Yes, the “dream crabs” in Doctor Who’s latest Christmas special were basically facehuggers from Alien — to the point where the show kept lampshading this. But they still looked cool and revolting, and this concept art shows how they could have been even nastier.
Once again, the Radio Times has Doctor Who concept art from Millennium FX, the effects studio that designed these nasties. And Millennium’s Rob Mayor basically admits that Alien “was a reference… but it’s such a classic film that as soon as you have spider-like creatures running around attaching them to people’s faces, you can’t help but make that comparison. We were quite mindful that we didn’t draw too much on that, because it’s a film we’ve all grown up with and Alien is a key influence in our line of work.”
The good news is, they did create some designs that were very crab-like and had nasty claws in addition to the facehugging thing. Check out some of our favorite designs below, and there’s tons more over at the Radio Times:
