The Taking of Planet 5 (novel)
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 paradox 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".
rest to be added
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
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.
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)
- 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)
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