Mia Bennett had her thesis on Martian geology published. She had managed to grow green beans and turnips from samples of Martian soil. [151]
2050 (28th September) - The King of Terror [152]
Eighty years after the events occurred, some early UNIT files were officially released. The records included details on Cybermen, the Autons, the fall of General Carrington and the Stahlman incident.
Reporter Daniel Clompus, writing for the Guardian, visited the elderly Brigadier General Sir Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart at the Westcliffe Retirement Home in Sussex; the Brigadier General was thought to be 121 years old, but physically looked about 75.
Lethbridge-Stewart passed away shortly afterwards. The book that Clompus wrote on UNIT, Watch the Skies: The Not-So-Secret-History of Alien Encounters, was published in 2051. Lethbridge-Stewart’s memoirs, The Man Who Saved the World, were published in 2052.
c 2050 - The Wedding of River Song [153]
The eleventh Doctor phoned Lethbridge-Stewart’s nursing home... and discovered he had passed away, peacefully, a few months before.
The people of the ocean planet Ockora built exoskeletal battlesuits and started an uprising against their Kalarian oppressors, who hunted them for sport. These warriors renamed themselves Selachians. After defeating the Kalarians, they conquered four planets, including Kalaya and Molinar. The Selachians became arms dealers, and attacked a Martian colony with a sunstroker. [154]
The best and brightest of Earth’s children, including Zoe Heriot, were given over to the Company’s Elite Programme at a young age. The Elite Programme erased the children’s memories of their families - Zoe became unable to remember her mother - and performed other techniques so alarming, the Company could have toppled if the truth became known. The Company taught the children self-defence techniques. [155] Freda, an offspring of the aliens who settled in Cardiff, was born on 30th May, 2053. [156]
In 2054, the Doctor and UNISYC (led by General Tchike) defeated the Montana Republican militia, who were using Selachian weapons. [157] Sam Jones had a mid-2050s ergonomic chair in her TARDIS room. [158] The Dogworld poodles built their first space station. It received radio signals from other planets, including Earth. [159]
All the religious faiths of the world were merged with the idea of creating world harmony. This consensus was unworkable and quickly collapsed. The Chapter of St Anthony was formed to fill the spiritual vacuum. When China was taken over by Hong Kong, the Yong family joined them on a new crusade to purge the heathens. [160]
In the mid 2050s, the world government overreacted to major wars and nuclear terrorism by passing police shoot-to-kill laws and banning all religions. There were years of total chaos, and cities became no-go areas. There was no effective government. [161]
The shuttle Apollo 34 taking the first colonists to Mars set off around 2057. The first Martian colony was established on 1st July, 2058. This was Bowie Base One, built by robot drones on top of the underground glacier in Gusev Crater, and as supervised by nine human astronauts. Their mission was to discover whether the planet could be made suitable for human beings. The crew of Bowie Base One had dehydrated protein for their Christmas Dinner in 2058. Susie Fontana Brooke, granddaughter of mission commander Adelaide Brooke, was born after the crew left Earth. The base was partly constructed using a steel combination manufactured in Liverpool. [162]
2059 (21st November) - The Waters of Mars [163]
The tenth Doctor arrived at Bowie Base One, the very first Martian colony, and realised he had arrived on the day it was doomed to be destroyed. History recorded that all the colonists were killed in a mysterious explosion. This would have an inspirational effect on humanity, spurring them to explore space. The Doctor theorised that base commander Adelaide Brooke’s death was a “fixed” moment in time that was crucial to the future of humanity, and as such he was powerless to intervene.
The colonists had tapped the underground glacier in Gusev Crater for water, and in doing so had woken the Flood - an ancient lifeform that lived in liquid water, and could transform host creatures with water in their bodies. As more of the colonists were affected, Brooke initiated Action Procedure Five: the destruction of the base via a nuclear device in its central dome.
(=) Brooke and all of her fellow colonists - Ed Gold, Tarak Ital, Andy Stone, Margaret Cain, Mia Bennett, Yuri Kerenski, Steffi Ehrlich and Roman Groom - were killed. Humanity mourned their loss, not knowing the cause of the tragedy.
The Doctor decided to change history and save the remaining colonists - as the last of the Time Lords, he believed that he alone could command the Laws of Time. Ed Gold sacrificed himself to prevent the Flood from capturing the base’s shuttle; Ital, Stone, Cain, Ehrlich and Groom died as Action Protocol Five obliterated the base. The Doctor took Brooke, Bennett and Kerenski back to Brooke’s home on Earth. Brooke was so horrified by the Doctor’s arrogance, power and unaccountability that she killed herself in her house. Bennett and Kerenski, as the only survivors, credited Brooke with having saved Earth from the Flood, guaranteeing her reputation in future. Media accounts mentioned how “The Mythical Doctor” had saved Bennett and Kerenski.
Brooke’s suicide made the Doctor acknowledge to himself that he had gone too far. He briefly saw a vision of Ood Sigma, and, worried that it was an omen of his death, departed in the TARDIS.
At this time, robots were commonplace, from small repairmen controlled by autogloves to giant construction drones. Other technology included atom clamps, medpacks and Hardinger Seals that hermetically sealed rooms. On Earth, people still drove cars, paying for them with credit stamps. Gay marriage was legal in Dagestan. Solar flares sometimes disrupted communications between Earth and Mars. Politically, the Earth consisted of the World State (including at least the USA, UK, Germany and Russia) and the independents (which might have included Spain and Philippines). There had been multiple stories of the Philippines building a rocket, and they were the leading contenders for a rival mission to Mars. The Spanish had been keeping their Spacelink Project under wraps. The Branson Inheritance had been talking about a Mars shot for years.
(=) 2059 - SJA: The Mad Woman in the Attic [164]
A boy called Adam visited an ancient Rani Chandra in the attic of her home, Sarah Jane Smith’s former abode at 13 Bannerman Road. Rani had been living here alone for so many years, she had become something of a local legend. Adam was the son of Eve, an alien Rani had befriended when she was a teenager. Adam changed history so that Rani was never alone.
Rani lived at 13 Bannerman Road, and had at least one son and at least two grandsons. She had just returned from a visit to Washington with Luke, where they caught up with Maria.
The planet Flissta became uninhabitable due to a stellar cataclysm. The Doctor was onboard the medical frigate Talaha, with some of the surviving Flisk, when a rift opened as the ship crossed the Opius Expanse. [165]
Earth sent out colony ships in the late twenty-first century to Mars, Venus and a “weird little planet” that was later determined to be a moon, but never left Earth’s solar system for the first fifty years of this mode of travel. One colony ship ended up five systems away, possibly after falling through a wormhole or temporal eddy created by the Tef’Aree. The colonists were given terraforming technology that they used to “reboot” the planet’s ecology. Only those within the shielded Colony One Base survived the process. [166]
New governments started to form by the 2060s. Octogenarian Samantha Jones might have been a major player in these events. Before this point, her father had died, shortly after the last King of England abdicated. [167]
(=) During a period of extreme instability, Karen Coltraine established an oppressive right-wing regime in Europe, and put Earth’s expansion into space on a more aggressive footing. The Gallifreyan CIA prevented this future from occurring. [168]
In the 2060s, the Bantu Independence Group received new funding from energy tycoon Olle Ahlin, and directed its efforts to central Africa and Scandinavia. In the decades to co
me, Bantu would look to aiding colonies on other worlds. [169] Cricket was an Olympic sport in time for the Barcelona Olympics of 2060. [170] The eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory photographed a lake that occupied the space where Swallow Woods had stood. [171]
2062 - The Last Dodo [172]
Chinese Three-Striped Box Turtles were now extinct on Earth. The Museum of the Lost Ones had a single specimen of each extinct species in the Milky Way and Andromeda. The tenth Doctor and Martha arrived as Eve, the curator, had decided to wipe out all other life in the universe. She died when a weapon she was aiming at the Doctor exploded. The Doctor returned the specimens to their native times.
Prior to the Bowie Base One disaster, the plan had been for the first colonists to stay on Mars until 2063. [173] During the mid 2060s, the Daleks were scattered around the edges of Mutter’s Spiral, trying to build up a decent galactic powerbase. The ones who got left behind on Skaro were just starting to think about putting together their own little empire - this was the “static electricity” phase of Dalek development... [174]
The collapse of the Amazon’s ecosystem made the “Lung of the World” into a dust bowl stretching from Rio de Janiero to the Andes, displacing a number of werewolves and Amazon Indian tribes. A constant risk of global war existed until the Earth’s governments turned their attention to the moon and asteroid belt for resources. [175]
Legend had it that star whales guided early space travellers through the asteroid belt. [176] The spaceship Gravity’s Rainbow was constructed in the twenty-first century. [177]
By 2068, a few colonisation missions had been launched to other solar systems, but there was no indication of whether they had succeeded. UNIT had recently been replaced by PRISM. On 3rd March, 2068, the Lunar Base picked up an alien signal. This was evidence of the Myloki. First contact proved disastrous, and the Myloki launched a war on humanity. Although conducted in secret, the war with the Myloki was so devastating that on 29th August, 2068, the UN banking system collapsed under the strain. The war ended when Colonel LeBlanc sent Captain Grant Matthews, an indestructible Myloki duplicate who retained his loyalties to humanity, to the moon with a twenty-megaton bomb strapped to his back. This destroyed the Myloki base. But the war exhausted Earth’s natural resources and saw New York destroyed in a nuclear attack. An altered maize crop destroyed the ecology of Africa. The City of London became an independent city-state, walled off from the rest of the world. [178]
2069 (26th March) - Alien Bodies [179]
In the East Indies ReVit Zone, Mr Qixotl hosted a private conference in which representatives from various powers were to bid on the Relic, a Gallifreyan body that contained extremely rare biodata... and which the eighth Doctor, accompanied by Sam, discovered was his body from his personal future.
Friction among the delegates increased, and a Kroton Warspear arrived to claim the Relic by force. The Doctor used a Faction Paradox timeship to reflect the Warspear’s weaponry back on itself, destroying the entire battlefleet. Mortally wounded, Qixotl traded the Relic to the Celestis in return for a new body. The Doctor travelled to Mictlan, the Celestis’ powerbase, and reclaimed the Relic. The Doctor buried the Relic alongside the dog Laika on the planet Quiescia, and destroyed the Relic with a thermosystron bomb.
By now, Kroton weapons developed on Quartzel-88 had decimated the Metatraxi homeworld, reduced the moons of Szacef-Po to powder, and convinced the united forces of Criptostophon Prima to surrender.
The Cardiff public had what resources they needed to live, but water was rationed, and fresh tomatoes were a rarity - as were automobiles. Tapping grid power in the daytime wasn’t permitted. Universal Remote Controls (URCs) were hand-held devices used to make purchases - running one over a “zed code” would debit your ration. UK citizens had ID codes such as 818945/CF209B.
Peaceful, human-looking aliens who’d been living in Cardiff for fifty years became the targets of racism, and their offspring were disparagingly called “ghosties”. One such offspring died in a deliberately set house fire, and a Torchwood agent - or possibly Captain Jack himself - sent the dead woman’s daughter, Freda, through the Rift back to 2009. [180]
Middle Eastern countries turned their economies to high technology, particularly the space industry, as the oil ran out. [181] Galactic Salvage and Insurance was set up in London in 2068. [182] The space station Hotel Galaxian became the first offworld tourist attraction. [183]
The Cyber Incursions
? 2068 - The Wheel in Space / The War Games [184]
Jet helicopters had become the principal form of transport on Earth. Simple servo robots were developed, as were x-ray laser weapons and food dispensers. John Smith and Associates built advanced medical equipment for spacecraft. Psychotropic drugs could now prevent brain control, and all astronauts were fitted with Silenski capsules to detect outside influences on the human mind. Two years beforehand, Dr. Gemma Corwyn’s husband had been killed exploring the asteroid belt. The loss of rockets was becoming rarer, though.
The Earth School of Parapsychology was founded around this time. It was based in an area known only as the City and trained children from a very early age in the disciplines of pure logic and memory. Zoe Heriot, one of the School’s pupils, developed total recall and majored in pure maths. She qualified as an astrophysicist and astrometricist (first class). Her education was narrow and vocational, though, and didn’t include any pre-century history. When she was about 19, Zoe was assigned to Space Station W3.
The Space Wheels were set up around the solar system. W3, for example, was positioned relative to Venus, 24,564,000 miles at perihelion, 161,350,000 miles at aphelion, a week’s rocket travel from Earth. W5 was between eighty and ninety million miles from W3. The small, multinational crews of the Wheel warned travellers of meteorite storms and acted as a halfway house for deep space ships of the space fleet; they monitored all manner of stellar phenomenon, and also supplied advance weather information to Earth.
The Wheels were armed with x-ray lasers with a range of ten thousand miles, and protected by a convolute force field, a neutron field barrier capable of deflecting meteorites of up to two hundred tonnes. Phoenix IV cargo rockets, which had a four-man crew but could be placed on automatic power drive, kept the stations supplied with food and materials.
Back on the human homeworld, the Pull Back to Earth movement believed it was wrong to colonise other planets. They committed acts of sabotage against the space programme, but their exponents were never seen as anything but crackpots. Space travel had undoubted benefits, but remained hazardous.
Zoe aided the second Doctor and Jamie in repelling a Cybermen assault on W3, then joined the TARDIS crew. Gemma Corwyn died in the attack.
As part of the resolution of the Doctor’s first trial, the Time Lords returned Zoe to W3, but walled off her memories of her time in the TARDIS.
Zoe had a photographic memory and a degree in Pure Mathematics. [185] She eventually left the Wheel. Years later, she experienced dreams of her time with the Doctor and Jamie, and wondered if some of her memories were blocked off. She sought counselling, and related a particularly vivid adventure involving the Daleks. Zoe’s unsettling dreams ceased after the Doctor’s voice - through unknown means - told her not to fear the Daleks. [186]
2070 - The Moonbase [187]
The Cybermen attempted to take control of the Gravitron on Earth’s moon by using Cybermats to introduce a plague to the moonbase. The second Doctor, Ben, Polly and Jamie thwarted them. Medical units could now administer drugs and automatically control the pulse, temperature, breathing and cortex factor of a patient.
Tobias Vaughn recovered bodies of Cybermen from W3 and the moonbase, and used the components to repair his cybernetic body. [188] Facing extinction, the Cybermen conquered Telos, all but wiping out the native Cryons and building their “tombs” using Cryon technology. Once this was completed, the Cybermen retreated to their tombs and vanished from the galaxy. The location of Telos remained a mystery. [189]
The C
ybermen launched a star destroyer from Telos that headed to the Garazone Sector. [190] Seismic shifts created an island in the Atlantic, and this became a homeland for the Dutch, the New Dutch Republic. [191] The Sontarans left the Coal Sack sector of space and wouldn’t return for three hundred years. [192]
? 2070 - “The Forgotten” [193]
The second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrived on a space station that was being attacked by an Alvarian Space Wyrm. The Doctor sent her snake soldiers to sleep by playing his recorder, then did the same to the Wyrm herself by amplifying the signal through the station’s communication system.
On Earth, PVC made a big resurgence. [194]
2074 - Mad Dogs and Englishmen [195]
Science fiction by human authors had become the subject of serious academic debate. There were also groups who sought to rewrite literary texts for their own evil ends, including The Circle Hermeneutic and The New Dehistoricists. The eighth Doctor accidentally landed his TARDIS on one academic, Alid Jag.
The Doctor, Fitz and Anji learned that the novel The True History of Planets was a book about talking poodles, not the sword and sorcery epic the Doctor remembered. The Doctor teamed up with Mida Slike of the Ministry for Incursions And Ontological Wonders, a group that investigated such changes to history. Slike was killed, and poodle fur found on her body. Fitz discovered the co-ordinates for Dogworld in Tyler’s novel.
The space station of the Dogworld poodles was now receiving radio signals from Earth. The movie of The True History of Planets was the story of how the Emperor deposed the mother of Princess Margaret, the true heir to the throne. After trips to 1942 and 1978, the Doctor and his companions discovered that Margaret had been manipulating history to change the contents of Tyler’s book, and changed it back. Margaret was killed and the Emperor restored to power. A grateful Emperor allowed writer Reginald Tyler to remain on the Dogworld.
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