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| BOSS |
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 Name: BOSS, AKA Biomorphic Organisational
Systems Supervisor
Format:
Television show and audio
Time of Origin: Earth,
Wales, 1974; a back-up version was introduced on the Greenwood ship in the distant future.
Appearances: "The
Green Death" and "The Green Gift"
Doctors: Third
Doctor and Ninth Doctor
Companions: The
Brigadier, Sergeant
Benton, Jo Grant, Captain
Mike Yates and Callen Lennox
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The Green Death |
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History: Although fundamentally
similar to the First
Doctor’s adversary WOTAN
("The
War Machines") in that both were highly advanced computers
designed by Earth of the present who sought control of humanity for
its ‘own good’, the Biomorphic Organisational Systems
Supervisor showed a more human side than its ‘predecessor’,
even if it was still clearly dangerous.
Having
realised that humans were so successful due to their ability to make
illogical decisions that could be more efficient than logic, BOSS
reprogrammed its creator - Stevens, the owner and founder of Global
Chemicals - to make itself inefficient, subsequently gaining sentience.
Using the connection equipment that Stevens had created to allow BOSS
to scan his mind, BOSS was able to brainwash Stevens to serve as its
human agent, developing new equipment and resources for Global Chemicals,
such as claiming to have devised a means of producing more oil while
leaving less waste while secretly dumping it in a nearby mine.
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| Jo
with Professor Clifford Jones |
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Unlike other computers The Doctor
faced at this time, BOSS was surprisingly able to ignore its fixation
with logic more than once. Although The Doctor was able to escape
his initial confrontation with BOSS by challenging it with the ‘Liar
Paradox’ - asking it if BOSS would believe him if he said that
the next thing he said would be true and the last thing he said would
be a lie -, BOSS was still able to dismiss that attempt to delay it
as irrelevant in the end. BOSS also showed some odd moments of humanity
that it didn’t need do, such as humming a tune while it prepared
to put its master plan into action, later calling Stevens its ‘sentimental
friend’ as it went into overload.
BOSS
eventually came to The Doctor’s attention when UNIT was asked
to provide Global Chemicals with additional security following a suspicious
death in a nearby mine (Although Jo
Grant preferred to side with environmentalist Professor Clifford
Jones, who was investigating the plant in the belief that it produced
more waste than Stevens claimed -, rather than Stevens and Global
Chemicals). Discovering a strange green slime in a nearby mine linked
to Global Chemicals, The Doctor and UNIT found themselves facing giant
maggots that had been mutated by the chemicals, spreading the ‘green
death’ by biting people, the victims’ bodies turning green
as they died.
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| A
Giant Maggot |
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Fortunately, UNIT managed to get Mike
Yates inside Global Chemicals as an undercover operative, allowing
The Doctor to sneak into the factory disguised as a milkman and washerwoman
while UNIT attempted to contain the maggots. Although The Doctor was
able to escape after learning the truth about BOSS, BOSS was able
to brainwash Mike to send him after The Doctor, only for The Doctor
to break his conditioning using the blue crystal he’d recently
acquired on a trip to Metebelis Three ("Planet
of the Spiders"). At the same time, Jones discovered that
a fungus he had been experimenting with due to its possibilities as
a beef substitute was poisonous to the maggots, The Doctor and Sergeant
Benton subsequently taking Bessie to throw the fungus at the maggots.
Returning to Global Chemicals, The Doctor was
able to convince Stevens to resist BOSS as it prepared to link with
other computers, telling Stevens that BOSS's ‘efficiency’
would only result in greater pollution, brainless brainwashed humans,
and more death and disease. With the blue crystal having broken BOSS’s
hold over Stevens, Stevens, infuriated at what the BOSS has done to
him, cross-fed the generator circuits, causing the whole plant to
explode and destroying both of them ("The
Green Death").
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The Green Gift
(Roy Gill) |
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The Ninth Doctor would encounter another version of BOSS when he and temporary companion Callen Lennox ("Red Darkness") arrived on the Greenwood ship, a vessel transporting various flora and fauna from Earth after an environmental disaster with the intention of returning them to Earth later. At first The Doctor was simply intrigued at the promise of the Greenwood, but he became suspicious when Fiacra, the head of the ship, revealed that she was aided in her decisions by a neural link to an artificial intelligence. Fiacra claimed that the link provided advice while she made the final choice, but The Doctor soon realised that this A.I. was actually based on a back-up version of BOSS retrieved from a deep dive into historical archives. While the ship’s primary engines were powered by solar energy, they had created more industrialised engines as a back-up for cases where they lacked solar energy, but this required them to create a new fuel source using the 'Stevens Process' to support their back-up engines. This had also led to the creation of a new version of the giant maggots, which were used by the crew to consume the waste produced by that process but were just as hard to control as the originals.
Taking a look at records of the ship’s flight path, The Doctor realised that this version of BOSS had been constantly diverting the ship from Earth. While the planet was relatively safe even if the current human population had regressed to a primitive level, BOSS was keeping the Greenwood away until it would be most profitable for the company for the ship to return and reap the benefits by basically selling the flora and fauna on board back to humanity (The Doctor speculated that the computer was still at least partially operating on a 1970s view of civilisation). Fiacra briefly fell completely under BOSS’s control as the computer tried to make The Doctor back down, but The Doctor was able to advise Callen on how to find the fungus that had previously been used against the maggots through the communicator in the collar of Callen’s dog Doyle (Callen had a vision disorder and Doyle’s collar was equipped with a speaker and translator to help him). Using the collar’s technology to create a firewall, The Doctor was able to suppress BOSS and force a reset back to factory settings, removing BOSS’s influence over the ship. The Doctor encouraged the crew to focus on helping life rather than adhere to the old way of doing things, directing the ship to a suitable world for the crew to set up a new colony of their own. The Doctor left Callen and Doyle to make a new life on this new planet, wanting to give Callen a new home and a suitable challenge to keep him engaged, but left a second version of Doyle’s collar with another dog, Laika, so that the firewalls would help keep BOSS in check in future.
During a visit to the thirtieth century, the Seventh Doctor learned that BOSS had been developed using funding provided by the Second
Doctor’s old enemy Tobias Vaughn ("The
Invasion"), who operated behind the scenes to protect Earth
after being trapped in a robot body following his near-death at the
hands of the Cybermen
("Original
Sin"). |
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