Colony ship (World Enough and Time): Difference between revisions

|used by    = [[Mondasian]]s

Sometime after the apes of [[Mondas]] had evolved into the [[human]] [[Mondasian|Mondasians]], the colony ship was launched from Mondas to pick up some colonists, with a skeleton crew of fifty, including the [[Captain (Jorj)|Captain]], chief engineer [[Franq]] and [[Jorj]], the [[Caretaker|janitor]] and only non-human. On day 43 of its voyage, it was drawn into the gravity well of a [[black hole]]. After the Captain berated Jorj for not alerting him of the black hole sooner, a team of twenty engineers, including Franq, were sent from Floor 0000, the flight deck, to Floor 1056, the lowest level, to reverse the rear thrusters and escape the black hole. However, [[time dilation]] caused by the black hole's gravity resulted in [[time]] passing much more slowly on the higher floors on the ship in comparison to the lower floors, as the higher floors were closer to the black hole.

==== The deterioration of Floor 1056 ====

As a result, the team at the bottom of the ship found that, after reversing the rear thrusters, they were unable to return to Floor 0000. Forced to spend the rest of their lives on Floor 1056, they established a huge civilisation that their descendants inherited over several centuries, but over time, the city degraded significantly as the bottom of the ship aged dramatically, whereas the higher floors, in particular Floor 0000, did not. At some point, {{Simm}}, after being banished from [[Gallifrey]], landed on Floor 1056; he attempted to escape the black hole but flew his TARDIS too fast, burning out the [[dematerialisation circuit]] and stranding him on the colony ship. The Master then "killed a lot of people, took over the city", and "lived like a king" before the people of Floor 1056 got tired of his cruelty and overthrew him. The Master was forced into hiding as "Mr. Razor", the caretaker of the city's hospital.

By this time, conditions on Floor 1056 had grown inhospitable to the point that the hospital began Operation Exodus, an operation with the intent of transforming the people of the city into cyborgs to dramatically extend their life spans, so that they could not only survive on Floor 1056, but also survive the journey to Floor 0000 to take command of the ship. However, following the manipulation of Razor, the cyborgs that were produced from Operation Exodus were a race of Cybermen that the Master intended to use to conquer the galaxy. The "patients", an early form of Mondasian Cybermen, were converted from humans by the hospital's surgeon in the conversion theatre, although they were insufficient as a final solution to Operation Exodus as they were in constant pain from the conversion process. Although a temporary solution was found in the development of voice synthesisers that allowed the patients to be muted, a permanent remedy to the problem was needed, and thus the patients continued to evolve over the years.  

Whilst the patients were used to escort people from the city to be converted in the hospital, they were also sent to the higher decks to capture any other humans for conversion. One team of patients were sent to Floor 0507, but were attacked by the farmers, who shot them down at night and chained them to crucifixes in the fields during the day. However, at night, the patients sometimes broke free and resumed their original mission, forcing the farmers to constantly fight them off.

On Floor 0000, the day after Franq and the original twenty engineers were sent to Floor 1056, Jorj detected hundreds of life readings at the bottom of the ship. The Captain sent another team to Floor 1056 to deal with the "stowaways”, but when the lifts returned, a patrol of patients arrived, capturing the remaining humans and taking them back to Floor 1056, leaving Jorj behind due to him being non-human. By the next day, Jorj had broadcast a distress signal; in response, the Twelfth Doctor's TARDIS arrived, and {{Gomez}}, Bill Potts and Nardole emerged. Initially monitoring the trio from inside the TARDIS, the Twelfth Doctor quickly emerged when Jorj arrived and threatened to shoot them, after Bill's human life-signs were detected by the hospital on Floor 1056, who, in response, sent a team of patients in the lifts to capture her. When the lifts arrived, Jorj shot Bill despite the Doctor's efforts to stop him, and the patients took her back to Floor 1056. The Doctor left a message in Bill's subconscious to "wait for [him]", and after explaining the effects of the time dilation on the ship to Jorj, proceeded to knock the janitor out before he travelled with Missy and Nardole in a lift to Floor 1056, stating that he'd never be able to fly the TARDIS properly in close proximity to the black hole. ([[TV]]: ''[[World Enough and Time (TV story)|World Enough and Time]]'')