TV Series

Doctor Who Series 10 Monsters were initially ‘Kung Fu Monks’!

By Cameron K McEwan

In the latest episode of Doctor Who: The Fan Show – the Aftershow, sculptor Gary Pollard has revealed that the Series 10 Monks were originally very different…

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Pollard, chief designer at Millennium FX, has worked on various Doctor Who episodes since 2013, designing and sculpting prosthetics for the show’s monsters and aliens.

One of his most recent creations, the Monks, having been causing a sensation in Extremis, The Pyramid at the End of the World and The Lie of the Land but, he told The Fan Show, they weren’t always how they looked and acted now:

“Early on, it was very different and they were kung-fu monks that were going to be physical and fighting. Later on that evolved into the thinkers and the schemers and the mind-controllers – the idea shifts and evolves.”

Gary, who has worked on big screen blockbusters such as The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, treated fans to a glimpse to pre-production art featuring early designs for the aliens when they were “fighting Monks”; he says:

“He’s got a wooden sort of wooden carved vambraces and a bolas because there is a part in an earlier thing that I read where it takes out an entire SWAT team.”

Gary also speaks about working on the new Ice Warrior design, in the forthcoming episode Empress Of Mars, and the return of the classic Mondasian Cybermen in the Series 10 finale.

Watch the latest episode of Doctor Who: The Fan Show – the Aftershow below.

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