Humanity at this time still used imperial measurements, projectile weapons and wheeled transport (“space buggies”). Ships were powered by nuclear motors, and communicated with Earth via “warp” radio and videolink. The language of Earth was English; the currency was the pound. IMC had advanced scanning equipment for mineral surveys and medical diagnoses. Colonists bought old ships to transport them to their colony planets.
In the twenty-fifth century, Earth colonised Solos, a planet with rich deposits of thaesium. The beautiful planet was ravaged and its people enslaved. [644] The seventh Doctor, Benny, Roz and Chris went to Navarro to rest after their adventure in Little Caldwell. [645] Mrs Ransandrianasolo was born. She was a telepath, as her mother was given psi drugs. [646]
At this time, Earth was thought to be the only body in the solar system capable of supporting plant life. [647] In 2476, the Techno-Magi consulted the frozen head of Ralph Waldo Mimsey as an Oracle, driving him insane. [648]
The Korven invaded Earth in 2480, and attempted to cool the planet with phosphane devices because the planet was too warm for them. [649] Circa 2481, the UI designated Cray as Earth’s sister planet, due to its position relative to Earth from Galactic Zero. The increased focus on Cray compelled Earth to try and end the planet’s embarrassing war. The negotiator Lord Carlisle would be dispatched to try and arbitrate a peace. [650]
c 2484 - The Game [651]
On the planet Cray, only two teams - the Gora and the Lineen - had survived to continue playing the lethal game of Naxy. The past five seasons had seen the deaths of 78,349 Gora and 65,418 Lineen, although the Gora were in much worse shape than was officially reported, and were on the brink of defeat.
The fifth Doctor and Nyssa witnessed Lord Carlisle’s efforts to broker a truce, but the Doctor’s involvement in a Naxy match led to an upset for the Lineen, with four hundred Lineen casualties. Carlisle died while saving the Doctor’s life, but the Doctor exposed the Morian Crime Syndicate’s manipulative influence on the planet. The Gora and Lineen united against the Morian, ending the Naxy tournaments. Carlisle was accredited with the planet’s newfound peace.
Heroin slam, the so-called “razor drug”, was now in distribution.
c 2485 - “Junkyard Demon” [652]
The Salvage ship Drifter travelled along the edge of the galaxy, piloted by two traders: Flotsam and Jetsam of the Backwater Scrap and Salvage Company. They plucked the TARDIS out of space, interrupting the fourth Doctor’s meditation. The Doctor was horrified to see that they’d recovered a Cyberman, and to learn that Flotsam and Jetsam reprogrammed them to sell on as butlers.
The Cyberman reactivated and took Jetsam to the planet A54 in the Arcturian system, where a great Cybernaut fleet had crashed. They quickly discovered Zogron, the deactivated leader, and Jetsam reprogrammed him... as a butler. The Doctor and Flotsam arrived in the Drifter and immobilised the Cyberman with a polymer spray.
c 2485 - “Junkyard Demon II” [653]
Joylove McShane of Joylove Antiques arrived on A54 wanting to buy Flotsam and Jetsam out, and set his henchman Stinker on them when they refused. Joylove was a gunrunner working for the Brotherhood of Logicians, and he wanted the army of Cybermen. The fourth Doctor arrived and destroyed the Cyber Army, but Flotsam and Jetsam discovered a supply of Cybermats to keep them busy. Joylove escaped... but a surviving Cyberman went with him.
c 2486 - Leviathan [654]
The clones aboard the Leviathan carrying the Sentinels of the New Dawn had spent their whole lives in a Middle Ages setting - a template of the society the Sentinels hoped to establish on the planet Felgathon. A meteor storm struck the Leviathan as it was less than fifty light years from its destination, and the sleeping Sentinels were all killed. The sixth Doctor and Peri visited the Leviathan as human salvagers overrode the ship’s Zeron computer system, and attempted to have all the clones recycled. The Doctor thwarted the salvagers and arranged for the clones to be relocated to safety.
c 2486 (September) - The Tomb of the Cybermen [655]
Eric Klieg and Kaftan, two members of the Brotherhood of Logicians, usurped control of an expedition mounted to unearth the Tombs of the Cybermen on Telos. The Cybermen were revived and planned to emerge into the universe, but were re-frozen by the second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria. Klieg and Kaftan were killed, and the CyberController was badly electrocuted and thought dead.
The currency at this time appears to have been the pound. Individuals and organisations could charter spacecraft.
The CyberController was not destroyed, but merely damaged. He went on to build a new Cyber-Race. [656]
By the end of the twenty-fifth century, a museum was dedicated to the Beatles in Liverpool. Clothes were self-cleaning, dirt repelling and non-creasing. Ten-year-olds took a certificate of education in physics, medicine, chemistry and computer science using learning machines for an hour a week. There was evidence that humanity now had some familiarity with temporal theory - even children knew Venderman’s Law: “Mass is absorbed by light, therefore light has mass and energy. The energy radiated by a light neutron is equal to the energy of the mass it absorbs”. [657]
Vicki Pallister, a companion of the first Doctor, was born in New London on Earth around 2480. She lived in Liddell Towers. Vicki’s mother died when she was 11. After that, she and her father left Earth for a new life on space colony Astra. [658] She was inoculated using a laser injector when she was five, and owned a pony called Saracen. [659] In Vicki’s time, St. Paul’s was still standing, having survived four world wars “and an alien invasion”. [660] Food was designed to be nutritious, not tasty. Pandas were extinct, and museums used holograms. Vicki’s father, Lieutenant Commander Pallister, had basic paramedic training for his intended job on Astra. [661]
2487 - Judgement of the Judoon [662]
The planet New Memphis opened Terminal 13, hoping to expand its service of hyperspace vessels. Conflict escalated between criminal organisations respectively led by “Widow” and “Uncle”, but the tenth Doctor and the Judoon stopped an effort to destroy Terminal 13 as part of an insurance scam. Uncle and Widow both died owing to a virus, the Invisible Assassin, that Uncle had tailored to Widow’s DNA - he had failed to realise that she was secretly his daughter, and that the virus would affect him also.
Kronkburgers were served in the New Memphis settlement.
The Interplanetary Mining Corporation established Unit 426, a colony equipped with oxygen gardens in orbit around Saturn, to aid and supply its first hydrogen mine there. [663]
c 2493 - The Rescue [664]
There were emigrations to other planets. One such ship, the UK-201, crashed on Dido en route to Astra. This was a desert world, home of a peaceful humanoid race and lizard-like creatures known as sand beasts. The Didoans had a population of around one hundred, and had just perfected an energy ray that could be used as a building tool. A young girl named Vicki was one of only two survivors of the crash; her father was among the fatalities. When the TARDIS made a return visit to Dido, the first Doctor, Ian and Barbara exposed the other survivor, Bennett, as a murderer. Vicki joined them on their travels.
Boar-like aliens attacked human colonists in the Thynemnus system, causing disputes. The aliens were driven off, but the Valethske attacked the system soon after. [665] The interior of Tyler’s Folly reshaped itself according to explorer Franz Kryptosa’s conception of the “inner world” myths. He merged with the Pool of Life there. [666]
A super-volcano destroyed the Incorporated Nation of NeoCalifornia in the late twenty-fifth century, and so a consortium of entertainment businesses terraformed the planet Hollywood to serve as the centre of the movie industry in the Milky Way. The planet BollyWood was the next orbit over from Hollywood, as were some Celebra-Stations, where visitors could chase talentless android celebrities in safari parks. The tenth Doctor and Martha visited Hollywood because she wanted to see a good Western, but when the cinema they planned to go to was closed, he took her to the real Wild West in the 1880s. [66
7]
c 2495 - Set Piece [668]
In the late twenty-fifth century, spaceships started disappearing from one of the less-used traffic lanes. A space vessel, designed to save a group of doomed colonists by directly uploading their memories, had outstripped its programming. It now sought to absorb the memories of every living being, and was using its robotic workers, the Ants, to kidnap people.
Five hundred and six people were taken from one such captured ship, the Cortese. The seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice tried to intercede and were flung through time to ancient Egypt and nineteenth century France. They eventually brought about the Ship’s destruction. Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart briefly became the Ship’s thrall - she was liberated, but fell through a space-time rift. The Doctor would next meet her in 1754, near Sierra Leone.
Androids indistinguishable from humans were constructed in the Orion Sector. They became smart enough to demand equal rights and protest their mistreatment. This led to a conflict - the Orion War - against humanity. The androids settled in the Orion system, ordering the humans to accept android rule or leave. [669]
c 2495 - Attack of the Cybermen [670]
The Cybermen faced total defeat. Thanks to Cryon guerillas and the Cybermen’s failing hibernation equipment, they weren’t even safe on Telos and planned to evacuate. They captured a three-man time machine that had landed on Telos, and used it to go to 1985 to prevent Mondas’ destruction. The sixth Doctor and Peri were captured in 1985 and brought to Telos, where the Doctor destroyed the tombs and the CyberController. Lytton, a former Dalek operative now working for the oppressed Cryons, was killed.
In Earth’s solar system, some humans who had been in cryo-freeze for centuries were revived, albeit with considerable brain damage. They were disparagingly called Cryogens, and most of them lived in nursing homes. [671]
The bloodthirsty Drexxons rampaged from planet to planet. They were defeated by the armies of the Combined Stellar Forces after a decade-long battle, and sealed inside a timeless Perpetuity Chamber which was hidden on the asteroid of Stanalan. [672]
The Twenty-Sixth Century
By the twenty-sixth century, interstellar travel had become a matter of routine. Fleets of spacecraft ranging from luxury liners to cargo freighters to battleships pushed further into deep space. Ships were built from durilium and had hyperdrives. The mind probe was commonly used to scan the minds of suspects, but it wasn’t always reliable. Weapons of the time included hand blasters and neutronic missiles. This period saw the beginning of Earth’s Empire. [673]
The warp drives of Earth ships were powered by anti-matter contained in stabilising vessels. [674] Space was divided into Sectors. [675] The currency was the Imperial. [676] It was likely around now that the Doctor gained a licence for the Mars-Venus rocket run. [677] The Collected Works of Gustav Urnst were published in June 2503, striking a chord with the bombastic people of the twenty-sixth century. [678]
Planetoid KS-159, the future home of the Braxiatel Collection, was once located within Draconian space. Even when it was outside their borders, the Draconians contested it under a caveat about war reparations. [679]
In the twenty-sixth century, the galaxy did not experience a year that was free of war. [680]
? 2500 - Army of Death [681]
Humans settled the frontier world of Draxine, and within ten generations had created the twin city-states of Stronghaven and Garrak. The Lifespan Project sought to extend human longevity, but President Carnex of Stronghaven discovered that it could transfer his mind into a psychic cloud. He wanted godhood by arranging Garrak’s destruction with a bomb, and then, after the death of his physical form, animated the skeletons of Garrak’s dead to attack Stronghaven. The eighth Doctor and Mary Shelley were present as Nia Bursk - a Garrak survivor - infused the psychic cloud with her own mind. She extinguished Carnex, then drove his skeleton army into the sea.
2501 - The Monsters Inside [682]
The ninth Doctor and Rose arrived on the planetary system of Justicia, a penal colony of the Earth Empire, where cruel guards were overseeing the construction of a set of pyramids. The Doctor met two criminals from Raxacoricofallapatorius who planned to use gravity warps to convert the entire system into a weapon that could destroy planets. These were members of the Blathereen family. The Doctor teamed up with members of the Slitheen family to defeat them.
? 2502 - “Throwback: The Soul of a Cyberman” [683]
The Cybermen invaded the planet Mondaran, and encountered heavy resistance. Cyberleader Tork requested reinforcements from Telos, which was six days away. These included Junior Cyberleader Kroton, who refused to kill a resistance cell. Kroton was developing emotions, and sided with the humans. Together, they stole a ship from the spaceport and retreated to the safety of the forest of Lorn. Kroton took the ship into orbit to prevent the humans from being detected, but it was a one-way trip. When his batteries drained, he was left drifting in space.
Earth initiated the Sword of Orion project: an effort to obtain Cyber-technology left over from the Cyber incursions on Earth for use in the Orion War. [684]
2503 - Sword of Orion [685]
A derelict spaceship was discovered near the Garazone Central habitat. It was a Cybermen factory ship, and Earth High Command dispatched Deeva Jansen to recover the Cyber-technology aboard. Jansen, however, was actually an android trying to obtain the technology for the Orion androids. The eighth Doctor and Charley were present when the Cybermen aboard the spaceship revived in great numbers, but the Doctor defeated them. Jansen was swept into space with some Cybermen and presumably frozen.
Telos was destroyed in a random asteroid strike. The Cyber-vault there had been designed to survive the planet’s break-up, and so floated in space amidst Telos’ ruins, the Cybermen inside the vault still in cryo-sleep. [686]
c 2505 - To the Slaughter [687]
Earth had been abandoned to the poorer countries. Mercury had fallen into the Sun and Venus was a toxic waste dump. The Oort Cloud had been sold off and dismantled.
Falsh Industries demolished most of Jupiter’s moons - using the designs of Aristotle Halcyon, a celebrity decor-artiste - as part of a redevelopment scheme to attract businesses to the solar system. The “Old Preservers”, speaking on behalf of the Empire Trust, were opposed to this. Falsh himself was engaged in illicit weapons research. The eighth Doctor, Fitz and Trix uncovered his schemes and defeated him. Halcyon decided to use his talents to improve Earth.
The people of Atwalla 3 prevented a takeover by alien races by genetically engineering their women to inter-breed with other species. As more and more hybrids were born, the Atwallans found their own race was in danger of extinction. The Atwallan males wiped out the hybrids, and stripped their women of all rights. [688]
The human colony on Cantus was believed “lost”; in actuality, the Cybermen had cyber-converted all the adults there, and harvested the children’s organs for use in Cybermats. [689] The Draconians committed war crimes during the reign of the thirty-fourth Emperor, and were later made to pay reparations. [690] After IMC closed its hydrogen mine on Saturn, Unit 426 was purchased and redeveloped by Powe-Luna Developments into a facsimile of a twentieth-century English market town. It was renamed Chelsea 426. [691]
Humanity built the Empire State: a single tower, named after the Empire State Building, that stretched from half a mile underground to the upper atmosphere on a desert moon that orbited six planets. It became a centre for trade and commerce, but around 2509, a misanthrope named Rand Goodwyn destabilised the State’s generators and destroyed it. [692]
c 2509 (20th August) - The Taking of Chelsea 426 [693]
The Third Renaissance was about to commence. Some features of it, including the Theatre of Nomogan, the ceilings of the Chamber of Ra and the Simarine Orchestra, would be talked about for centuries. Neptune had mining platforms.
The Oxygen Gardens of Chelsea 426 had become home to the Chelsea Flower Show. The top exhibit was the Blue Flower of Saturn, recently discovered in
that planet’s atmosphere. The tenth Doctor tried to attend the flower show, and found that the Blue Flower contained mind-controlling spores that the Rutans had seeded on Saturn five centuries previous. Compounding the situation, Colonel Sarg of the Fourth Sontaran Intelligence Division arrived with his shock troops, and demanded to search for enemies of Sontar. The Doctor contained the resulting battle and saved the humans on Chelsea 426. Sarg’s Sontarans - not realising that they had been infiltrated by the Rutan spores - returned to Sontar.
Field Marshal Sir Henry Whittington-Smythe died as part of this conflict, and was given a full military funeral on Earth. He was a veteran of the Martian Wars, the Battle of Olympus Mons, the Battle of Mercutio 14 and the Siege of the Hexion Gates.
The Bantu Independence Group lost a war in 2511, and its position was greatly diminished. [694]
Dr. Oleg Mikelz located the Oracle of the Lost on planetoid KS-159. The Oracle had tired of its servile existence, and attempted to trick Mikelz into destroying it - but its ambiguous statements instead drove Mikelz to kill his wife, his personal assistant and finally himself. Edward Watkinson, the finest archaeologist of his age and Mikelz’s good friend, became infected with a mental parasite on the planet Paracletes. On September 11, 2515, Watkinson deduced the Oracle’s involvement in Mikelz’s murder-suicide and went to KS-159. Watkinson killed himself, causing the parasite to leap into the Oracle - which went inert to keep the creature contained. [695]
c 2505 - Kingdom of Silver [696]
On Tasak, the House of Argentia, under the command of Magus Riga, found a Cybermen tomb established some millennia ago. Argentia revolutionised medicine by reverse-engineering the Cyber-technology, including the development of a healing solution called Silver. In so doing, Argentia ended a devastating war with the rival House of Sarkota through benevolence, not force of arms.
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