Hairless, pale and distinctly egg-like. The Idogene are a hyper-intelligent, technologically advanced strain of Votan. Their pale skin is pocked with hexagons, and they are largely seen as the peacemakers of all the Voltan species, although they hate the Castithans who they shared a birth-planet with. Boy, they just hate them. Photograph: PR
There are no shortage of aliens on Star Trek: The Next Generation, but with a Klingon on the bridge (the entertainingly angry Mr Worf) they needed a new signature baddie. Step forward the Borg, looking like some alien version of Hellraiser’s S&M cenobites, their bodies assimilated from countless other species. With a cold, hive-mind that was unable to be reasoned with or placated, their thought-processes were just as scary as their appearance. Resistance was futile. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar
They made only one appearance in Doctor Who, in 1975’s Terror of the Zygons, but they made their mark and are returning this season. Design-wise they don’t make too much sense (suckers on their heads, why?) but they nailed it with the makeup and sound (a hissing, raspy brrr). We’ve only seen the new ones in publicity stills but going by that, they seem to have lost a little in modernisation. Photograph: PR
Sure, it’s a man in a lizard suit, but Kirk’s fight with The Gorn, in the fan-favourite Star Trek episode Arena, is more memorable than many better choreographed slug-fests. Arena has the usual heavy metaphors that marked Trek out, but also has Kirk drop-kicking a space-alien lizard-man. Win/win. Photograph: PR
Futurama’s resident awful doctor. Pink, lobsterish, ink-squirting, garbage-eating Decapodian Zoidberg. His brain is in his backside, he has a retractable head-fin for mating displays and possesses ripe stink glands. They’ll never run out of ways to make Zoidberg hilariously disgusting. Photograph: PR
Dominar Rygel XVI or just Rygel for short. And short he is, this ancient Yoda-sized Jim Henson-produced creation had a personality bigger than his squat, useless body. Utterly selfish, cowardly and pompous, he also expelled helium when scared (easy to know who dealt it when everyone’s voice goes higher). An excellent, alien take on the traditional Earth fart-gag. Photograph: Everett Collection / Rex Feature
This unnamed mass of tentacled mayhem lurked in a graveyard of dead spaceships and any traveller who got close enough was sucked into its maw and the charred remains spat out. Its demise was just as harrowing: an axe slammed into its glowing eye. The stuff of thrilling nightmares for decades. Photograph: ITV / Rex Features
Ew, creepy crawlies. Ew, ew, creepy crawlies with human(ish) faces posing as dangerous space criminals. Well done Outer Limits, you managed to find a way to make bugs even more unsettling. These tiny crooked critters were too small and insectoid to be realised by makeup, so stop-motion animation brought them to life, the process making them seem somehow even more like a bad hallucination. Photograph: PR
New show Defiance introduces us to the newest addition in the fine lineage of television aliens: the Votans. We join the action 33 years after their 2013 invasion of Earth. Our planet has been terraformed, teeming with often deadly extraterrestrial flora and fauna. Of the seven Votan species introduced, the most interesting looking are … the Volge: hulking, mechanically enhanced beasts “bred to wipe out worlds”. Heavily armoured and armed, with large walking battle-tanks, they present a formidable threat to our plucky human (and Votan) heroes. Photograph: PR
This bonkers Anglo/German show from 1975 presented a topsy-turvy, role reversal (for the time, of course) world, the planet Medusa where women ruled over subservient men. Photograph: PR
