The Taking of Planet 5 (novel)

The Taking of Planet 5
Doctor:	Eighth Doctor
Companion(s):	Fitz, Compassion
Main enemy:	Celestis
Main setting:	Planet 5, 12 million BC, Antarctica, 1999
Key crew
Publisher:	BBC Books
Writers:	Simon Bucher-Jones, Mark Clapham
Release details
Release number:	28
Release date:	4 October 1999
Format:	Paperback Book; 25 Chapters, 288 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-563-55585-8
BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures
← Previous	The Blue Angel
Next →	Frontier Worlds

The Taking of Planet 5 was the twenty-eighth novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Simon Bucher-Jones and Mark Clapham, released 4 October 1999 and featured the Eighth Doctor, Fitz Kreiner and Compassion.

Publisher's summary

Twelve million years ago, a war touched the Earth briefly. Now, in Antarctica, an archaeological team has discovered the detritus of the conflict. And it's alive.

Twelve million years ago, a creature evolved that was capable of consuming all life in the universe. Now someone, or something, is desperate enough to want to revive it.

Outside the ordered universe, things move. They're hungry. And something has given them the scent of our space/time.

In the far future, the Doctor has learnt of the war and feels he must intervene -- but it's more than just a local conflict of interest. One of the groups of combatants is from his own future, and the other has never, ever, existed.

Plot

A young child living in Mictlan learns about the "Invisible Ocean" and meets a hermit (an outcast from Celestis society) who teaches him about the mysteries of existence, such as the Swimmers and "universes in a bowl of gruel".

Chapter One

A platoon of investigators from the United Nations scout the ruins a million-year old alien base in the South Pole. As they descend into their base, one of their member (a man named Thomas Jessup with psychic/empathic powers that are quite negatively attuned to the environment of the ruins) gets dragged by another member named McCarthy towards an alien being that has been found within the ruins.

Ostensibly as a brief "pit stop", the Doctor visits the Second Wallachian Exhibition - though it soon becomes clear that he has one exhibit in mind - Professor Mildeo Twisknadine's Wandering Museum of the Verifiyably Phantas-magoric (a museum of things that don't exist) in the hopes that he can use it to find more evidence of the Observe and eventually return to it. After being invited in by Professor Mildeo, the Doctor is sidetracked after he discovers that Mildeo has made a model of Planet 5 (which definetly exists). He soon discovers a rather shocking revelation, that someone verified the existence of the "Antarctic Elder Things".

A soldier named Xenaria prepares for battle in a polar base through biological morphing alongside her platoon.

Chapter Two

In the Wandering Museum, the Doctor examines the evidence for the Elder Things' existence - this being video from "Project Icepack", the UNIT expedition into the ancient Antarctic base. After watching this, the Doctor decides to travel to the base while it was still inhabited.

In Buenos Aires, a UNIT scientific adviser named Nathaniel Hume appears at a UNIT base in a rather anomalous way and is sent to help out Project Icepack. Deep within the base, the creature ejects a seemingly human woman from its confines and then blasts radiation into the atmosphere - which hits Hume's helicopter and causes it to crash.

Chapter Three

Hume manages to survive the crash (being the only survivor of the crash) and is found by a medic. Hume tries to convince the medic to leave Antarctica, leading the medic to strangle Hume.

Xenaria's platoon lands on the prehistoric tropical jungles of Antarctica and immediately begins wiping out the Elder Things inhabiting the nearby city. Inside of the TARDIS, the Doctor deduces that an odd artefact he saw in the Icepack footage was created by the Celestis. Immediately after the Doctor and company arrive, one of the platoon fires a parallel cannon.

In the Celestis' hellscape home of Mictlan, one of the Houses vanishes completely and leaves behind absolutely no trace.

Chapter Four

Using the parallel cannon, Xenaria's soldiers cut into the base and kill numerous Elder Things. Xenaria justifies the use of such a powerful weapon to Allopta (her more cautious subordinate) by stating that it was the only weapon that could cut through the walls of the base. After the Doctor and his companions get up from where they jumped down due to the sudden burst of the cannon, they walk towards the base (after the Doctor states that everything in the local area is most likely based off of fiction). They are found by a young soldier named Ayworl, whom the Doctor is able to bluff into believing that he is a General.

Hume is saved from being strangled to death by a nurse who shoots his assailant in the head. He is mostly unaware of this, as he is preoccupied by the sheer feeling of emptiness and despair emanating from the dig. Once he recovers, Hume views the creature found within the base on a vidlink. Unusually, it seems that Hume is aware of exactly what the creature is.

Chapter Five

The Doctor introduces himself to Xenaria and explains his companions as temporal canaries indicating damage to the local timestream. He actively avoids learning about the identity of the Enemy, though he does hear that something related to them has the name "Rep". The Doctor and his companions are soon languishing in humanoid lodgings within the base, where the Doctor reveals that Xenaria and her fellow soldiers are far-future Time Lords fighting in a mysterious war he first learned about from his time spent at the auction for the Relic.

The Celestis send out investigators (specifically Invesitgators "One" and "Two") to discover what happened to the missing Lord and his House. They first reassemble and dissasemble his family of cybernetic beings, though this brings up nothing.

Professor Hume is soon met on the ice by Schneider. He is able to convince her to bring him to the mysterious girl. While in Hume's company, the girl wakes up and talks with Hume - seemingly having met him before.

Chapter Six

Allopta and Xenaria discuss the "General", with the two coming to the conclusion that the appearance of a high-ranking figure means that something big has happened in the war front - that or an Enemy agent is able to take the form of a Time Lord, something that is shot down rather quickly. Xenaria then begins preparations for the real mission - an expedition to Planet 5. Meanwhile, the Doctor and his companions try to figure out what the Enemy could be.

In a square in the ancient Greek city of Corinth, Investigators One and Two hunt down one of the last survivors of Atlantis and rather viscerally probe his memories.

Hume and Jessup discuss what the creature in the base could actually be, with Hume "deducing" that it is a time machine with its occupant being a "concerned time traveller".

Chapter Seven

A younger Time Lord named Holsred from the House of Redloom visits the Doctor seeking to gain the honour of a General. From Holsred, the Doctor learns the real mission of the Time Lords - a suicide mission to Planet 5.

The Investigators travel to Tulloch Moor as a creature from Karfel falls out of a time tunnel. One probes the creature's memories and almost succumbs to the raw hatred in the heart of the Borad before he blasts the creature's brains out. The Investigators then travel to Antarctica and discover the ancient base of the Elder Things. As One flits inside of its internal dimensions (becoming two-dimensional), Two briefly thinks to kill him (due to her Investigator instincts to kill any possible threat, as she has been briefed that One could be a threat) but is able to ignore it long enough to join One inside of the base and grab one of the Elder Things.

Chapters Eight and Nine

Realizing that his cover might be blown soon, the Doctor decides to leave the base right before Xenaria walks into the room he is in. As the trio walks through the base, the Doctor points out the Cosmic Background Radiation in the sky. While the Doctor and companions make their way through the base, the Investigators probe the memories of the dead Elder Thing - who is revealed to be Allopta - and mesh his memories into their own minds.

Hume tries to convince the UNIT forces to keep radio silent - citing the threat of cultural collapse from the existence of Elder Things being proved (though during this, he briefly hints that he isn't human through a Freudian slip). To get further proof of the Elder Things' existence, the members of the expedition enter into the girl's room and find that the girl is missing.

After finding the Doctor missing, Xenaria activates the base's defenses using a flow of microwaves. As the Doctor and company walk through the base, Compassion and the Doctor find themselves falling victim to the psychic influence of the base. Using her earpiece, Compassion feels the defences of the base being activated and the three split up. Fitz is captured by Holsred while Compassion is cornered by two Time Lords but manages to activate the defenses of the base and use it against them. The Doctor is captured and Xenaria is about to have him executed but is stopped by "Allopta" (actually one of the Investigators taking the form of Allopta) who takes the Doctor to be interrogated.

Chapter Ten and Interlude: The Eighth Gallifrey

"Allopta" (actually Investigator One) straps the Doctor to a torture device called the "Black Stone" which is vaguely related to the Ogri and tries to interrogate the Doctor. The Doctor purposefully stalls by talking about linguistics despite the extreme agony caused by the Black Stone. Exasperated, Investigator One begins directly probing the Doctor's mind.

As the Doctor is being interrogated with agony, Fitz is interrogated by Investigator Two - who sheds the disguise of Allopta for the form of a beautiful woman and tries to seduce Fitz. This is watched by Compassion, who sees the form of Allopta. Investigator Two's seduction is interrupted by a scream of pure agony.

In the eighth of the Nine Gallifreys, a Time Lord veteran named Homunculette is sent by the Lord President on a mission to the same planet as Xenaria during the "Humanian Era".

Chapter Eleven

The scream of agony actually comes from Investigator One - a visceral reaction to the knowledge of Swimmers held within the Doctor's mind. Due to the link between One and Two, both of them are incapacitated. As such, Fitz realizes what his interrogator "actually" (though Two still keeps the form of Allopta) is right as Holsred enters. Shortly after the Doctor unhooks himself from the Black Stone, a Time Lord named Ostrev enters into the room and gets shredded by the psychotic One.

While flying down the corridors, Holsred finds Compassion. Compassion keeps Holsred from killing her by convincing him that "Allopta" is actually a fake and Fitz meets back up with the Doctor. The two then begin looking for something they can use against the Celestis.

While under the effects of the anti-psychotic, Ferdinand finds the girl walking down the corridors towards the time machine.

Chapters Twelve, Thirteen, and Fourteen

The Doctor finds an artefact he saw in the Icepack video footage, something that was actually created by the Celestis and that proves that the entire Elder Thing base was created with ulterior motives. The Doctor intends to use it to "unmake" the fictional situation to make the Time Lords more susceptible to his demands but he discovers that its "core" (presumably a copy of Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness) has been consumed.

Two finds the psychotic One and brings him back to sanity. The two begin discussing what One saw in the Doctor's mind (revealing that One is most likely the child from the Prologue). Meanwhile, Xenaria finds the corpse of Ostrev and Ferdinand catches up to the girl.

Fitz and the Doctor look for Compassion while the Doctor talks about how he escaped being tortured to death and Holsred and Compassion make their way to the TARDIS Cradles. While the two are at the Cradles, Compassion falls into them. Meanwhile, Investigators One and Two discuss the threat of the Doctor. After Two discusses "removing" the Doctor, One attacks Two and the two Investigators fight to the death. Their battle is briefly seen by Xenaria before they shift into the future - where One bashes in Two's head while watched over by Ferdinand. After bashing in Two's head, One promises to "save the universe and commit genocide".

After Compassion falls into the TARDIS Cradles, she communes with the TARDISes within and psyches them into revolting against their masters.

Ferdinand examines the "corpse" of Two, which awakens and then beheads him. One returns to the past and morphs himself back into the form of Allopta, adding battle scars to avoid Xenaria's anger.

Chapter Fifteen and Interlude: The Shores of Hell

The TARDISes begin to revolt - breaking out of their moorings, killing several Time Lords, and nearly unleashing Artron energy - right before the Doctor and Fitz enter into the Cradles. They watch as one of the Time Lords (Tachon) gets nearly killed by a TARDIS in the form of a sphinx which suctions Compassion into its bowels. The Doctor warns Compassion to make sure that the TARDISes avoid Planet 5 before Tachon fires a D-Mat gun right before he is slain by the reverting spatial dimensions and the TARDIS that swallowed Compassion dematerializes.

"Allopta" reunites with Xenaria right as she learns about the revolt. Xenaria makes her way to the Cradles after the dematerializing TARDIS and finds the Doctor and Fitz. She tries to have the Doctor executed but is stopped by her troops' minds succumbing to the effects of the Ur-Box. "Allopta" tries to interrogate the Doctor but the Doctor demands that Xenaria executes him.

Investigator Two lapses from the psychotic state she briefly entered and (in her brain damaged state) resolves to kill every humanoid she can find in the blind hope that she finds the Doctor. While walking down the corridors, McCarthy (an archaeologist in the Icepack expedition) trips over Ferdinand's corpse.

Seeking his advice, Lord Smoking Mirror visits the hermit. The hermit gives cryptic advice about the fall of Mictlan and then kills Lord Smoking Mirror using a metabomb.

Chapter Sixteen

Hume learns from the girl - who is Compassion - that the time machine is a TARDIS (presumably the TARDIS that swallowed Compassion). The two decide to blow up the base to stop the Time Lords from discovering said TARDIS and deciding to sterilize the Earth. They are interrupted by McCarthy calling on a radio after finding Ferdinand's body. During this call, McCarthy is seemingly attacked but assures the people on the other end that she just tripped on a cord. Compassion and Hume leave their geodesic and find Schneider dragging Ferdinand's body away. Hume does a brief autopsy on the body and everyone present (including Jessup and McCarthy) begin talking. During these talks, Compassion mentions the TARDIS - causing "McCarthy" to run off and reveal herself to be Investigator Two in disguise.

Meanwhile, "Allopta" gets ready to kill Xenaria right before the real Allopta's body falls through the roof after a pocket of space-time shatters. Investigator One tells the Doctor that he must enter into the shattered remains of the TARDIS left behind in the Cradles before he attacks Xenaria.

Chapter Seventeen and Eighteen

After the TARDIS dematerializes, Investigator Two sabotages the lights and the assembled members of Icepack enter into the chamber that once held the TARDIS. Two, seeking a way out of the base back to Mictlan, claims that she will hunt Hume down in the darkness but Hume fires a magnesium flare into the room.

As Investigator One and Xenaria fight, The Doctor enters into the TARDIS remains - causing the TARDIS in the future to dematerialize. Holsred makes a plan to save the Doctor by taking control of the Doctor's TARDIS and using it to follow the trail of the Cradle-TARDISes. As the Doctor floats through the Vortex, he sees images of the last time that the Fendahl was unleashed onto Earth. He decides to injure himself to make the Cradle-TARDISes recognize him as their pilot. This leads to the TARDISes revert to their original orders - to ram into the time loop around Planet 5 and "unlock" it, unleashing the Fendahl. To stop them, the Doctor first tries to activate their HADS systems and then psychically connects himself with the TARDIS he is inside. The wrathful TARDISes start to turn but one of their number collides with Planet 5 - dying as the time loop is broken.

Investigator One stops fighting with Xenaria to show her his plan coming to fruition. From within the mirror-like ruins of the sphinx-TARDIS, they see a creature emerging from Planet 5. Instead of the Fendahl it is a Memeovore - a creature that consumes perception (and language) itself - that evolved to eat the Fendahl. One gloats about the Memovore as it causes mass chaos (such as creating the odd languages of the Delphons and Tersurans and making a human colony world refuse to believe in circles). One then reveals why he has unleashed the Memeovore - to save the universe from being destroyed by the Swimmers (which he is extremely paranoid about) due to the presence of a time-active civilization. Xenaria initially thinks that this is the Time Lords, it is revealed to be the Celestis - who get consumed by the Memeovore. While One is distracted, Xenaria shoots him with a parallel cannon but he survives this. Xenaria realizes that the only way to destroy One is to use the breeding engines in the TARDIS Cradles as a weapon.

Chapter Nineteen

With Fitz on his back, Holsred flies through the jungles of Antarctica until he finds the TARDIS. They attach the piece of the Sphinx TARDIS into the Doctor's TARDIS. Meanwhile, Compassion and Hume run from the temporarily-blinded Two and find the Ur-box. Hume tries to use the Ur-box against Two, which causes her to briefly jump in and out of phase alongside Hume. Fitz and Holsred then arrive, with Holsred challenging Two to a brawl. Two brutally kills Holsred and then goes back to attacking Hume. Using instructions from Hume, Fitz reverses the Ur-box and causes Investigator Two to become a pulp magazine.

After gaining the TARDIS' trust, the Doctor uses them as a scalpel to cut off Mictlan - and by extension, the Memeovore - from reality entirely. The TARDIS that the Doctor is in then begins to die due to the strain, its last dying action being to activate its fast return switch.

The breeding engine has no effect on Investigator One and he simply destroys it before taking Xenaria with him outside of the base. As One gloats about his accomplishment, Xenaria summons her soldiers and has them blast One with all of their stasers. Though this seemingly kills him, One survives and attacks Xenaria - blinding her in one eye - before departing.

Chapter Twenty and Epilogue

The Doctor is marooned in the Asteroid Belt (where Planet 5 once sat) and kept alive by a fountain within the dying TARDIS. He is found by Fitz and Compassion within the TARDIS and is rescued using ropes and spacesuits. After recovering from the effects of the vacuum, the Doctor examines the worlds fed on by the Memeovore and finds that they have largely healed. As the Doctor takes these trips, Compassion dreams of the freed TARDISes.

Seeing that there is nothing more to be done, "Hume" (actually Homunculette) speaks with his Type 103 TARDIS Marie and has her pick him up after he collects the various Celestis artefacts left behind.

Investigator One - taking a human form but unable to keep his form due to the damage from the staser blasts - meets with the hermit near a Nevada town. The hermit is proud with the actions of his pupil and has him trigger a regeneration through a shotgun blast so that he can mingle with the townspeople.

Characters

• The Eighth Doctor
• Fitz Kreiner
• Compassion
• Professor Nathaniel Hume/Homunculette
• Marie

Gallifreyans

• The hermit
• Xenaria
• Allopta
• Holsred
• Neinthe
• Erasfol
• Machtien
• Urtshi
• Ventak
• Tachon
• Vuilp
• Lord President
• Ostrev

Celestis

• Lord of the Smoked Mirror
• Duke of Knives
• Lord of the Red Moon
• One
• Two

Humans

• Professor Mary Schneider
• Thomas Jessup
• McCarthy
• Nurse McGovern
• Frances Muerte
• Capitano Julian Esparza

Worldbuilding

• Parallel cannons were weapons developed by the Time Lords.
• Xenaria uses an ur-box.
• One mentions pin galaxies.
• Fitz thinks of himself as "James Bond in space".
• The Doctor corresponded with H. P. Lovecraft and thought about offering him a quick trip in the TARDIS.
• The Doctor recalls horror stories of Time Lords regenerating in a vacuum and exhausting their lives as their bodies try to become something that can cope in such an environment.
• H.P. Lovecraft wrote about the Old One, a.k.a. Elder Thing in At the Mountains of Madness, first published in Astounding Stories, in February–April 1936. The Old One was "regarded as real by 25th century fringe archaeologists, particularly Bendecker, Vildson and Urnst".
• Karfelon circuitry is like tinsel.
• One of Ostrev's earliest memories is of reading and sharing Doctor ? in an Exciting Adventure With the Enemy.

Notes

• This story is a sequel to the television story Image of the Fendahl.
• Mildeo Twisknadine's mention of fungi yeti is a reference to Lovecraft's Mi-go, known elsewhere in Doctor Who as the Darklings.
• The novel ends with an "Annexe" featuring a cosmobiology paper written by Simon Bucher-Jones called "The Predators of the Multiverse" that lays the basis for the Swimmers.

Continuity

• The novel begins with an extract from Captain Cook's (TV: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy) "Letters from Golobus", which mentions the Androgums (TV: The Two Doctors) and Marinus (TV: The Keys of Marinus).
• Vorg the Magnificent (TV: Carnival of Monsters) is mentioned by the Doctor whilst at the Museum of Things That Don't Exist.
  • Inside of Mildeo Twisknadine's museum are exhibits for "robotic yetis" (TV: The Abominable Snowmen), Vulcan (TV: The Power of the Daleks), and Atlantis (TV: The Underwater Menace, The Time Monster).
• The Doctor mentions the "Vega Incident" to Compassion (PROSE: Demontage)
• A temporal anomaly disgorges the Borad (TV: Timelash) and is dealt with by temporal investigators.
• Alien Bodies, Unnatural History, Interference - Book One, Interference - Book Two and The Shadows of Avalon are all points where when the Doctor (and companions) have encountered elements of the Time Lord's Future War with the Enemy and/or the Faction Paradox.
• The Doctor recalls his adventure in the Obverse. (PROSE: The Blue Angel)
• When speculating on the nature of the Enemy, the Doctor muses that after all he's heard, the Enemy may simply turn out to be "Yartek, leader of the alien Voord, armed with a big stick". (TV: The Keys of Marinus). Compassion speculates that the Enemy could be the Nestene Consciousness (TV: Spearhead from Space), the Zygons (TV: Terror of the Zygons), and the Rutan Horde (TV: Horror of Fang Rock)
• The "Black Stone" used by Investigator One while taking the form of Allopta is distantly related to the Ogri. (TV: The Stones of Blood)
• Fitz remembers being in Tibet (PROSE: Revolution Man)
• Reflecting back on old ideas that the Doctor may have built the TARDIS, the Doctor reveals that he substantially modified/rebuilt it after leaving Gallifrey to achieve control of the TARDIS without using a direct mental link, allowing him to bypass the feature on most TARDISes which sent a tracking signal to the Time Lords.
• The Doctor realises that the time fissure made by the damaged TARDIS is the one that Fendelman used to enhance a time scanner in the 1970s. While falling through the fissure, the Doctor sees Fendelman, Maximillian Stael, Adam Colby, Thea Ransome, and fire. (TV: Image of the Fendahl)
• Compassion notes that the Doctor has burnt out the TARDIS's tractor beam at some point, speculating that he must have been doing something stupid like trying to lasso a star. (TV: The Creature from the Pit)
• Compassion jokes about the Doctor being a Great Old One on his mother's side. (PROSE: All-Consuming Fire et al.; TV: Doctor Who)
• Smoked Mirror takes the forms of Urmungstandra and Tehke. (PROSE: Twilight of the Gods)
• The War King is Lord President. (PROSE: The Book of the War)
• The Lord President mentions Sontar's visit to the Capitol. (PROSE: The Infinity Doctors)
• Rumour had it that, beyond the nine, there were further copies of Gallifrey hidden in pocket universes. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
• At the Lord President's behest, several renegades were reintegrated into Gallifreyan society for the War effort. Holsred was tutored by a former renegade Time Lady with "engineered creatures" who he found to be creepy. (TV: The Mark of the Rani) Allopta was trained in the Death Zone by an ancient, "plummy-voiced" Time Lord in scarlet robes. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
• The Memeovore consumes the languages of the Delphons (TV: Spearhead from Space) and the Tersurons, forcing them to develop new ways to communicate. (TV: The Curse of Fatal Death)
• The Time Lord mission to free the Fifth Planet, and its obvious failure, would later be called the Fifth Planet Gambit. (PROSE: We Are the Enemy)

External links

• The Taking of Planet 5 at the Faction Paradox wiki
• The Taking of Planet 5 at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: The Taking of Planet 5 at The Whoniverse
• The Cloister Library: The Taking of Planet 5
• Throwback Interview: Mark Clapham (2002)