The Thing from Outer Space (short story)
From Tardis Wiki, the free Doctor Who reference
The Thing from Outer Space was a short story in the 1971 Countdown Holiday Special, a forty-eight+63-page oversized edition of the magazine. It was one of the very few bits of Doctor Who prose ever published by Polystyle in their long association with the franchise and the only Doctor Who content in the issue.
It featured the Third Doctor.
Summary
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Characters
- Third Doctor
- Captain Fenton
- The Thing
- Duty Guard Officer
- The Bespectacled Scientist
- Harassed Looking Major
- The Helmsman
- Frogman
- Sparks, Duty Communications Officer
- Stocky, Grim Faced Naval Captain
- Petty Officer
- Staff Car Driver
- The Officer In Charge Of Operations
- Commander
References
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Notes
- In this story, the Doctor is the leader of an organisation based in Portsmouth that is similar to UNIT but is not identified as such.
- The Thing is described as "a great glowing mass, heaving and pulsing like some monstrous jelly fish." It has long tendrils protruding from its body and a hideous frog-like head.
- Captain Fenton surmises that the Thing is "... an alien life form that intruded into our dimension of time and space." Dr Who then goes on to say that it is "... obviously a cosmic freak, which has broken the normal laws of nature and become totally destructive in our Earthly environment." The Thing needs some kind of cosmic energy to sustain it, and its breathing is defined as an eerie green pulsating light. It is capable of self generating its own a surface force field.
- "The Thing From Outer Space" was released in the summer of 1971, and set in Portsmouth. By October of 1971, the BBC were already filming The Sea Devils, with its locations including the Fraser Gunnery Range at HMS St George in Portsmouth, HMS Reclaim, a diving training vessel based at Portsmouth, and No Man's Land Fort in the Solent, a sea fort near to Portsmouth.
Continuity
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