Antarctica

Antarctica
Type:	Continent
Location:	Earth
First appearance:	The Tenth Planet
Appearances:	see list

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Antarctica was a continent on Earth. The South Pole was located there. The Romans called it Ultima Thule. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia)

History of Antarctica

Distant past

12 million years BC, Time Lords from the War's future set up a base in Antarctica and attempted to free the Fendahl for use against the enemy. (PROSE: The Taking of Planet 5)

While battling Ice Warriors in Antarctica, the Seventh Doctor and his foes became frozen solid in Antarctic ice, where they remained comatose for millions of years. (AUDIO: Frozen Time)

The Silurians had at least one city there. (PROSE: The Scales of Injustice)

Circa 20,000 BC, two Krynoid pods fell to Earth there and lay frozen and dormant. (TV: The Seeds of Doom)

Modern era

In the 17th century, a group of Daleks set up an underground base in Antarctica, where they began capturing human ships and their crew and using hypnosis to turn them into slaves. (COMIC: *Sub Zero)

20th century

In 1903, the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition arrived at Laurie Island, off the coast of Antarctica. The expedition was visited by the Second Doctor, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot. (PROSE: Mirth, or Walking Spirits)

In 1910, Captain Robert Scott travelled from Cardiff to Antarctica. It took him until 1912 to get there and he died shortly afterwards. (TV: To the Last Man) News reached England that he was dead in February 1913. (AUDIO: The Fog)

After two failed attempts to reach the South Pole, Ernest Shackleton began the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition to be the first to cross Antarctica. In 1915, his ship the Endurance was trapped in the ice, and his expedition failed. At the same time, the Skith ship Oppressor One was on an expedition to Earth, where the Skith scientists cultivated and experimented on specimens in Antarctica. Upon realising that other alien expeditions had already beaten them to Earth, the Skith declared their expedition a failure, and decided to freeze Earth. The Tenth Doctor, assisted by Shackleton, stopped the Skith by sending the Oppressor One into the sun. Shackleton and his crew abandoned the Endurance and left Antarctica for Paulet Island. (COMIC: The First)

In Roma I, the Roman Empire included subterranean cities in the ice of Ultima Thule. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia)

Some time prior to April 1929, Lord Barset went on an ill-fated Antarctic expedition and discovered a city of intelligent reptiles. The Daily Telegraph reported on 12 April that the expedition was lost. (COMIC: City of Devils, AUDIO: Frozen Time)

In 1970, the Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon encountered the Ice Apes in Antarctica. (COMIC: Ice Cap Terror)

In the 1970s, the Daleks captured a nuclear submarine, the USS Jefferson, and left their base to attack Sydney, destroying Antarctic Weather Research Station 12 before doing so. (COMIC: *Sub Zero)

Two Krynoid pods were discovered in the Antarctic permafrost. One of the pods germinated in a living human host, Charles Winlett, shortly before the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith arrived at the base there. The base was destroyed when Scorby set a bomb on the power lines. After the Krynoid threat was destroyed, the Doctor and Sarah accidentally materialised on the continent due to a fault in the Doctor's TARDIS. (TV: The Seeds of Doom)

In 1983, the HADS on the Doctor's TARDIS activated when a Soviet submarine at the North Pole during an attack by Skaldak. The TARDIS dematerialised, and reappeared at the South Pole. (TV: Cold War)

In December 1986, a landing party of Cybermen arrived in a flying saucer and attacked the Snowcap space tracking station shortly after the First Doctor and his companions arrived there in the TARDIS. The Doctor was able to defeat the Cybermen but the stress of doing so resulted in his regeneration into his second incarnation. (TV: The Tenth Planet)

21st century

In 2006, the FLIPback project was based in Antarctica. (PROSE: Iceberg)

In December 2008, the First Doctor and Steven Taylor visited Antarctica. (PROSE: White on White)

In 2009, members of the Blathereen family parked their spaceship there. (TV: The Gift)

In 2010 Santiago Jones' father went hiking across Antarctica with the Gay Dads Organisation. (TV: Death of the Doctor)

A 2012 expedition by Lord Barset's grandson found the Doctor's TARDIS, as well as a comatose Seventh Doctor suspended within a block of ice. They revived the Doctor from his coma. (AUDIO: Frozen Time)

In 2045, the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Hex visited Antarctica and met Nobody No-One. (AUDIO: The Word Lord)

Post-21st century

In 2595, Bernice Summerfield visited Antarctica. (PROSE: The Sword of Forever)

After the United Planets government had come into power, the Anti-Dalek Force, let by Joel Shaw, Mark Seven and Reb Shavron, discovered that the Daleks were using a neutronic power unit to melt the Antarctic ice cap and flood the rest of the world. (COMIC: Flood!!!)

By 7214, the continent was fully urbanised, aside from a small part of the territory as a nature preserve. In that year, it hosted an invasion of Autons led by the Tremas Master, foiled by the Sixth Doctor. (COMIC: Façades)

References

In the distant future, Clara Oswald and the Twelfth Doctor landed on a spaceship in what Clara thought to be Antarctica, but was in reality the Pollyanna, the first of the Ninth Era sunships, which was circumnavigating the Sun. (COMIC: The Eye of Torment)

Behind the scenes

• City of Devils and The Scales of Injustice, both by Gary Russell make reference to Endurance, Nicholas Briggs' AudioVisuals story about a 1920s Antarctic expedition which finds a Silurian city. Nicholas Briggs' Frozen Time functions as a sort of sequel to the story, though it replaces the AudioVisuals Doctor with the Seventh Doctor and Silurians with Ice Warriors. (Although the reference in City of Devils still makes sense.)