Dr. Leonard McCoy ("Bones") (Star Trek)
Kind of the obvious place to start, right? It's kind of hard to think of something to say about McCoy that hasn't already been said. He's probably the original Awesome Space Doctor, providing not only medical expertise to the Enterprise, but also being one-third of the trifecta that is Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. If Spock is the logic and Kirk is emotion, then McCoy is morality glue that holds it all together. (Morality glue?) Originally portrayed by DeForest Kelley, he will be played by Karl Urban in this summer's film.

Dr. Pieter Cross (Doctor Mid-Nite) (DC Comics)
Dr. Cross is actually the third DC hero to don the mantle of Doctor Mid-Nite, and like his predecessors, he a) can only see in pitch darkness, and b) is a doctor. Despite the fact that the chosen spelling of midnight looks like the name of a bad motel, it's a little refreshing, really, to have a superhero who uses the title of "doctor" and has the medical degree to back it up. Cross, in addition to his vigilante activities, still puts in a full day at the office and is always willing to take time to deal with a medical emergency. On top of that, he's the superhero community's physician of choice, having done everything from emergency surgery on Hourman to removing the Brainiac virus from Oracle to removing a bullet from Lois Lane to giving Power Girl her annual checkups. (I kid you not; Pieter Cross is a lucky man.)

Dr. Janet Frasier (Stargate SG-1)
Dr. Frasier is basically amazing. She is a compassionate physician and finds herself not only dealing with Earth diseases, but alien ones as well, as she treats extraterrestrial refugees. Over the course of the show, she adopts a daughter, Cassandra, an alien orphan.

Dr. Owen Harper (Torchwood)
Owen is the medical officer for Torchwood Three. He's kind of sarcastic, kind of abrasive, and eventually also kind of wonderful. He spends his spare time getting romantically entangled with both of his female coworkers, a female aviator from 1953, and, well, pretty much whoever else he happens to run across. In the show's second season, he dies, but gets better. Sort of. In that he essentially becomes the team's resident snarky zombie boy for the rest of his run.

Dr. Simon Tam (Firefly TV series, Serenity, 2005 film)
A brilliant young doctor (graduating in the top three percent of his class at the Medical Academy), Simon became a resident trauma surgeon in a major hospital and his future looked bright. That is, until he has to bust his sister out of the Academy, where she's being experimented on, escape, and join up with a less-than-savory crew that conducts less-than-legal business. Lucky for him, their business tends to keep his medical training pretty well in demand. (Plus, he's pretty much a shoe-in to win Best Dressed among the ship's crew. He owns some nice waistcoats.)

Dr. Carson Beckett (Stargate: Atlantis)
If there were a competition for Most Awesome Doctor On This List, chances are Beckett probably wouldn't win, although he might earn a few points for sharing a last name with an existentialist playwright. At the same time, he's a pretty competent physician and has the honor of being the only Scottish doctor on this list. He also probably holds the honor of having the most awkward character death on here, but at least he's back now. As a clone. Which is also kind of awkward.

Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
Maybe he's not exactly a certified physician, but you have admit that creating a living being out of a bunch of dead people is about as impressive as you can get when it comes to medical skill. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, however, Victor both fears and rejects his creation because of its ugliness. Way to be a pansy, man.

Dr. Thomas Elliot (Hush) (DC Comics)
He started out as Bruce Wayne's childhood friend, despite being kind of a nutjob of a kid, and went on to become a successful, Harvard-educated surgeon. Unfortunately, he eventually becomes the doctor of one Edward Nigma (The Riddler), which spells bad news, considering Elliot is the guy who tried to kill his parents as a kid (and half-succeeded) and now hates Bruce Wayne. Well, he and the Riddler realize they have that in common, and Dr. Elliot invents himself an alter-ego to work on the whole bringing-down-Batman plan. And thus, Hush is born.

Dr. Stephen Franklin (Babylon 5)
Dr. Franklin is the chief medical officer aboard the space station, and as Wikipedia describes him:

Dr. Franklin is a strong-willed, kind person and idealistic leader on Babylon 5; he is also a workaholic. He is not afraid to take risks to save a patient's life; this habit can occasionally get him into trouble. He has strong moral and ethical values, but he can also be self-righteous and a perfectionist at times.

And while those qualities make him kind of awesome, they also kind of make him addicted to stimulants in the show's third season. He, of course, beats the addiction and goes back to the awesome.

Dr. Miles Bennell (Invasion of the Body Snatchers, 1956 film)
The good doctor is called into town to look at the uncle of the cousin of his ex-sweetheart, who somehow seems not to be himself as of late. (This ex-sweetheart also seems to be able to call in some pretty convoluted favors.) Dr. Bennell is at first unable to find anything wrong, but a little more investigation leads him to discover the pod people, come to Earth to replace us. And, of course, snatch our bodies in the process-A fate which Bennell warns us of the last dramatic fourth-wall-breaking moments of the film. (The 2007 adaptation, The Invasion, features Daniel Craig as a doctor named Ben Driscoll. It unfortunately also features a bad movie.)

Dr. Sherman Cottle (Battlestar Galactica)
The Chief Medical Officer of Galactica, Dr. Cottle is also the only real physician-surgeon aboard. As the Battlestar Wiki describes him:

Cottle is somewhat eccentric and is considered a "bastard" among some of Galactica's crew, in addition to his penchant for being a heavy smoker, despite knowing the risks, and one not overly impressed by positions of power. He is, above all things, a healer. To him, nothing else really matters, be it rank, riches, or species.

Despite his somewhat abrasive manner, he's still well-trusted among the crew.

Dr. Samuel J. Loomis (Halloween franchise)
While its debatable whether or not the Halloween films are remotely science-fiction (although Michael Myers pretty inarguably displays some rather superhuman abilities), it's pretty safe to say that Dr. Loomis is just about the most awesome licensed psychiatrist in the business. After all, one of his main charges is more or less Unmitigated Evil. Then again, Loomis also doesn't have a great track record with keeping Michael from killing people. But he does get to say things like, "Death has come to your little town, Sheriff." And in Donald Pleasance's voice to boot.

Dr. Donald Blake (Thor, Marvel Comics)
Dr. Blake was Thor's original alter ego, having somewhat accidentally discovered the ability to transform into the god while on vacation in Scandanavia. Blake was a surgeon and while not being Thor, was actually seen practicing medicine in the comics. He is also said to have worked with Thor on multiple occasions, but what exactly that entails is a little beyond me.

The Doctor (Star Trek: Voyager)
The Doctor might be an Emergency Medical Hologram, but he's more than just a bit of hardware. In an attempt to build his own personality, he develops artistic talents and a holographic family, as well as friendships with his crewmates. He even writes a novel titled Photons Be Free.

Doctor Gogol (Mad Love, 1935 film)
Doctor Gogol is a brilliant-but, of course, completely mad-surgeon. After all, he's played by Peter Lorre, who pretty much invented brilliant-but-mad. Gogol is (madly) in love with an actress named Yvonne, and when her husband, a concert pianist named Stephen, has his hands crushed in a tragic accident, she comes to him, begging for help. He obliges by replacing Stephen's hands with those of a recently executed knife murderer. The results? Well, let's just say that Stephen and that kid from Idle Hands should get together and form some kind of support group. And Doctor Gogol? Completely mad. But also brilliant.

Dr. Cecilia Reyes (X-Men, Marvel Comics)
A Puerto Rican doctor, Cecilia has the ability to project a forcefield around her. As Wikipedia says:

Cecilia Reyes decided to become a doctor when her father was gunned down in front of her as a child, and she was unable to do anything to help him. The X-Men tried recruiting her when it was discovered that she was a mutant, but Reyes had no interest in being a superhero. However, when Operation: Zero Tolerance, a government-backed anti-mutant task force, targeted her, she was forced to join forces with the X-Man Iceman and other mutants to escape New York City and track down Bastion, Operation Zero Tolerance's leader.

Doc Benton (Supernatural, 3.15 "Time is on My Side")
When people started turning up with surgically removed organs and a dead man's fingerprints all over them, the Winchester brothers begin looking into it, as they are wont to do. Their investigation leads them to Doc Benton, a nineteenth century surgeon who discovered the secret to eternal life and now has a habit of replacing his parts whenever they wear out. Maybe it's not the best plan to win a guy friends, but it sure makes great use of his surgical skills.

Doctor Strauss, along with Professor Nemur (Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes)
Although nobody really remembers the name of the doctor who tripled Charlie Gordon's IQ, you have to admit that pulling that off is no small feat. Unfortunately, the effects are-not to ruin the ending-not exactly all they're cracked up to be. Additionally, Strauss and Nemur can claim the credit for one of the most famous mice in sci-fi.

Dr. Julian Bashir (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
As Wikipedia tells it:

As a child, Julian Bashir fell behind in school, and was evaluated as having learning difficulties. Because of this, his parents, Richard and Amsha Bashir, had him subjected to genetic engineering. The procedure made him mentally superior to most humans, and greatly enhanced his physical abilities. However, because human genetic engineering is illegal in the United Federation of Planets, Bashir and his parents kept his procedure a secret throughout most of his adult life.

Throughout the course of the show, he gets to do such exciting things as end up in a prison camp, see the woman he loves (Jadzia Dax) marry someone else, and attempt to integrate some other genetically engineered people into Federation culture.

Dr. Henry Jekyll (Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson)
Unlike his more temperamental counterpart, Dr. Jekyll is a well-liked, friendly doctor. The secret life he leads as Mr. Edward Hyde, however, puts that likeable reputation at stake, thanks to a potion Jekyll invented. Perhaps the lesson here is that you shouldn't mix your own drinks, even when you're a trained professional.

Openly Aggressive Alien Invaders
You know the type; they come with their guns and their bombs, to quote Dolores O'Riordan, and just try to blow shit up until we surrender. We've seen their kind in War Of The Worlds (whichever version you want), any Dalek-themed episode of Doctor Who, Independence Day or even Transformers, and they're the kind of alien invaders that the world expects - Straight, to the point, and despite their superior firepower, ultimately prepared to fall to our superior intellect, pluck and whatever contagious diseases may be going around at the time.

Passively Aggressive Alien Invaders
These aliens are much sneakier and more difficult to deal with. Oh, they come with promises of all manner of intergalactic treats and peaceful transactions, but behind their oddly perfect grins, they're really lizard people who eat mice whole. I speak, of course, of the aliens from V, but we've seen similar tactics from Secret Invasion's Skrulls ("Embrace change," indeed. The only change they want for us is the one from breathing to six feet under) and, memorably, Mars Attacks's big-brained psuedo-pacifists:

Secret Invaders
Where the Skrulls went wrong, of course, was coming out of the alien closet. If they'd just stuck to their original plan of being undetectably undercover, then world domination could've been theirs much more easily - if less profitably for Marvel Comics. Think of how successful the 1970s Invasion of The Body Snatchers was (and try to ignore Nicole Kidman's shameful The Invasion, while you're at it), or the fact that poor David Vincent never quite managed to completely save the day in The Invaders. Particularly popular in times of American foreign affair paranoia, secret invaders can also generally be identified by the nearby presence of a title that includes some variation on the word "invasion."

Accidental Invaders
It's not just The Day The Earth Stood Still's Klaatu who found himself mistaken for a hostile force; poor ET almost got himself dissected by an overzealous government with cell-phone handguns, as well, and don't get me started on those poor musical bastards from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Call it the human disease: seeing something different and just expecting the worst without provocation. I mean, sometimes, even those who do intend to cause destruction aren't really entirely bad guys: think about the Vogons in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, who destroy the Earth only because it's in the way, or Star Trek: The Next Generation's Borg, who only want us all to be brothers and sisters and share the same interests, likes and dislikes, and hive mind. Is it that wrong to condemn them?

Well, yes. After all, if we don't condemn them before they destroy our planet, how are we supposed to do it afterwards? If there's another thing that science fiction has taught us, after all, it's that whichever aliens are going to make contact with the human race, there's a very high percentage that their language's version of the words "widespread destruction and/or subjugation of the native population" are going to appear somewhere on their list of things to do. It may seem cruel and overly suspicious, but in this dog-obliterates-dog-with-raygun universe, the case can always be made that it's worth cutting open a couple of friendly aliens who just want to phone home if it means that we don't end up under the extra-terrestrial boot heel of some inhuman Space Hitler. Take my word for it, people: hope for the best all you want, but if you happen to make first contact with an alien, make sure that you do so with at least a knife handly, just in case. And whatever you do, remember: Don't cover your mouth when you sneeze.

Evidently this system is already in practice in Spain, and the organ-harvesting ambulances are only dispatched when a known volunteer donor is in a life-threatening situation, and now a group of NYC doctors led by surgeon Lewis Goldfrank of Bellevue Hospital Center at New York University want to replicate the process. Still, it's not hard to picture the harvesting paramedics looking over the regular EMTs saying "oh man, that looks bad. Don't think he's going to make it..." or carting someone off to be 'redistributed,' only to have the patient protest, "I'm not dead yet," Monty Python-style:

Normally, transplant and organ preservation specialists don't get involved until after a patient has been declared dead. "Declaring someone dead out in the field, when the person is either not decapitated or decomposed ... is a critical decision," said Michael Grodin, a specialist in health law and bio ethics at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

"I think it is a bad idea, a counterproductive one," he said. "The public will see it as an ambulance floating around in the city ready to take your body."

The project's goal is to send an ambulance to the scene of an accident and for the paramedics to do what they can to save the victim's life.

But without necessarily telling these paramedics, project administrators will also order a special ambulance in charge of collecting fresh human organs to the accident site. Its personnel will intervene only if the patient dies.

Source: PhysOrg

1. Double mouth, or double-wide mouth. (See: Alien)

As the Alien series taught us, there's nothing scarier than a really long, giant toothy mouth — especially if there's a second long, toothy mouth inside it. But the long, toothy mouth rule shows up in a lot of alien movies. In Slither, for example, a guy is taken over by an alien and one of the first things it does is elongate his mouth so that it practically stretches to his ears on one side. (Lopsided elongated mouths are a bonus — lopsided is always scary.)

Corollary: Drool

A scary alien must drool. Again, we know this from the Alien series where the drool flows like water. But since Ridley Scott first gave us full frontal drool in the first Alien flick, drool has been the sign of scary for all aliens. It says "out of control." Now, of course, we cannot imagine any monster without drool. See, for instance, Beowulf, where the monster's drool is one of the first 3D effects. And there's 3D drool coming up in Journey to the Center of the Earth, too. Dinosaur drool!

2. Collective Consciousness (See: Borg from Star Trek)

One of the scariest and most alien things we can imagine is a species that has collective consciousness, or group think. All their minds are connected together like a bunch of little networked Linux boxes, rapidly churning through all that knowledge to figure out exactly how to kill you. Plus, collectively conscious creatures can more easily coordinate an attack, because they are all in mental communication with each other all the time. And they might absorb you — think how scary it was the first time you saw the Borg chanting: "You will be assimilated."

3. Looks Exactly Like a Human (See: Invasion of the Body Snatchers)

Somehow it's scarier when an alien looks exactly like a human, or is camouflaged as one. Even though Men in Black wasn't exactly scary, there was something uncanny when the alien took off its human skin and revealed its true face. And of course one of the reasons Hollywood has remade Invasion of the Body Snatchers four times in the past 50 years (Invasion was the most recent one) is that it's so freakin creepy that the aliens look perfectly human — except for the fact that they have no emotion. We will not, however, speak of the human-camo farting aliens from Doctor Who.

4. Treats Humans the Way Humans Treat Animals (See: Predator)

The infamous Twilight Zone tale "To Serve Man" packs all its punch into one single idea: the aliens have a cookbook ALL ABOUT EATING HUMANS! They look at us the way we look at chickens! The same idea lurks at the heart of popular franchise Predator, where the whole conceit is that the alien has just come to Earth on a safari to hunt human game. Where's the respect? 5. Polymorphous (See: The Thing)

If there's anything scarier than an alien that looks just like a human, it's an alien that can look like whatever it wants. Although the shiny, pretty aliens in Abyss wind up being our friends, they are super scary at first because they can morph into any shape they want. And of course what makes the thing in John Carpenter's version of The Thing so scary is that it can turn any body part into chunks of alien — human heads sprout legs, blood jumps up and runs around the room, people grow dog heads. Whoa. Same goes for the aliens in my personal favorite alien movie, Society, where a bunch of rich Beverly Hills types turn out to be polymorphous creatures who love to have giant orgies where they merge into a big room full of goo and eat humans.

6. Wants to Mate With Humans to Produce Scary Hybrid Offspring (See: Species)

The fear of an alien being who wants to mate with you probably goes back thousands of years, but in terms of current pop culture we can probably trace it back to H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories of the 1920s. Remember, one of the scariest things about Cthulhu's spawn is that they are mating with humans, producing strange, fishy-looking humans who eventually go back to the sea. Combining this rule with rule 3 (looks human) is the Species franchise, where a super-hot alien lady goes around humping unsuspecting men for their seed and then killing them in flagrante delicto.

7. Buglike (See: Independence Day, Starship Troopers)

Buglike aliens are a staple of the genre. Even the aliens of Alien are buglike, with their hard carapaces. Bugs are so scary-looking already, and we suspect they may also participate in rule 2, having collective consciousness. In fact, "buglike" has become shorthand (sometimes lazy shorthand) for "scary alien," which is why you see so many depictions of aliens with feelers or antennae on their heads. Bug aliens show up in some of the most generic scifi flicks like Independence Day and Starship Troopers. But there are buggy aliens in more highbrow places too, like the Ender's Game series, where Earth is battling (and ultimately genociding) a buglike race.

28 Days Later
A virus called Rage spreads rapidly through England, turning nearly everyone into zombie-like creatures who eat human flesh. A small band of uninfected humans escape London, only to find themselves in an even worse situation when they encounter a military unit whose madness has nothing to do with the virus. Ends on an ambiguously dark note. You won't be reaching for the cyanide capsules, but you may not be able to sleep.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978 version)
This dark remake of the 1950s communist-scare story takes place in San Francisco and stars Donald Sutherland as a Sensitive New Age guy who discovers all his buddies have become pod people in their sleep. Made very soon after the Watergate scandal, the movie is a satisfying homage to conspiracy paranoia. The ending will make you want to never sleep again.

The Quiet Earth
This New Zealand indie is about a guy who wakes up one morning to discover he's the last guy on Earth . . . until he meets two other survivors. Sometimes having people around can be worse than being the only guy on the planet. Especially when the fabric of space-time keeps getting shredded. The ending is one of the most beautiful and frightening things I've ever seen.

Brazil
Terry Gilliam's mid-1980s dystopian masterwork holds up beautifully, and people a century from now will still be watching this sad tale of a dreamy bureaucrat who gets mixed up with political forces he doesn't understand. Set in a gloomy, fascist nation forever at war with nebulously-defined terrorists, Brazil is about how a little guy who dreams big can fight the system. But the ending — which Gilliam fought the studios tooth and nail to retain — will make you cry, rip your hair out, and question whether there is any hope left in the world.

Night of the Living Dead
There have been sequels aplenty, but none hold a candle to this 1969 speculative classic in which the recently-dead suddenly start walking around eating the living. Though it plays with horror themes, this black-and-white movie has almost a documentary feeling. There's nothing supernatural about government officials trying to explain and suppress information about the risen dead. When a group of strangers get stranded in a zombie-beseiged house, they have to work together to fend off the hordes of dead people. But director George Romero wants to be sure you know that heroism never pays off in late-60s America. The ending will make you want to chew people's arms off just like a zombie would.

Famous names: Kevin McCarthy Don Siegel

Crunchy goodness: rate 4

Life lesson: Vegetables are dangerous; eat steak.

Most painfully dated moment: Public health professionals who will sit up with you all night listening to your "alien space pod invasion" story.

Deadliest spoiler: The Soviet Union eventually collapses.

Review and Synopsis of Movie by Tim Dirks

Famous names: Brooke Adams Veronica Cartwright Jeff Goldblum Leonard Nimoy Donald Sutherland

Crunchy goodness: 3.5

Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: Body Snatchers (1993), Invasion (2007). One can only assume that The Invasion Snatchers is in the works.

Sights you'll never unsee: Pulsating embryonic Donald Sutherland pod complete with porn star mustache and 'fro. Obese man wearing a tiny, tiny towel receiving full body mud rubdown from Veronica Cartwright. Leonard Nimoy and Jeff Goldblum coming dangerously close to a full on sissy slap fight.

Life lesson: Organic farming is part of an alien mind-control conspiracy, just like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly have always said.

Deadliest spoiler: The pods win.

MonsterHunter Film Review: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)