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The Ultimate Monsters Set (2008)
The Ultimate Monsters Set is the fourth major release in the Battles in Time series and the third main expansion, excluding the standalone Daleks vs Cybermen collections.
GE Fabbri announced the collection in a press release dated 11 February 2008. The nationwide release followed on 5 March 2008.
The launch of Ultimate Monsters was accompanied by a special bumper issue of the Battles in Time magazine. The issue was distributed with four Ultimate Monsters booster packs attached to the cover.
Individual Ultimate Monsters booster packs were also made available for separate purchase from newsagents at the time of the collection's launch. This allowed the cards to be obtained independently of the accompanying magazine.
The 225 new cards were divided across the traditional five rarity tiers with a slight tweak to the Ultra Rare count:
185 Common Cards (C): 8 per pack
25 Rare Cards (R): 1 per pack
10 Super-Rare Cards (SR): 1 in every 6 packs
5 Ultra-Rare Cards (UR): 1 in every 24 packs
1 Golden Ticket Card: 1 in every 1,000 packs
Taken from Issue 393 of the Doctor Who Magazine announcing the Ultimate Monsters Set.
My Render of what the packs for this set looked like, as it is incredibly hard to scan the packs themselves due to the foil packaging. Please do not re-use without permission as a-lot of work went into re-mastering these. Thank you.
Promotional art from the Invader series showing what the boxes in retail settings looked like where you could purchase single packs.
A Historic First: Bridging "Classic" and "New" Who
The Ultimate Monsters Set expanded the scope of the Battles in Time collection by introducing material from the Classic Era of Doctor Who, which originally aired from 1963 to 1989. Previous main collections had primarily focused on the revived television series.
The inclusion of characters and monsters from different periods of Doctor Who required an additional identification feature on the cards. GE Fabbri introduced a dedicated indicator circle on the front of the cards, identifying the incarnation of the Doctor associated with the character or monster depicted.
The Ultimate Monsters collection contains 225 new cards, continuing the numbering from the Invader Set. The cards are numbered sequentially from 601 to 825.
The collection combines characters, monsters and other subjects from the Classic Era with material from the revived television series. Its coverage extends to the most recent television story available at the time of production, the 2007 Christmas Special, Voyage of the Damned.
The resulting checklist incorporates material from multiple periods of Doctor Who, including classic and modern characters and monsters within a single collection.
How To Identify Ultimate Monsters Cards
Because the Ultimate Monsters expansion bridged the gap between the Classic and Modern eras of Doctor Who, its card frame underwent the most significant layout overhaul in the entire franchise. When sorting through your collection, look for these five distinct visual markers:
Light Blue Rarity Bubbles: The circular rarity icon in the bottom-left corner features a crisp, light blue background (distinct from the red used in the original Exterminator set).
Light Blue Set Numbering: The card number in the bottom-right corner is printed in light blue ink and counts up out of the 225.
The "Ultimate Monsters" Branding: The words ULTIMATE MONSTERS are clearly stamped in bold text along the bottom-center border of the card frame.
Dual "Doctor Indicator" Icons: To educate younger fans on classic lore, the specific Doctor that the character or item encountered is printed in two distinct locations on the front of the card:
A floating circular graphic placed contextually within the main artwork where space allows.
A secondary reference icon positioned neatly directly below the series name at the base of the card.
Updated Back Copyright: Turning the card over reveals the updated "© BBC 2008" copyright timestamp printed directly beneath the main Battles in Time logo.
Ultimate Monsters Special
The Ultimate Monsters Set introduced a revised card layout to accommodate material from both the Classic and Modern eras of Doctor Who. Several visual features distinguish Ultimate Monsters cards from those of the preceding collections.
The principal identifying characteristics are as follows:
Rarity symbols: The circular rarity symbol in the bottom-left corner features a light blue background. This differs from the red styling used on Exterminator cards and the green and yellow styling used on Annihilator and Invader cards respectively.
Set numbering: The card number in the bottom-right corner is printed in light blue ink and is numbered as part of the 225-card Ultimate Monsters collection. The numbering continues from the preceding Invader collection, beginning at 601 and ending at 825.
Ultimate Monsters branding: The words “ULTIMATE MONSTERS” are displayed along the bottom-centre border of the card frame.
Doctor indicator: Ultimate Monsters cards introduced dedicated Doctor indicators to identify the incarnation of the Doctor associated with the character, monster or subject depicted. The indicator appears in two locations on the front of the card:
A circular graphic incorporated into the main artwork where the available space permits.
A secondary reference icon positioned beneath the series name at the base of the card.
Copyright text: The reverse of the cards carries the updated copyright notice “© BBC 2008”, positioned directly beneath the main Battles in Time logo.
The introduction of the Doctor indicators was particularly relevant to the Ultimate Monsters collection because the set incorporated material from both the Classic and Modern eras of Doctor Who.
The Ultimate Monsters Flash Website
To accompany the release of the Ultimate Monsters collection, GE Fabbri introduced a dedicated website at [www.battlesintimemonsters.com](http://www.battlesintimemonsters.com).
As with the earlier Invader website, the Ultimate Monsters site used Adobe Flash for many of its interactive and animated features. Following the discontinuation of support for Flash, much of the site's original interactive content is no longer accessible through modern web browsers.
Archival video footage provides a record of the website's appearance and functionality during its operation in 2008. The footage includes the site's homepage and several of its interactive features.
One of the features documented in the footage is the “Buy the Special” section. This incorporated an animated page-turning preview of the Ultimate Monsters Special magazine, allowing visitors to view selected pages from the publication before purchasing the physical issue from newsagents.
The surviving footage provides additional evidence of the digital content and promotional material that accompanied the Ultimate Monsters collection at the time of its release.
Scanned Cards:
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