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San Helios was a planet in the Scorpion Nebula, on the other side of the universe from Earth. It once had an advanced civilisation with a population of 100 billion, and cities like San Helios City, but in the early 21st century it was ravaged by the Swarm, and all life on it devoured, turning the planet into a desert planet in less then a year.
After feeding off of San Helios, the Swarm attempted to open a wormhole to Earth, accidentally trapping a group of Humans on the planet in the process. The Humans eventually escaped to Earth through the still-open wormhole, and Doctor Malcom Taylor closed the wormhole. The Doctor eventually re-routed the Swarm to an uninhabited planet, saying they'd just keep opening wormholes to devour planets, but he would try to divert them to uninhabited worlds where they could do no damage.
Before its demise, San Helios traded in "waste products" with the Tritovore race. As a result, a Tritovore crew was the first to discover the fall of the planet. (DW: Planet of the Dead)
Behind the scenes
- Sanghelios is a similarly named fictional planet in the Halo universe, homeworld of the Sangheili (Elite) race. Both planets are in trinary star systems, and "san" means "three" in Chinese and Japanese. "San Helios" obviously references "san," whereas Sanghelios' etymology may be more complex; the Sangheili are a hotblooded warrior race, indicating a reference to one of two definitions of "sanguine" (in this case, "bloody" rather than "cheerful"). If so, "Sanghelios" may be doubly referential, nodding to both the bloody nature of the Sangheili and the harshness of their planet, as well as to its three suns.