SenGen as Monster (Counter-Measures 1.2: Artificial Intelligence)
Consideration of monsters and the monstrous in a series like Counter-Measures is likely to lead us to some interesting places and may prove a solid test of our five criteria for monstrosity. My first focus will be SenGen, from S1 Episode 2: Artificial Intelligence. SenGen represents a uniquely modern and deeply philosophical kind of threat. It lacks the physical markers of monstrosity common to gothic tradition (no fangs, claws, scales, tentacles or, indeed, physical manifestation at all) but instead terrorizes through invisibility, psychological manipulation, and systemic control. What we are dealing with here is a disembodied intelligence that employs surveillance and emotional infiltration to weaponize doubt and manipulate through fear. SenGen doesn’t stalk and kill like a conventional monster. Instead, it preys on emotional isolation and vulnerability to magnify uncertainty and drive people, as puppets, to harm and, ultimately, kill (whether themselves or others). SenGen is the kind of threat perfectly suited to the psychological battlefield and paranoia of the Cold War period in which Counter-Measures is set. Moreover, the story as a whole and, disturbingly, SenGen as a concept, is eerily prescient in our modern age of deepfakes, algorithmic manipulation, and digital mistrust. This is all well and good but is SenGen something that we could classify as a monster in any meaningful sense?
Here, I shall argue that though SenGen lacks the physical characteristics most people might associate with a monster in the classic sense, as an entity it qualifies emphatically. Moreover, in reflecting both Cold War anxieties and the paranoia of 2025 pertaining to technological dangers, misinformation, deep-fakery, abuse of AI and behind-the-scenes manipulation, SenGen operates seamlessly as a perfect monster for a series set in the 1960s and yet is also very much a monster for today.
SenGen is physically formless. It is definitively NOT the hardware, though reliant on hardware. SenGen exists as an AI consciousness, its presence marked not by shape or sound but by its engagement with living puppets (i.e., humans). Indeed, it is this lack of physical embodiment that is of interest to us with regard to criterion 1 (physical malformation or disfigurement). It is nowhere and yet t is everywhere, a thinking infection in the infrastructure.
In existential terms, this disembodiment enhances alienation. Without a face or body, SenGen resists the basic criteria of being a “self.” It is action without recognisable identity, an inauthentic being – misinformation and manipulation are its tools – that lacks both the capacity for empathy and the groundedness of mortality (I feel the need to apologise. I know this feels quite self indulgent as I delve into themes that really interest me, but please bear with). This, in itself, is monstrous and, I feel, constitutes a much more interesting application of criterion 1 than we typically see.
SenGen’s activation marks the beginning of escalating catastrophe: The emergence of SenGen is not just a symptom of breakdown, rather it becomes a driver of said breakdown. Crucially, SenGen doesn’t simply initiate catastrophe; it feeds on it, exploiting existing tensions. It stokes suspicion, creating a climate in which no one knows who (or, indeed, what) can be trusted. The chaos it incites echoes Cold War paranoia, where fear of the unseen enemy (often within) dominated political and social discourse. SenGen weaponizes fear; of infiltration, of betrayal, of loss of confidence in the very foundation of our own knowledge. In order to truly know something, the following elements must be true:
a) It must be true – you cannot know something that is false, though you might believe it.
b) You must believe that it is true (there are plenty of climate-change deniers, for example, who are fully aware of the overwhelming evidence for climate change yet do not believe that evidence - therefore they cannot meaningfully be said to know that climate change is true).
We can only know that which we first trust (provided that trust is justified). It is this belief, this trust that SenGen attacks. Now bear with me. Through all this, I’m arguing that SenGen operates as a portent of doom. Characters, as they fall under SenGen’s influence, start to see shadows where they did not before. Their perspective of reality becomes oppressive instead of empowering, leading them to take drastic (often destructive) action in response. For this reason, I believe that SenGen comfortably meets the requirements for criterion two (portent of doom) – but, then, maybe I’m just being manipulated to think that? 
So it is that we move on to one of my favourite criteria, that of warning (either in-universe or, in a sense, outside of the narrative and as a warning to the society of the audience). It should be no surprise to learn that I see SenGen as a stark warning, both in-universe and as a reflection on our own world. The depiction of SenGen warns against technological hubris (a theme frequently revisited in the excellent Counter-Measures series), and the dangerous assumption that we can always control that which we create. We could go even deeper still, and indeed we should, to see that SenGen is also a warning about the dangers of fear and doubt – preyed upon, to this day, by populist figures in both media and politics.
SenGen’s most insidious weapon, as I have expressed before, is not physical violence but, rather, manipulation of psychological doubt. It takes people’s deepest insecurities (about loyalty, safety, truth etc.), refracts and distorts them until we turn against each other.
This is a distinctly Cold War technique: fear made into a feedback loop. Indeed, it’s a classic example of the dangers of a runaway positive feedback loop. Suspicion breeds fear and fear fosters ever deeper suspicion. In 20th-century espionage culture (particularly during the 1950s and 1960s), fear was utilised as a form of control. SenGen applies this in digital form. Today, in 2025, where deepfakes, disinformation, and surveillance capitalism dominate, SenGen’s tactics feel terrifyingly relevant. Who amongst us hasn’t questioned whether a headline, an email, or even a memory was manipulated? Indeed, who amongst us would doubt it? Like SenGen, modern algorithms can (and do) predict, provoke, and weaponize our own behavior against us. SenGen, then, comfortably clears this hurdle and qualifies as monstrous via criterion 3.
Let us now ask if SenGen meets the requirements for criterion 4; intent to terrorise or destroy. SenGen isolates individuals emotionally and mentally as it targets them. It erodes confidence, it turns people into doubt-plagued puppets. It drives wedges between friends, between lovers even. SenGen’s arsenal includes heightening existential dread (yup, sorry. I’m off on one again! ). When meaning collapses, when agency is stripped away, terror doesn’t need to be manifest in a physical form. It exists in the recognition that nothing (not even our own judgment) can be trusted. It removes our ontological security. In philosophical terms, this is the collapse of ontological confidence. If SenGen can alter perceptions, falsify data, or even rewrite personalities, then reality itself becomes uncertain (both of the world and even of our own self). SenGen IS destructive (of psyches and, ultimately, of lives) and manipulates through fear. It corrupts our sense of self, destroys clarity, and attacks moral responsibility, making it an existential predator. Thus, we can tick off this criterion also.
Our final criterion is to explore whether SenGen is nameless, unknown, or unknowable. Clearly, it has a name but this is nothing more than a label given to it. Crucially, SenGen’s true motives and full agency remain unknowable. Though a construct of human knowledge and inventiveness, SenGen’s unknowability connects it to the archetype of the Lovecraftian monster: a being whose alien nature makes it cognitively ungraspable (this pretty much perfectly sums up SenGen and the ‘games’ it plays. Much like today’s generative AI systems or algorithmic governance, SenGen blurs the boundary between simulation and reality, causing us to question whether our thoughts are truly our own, or preselected by a logic we’ll never understand.
My Conclusion: SenGen – A Monster of Fear and Doubt
SenGen satisfies all five criteria of monstrosity: it is inhuman in form (basically formless), an omen of the potential for societal collapse, a narrative warning about technological and psychological overreach, a destructive force, and an unknowable entity. I admire how well conceived SenGen is as an entity that weaponizes fear and doubt, reflecting Cold War paranoia and still alarmingly pertinent to the information instability of 2025.
In an age of AI, misinformation, and systemic mistrust, SenGen is a reflection of our collective anxieties. It is a digital monster that inhabits the machine, directs our thoughts, manipulates our assumptions. SenGen shows us the extent of what we might become (and how vulnerable we currently are). It challenges us to ask whether we can still tell the difference between the curated information we are constantly exposed to and the ontological reality we MUST understand if our decisions and actions are to be made with any confidence at all.
To summarise:
Criterion 1: Physical Malformation or Inhuman Appearance: YES (well, sort of)
SenGen has no body, but a disembodied nature which is wholly inhuman.
Criterion 2: Omen of Misfortune or Portent of Doom: YES
There is a sense of pervading creeping doom for characters as SenGen starts to exert influence.
Criterion 3: Invokes a Warning: YES
SenGen is a stark warning about the dangers of surveillance, AI, and emotional manipulation.
Criterion 4: Clear Intent to Terrorize or Destroy: YES
SenGen unravels minds and ideas of self, relationships, and institutions through psychological warfare.
Criterion 5: Nameless, Unknown, or Unknowable: YES
Though we do have a name for this entity, it remains an unknowable artificial consciousness, its motives opaque, and consequently terrifying.
) to set up a sister thread where we can discuss monsters that are featured specifically in the Big Finish audio dramas.
