PROPOSAL BY SIMON
BUCHER-JONES & [INSERT FAKE NAME HERE]
HALLUCIGENIA
(Alternative title: The Evolution of Monsters)
A
THIRD DOCTOR NOVEL OCCURING AFTER THE
SEA DEVILS ………….(but see note at end for possible alternative Doctors, and
placement discussion).
26-27 chapters of approximately 3000 words
per chapter, Prologue & Epilogue of 2,500 words each.
Total
80,000 - 85,000.
General summary.
The Eocene period: 40 million years ago.
It is the age
of the Silurians; society is structured; placid; ritualistic, and doomed. The Silurians have preserved a uniquely
stable culture across millions of years, by carefully limiting their breeding.
This is partly natural, partly political
(when Silurians take in calories below a certain level per day they become
male; thereby increasing hunter’gatherer capacity while decreasing production
of children unsuited for trekking – this evolutionary adaption from the periods
of the great extinctions has prevented their over-use of global resources), and
led to a Samuri-like culture containing both great beauty, and casual (though
ritually limited) violence.
Concern for
the preservation of the race, for their capacity to spread out and re-populate
the world after the coming projected near Collision – when a more rapid
capacity to re-establish breeding stock may be needed – has lead one scientist
– Academic Oolpas - taking advantage of
the isolation offered by an approved World Government project to embark on a daring
experiment. He has the backing of a
number of aging reptiles in the Government who believe he is working on
life-extension, and that his work will enhance their chances of surviving
suspended animation; which is a new development, and is still risky enough that
even a small failure rate could decimate ranks of the ancient ruling class.
The project is
an anciliary one to the survival shelters, [The shelters were built/excavated
generations before as soon as the existence of previous cometary and asteroidal
impacts long recorded in Silurian holy writ were understood for what they
were. Unlike mankind when discovering a
long-term need Silurians begin to address it; they do not put the present ahead
of the future. <There is also a
Silurian project, they joke among themselves, to stop the Sun dying. It has been in existence for half a million
years, and has as yet not reached a conclusion>]. The official project
underway is the placing of a Silurian colony in space on Toro, Earth’s moonlet,
a tiny body –nb check the accuracy of
this, it was mentioned in the science section of a Dr Who annual I read as a
child and may not actually exist, if not I’d like it to be real in the
Whoniverse, but if it does in our world I’ll get the science right) to
monitor the impact and direct from outside the re-vivication of their race
after the passing of the asteroid. In a
vast dome, the maintenance of a completely closed environment – a testbed for
preserving Silurian life on other worlds - has left a group of twelve Silurians
and their experimental subjects, at the mercy of Academic Oolpas.
He has
identified a point in evolution where he believes life on Earth took a wrong
turning, he intends to put things right.
The Dome, covers a whole tropical island,
and is 100% sealed. It was originally a
test-bed for Martian colonies, [Silurians lack the means to travel into space
beyond orbit, (Giant augmented, ptetradon, space-shuttles do low orbit work,
imagine Flintstones in Space) [Check if
they had graviton in pre-history in Bloodheat?] but that wouldn’t stop them
testing how to survive somewhere, ten thousand years before working out how to
get there]. To Oolpas it is merely a test-tube, and so are its twelve
inhabitants, including himself. He is a
fanatic for his species; and has no personal ambition, if anything this makes
him more dangerous.
The Doctor has travelled back to Silurian
Earth, after the end of the Sea Devil Incident, hoping that he can cut the
gordian knot of Silurian territorality by learning enough about them to broker
a treaty with the next nest to revive, with [His companion, Jo Grant or Sarah
Jane do you have a view? Liz Shaw would
probably be pleased to be asked given her involvement in the Wenley Moor
Business]
However, he has been discovered, and after
(off screen) assisting the Silurian government in some matter [or having
learned of some future help he has already given them in the past, cf Dragonia]
he has been co-opted, (with a threat of force?) to sit in on the initial phase,
a three month ‘limited access’ shakedown, after which the Dome will be time-locked
for one year. [This is around 1 1/2
years before impact; the Silurians have a calculation of the “small planet’s”
(the Moon’s ) passage through the Solar System, a long ellipse) that points to
a near passage to Earth on or around 1 1/2 years hence +/- thirty one
hours, it will be visible in the final
months of its approach]. <Silurian
Radio telescopes are giant flocks of soaring pteradactyls; the migration sensors
in their brains adapted to receive and respond to radio signals from space, Scientists
watch their modified flight patterns like auguries to read off the in-coming
data>. (Timing from novelisation of
The Silurians, never discussed on screen.).
The Doctor’s presence (as the thirteenth
Silurian at the project, or as some snidely remark, the forty fifth ape) looks
likely to hinder Oolpas experiments and Oolpas arranges - through his backers -
for a series of mock alien incursions designed to draw the Doctor’s, and the
World Government Strategic Militia’s, attention away from the biosphere. [These are first a red-herring, and then
comedy, as the Silurian media-expert’s (referencing the camp Silurians of Happy
Ending?) ideas of extra-terrestrials – the ideas remember of a culture of
Samuri lizards - clashs with Sarah Jane (or Jo’s real experience [as the Doctor
absorbed in his scientific work, and believing the sightings to be
misunderstandings or something akin to Millenium Panic Syndrome thinks she will
be quite safe, but this strand also feeds an important sub-plot namely an
external threat to breach the Dome].
Oolpas’s diversions, ultimately fail, but
they distract the Doctor long enough for Oolpas’s experiment to take effect. He
hopes to change the nature of Siluriankind making it – as he thinks - more
adaptable, and better able to cope with the ecological disasters of the Post
Asteroid Pass Earth. However, what he
has produced kills, but before it kills it changes.
Inside Dome Island, the Doctor may be able
to contain the horrors of the Silurian’s own creation, but outside the events
staged by Oolpas’s agents have attracted considerable media attention, and a
cult is beseiging the habitat – lead there by its supposed status as the World
Government’s Secret Science City.
Secretly funded by Oolpas’s backers the cult is another distraction, but
among the, mostly, harmless cultists are a group of eco-terrorists are
threatening to destroy the habitat and Sarah (Jo) who is in their hands (claws)
and the Militia may not be able to stop them in time. [The eco-terrorists do not believe in the
Asteroid considering it a plot to force the population into shelters only to be
revived one at a time, branded with the unholy mark of Urmugstatlur (check spelling) and set to work as slaves while in
things like the Dome (in their view the first prototype of a them-and-us
arkologies, in which the elite will be the beneficiaries of the only unspoiled
land and the poor will inherit the waste-dumps and the toxins). (Even Silurian
Earth has them but it has taken them millions not thousands of years to reach a
late 19th century level of hard industrialisation)]. If the Dome is breached the viral mediated
changes to the Silurian (and the Ape) genome could spell the end of the future
of humanity as we know it. [The cult
quotes from Silurian equivalent of Revelation as needed].
SELLING POINTS
SCIENCE! Sometime after 530 million years
ago, the different phyla “locked” – thereafter the range of viable mutations
available to each organism were limited to the “set” available to that
phylum. The scientist – villain – of the
proposal has worked out a way to turn off the inhibitors in the genome, “to
free the inherent potentiality of the past history of each cell”.
The lock was an evolutionary benefit, by
giving a reduced grab-bag of available mutations (this is a minority theory
cited by Stephen Jay Gould in his book on the Burgess Shale – the strata in
which Hallucigenia and other extra-current phyla arthropods were found -, Wonderful Life) it increased the chance
of the retention of mutually enhancing groups or patterns of development.
Silurians and Apes affected by the drug Hallucigenia gain the ability to change
their limbs/bodies into other shapes, this is a recapitulation in redundant DNA
of the evolutionary chain, but it will – the Doctor realises become fully
active only with the next generation; at which point the infinite plethora of
differently shaped forms will probably cause the largest extinction ever, as
instinct, breeding and feeding patterns collapse in a flurry of utterly
different off-spring.
Chapter by Chapter Synopsis
Prologue
Burgess Shale fossils are stolen from a
Museum-Temple – by Oolpas’s agents,
Ninja, mission impossible action with Silurians in what seems like a
modern museum on Earth, until the scene pulls back to show it is the highly
ornate Temple Of The Contemplation Of Earth Spirits in the Silurian
Capital. [Reason for theft, nuclear
dating of fossils can give Oolpas a precise time/space fix from which to
acquire living material using an experimental time-scoop, built by the
Silurians after a number of vanishing farmed Dinosaurs alerted them to the
possibility of things being moved through time.]
Chapters 1,2,3,4, & 5 (Episode 1)
A Silurian triad, male, female, young go to
the botanic and animal gardens. There in the Ape House an odd new specimen
seizes the chance to scratch symbols in the dirt and whisper to the child when
its parents are distracted. This is the
Doctor’s companion, lost and captured by naturalists – not wishing to risk
dissection she is holding back speech in reserve with adult zoologists, but
believes she can persuade the child to help her (as in Free Willy etc). However, the child informs his father – who
hears the companion speak and mutters something about the Blind Ape Of Truth
(This is a bad omen referred to in the Book Of The End Times, an ancient
Silurian religious text dating back to the great Ice Treks). He has some importance (not explained here)
and arranges for the companion’s release into his custody. [He is an official in a religious cult important
later in the plot] and intends to train the companion to utter prophesies that
will enhance his status in the cult.
The Doctor is flown by engineered Pteradon
to Dome Island in the company of one of the Silurian World Stategic Militia he
has already impressed their military with his grasp of their problems in
managing global knowledge of the predicted near asteroid miss 5 years
hence. He is heavily bandaged, as per
invisible man (although he strips these off as soon as he can) as his features
are causing discipline problems among the troops.
[h’I didn’t enlist to take orders from no
bloody Ape!]. He re-states his concern
about his missing companion, and the Military Leader [Name?] re-affirms that he
is doing all he can to locate her. He
reminds the Doctor that resources are scarce and that the search could be
ended, if for example matters here were in-expertly handled, and required
military intervention. Terrorists have
issued threats aimed at the Dome, and there have been odd events, and sightings
of strange animals. Implicitly the Silurians have the TARDIS. We get the impression that the Doctor landed
in a hunting preserve and got netted, choosing capture to let COMPANION escape.
Arriving At Dome Island the Doctor is
favourably struck despite himself by the architecture and scale of the
project. He meets Academic Oolpas who
impresses him with his concern for the future of Siluriankind, although the Doctor wonders aloud if this is
to be found in increasingly air-tight boxes.
Academic Chandrukhra snubs the Doctor, and Oolpas apologises for his
attitude, he objects to the military presence of the World Militia [Needs
acronmyn?] which is on site until “lock-down” to safeguard the Government’s
interests in space technology. The
Doctor notices that Chandrukhra was very anxious to reach a sluice room, and
sees her scrubbing at her hands through the sluice room window before Oolpas
ushers him on. He also notices that
Oolpas has a globe in his desk that when activated by thought – as by a third
eye – but the Doctor can do it if he has time to concentrate, changes to depict
continental drift eventually showing Silurian not Eocene land masses (the
Silurian period 437 million years pre now (not 200 million as stated in the
Silurians) is the time of the Burgess Shale animals) this is a clue tying
Oolpas to the events of the prologue.
On a nearby island a fisherman (whose
harbour on Dome Island was compulsorily sequestered
by the State to make way for the Dome) is
grumbling as he drinks in the local equivalent of a pub – a sort of sweat lodge
come brewery. [Given the Samuri
life-style is there Silurian Kareoke?].
He is pestered by two media reptiles who are looking for a landowner who
allegedly reported a Mystery Beast sighting to the local papers and hence to
the Press of Oddities (The Eocene’s Fortean Times). He begins by being very cagey and holds out
for a round of drinks, before sending them off to a particular harbour across
the fields. One of his crony’s takes him
to task because its miles, through mud and silage and the poor fools won’t see
anything. ‘Oh they will,’ the fisherman
says, ‘they will!’ and pulling out a high tech device makes a report.
In the Dome there is a near explosion
caused by a problem with oxygen regulation but Sub-Academic Lainen (Female
Silurian companion for this adventure) believes she has solved it. She is not
pleased when the Doctor avuncularly corrects her figures in passing. A mysterious figure is shown using receiving
a call (implicitly from the fisherman) and relaying orders to arrange a
“happening”. The Military Leader is
informed of a Mystery Beast signing in the area. [Note Mystery Beasts are the Silurian
equivalent of UFOs – having kept some dinosaur strains viable through the great
cold; they have a species wide “regret” for the forms they did not save, and
sightings often with mystical implications are common. Silurian Occultists talk
of ABCD’s Alien biologically conserved dinosaurs].
In the cult’s
power, COMPANION is confronted by such a creature.
Chapters 6,7,8,9 & 10 (Episode 2)
The creature is revealed to be faked;
Silurian animatronics and operators in skins, a test kept for initiates. (Silurian race memory can be triggered by
Dinosaurs just as ours can by them) Dinosaur handling is therefore a specialist
skill done by psychologically trained reptiles.
Sudden exposure to dinosaurs outside of controlled conditions is a
standard Silurian mind-breaking technique.
The Cult Leader – who seems sympathetic tells (COMPANION) about the
great fraud the Government is planning, it’s new world order. Frozen serfs to be thawed out as needed,
ruling class in the sun, basking on their ceremonial flat rocks of power. He needs COMPANION to help strike a blow
against it. [If Jo she considers telling him truth is Gov are right but doubts
he would listen, if SarahJ may not be aware of Silurian history, if so will be
angry at Doc for not briefing her properly, prone to jump to conclusions, if
Liz cautious and scientific sees through faked creature quickly]. COMPANION asks about the Doctor – has he been
captured too? She confides how they were separated. The Cult Leader asks about the Doctor, and
COMPANION’s species. She hedges leaves
out her future origin but makes out a claim to be alien. He appears impressed but really considers her
a biological construct perhaps planted by the Militia, as bait, perhaps a rival’s
work.
Still, she will serve him.
The poor media-reporters are scared out of their wits by a giant
mysterious creature (having had the description in 6 however, readers can tell
this is just a much better funded fake. However, the Militia diverts strength
to investigate, and a boat is lost.
Early Godzilla movie feel here, journalists, superstitious islanders,
mysterious events.
Sub-Academic Lainen shows the Doctor various abandoned projects –
ones that will now not come to fruitition because of the small planet, she
detects a certain cageness about the subject when it is raised. Equally the Doctor avoids telling her his
origin, only that he has come from another world to talk to the Government and
that if trouble-shooting this project ensures their trust he will do it. He
confides in her his worries for COMPANION.
She agrees, displaying the strong traits of the female Silurian towards
tenderness to all lost offspring. [The
other projects include, a journey to the far-side of the Sun where a
counter-Earth has been detected which they call Mondas, replacement of the aged
parts of the body with mechanical devices – this has been rejected by the
Science Board as unethical – a prototype timescoop “just as much of a botch-up
as Whitikers” The Doctor says - and partial re-engineering of the Silurian form
to conquer Mars]. Lainen decides that
the Doctor must be from Mondas: a world where evolution has reversed and Apes
not Reptiles are dominant. A kind of Planet of The Apes. There are legends of visitors from Mondas in
Silurian oral-history. She confides this
theory to Academic Oolpas who is worried by it.
Then a scream rings out….
A Silurian vetinarian working in the Dome
on one of the test apes’ to deliver its offspring, is dismembered by the
hideous shrieking thing that issues forth.
Finding the body the Doctor and Lainen identify ape-tissue in the
wounds, but also the bite marks of three distinct types of teeth. The Militia begin a full search of the Dome,
but it has square miles of oxygen-producing forests.
The child
Silurian and COMPANION attempt to escape from the cult’s encampment on (as it
turns out one of the islands). COMPANION is starting to show signs of illness.
Not psychological but actual changes to bone structure of hands, a kind of
regression. The child tries to calm her;
but she is hyper-ventilating, and her skin is splitting.
Chapters 11,12,13,14 & 15 (Episode 3)
The child turns to see COMPANION and
finding a partly mutated version tries to drive her back with it’s third
eye. COMPANION falls backward off a
cliff edge. Looking down the child sees
her on a ledge, and goes for help. She meets the media Silurians who have
landed on the island in an attempt to gain an interview with the cult leader, a
famous Silurian novelist and philosopher, now the guru of a heavily armed cult
composed of Silurians who have reputedly voluntarily starved themselves into a
third-state; an especially militant and aggressive form. The child takes them to the cliff edge but –
COMPANION is gone, leaving only distorted – and too large tracks on the cliff
escarpment.
A Silurian soldier searching the Dome is
bitten by a 3-headed thing, and begins to show symptoms like those of
COMPANION. In the Dome, the Doctor has
isolated what appears to be an active agent, but is baffled by the fact that it
hasn’t existed on Earth for almost 400 million years. He starts to explain to Lainen but is
interrupted by the arrival of a raving Academic Chandrukha who’s hands have
taken on a life of their own, the skin writhing and twisting over the bone
beneath. The Doctor is forced to use
Venusian karate to knock him out, despite his wild and manic use of this 3rd
eye to cause horrible hallucinations in the Doctor. [Of dying in the dust
perhaps?]. Lainen and the Doctor
restrain him, and confirm that the tissue changes in his hands are driven by a
similar micro-organism.
Elsewhere; in the ocean, fish dart away
from some vast form. [Waking with Dinosaurs pastiche, icthyosaur scares fish
only to be sacred in turn by something uncanny].
Cult members, surround Dome Island in
stolen Naval Devil ships, demanding an end to the abominations within.
The media-couple with the child in tow, are
present as one of the ships is dragged bodily under the waves, and a giant mammalian
head breaks the surface of the water.
Chapters 16, 17, 18, 19 & 20 (Episode
4)
Militia Leader runs into Dome lab to report
someone has turned the Apes loose and they are all changing.
The Doctor is adamant that the Apes be
recaptured, if one escapes into the wild the whole future of life on the planet
could be affected. The Militia Leader
puts this down to hyperbole but Lainen realises that the Doctor is not from
Mondas but the future, a future in which by implication her people can play no
great part.
Her third eye begins to glow as she
considers boiling his brain in his skull.
Ending the future here and now.
The Militia Leader moves to intervene,
stopping Lainen with a blow to the nerves in her shoulder. Face of the future or not he regards the
Doctor as too useful a resource to be wasted.
The military have always faced up to death, they do not fear extinction.
They have their duty.
That, a voice says, is just as well! The Militia leader falls, burned down from
behind by Oolpas who is holding an experimental laser gun from the display
cases in the main hall. Threatening the
Doctor with the gun
Oolpas tacitly admits his actions and
demands help. Only the Doctor can correct the errors in Oolpas’s experiment and
hence (in Oolpas’ view) guarantee the survival of the Silurian race. Oolpas does not believe the small planet will
pass the Earth with no effects beyond those of its gravity, he believes it will
shower Earth in nuclear-winter causing debris, resulting in a million years of
chaos before the eco-system reasserts itself. To survive and flourish in that
environment, Silurians will need to breed rapidly and be more passionate, maybe
even more brutal. The Doctor tells him
that he’s nothing more than a butcher, and that he won’t see any thinking race
treated as so much meat. Incensed,
Oolpas injects Lainen with his drug before the Doctor can stop him, and taunts
the Doctor to save her life by discovering the error-factor that is
mistriggering the genetic changes he wishes to create.
The 50ft creature is the Doctor’s
companion, mutated by some as yet unexplained force – [this is the effect of
the changes to the timeline which will occur if all her ancestors are subjected
to the Hallucigenia Virus, altering ever more wildly with each generation
]. The Cult – prepares to fire on the
creature considering it the true Beast who’s coming foretells the End
Days. However, the Cult leader’s child
pleads with him to restrain his followers.
Telling him that COMPANION is in pain from
the transformation and not responsible for her actions.
The
Cult Leader tries to contact someone on his communicator (Oolpas).
The Doctor takes advantage of Oolpas’s
distraction to heft the unconscious Lainen over his shoulder and run for it,
snatching a bag of medical equipment supplies on the way [better make this a
hand-portable auto-medic demonstrated to him earlier as he needs to improvise a
cure with its contents and we have to make it seem possible].
Groggily Oolpas
stirs and he reaches for the laser gun as the Doctor darts out of the room,
only to be seized when a giant ape hand, crashes through the Dome and grabs
him.
Chapters 21, 22, 23, 24 & 25 (Episode
5)
Recognising that the beast has Oolpas – who
has been channeling funds to the Cult, the Cult leader orders his followers to
open fire, explaining to his child that it is just a big animal and in pain. It
would be an act of mercy to destroy it.
Resounding
squishing of Cult leader, by beast. Oolpas is thrown to one side, and believed
dead at this point.
Resourceful
Silurian child uses sounder to make dinosaur noises, causing beast to retreat.
In the forests of Dome island, the Doctor
works to save Lainen; while around the campfire circle of light, mutated and
mutating Apes draw closer.
In the Dome, the Militia Leader staggers to
his feet. His communicator buzzes and
the carnage of the Beast’s attack is reported to him. He gives the order to call in elite special
forces the Gojira Elite Riders; Silurians on Godzilla scale dinosaurs from the
deep sea trenches. [Make this as like a
Saturday morning cartoon “power-up” sequence as possible. Go Go Gojira Riders!!!] He orders a full withdrawal form Dome
Island. The Gojira Elite will destroy
the island and the contamination with it. [And the Doctor and Lainen and the
Beast/Companion but that’s a small price to pay].
Lainen is recovering and the Doctor has
almost calmed the frantic Apes with his Venusian lullaby, when the massive
beast passes by scaring them away.
Lainen’s communicator crackles to life, warning her to flee if she can;
as the Island will be destroyed in minutes.
The Doctor had made a lasso from vines to
catch an Ape earlier (so as to check the process of the virus in its body) [NB
insert this into earlier narrative], with this he lassos one of the bone spurs
of the beast, and climbs up with Lainen.
They will ride the beast to safety moments ahead of the bombs. The Doctor ties Lainen into the beast’s hair
for safety, a kind of big cat’s cradle, and climbs up its back, intending to
inject a kill-or-cure dose of his anti-serum into its pineal gland.
Oolpas swims ashore onto the island, just
as a wave of nuclear fire sweeps over it.
Chapters 26, 27 (Episode 6)
The anti-serum courses through the Beast’s
veins, retarding the process as the Doctor hangs on for grim death.
But is it that or the Militia Leader’s
nuclear bombing of Dome Island that reverses the process – by removing the
ancestral contamination? [Not COMPANIONs
direct ancestors but ancestors of contamination vectors that would infect her
ancestors]. Is it even the pleading face
of the Silurian projected from the Naval vessels. (oh please, It’s so
embarrassing it must work). Maybe a consequence of all three. Whatever the
cause, COMPANION changes back, and the Doctor, Lainen and Companion are picked
up by the Navy.
At the Militia Leader’s recommendation the
Doctor writes sealed orders and diplomatic instructions to be placed in the
sleep-shelters, which he suggests be set to revive their occupants in the mid
21st century. He is forced to
exclude certain shelters; which have already gone into hibernation. A cache of living genetic material from the
Burgess Shales is found in the ruins of Dome Island.
Epilogues
Page of Oolpas journal. Before his death he
has already injected random sleeping Silurians and Sea Devils in the shelters
that have already closed with drugs to make them into “better warriors”. [Sets up sequel, also partly explains why
Young Silurian in the Silurians is quite so obviously raving mad!]
The Doctor introduces the living burgess
scale material to a genetic-dead end biosphere at the far side of the Galaxy,
in five hundred million years it may produce another human species or something
quite different. He’ll have to remember to look them up sometime.
NOTE OTHER DOCTORS that could be used if
the 3rd is over-subscribed: The
5th Just after Warrior’s Of The Deep, looking for that “other
way”. Increased role for companions,
split them – one with Doctor, two in zoo (to split later one with child/media
people, other to mutate into 50ft beast – Tegan as the others are not of Earth
stock). ATTACK OF THE 50FT
AUSTRALIAN. (Is is an australopithicene
Doctor? Turlough asked, ‘Well almost!’, the Doctor replied.)
The 8th A Modest Proposal - I
understand that The Burning will leave open the question of whether the 8th
Doctor could have had other “missing adventures” in Earth’s history before that
novel begins; why not go the whole hog
and give him one 40 million years before?
At the end he could jury-rig a Siluirian sleep-capsule to take him
forward to the date of the next chronological missing adventure! This would require re-ploting to merge the
companion/Doctor experiences, but would still work. The Doctor could begin in the zoo….etc, etc,
he could have a Silurian companion, and a human timescooped from “a hideous
alternate Ape filled future” by Oolpas, and given to the cult as their Blind
Ape Of Truth.
SBJ & [INSERT FAKE INITIALS HERE] 22/6/00
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