Series 11 of Doctor Who premiered with The Woman Who Fell To Earth. Written by Chris Chibnall and starring Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor, it was an interesting, if slow, story – but whose ideas are they, I wonder…?
For an alien gateway in a forest, go no further than The Day of the Doctor.
For a ‘semi-species’ on a train, try the Foretold in Mummy on the Orient Express; it was part lifeform, part technology on a locomotive.
For the introduction to a new companion in a police uniform, try Amy Pond in The Eleventh Hour.
For a newly regenerated Doctor, asleep, giving off regeneration energy, we have the Tenth Doctor in The Christmas Invasion.
For two pulses, it was the tell-tale in Time and the Rani.
For a female Time Lord to make her own screwdriver, remember Romanadvoratrelundar in The Horns of Nimon.
For a mobile phone being upgraded to a superphone, there are so many, but let’s start with Rose’s in The End of the World.
For someone researching alien conspiracy theories like Rahul, cue Clive Finch in Rose.
For an ice-cold alien who can kill with a touch of his super cold hands, try Kane, a native from Proamon in Dragonfire; he too was on a hunt (for the Dragonfire).
For an alien “cheating” with a short-range teleport, try our favourite Raxacoricofallapatorian, Blon Fel Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen, in Boom Town.
For climbing up a tall metal superstructure, try the TV antenna in The Idiot’s Lantern and, walking on a metal structure high above the ground, we have the Pharos Project in Logopolis.
For confronting a new alien in a post-regeneration story, with our protagonist saying, ‘I am the Doctor’ and telling the threat to leave Earth, we have the Eleventh Doctor in The Eleventh Hour.
For ‘not a companion’/’almost a companion’ dying whilst helping the Doctor, there are many such instances, but examples include Lynda Moss in The Parting of the Ways, Harriet Jones in The Stolen Earth, and Rita in The God Complex.
And finally, for the grandmother of a companion dying, this happened to Mickey Smith just before Journey’s End.