B00DPX9ST8 EBOK

by Parkin, Lance

  Roz lost her life leading a ground assault on the Emperor’s palace on Callisto. The death of the Grandmaster left the Emperor lifeless, and Leabie Forrester was declared Empress. The Doctor suffered a heart attack at Roz’s burial. A year later, the Doctor, Cwej, Benny and Jason attended to Roz’s final funeral rites.

  House Forrester had recently resurrected the long-extinct elephant. [1093]

  Earth’s moon was home to conurbations in the late thirtieth century. [1094] In 2983, Kimber met Investigator Hallett while he was investigating granary shortages on Stella Stora. The Doctor visited this timezone a number of times. He met Hallett and visited the planet Mogar. On another occasion, he involved Captain Travers in a “web of mayhem and intrigue”, but did save Travers’ ship. [1095] The Doctor was travelling with Evelyn at the time, and convinced her - rightfully, she thought - to turn down Travers’ marriage proposal. [1096]

  2986 (16th April) - Terror of the Vervoids [1097]

  Professor Sarah Lasky planned to breed intelligent plants, Vervoids, that would hopefully make robots obsolete. Vervoids bred and grew rapidly, plus were quick to learn and cheap to maintain. For an undisclosed reason, the Vervoids also had a poisonous spike. A consortium was ready to exploit the creatures, but as the Vervoids were being transported back to Earth in the intergalactic liner Hyperion III, they went on the rampage and killed a number of the passengers and crew, including Lasky. The sixth Doctor and Mel’s intervention resulted in every example of the species being wiped out using the mineral vionesium, which accelerated their growth cycle.

  The ruling Council on Earth came to realise that Earth was “exhausted... politically, economically, biologically finished”, “fighting for its survival” and was “grey and misty” with “grey cities linked by grey highways across grey deserts... slag, ash, clinker”. Earth’s air was so polluted that the entire population now had to live in the vast sky cities if they wanted to breathe.

  By this point, Earth couldn’t afford an Empire any longer. By the end of the thirtieth century, most planets in the Earth Empire had achieved some form of independence from the homeworld. [1098] These were “the declining years of Earth’s planetary empire”. [1099]

  As the Earth Empire underwent collapse, countless planets were cut off and abandoned. [1100] The Earth Empress granted Eta Centauri 6 the status of a Duchy Royal with the name of Tractis. Humans had committed genocide there during the Empire period, because the natives refused to allow the mineral exploitation of their planet or the growing of narcotic crops. The Silurian governor of the planet, Menarc, tried to establish an elected council, but human colonists formed a separatist party and assassinated key politicians. The decaying Empire tried to restore order, leading to a conflict that killed hundreds of thousands. The eighth Doctor told Sam Jones that matters would improve for Tractis after that. [1101]

  c 2990 - “Children of the Revolution” [1102]

  The eighth Doctor and Izzy travelled to the waterworld of Kyrol, and spent time on the submarine Argus. While swimming at the uncharted Asamda Ridge, Izzy encountered some Daleks - who went on the board the submarine and greeted the Doctor as their saviour.

  The Daleks steered the Argus to Azhra Korr, home of eight thousand Daleks who were the humanised Daleks from the civil war and their descendants. Their leader was Alpha, the first humanised Dalek, and he explained that the Daleks had developed psychokinetic abilities. When the Doctor and Alpha investigated a cavern under Azhra Korr, they discovered Kata-Phobus - the last Kyrolian and a giant octopus with psychic powers. Kata-Phobus had been planning to use the Daleks’ psychic abilities to conquer the human colony.

  Meanwhile, the humans rebelled and attempted to escape their Dalek captors. The Daleks were shocked that their saviour, the Doctor, was secretly more loyal to the humans than to them. Nonetheless, they sacrificed themselves to kill Kata-Phobus save the human colony.

  c 2990 - The Mutants [1103]

  One of the last planets to gain independence from Earth was Solos. The native Solonians staged organised resistance, but the Marshal of the planet resisted reform for many years. From his Skybase in orbit above Solos, the Marshal had been conducting experiments on the Solonian atmosphere, attempting to render it more suitable for humans. When the Solonians began mutating into insect-like creatures, the Marshal ordered the “Mutts” destroyed.

  An Independence Conference was arranged between the Solonian leaders and the Earth “Overlords”, with Solos to be granted independence. The Administrator was assassinated at the meeting, and martial law was declared. The Time Lords sent the third Doctor and Jo to Solos - they met Professor Sondergaard, who had discovered that the Solonians underwent a radioactive metamorphosis every five hundred years, meaning that the process that was transforming the population into Mutts and altering the atmosphere was seasonal. The Doctor and his allies deduced that the Mutts were a transitional stage as the Solonians turned into advanced beings. One of the Solonians, Ky, completed his transformation and killed the Marshal.

  2992 - The Fall of Yquatine [1104]

  The eighth Doctor attended the inauguration of Stefan Vargeld, who defeated the unpopular Ignatiev to win the Presidency of Yquatine. Four years later, the Doctor returned just as sentient gas creatures named the Omnethoth, constructed millions of years ago as a weapon to conquer the universe, awoke from dormancy and devastated the planet with searing gas bombs. The reptilian Anthaurk attempted to capitalise on this and capture Yquatine space, but the Doctor’s companion Compassion engaged her Chameleon Circuit and impersonated Vargeld, helping to sue for peace. The Doctor mentally reprogrammed the Omnethoth as peaceful cloud-like beings, but a vengeful Vargeld, in retribution for Yquatine’s devastation, destroyed the Omnethoth with ionization weapons.

  2994 - Superior Beings [1105]

  The fifth Doctor and Peri were caught when the fox-like Valethske invaded a pleasure planet, Eknur 4. The invaders were looking for the homeworld of their gods. The Valethske put Peri into suspended animation aboard their ship and departed. The Doctor calculated its next arrival point, in a century’s time, and left to rendezvous with Peri then.

  Eknur 4 was one of the Wonders of the Universe, and a utopian society given over to hedonism.

  Humanity migrated from Earth aboard space arks built to house the population of entire nations. Britain was unable to launch an ark until a star whale, hearing the cries of Britain’s children, intervened. The Britons repaid this by capturing the whale and torturing it to fly through space with their ark atop it. The ark, named Starship UK, contained much of Great Britain, Wales and Northern Ireland (Scotland had chosen to go into space in its own ship). Enormous buildings housed the populations of Yorkshire, Devon, Surrey, Kent, Essex, Lancashire, London and more. The population of the ark chose to remain ignorant of the crime perpetrated upon the space whale, and continually had their memories of it erased. [1106]

  In 2999, a Sun City teenager hacked Earth’s TacNet, causing a meltdown that killed thousands on the East Coast of Australia. Humberto de Silvestre was wounded by this, and only saved when he was grafted with experimental liquid computers. He became the cyborg Silver. [1107]

  The Fourth Millennium

  The Daleks invaded the Earth around the year 3000. [1108] Africa was in the middle of its Third Golden Age in the year 3000. [1109]

  At the turn of the thirty-first century, an Imperial Navy force was sent out to seek out alien technology that might help shore up the Earth Empire. They discovered the planet Darkheart and colonised it. They remained isolated for three and a half centuries, but came to discover a device that they also named the Darkheart, and which was built from Chronovore technology. The Chronovores had designed the device to beam healing energy to their remote, injured members, but the colonists adapted it to alter morphic fields. Properly tuned, the Darkheart could transform all alien species into human beings. [1110]

  The Hexion Geldmongers of Mercutio 14, located out beyond Cassiopeia’s Elbow, had an empire that spanned w
hole galaxies. They forged the Mymon Key: a device that could tap gravitational force to produce limitless energy. Mercutio 14 fell, and endless wars were fought over the Key - which was placed a casket that only a Hexion speaker could open. A museum of antiquities in the thirty-first century owned the casket, but had budget cuts. The Key was sold to a private buyer in Andromeda, but the Gobocorp ship transporting it, The Herald of Nanking, crashed on the Gyre: an amalgamation of space junk in the Battani 045 system. Only five hundred of the three thousand crew survived. In the hundreds of thousands of years to follow, their descendents forgot their origins, and thought that the Gyre was humanity’s homeworld. [1111]

  The eleventh Doctor failed to take Amy and Rory to Margate for the 3000 AD World Jamboree. [1112] The mobile Super Hotel Miramar operated during humanity’s first expansion into space. It resided on the Spiral Wing, then spent a century on the edge of the Golden Chasm. [1113]

  From the year 3000 to the year 3500, Earth knew of no Dalek activity in the galaxy. [1114] From around the year 3000, the Foamasi began gaining in power and reputation across the galaxy. [1115] In 3006, aliens invaded Earth, overrunning America and capturing Washington. The government used experimental time machines to send agents to fetch help - Agent Grey was sent to the past, Agent Silver to the far future. [1116]

  Legends of The Book of the Still begin circulating. Unknown parties had developed this artifact so that stranded time travellers could summon help by writing their name in it. Copies of the book, made from invulnerable taffeta, found their way to various points in time and space, including the planet Lebenswelt in the year 4009. [1117]

  Documentary maker Harken Batt was discredited when he used actors in an expose of organised crime. [1118]

  3012 - The Space Age [1119]

  The eighth Doctor, Fitz and Compassion found an asteroid that contained a reconstruction of a futuristic city. The inhabitants - rival members of the Mods and Rockers gangs - had been spirited there from 1965 by a benevolent alien named the Maker. However, the gangs had fallen into continued bloodshed for nineteen years. The Maker, imprisoned by the Mods and compelled to make weapons, had instigated the city’s dissolution. Other Makers arrived, liberated their colleague and caused the Mods and Rockers to stand down. The Makers offered the humans a choice: return to 1965 as their younger selves with no memories of these events, or join a futuristic society in 3012. The humans made their decisions, and the Doctor’s party departed.

  3012 - Festival of Death [1120]

  Against objections from the major religions, Dr Koel Paddox - the galaxy’s leading necrologist - opened the Necroport. This housed a machine in which tourists could be temporarily killed and experience the Beautiful Death, which was touted as the “thrill to end a lifetime”. It was located at the G-Lock ship’s graveyard in the Teredekethon-Murgatroyd hyperspatial conduit, and attracted visitors such as the alien Hoopy.

  The fourth Doctor and Romana found that tourists experiencing the Beautiful Death were becoming savage zombies. The Repulsion had temporally swapped the tourists with survivors of the Cerberus disaster in 2815. The tourists went into the Repulsions’ realm, and the Cerberus survivors were endowed with pieces of the Repulsion’s essence - the Repulsion hoped this would let it fully manifest in our reality. The Doctor and Romana trapped the Repulsion’s essence in ERIC, the G-Lock’s central computer, then destroyed it. The Necroport exploded and the zombies expired.

  The G-Lock was evacuated and the hyperspace tunnel in which it was located collapsed, eradicating the station. The Arboretan race went extinct as a result of Paddox’s experiments. Paddox attempted to reincarnate into his younger self and prevent his parents’ deaths, but this trapped him in a recurring loop of his lifetime.

  The Proxima Centauri All Blacks did the double in 3012. Pakafroon Wabster had their first No. 1 hit in the same year. The Doctor visited the colony of Puxatawnee, and deemed it a very happy and prosperous place. [1121] The planets Emindar and Nimos started a series of minor wars that would run for over a century. [1122] The Silurian colony under Cwntaff in South Wales was set to emerge to the surface around 3020. [1123]

  c 3025 - The Sorcerer’s Apprentice [1124]

  Although many remained patriotic and a new Empress was crowned, it was clear that the Empire was collapsing. The Landsknechte Corps had fallen, and the newly-independent human worlds were now building vessels of their own.

  On the medieval world of Avalon, some natives became more proficient at tapping the ancient nanobot system to generate “magic”. The first Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan arrived as various “sorcerers” sought to gain further power. A magical battle ensued, but the Doctor had his allies place an Avalonian control device - Merlin’s Helm - on the head of a reptilian cephlie, a native of the planet. The Helm restored the cephlies, but they elected to destroy themselves and the nanobot system.

  ? 3026 - Kinda [1125]

  The homeworld was overcrowded, and teams were sent to assess other worlds for colonisation. One of these was S14, a primeval forest world, which had the local name Deva Loka (“the land of the Kinda”). The natives were humanoid telepaths and lived in harmony with nature. Trees came into fruit all year round, and the climate hardly varied throughout the year. The Mara compelled Tegan into letting it “borrow” her form, and so crossed over from the dark places of the inside. The fifth Doctor, aided by Adric while Nyssa experienced induced delta-sleep in the TARDIS, banished the Mara using a circle of mirrors. The colonists were persuaded to abandon further settlement. The Mara was not entirely purged from Tegan’s mind, and would later revive.

  On Peladon, the royal Citadel was constructed. The highest point of it looked out across the entire kingdom, from the Cargas Mountains in the east to the shores of Lake Vanashor. Midnight on Peladon was called “the witching hour”, when the ancients of Peladon had pledged their souls to the Dark Beast to gain power, fame and immortality. [1126] In 3045, humanity and the Kustollons fought a war which devastated both sides. Igrix, a Kustollon, stole a time machine and travelled to 1966 to prevent this. [1127]

  3060 to 3090 - Flip-Flop [1128]

  The planet Puxatawnee had two timelines.

  = 1) The Slithergees arrived around Christmas, 3060, and demanded a moon to inhabit. President Mary Bailey was apparently killed by her secretary, who was allegedly a Slithergee agent. In truth, she had been assassinated by beings from another timeline, who feared she would cave in to the Slithergees. There was an uprising, and warfare against the Slithergees left Puxatawnee a heavily damaged, radioactive wasteland. Christmas Day was renamed Retribution Day. Thirty years later, Professor Capra built a time machine to change history by sending agents back to kill the President’s secretary. The time machine overloaded, destroying the planet.

  = 2) President Bailey survived thanks to the time travellers’ intervention, and yielded to the Slithergee demands. Thirty years later, the aliens had dominated the planet. In this timeline, Capra built a mind peeler to interrogate people, not a time machine. Rebels forced the seventh Doctor and Mel to take them back in time, hoping to assassinate Bailey before she capitulated to the Slithergees...

  The Cyrrehenic Alliance fought a series of Frontier Wars. The Graff Vynda-K led two legions of his men for a year in the Freytus Labyrinth, and also fought on Skarne and Crestus Minor. He was an unstable, temperamental man, though, and upon returning home discovered that his people had allowed his half-brother to take the throne. The High Court of the Cyrrhenic Empire rejected the Graff’s claim for restitution. He spent eighteen years plotting his revenge. [1129]

  c 3064 - The Ultimate Treasure [1130]

  The fifth Doctor and Peri arrived at the Astroville Seven trading post. A dying merchant gave them galactic co-ordinates purporting to pinpoint the treasure of Rovan Cartovall, the emperor of Centros who once ruled fifty star systems. His treasury was worth the equivalent of 64,000,000,000,000 stellar credits. The co-ordinates led to the planet Gelsandor, where some telepaths set a variety of challenges for
any who wanted Cartovall’s treasure. The Doctor and Peri found that the treasure was the infinite possibilities of life, as represented by the puzzles themselves.

  c 3068 - Palace of the Red Sun [1131]

  The warlord Glavis Judd had risen to power on his homeworld of Zalcrossar, and expanded his military might to create a Protectorate of twenty star systems. His forces sought to subjugate the planet Esselven, but King Hathold and his family sealed the Keys to Esselven, an irreplaceable set of documents and protocols, in an impenetrable vault that would only open for their DNA. Without the Keys, Esselven society degenerated.

  The royals fled and established the Summer and Winter Palace residences on Esselven Minor, a planetoid orbiting a white dwarf star. However, the white dwarf’s gravity, in conjunction with the planetoid’s mass and the royals’ planetary defence shield, started altering space-time in the area. Time within the shield accelerated faster than time in the outside universe.

  Judd spent a year tracking the royals and landed on the planetoid in search of them. Due to the fast-time effect, he wasn’t seen again for five hundred years. Judd never appointed a successor, and his Protectorate collapsed in his absence.

  ? 3078 - The Ribos Operation [1132]

  The rare mineral Jethryk was now used to power ships such as Pontenese-built battleships. Communication across the galaxy was via hypercable, and highly trained mercenaries, the Schlangi, were available for hire.

  Located three light centuries from the Magellanic Clouds, the Cyrrhenic Alliance included the planets Cyrrhenis Minima (co-ordinates 4180), Levithia and Stapros, as well as the protectorate of Ribos (co-ordinates 4940) in the Constellation of Skythra, 116 parsecs from Cyrrhenis Minima.