B00DPX9ST8 EBOK (35 page)

& 696 - I, Davros: Purity
 [241]

The Kaled-Thal war experienced a hiatus that some called the Unsigned Truce. The increasing chemical pollutants and radioactivity on Skaro mutated the Varga plants: flesh-eating vegetation that was formerly rooted in the ground, but now gained the ability to walk and hunt its prey. The name “Varga”, as deciphered from old cave paintings, came from the old Dal word for “devourer”.

Davros had enlisted in the military because his family’s long tradition of service demanded it, but he longed to join the Scientific Corps. To win reassignment, he complied with the wishes of the Supremo, a high-ranking Kaled official, that he investigate an advanced Thal weapons facility. Davros’ team destroyed the facility, but Davros alone survived the mission. Calcula discovered that Yarvell, now a peace supporter, feared Davros’ potential for destruction and had warned her allies about his mission. Seeing her daughter as a threat to Davros’ advancement, Calcula drowned her. A Thal infiltrator was blamed for Yarvell’s death, and Davros joined the Scientific Corps.

& 709 - I, Davros: Corruption

The environment on Skaro took a turn for the worse. There hadn’t been a summer for three years, nearly all animal life was extinct, and what little wildlife survived was in the Lake of Mutations, formerly known as Drammakin Lake. Now established within the Scientific Elite, Davros developed a blast ray with a range of three miles - its use consumed enough energy to power the Kaled city for seventy-three years, but a shot from it obliterated a fortified Thal command facility.

The Supremo became wary of Davros’ ascent and desire to eradicate the Thals entirely, and sent an underling - Section Leader Fenn - to wreck his equipment and kill Calcula. She stopped Fenn by subjecting them both to fatal doses of radiation. Davros learned of the Supremo’s involvement in his mother’s death, and blackmailed him - henceforth, the Kaled Science Division would have autonomy, and the Elite could requisition any and all resources. Councillor Valron was framed for Calcula’s murder.

Fifty years before the end of the war between the Thals and the Kaleds on Skaro, the Kaleds set up an Elite group, based in a secret bunker below the Wasteland. It was run by chief scientist Davros, the greatest mind Skaro had ever seen.
 [242]

& 709 - Davros / I, Davros: Corruption
 [243]

Although he continued to develop weapons - one of which sunk the entire Thal Navy in a day - Davros had come to realise the war was futile. Prolonging the war with the Thals and using increasingly deadly weapons would mean that soon Skaro would become a dead planet. He believed that no other world could support life, and it was impossible to end the fighting, as both races would inevitably compete to exploit the same ecological niche. Logically, the Kaled race could not possibly survive.

One of his research students, Shan, came up with what she called The Dalek Solution, a plan to reengineer the Kaled race to survive the pollution on Skaro. Fearing that Shan would become a more brilliant scientist than him, Davros framed her for treason and had her hanged.

Davros was greatly injured, and the only survivor, when the Thals shelled his laboratory. He was given a poison injector to kill himself, as none of the Kaleds could bring themselves to put Davros out of his misery. At that moment, Davros realised how weak the Kaleds were and how true power was being able to grant life and death.
 [244]

Davros was crippled, but survived by designing a life support system for himself. He created energy weapons, artificial hearts and a new material that reinforced the Kaled Dome.
 [245]

& 759 - I, Davros: Guilt
 [246]

Lieutenant Nyder successfully rescued Davros when the Thals briefly captured him, and thereby became his trusted aide.

Davros demanded that the ruling Council of Twelve make all Kaled children the property of the state, so his biological experiments had access to the widest available stock. The Councillors unanimously voted against Davros, and so he killed them, attributing their deaths a faulty heat exchanger. Davros took charge until a new legislative body could be elected, and instigated a mandatory “child protection program” to oversee any Kaled younger than five.

Davros successfully developed a Mark I travel machine - based upon his own life-support chair - that would house the form he believed the Kaleds would eventually mutate into. He and Nyder looked on as the first “Dalek” - a Dal word meaning “gods” - switched on and came to life.

? 760 - Genesis of the Daleks
 [247]

Davros succeeded in selectively breeding an intelligent creature that could survive in the radiation-soaked, environmentally desolate world of Skaro. Using the Mark III Travel Machines, the Daleks could live in virtually any environment. The Time Lords foresaw a time when the Daleks had become the supreme power in the universe, and sent the fourth Doctor, Sarah and Harry back to the Daleks’ creation. They gave the Doctor three options: avert the Daleks’ creation; affect their genetic development so they might evolve in a less aggressive fashion; discover some inherent weakness that could be used against them. The Doctor destroyed the Daleks’ incubator room and entombed them in their bunker; he reckoned he had set Dalek development back a thousand years. He believed the existence of the Daleks would serve to unite races against them.

The Doctor’s interference on Skaro spared thousands of worlds from enduring the Dalek wars. The Time Lords calmed the resulting time disruption.
 [248]
At some point, at least a thousand years later, the Daleks developed space travel and began their galactic conquests.
 [249]

The Hornet Swarm, a hivemind of tiny insects ruled by a powerfully telepathic Queen, drifted through space. In the early ninth century, the Swarm accidentally ended up on Earth. They would develop plans to conquer it.
 [250]

c 800 - “Doctor Conkerer!”
 [251]

The seventh Doctor invented the game of conkers.

The Book of Kells - a collection of manuscripts including the four Gospels, and which would become regarded as Ireland’s greatest national treasure - was created in an abbey founded by St. Columbia on the island of Iona. Vikings raided the abbey, and the monks fled to Ireland and Scotland, taking the Book with them.
 [252]
The Vikings regarded the alien Vostok - who came to sleep beneath the polar icecap - as “the gods of the ice age”.
 [253]

The first Doctor was present when a fire ravaged Charlemagne’s library.
 [254]

= On Roma I, the Roman Emperor Carolus Magnus, that Earth’s Charlemagne, defeated the Vikings.
 [255]

The tenth Doctor rescued Charlemagne from the clutches of an insane computer.
 [256]
The Catholic Church founded the Library of St John the Beheaded in the St Giles Rookery, a notorious area of Holborn, London. The library contained unique, suppressed and pagan texts, including information on “alternative zoology and phantasmagorical anthropology”.
 [257]

The imprisoned Fenric still had influence over the Earth and the ability to manipulate the timelines. He summoned the Ancient One - a powerful Haemovore - from half a million years in the future. Over the centuries, the Ancient One followed the flask containing Fenric. It was stolen from Constantinople; Viking pirates took it to Northumbria. Slowly, the Ancient One followed it to Maiden’s Bay.

By the tenth century, a nine-letter Viking alphabet was in use, although the later Vikings used a 16-letter version. Carvings in the earlier alphabet claimed that the Vikings were cursed, and they buried the flask in a burial site under St Jude’s church.
 [258]

Merlin banished the Demon Melanicus from our universe. Melanicus waited a thousand years for an opportunity to escape the black, formless void.
 [259]
Viking legends referred to the Timewyrm as Hel.
 [260]
The seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice were at an Angle settlement when the Vikings attacked it.
 [261]
The Doctor met the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great and his cook Ethelburg, “a dab hand at bear rissoles”.
 [262]
The Doctor became known as Shango the thunder god of the Yoruba tribe when he demonstrated static electricity.
 [263]

During the second quest to find the Key to Time, the White and Black Guardians found that their powers were greatly diminished. The Black Guardian transported the fifth Doctor and Amy the Key-tracer to the location of the next Key segment - ninth-century Sudan - then crashed there himself, four decades prior to their arrival, in a spaceship. The Black Guardian became Lord Cassim Ali Baba, and sired a son named Prince Omar. He partnered with a stranded Djinn - a race of collectors who went from world to world in search of profit - to repair the spaceship and leave Earth. Meanwhile, the weakened White Guardian lived as the Legate of the Caliphate of Baghdad.
 [264]

The master vampire Gabriel Saunders embarked upon a breeding programme that developed the Ruthven family into formidable monsters protected by bone spikes, but could pass as human. Saunders hoped to create a prey worthy of being hunted by him, possibly even one that offered the chance of ending his undead existence.
 [265]

c 855 - The Destroyer of Delights
 [266]

The Black Guardian, a.k.a. Cassim Ali Baba, had spent two years amassing enough gold to hyper-compress into a warp manifold - the last component needed to restore his grounded spaceship. Upon its creation, the compressed gold shard became incarnated as the fifth segment of the Key to Time. Prince Omar killed the Djinn, and - along with forty others - plundered the treasures in the Djinn’s spaceship. The ship self-destructed upon the Djinn’s death, and the fifth Doctor and the Key-tracer Amy acquired the segment.

Romana met the Black Guardian while trying to answer the Doctor’s distress call, and transported him in her TARDIS to the planet Chaos in the far future.
 [267]

c 885 - “They Think It’s All Over”
 [268]

The eleventh Doctor, Amy and Rory attempted to see England play Germany in the 1966 World Cup Final, but instead landed in Wemba’s Lea, a Saxon area marauded by the Vikings. Henghist, the son of King Ragnar, killed his father as a means of spurring the Vikings against the Saxon. The Doctor and Rory forced the Vikings to retreat after besting Henghist in a penalty shootout.

The Cup of Aethelstan was made in 924 as a gift from the first King of England to Hywel, king of the Welsh. The Doctor visited Aethelstan’s court around this time.
 [269]
A group of benevolent space travellers landed in Japan and were killed by the scared natives. The ogre-like, animated mannequins - the Otoroshi - built to aid the travellers were incorporated into a holy shrine.
 [270]

Marshall Sezhyr founded the Ice Army, and united the nations of Mars, when the planet was in peril. He successfully defended the City of Chebisk against the rebel Dust Riders, and also fought the Kings of the Blood Gullies. Sezhyr’s banners flew in a hundred Martian cities and on the planet’s moons, but such was his tyranny that thousands of dissenters were killed. His mind survived his physical demise, encoded into his body armour.
 [271]

A thousand years ago, a new Keeper of Traken was inaugurated. The Union of Traken in Mettula Orionsis had enjoyed many thousands of years of peace before this time.
 [272]
The family of Vislor Turlough owned a planet in a system where wealthy Trions established stellar retreats. A millennia later, these were abandoned at start of the Trion civil war.
 [273]
Some space-faring races plundered more primitive species to create Gelem warriors - fierce cannon fodder soldiers, each created from an amalgamation of five living bodies. Gelems were used in the first battles of the War of Five Hundred Worlds, but were banned by the Pact of Chib in the eleventh century.
 [274]

c 1001 - Excelis Dawns
 [275]

Numerous civilisations had come and gone on the planet Artaris. The populace was mostly relegated to communities living on mountainsides for defensive purposes. A nunnery emerged on Excelis, the highest mountain on the planet.

The fifth Doctor landed on Artaris and met the warlord Grayvorn, who was on a quest for “the Relic”, a powerful artifact and purported gateway to the afterlife. The Doctor also met Iris Wildthyme, who couldn’t remember how she ended up there. Grayvorn found the Relic, which was shaped like Iris’ handbag, but he went missing. The Relic’s energies inadvertently made Grayvorn immortal.