Villain - Slitheen
The Slitheen are a family of massive, bipedal extraterrestrials from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and are adversaries of the Doctor. They first appeared in the 2005 series episodes "Aliens of London" and "World War Three", and subsequently recur in later episodes of both Doctor Who and spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures. They are creatures of living calcium, hatched from eggs and native to the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius. Though the name "Slitheen" refers to a specific family, the term has been used by the Doctor and Rose to refer to the Raxacoricofallapatorian race in general.
The Slitheen are a ruthless criminal sect whose main motivation is profit. They are instinctive hunters, being trained to hunt and kill from a young age. The members of the family are convicted criminals on their planet, subject to the death penalty if captured.
Physical characteristics
Raxacoricofallapatorians are eight feet tall, rather fat with long forearms and powerful claws. They do not appear to have eyelids, but have a nictitating membrane. They have a highly-developed sense of smell, able to track a single target across a few city blocks, smell adrenaline and hormones in people and can sense if one of their own dies. Female Raxacoricofallapatorians can produce poisons within their bodies which they then use against their enemies. Known methods of delivery include a poisoned dart that is formed in the finger and then fired and exhalation of poisoned breath. Members of the Slitheen family have green skin, though there is variation in the skin tone of other Raxacoricofallapatorian families. In The Sarah Jane Adventures episode, The Gift, members of the Slitheen-Blathereen family group are seen to have orange skin.
The Slitheen disguise themselves by fitting into the skins of their victims, using compression fields created by a collar worn around their necks to squeeze their huge size into a slightly smaller space. Initially the compression ratio was limited, so the disguises tended to be that of obese people. This issue was overcome by new technology by the time of The Lost Boy in which the skins of thinner people were used (by the time of From Raxacoricofallapatorius with Love short people could also be used). The exchange of gases that compression entails also builds up within the acquired skin, causing a very loud fart in humans (the expelled gas smells like bad breath, which the Doctor noted was a form of calcium decay, although in reality the bacteria that cause tooth decay are different from those that cause bad breath). This side-effect is also overcome by the newer technology in The Lost Boy.
Gas exchange
When the Slitheen are in their skin suits they fart loudly; they call this the gas exchange. This can also be caused by over-eating. In "The Gift" (Sarah Jane Adventures) Sarah Jane and the gang destroy the food, a plant called Rakweed, which is native to Raxacoricofallapatorius, in the stomachs of the Blathereen, which produced methane gas.
Vulnerabilities
Raxacoricofallapatorians are vulnerable to acetic acid, which reacts explosively—and fatally—with their bodies, which makes Slitheen allergic to vinegar, ketchup and Coca-Cola. One of the Raxacoricofallapatorian methods of execution is the lowering of the condemned into a cauldron of acetic acid, which is then heated to boiling. The acidity of the solution is formulated to dissolve the skin, allowing the internal organs to drop into the liquid while the condemned is still alive, reducing them to "soup" and resulting in a slow and painful death. In "World War Three", when a single Slitheen was electrocuted, the effects were transmitted to other Slitheen, even those across the city.
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