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| The Dominators |
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 Name: The Dominators/Quarks
Format: Television
show and Book
Time of Origin: Unspecified time and date in the future; attacked Earth in the 1950s.
Appearances: "The
Dominators" and "Prisoners of Time"
Doctors: Second
Doctor and Tenth
Doctor
Companions: Jamie McCrimmon, Zoe Heriot and Martha Jones
History: Although a superficially stupid and clumsy creation, the Quarks have gained a significant reputation among the show's fans, appearing on a regular basis in some of the Second Doctor's adventures in the comics (Although these encounters cannot be classified as canon due to the out-of-character portrayal of the Second Doctor in these storylines). However, the Quarks were merely the agents of the ruthless Dominators, the self-proclaimed 'Masters of the Ten Galaxies', taking territory for themselves and expanding across the galaxy. The Quarks were the Dominators' robotic warriors, powered by ultrasound and capable of using their arms to shoot to kill, paralyse, or simply deliver an electric shock, recording a wide amount of technical data just by rotating their heads, generally serving as the Dominators' agents so that they could avoid expending any more energy than was absolutely necessary.
The Doctor confronted the Dominators and the Quarks when they sought control of the peaceful planet of Dulkis ("The Dominators"), which had outlawed war almost two centuries ago after research into atomic energy resulted in the creation of an explosive device that decimated an entire island, the island being left as the 'Island of Death' to serve as a memorial and a warning to the horrors of war. Seeking to gain slaves and power sources to sustain their energy demands, the Dominators attempted to destroy Dulkis by firing rockets through various holes drilled into its crust to strike the magma. This attack would create a series of volcanoes that would erupt after a seed device was planted in the magma, converting the entire planet into a molten radioactive mass that the Dominators would use as fuel for their fleet's future expansionist policies.
Having faked their way through the Dominators' intelligence tests to trick the Dominators into underestimating what his companions and the Dulcians were capable of, The Doctor was able to intercept the seed device and confine the explosion to the Island of Death while using the seed to destroy the Dominator ship, taking advantage of the conflict between the two Dominators as one preferred the quickest course of action by killing the prisoners while the other objected to the elimination of potential slaves. The most serious long-term consequence of this encounter was when damage sustained to the TARDIS in the eruption initially prevented the TARDIS crew from simply dematerialising before the lava flow would reach them, forcing The Doctor to activate an emergency switch that would take them out of time itself, leading into his first encounter with the Land of Fiction ("The Mind Robber").
Although The Doctor did not encounter the Dominators again for some time, he quickly recognised their presence when he discovered a Dominator plot to invade Earth in his tenth incarnation ("Prisoners of Time"). While visiting a Hollywood observatory in the 1950s, the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones witnessed a film set that was experiencing scheduling difficulties due to the cast and crew mysteriously disappearing, to the point that the director impulsively hired Martha as a replacement for the main actress. Investigating the props for the film, The Doctor soon recognised a Quark among the mock robots being used, tracking its footprints back to a nearby cave just as the Dominators abducted the rest of the film crew due to them stumbling on the Quarks ahead of schedule.
Concluding that humans were too stupid and rebellious to serve as a willing labour force, the Dominators intended to use the movie to transmit a subliminal message that would prompt viewers to convince others to watch it, simultaneously dulling the human will to resist and turning them into the perfect slave race. Naturally refusing to allow this to happen, The Doctor tricked the Quarks into destroying the Dominators' brainwashing machine before manoeuvring himself in such a manner that the Quarks blew themselves up, forcing the Dominators to depart as they lacked the resources to be an effective threat without the Quarks as enforcers.
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| A Dominator and Two Quarks |
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| The Dominators |
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| A Quark |
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| The Quarks |
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