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| == Plot == | | == Plot == |
| === Part 1 ===
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| Leaving London and the company of Henry Gordon Jago and George Litefoot, the Doctor and Leela barely have time to dematerialize before the TARDIS receives an alien distress call…from the year 1895?! They follow the signal to a house in England, where a battle has taken place. Human and alien dead can be found; the Doctor identifies the aliens as Drellerans—and they were ''not'' the aggressors. He also finds a Drelleran stardrive, which is faulty and therefore potentially deadly. They flee in the TARDIS and try to track the drive to the ship it belongs to, but the drive’s effect on the TARDIS nearly knocks them off course.
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| They arrive on a transport ship, the ''Chandler'', some centuries in the future. The ship is carrying a construction crew to a space station under construction…and the Doctor is thrilled to discover that the station is Nerva Beacon, which he has visited before (here called Nerva Dock). With Leela, he has a brief run-in with the crew’s foreman and shop steward, Jim Hooley, who decides they are new workers. The ''Chandler'' is forced to divert to a different airlock, as their expected lock is unexpectedly occupied by a space pod from another ship called the ''Aeolus''. Upon arrival, he orders the Doctor and Leela into spacesuits and onto the station hull with the rest of the work crew.
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| The ''Aeolus'' pod is of Drelleran design, as is its parent ship; but it’s a human aboard, one Sergeant Henry McMullan. He enters the airlock without authorization, and demands to be let in. Chief Technician Laura Craske calls her acting supervisor, Dr. Alison Foster for permission to let him in. Foster realizes something is not right, and declines, but her signal is cut off, and Laura lets Henry in. He shakes her hand, and she suddenly becomes compliant to him. She takes him to the Control Center, and introduces him to the station commander, Commodore Giles Moreau; Moreau declines to shake his hand. Moreau orders McMullan to medical quarantine as per standard procedure, but is interrupted by a system fault alert. Elsewhere, Hooley has escorted the Doctor and Leela back inside, and called for security; security arrives in the form of a hovering, robotic Drudger, and takes them (using mild force) to the Control Center. Hooley returns to the hull. Moreau, meanwhile, traces the fault to the airlock where the pod is docked. McMullan tries to control the situation, and appears to mesmerize Leela, but the Doctor breaks her free of it. McMullan wants to shake hands with everyone, but Leela realizes he is not what he seems. Moreau orders the Drudger to arrest them all, but it collapses in system failure. Laura, meanwhile, becomes suddenly weak and incoherent. On the hull, Hooley is behaving similarly to Laura; Foster orders him back inside.
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| The Doctor realizes McMullan is wearing the same uniform under his spacesuit as the dead soldiers they saw in 1895. He realizes the ''Aeolus'' is a Drelleran ship, and confronts McMullan about stealing it. A proximity alert sounds; the Aeolus has arrived, and will soon dock. Henry, it seems, is an advance troop, carrying some kind of fast-moving infection that affects not only people, but the station systems; it is carried on the skin, in the form of a separate, independently-acting epidermis; the Doctor dubs it an “Epiderm”. Laura quickly becomes a similarly-mutated creature. The commander of the ''Aeolus'', Lord Jack Corrigan, contacts them. The Doctor, Leela, and the Commodore are forced to run.
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| Corrigan communicates with the Epiderms forming on the station, and says he and the crew will join them for the final unification of humankind.
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| === Part 2 ===
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| As the ''Aeolus'' docks, the Doctor warns the others not to let the creatures touch them. Hooley enters the airlock, but the inner door won’t secure. He insists something is wrong with him, and Foster tries to intervene—but she is stopped just short of touching him by the Doctor and the Commodore. Hooley dies while they argue, and Foster is outraged; Leela is forced to hold her back. She sees Hooley begin to transform, and she flees with the others. Elsewhere, Corrigan comes aboard, and meets a security team—and absorbs them into the Epiderm entity. The Doctor’s group flees to the ''Chandler'', but Moreau is touched by one of the creatures as the airlock closes; unknown to anyone, he is infected. They cast off from the station, breaking the airlock in the process. The Doctor sees, to his delight, that Nerva is orbiting Jupiter, as he once guessed.
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| Moreau sends a distress signal to the nearby supply ship from whence the ''Chandler'' originated, and requests a quarantine of Nerva, but is unsuccessful, as Jack blocks the signal. Jack tries to entice them back, and explains how he took the ''Aeolus'' in the nineteenth century and used it to try to build a British empire in the stars. The group discovers that the supply ship is already infected. With nowhere to go, Leela suggests using the TARDIS to get to Earth, but the Doctor thinks it won’t work—and it becomes moot, as Moreau transforms and blocks their way to the TARDIS. The Doctor locates spacesuits and gets himself, Leela, and Foster onto the hull. Outside, they see a huge ship coming—a Drelleran ship, centuries more advanced than the ''Aeolus''. It teleports them aboard.
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| Two Drellerans meet them. They show the group a video of Jack’s initial conquest of a Drelleran expedition, and explain how he conquered the peaceful Drelleran society afterward. They explain that, in revolt, the Drellerans unleashed a virus which creates the Epiderm creatures. The infected Jack was compelled to return to Earth and infect the rest of humanity; it’s sheer chance that he landed on Nerva first. The Doctor argues that humanity has matured since then; Foster and Leela convince them of his trustworthiness. However, they have made up their minds, and they infect the trio with the virus. They then return them to the station, where the Epiderms wait.
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| When the Epiderm tries to merge with them, it begins to die. They realize they were infected with not the virus, but a cure. It spreads rapidly, and all over the station, people begin to recover and awaken. The exceptions are Jack and his crew; having used stolen Drelleran technology to extend their lives, they now cannot handle reversion to normal, and they die. The Doctor encourages Foster to take the opportunity to develop a serum against the Epiderm virus, because Moreau is still infected—and not only that, but his infection of the ''Chandler'' is separating them from the TARDIS.
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| Later, with the TARDIS recovered, Leela and the Doctor discuss their travels. He asks where she wants to go, and she takes him up on his previous offer to teach her about the universe. With that, they depart.
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| == Cast == | | == Cast == |
