New human (The Rise of the New Humans)
“New Human” is a term coined by the Monk to describe the humans experimented on them by Dr Kurdi’s experiments. With her help, he set up a clinic with himself as the Chief Administrator to create new race of humans, one that were physically stronger and capable of healing themselves rather than deal with the ‘medieval’ medical technology of the 1970s. The Monk provided Kurdi with advanced scientific and medical technology and funding to carry out the experiments. Frustrated by the misogynistic and racist attitudes of the time, Kurdi was delighted for a chance to prove to the scientific community that she could make humans better. She was unaware that the Monk’s desires were meant to make a profit to be sold on.
Doctor Kurdi wanted to enhance the human body, seeing it as a wonder. She wanted to enhance the body, specifically in the immune system to defend itself against diseases and make the human body constantly evolve, encouraging it to adapt all the time.
Early experiments simply involved giving human patients who ordinarily hospitals would have given up on because they lacked the technology or knowledge to repair them help; for instance one of the patients had been involved in a ‘nasty’ speedboating accident which would have been impossible for ordinarily hospitals to repair, but the Monk claimed in a week’s time when he took the Doctor and Jo on a tour through his facility he would be ‘cartwheeling out’ of the clinic, one woman had enhanced cybernetic lungs. The Monk sarcastically stated she shouldn’t have them when the Doctor told him he shouldn’t be doing what he was doing, and she would have to ‘cough’ them up because she wasn’t meant to have them since they hadn’t been invented yet.
Despite the outward benevolence of the Monk’s activities and how he claimed that he was ‘saving lives,’ many of the patients underwent terrible amounts of pain during the treatments. Jo Grant believed that the Monk’s efforts were good until the Doctor told her that the Monk was damaging the timeline and gave her the example of how the Monk was taking away the chance for people to be inspired to find the cures for illnesses and create the technology to heal people for themselves, and people who should have been saved die because the drugs aren’t created.
Michael Carey was one of the earlier experiments of Dr Kurdi’s. In agony, he jumped off a building while he was trying to grow wings out of his back, and his skin was in the process of developing armour to protect himself. The Doctor noted that if he had jumped off a much taller building, the process might have produced an early ‘New Human,’ one that could fly and had armoured skin. Another test subject who had drowned a week before Carey was fished out of the Thames in the process of developing a full set of gills.
Mr Francis, a criminal, who was a patient as well at the clinic was injured and like many of the patients the hospitals couldn’t help him. The Monk was frustrated with him because the treatments didn’t seem to be working, but he was unaware that Mr Francis was actually a telepathic telekinetic.
Another test subject, Harriet, had skin that glowed in the dark, kept trying to escape from the clinic and she had been driven mad by the treatments given to her by Kurdi. Harriet was also immune to Venusian aikido.
The Monk’s plan was to use the Doctor to help Kurdi make the breakthrough to create the ‘New Humans;’ a race of humans completely immune to disease and capable of healing their bodies while exhibiting super-human abilities. He gave Jo a glass of water with a deadly disease that would certainly kill her in order to motivate the Doctor into helping Kurdi with her work. She had been having problems with her work, frustrated by the inconsistent and randomness of the results.
Kurdi argued with the Doctor over the morality of the work. She wanted to make diseases like cancer and brain disease a thing of past, and make humans capable of stopping them in their tracks without a thought. The Monk had poisoned Jo to make the Doctor work with Kurdi to remove the random inconsistencies of the treatments. When she collapsed, the Doctor worked with Kurdi and tried to get through to her to see the dangers of what she was doing.
The Doctor was impressed with Kurdi’s ability and her direction, but he was disgusted by her work. Kurdi pleaded with the Doctor to see the benefits of saving lives, but he argued that the Earth was having its resources drained on a daily basis and if she succeeded in making death a thing of the past the human race would collapse. Kurdi simply argued the human race would just need to look for greener energy solutions and space for a growing populace. She claimed with her treatments it would be possible for humans to adapt to environments like the deserts, the poles, and the oceans they’d live there in comfort. The Doctor turned the argument around, saying the humans who had adapted to live in those uninhabitable places would just destroy the eco-systems, and he went on to create habitation zones; an example would be for the oceans to become ghettos where workers would live because no one would want to see their ‘unsightly’ gills.
The Doctor compared the New Humans to the Time Lords when he realised that Kurdi had overlooked the fact that if the treatments changed humans so radically enough disease would be simple for them to adapt to, then they could effortlessly find a way to stop their cells decaying. During this argument he was horrified when he learnt that Carey had been given the treatment without him knowing about it.
Despite their arguments, the Doctor was able to help Kurdi with her treatment and injected them into Jo while also spending the time to develop a cure to reverse the damage Kurdi and the Monk had done. The treatment worked - Jo was cured, but the patients had adapted to the treatments and turned it into an epidemic, becoming a new race of humans. Harriet’s body had sorted out the instabilities of the treatments before the Doctor did, and she turned it into an infection that was transferred by exhaling. Kurdi became one of the New Humans as did some of the clinics orderlies, and together they became determined to spread it.
With Francis’ help, the Doctor and Monk were able to work together to cure the treatment. By this point a detachment of UNIT soldiers had become infected by the virus, and they became New Humans.
The New Humans had many advantages over ordinary humans. They could adapt physically for any kind of adversity; in the dark, their bodies could glow and give themselves enough light, and in strong gale force winds created by the members of their community who had psychic powers, they could change their feet to root themselves into the ground. They also shared a Hive mind with each other - Jo briefly was a part of this Hive mind, and they shared a belief they were the future. When she was cured, Jo likened them to ants sharing a purpose. (AUDIO: The Rise of the New Humans)
