Great Scott!  I’ve been savaging Listverse recently and ran into this gem, Top 12 Things You Need to Be a Mad Scientist. This is character reference gold, and I’m shocked I haven’t posted a mad scientist yet.  They are such a big part of science fiction, warning of the darker side of science and the lure to forgo traditional morality and become God himself!  MUAHAHAHAHAHA!Most of this stuff is Victorian, where the mad doctor trope was invented from the surge of scientific knowledge that resulted from the Age of Enlightenment.  Man, I can feel my creative juices flowing just thinking about it.  FOR SCIENCE!

Oh, lordy I love the Hath.  It’s a shame that this picture comes from a negative review of them on every level, but they can rot in hell. 

The Hath are a humanoid fish race from Doctor Who that I am oddly obsessed with.  There is something about people without faces, people that can’t talk, and people in ridiculous prosthetic.  Does the makeup look very convincing as a real creature? Not really, no.  But you have to understand, I don’t love him in spite of it, I love him because of it.  It’s this kind of gritty campiness that only Doctor Who could get a way with.

But I think my favorite thing about these guys is the way they talk.  They have those pea-soup breathing things that work like a reverse scuba suit, and when they communicate it bubbles.  I don’t know if it is more cute or hilarious, but if I could bottle the feeling it gives me I would never stop snorting it. 

And if you like the Who, here’s some relevant fan art I did a few years ago you might enjoy.

Riddick is an original character.  The movie Pitch Black was the first time he appeared.  He wasn’t based on a comic book, a novel, or a video game. 

Many people might already know this, but when I first found out it blew my mind.  So often it seems that there are no more original ideas Hollywood, especially in science fiction and super heroes.  Because lets face it, this guy is a super hero.  So even though the former murderous criminal turned antihero has been done a few times, I think the universe has benifited from his creation.

So he’s built like Vin Diesel but sound even smoother and smokier.  He’s got former military looking leggings and boots, a bodybuilder tank and those cool post-punk goggles.  And although I’m no optometrist but I’d guess they were designed to look like military sunglasses from a dark future.  Dark is a big theme in the whole Riddick series.

Which brings me to the reason for the glasses.  He wears them because of his perma-night-vision, coupled with the fact that they look awesome.  And while I feel like there have been other characters with night vision, Riddick is unique in that he got it done as a cosmetic surgery in a cavernous jail system to keep from getting shanked.  Yeah, he’s that hardcore.  And as a result, his eye balls have that cool silver color.

And it’s been announced that Riddick 3 in in the works.

Big Daddy.  Yes it is.  Two parts deep water diver and one part wrecking ball, Big Daddies where one of the scarier and more iconic of Bioshock’s enemies.

Their design also kindly helped cement the setting as a underwater dystopia where man and science had finally come together to create monsters.  These guys were like a tank in a fat suit, and hat the rage to match both.  They also had those killer cool glowing eyes of yellow evil.  Bioshock wouldn’t have been quite the same without them.

I’m on the record for finding a lot of hideous monstrosities cute, so it’s nice to have an example of a monster that’s supposed to be cuddly.  A lot of it is in the eyes and the face.  Something can have a monstrous body but once you give it a baby face it will either become really cute or all the more horrifying.  I guess there isn’t really a formula, but all the baby noises and sqiggling also helped the performance.  And +1 for puppet power.

I’ve been having fun with Scifi’s Syfy’s Being Human.  I never saw the original, but I think it has some interesting ideas and occupies a healthy level of emo.  I really like Sally the ghost’s character, although I’m often complaining that her stories seem so separate from the other two.

But more about her, she’s a free spirit.  She likes to be happy and wafting in the breeze but doesn’t get to do either that often what with the being dead.  She died in her jammies, so she’s always wearing that blankety jacket thing, it looks so comfy.  She also has this really nice bit she does a lot where her sleeves dangle past her hands and she just looks so helpless.

This students, is an alien.  A Narn to be specific, with foreign facial structures, patterned pigmentation, and eyes of red Cool-Aid.  Not pictured, is a man with pointed ears.

For those unfamiliar, the Narn are one of the three main alien races from Babylon 5.  These noble war-newt things were everywhere in that show, which goes to prove how seriously the creators took everything.  Now I’m particularly fond of garage band effects, but you just have to hand it to a show that would design something so extravagant and then trot it out every day like it was nothing out of the ordinary.