 |
Invasion of the Cat-People
(Gary Russell) |
|
 Name: The Euterpians
Format:
Book
Time of Origin: Encountered The Doctor
on Earth in 1994, but ruled an empire in their heyday over 40 000
years ago.
Appearances: "Invasion
of the Cat-People"
Doctors: Second
Doctor
Companions: Polly and
Ben Jackson
History: One of the most ancient and dangerous
races The Doctor had ever encountered, the Euterpians’ most
distinctive feature is their sheer self-centredness, regarding the
sacrifice of an entire planet acceptable if it meant that they would
achieve their goals. Capable of natural time travel under the right
conditions - as opposed to the artificial methods used by the Time Lords -, they had also carried out research into transcendental engineering,
and their RTCs - reverse tachyon-chronons, devices capable of reversing
the flow of time immediately around them - were even kept on Gallifrey
in recognition of the scale of their achievement.
Originally
arriving on Earth over forty thousand years in Earth’s past,
a landing party of five Euterpians intended to plant beacons on Earth
to prepare it for their mothership, the beacons giving the other
ship a line that they could use to cut open the planet and convert
it into a new fuel source. Unfortunately for them, the mothership
was destroyed by a random solar flare before they could begin, and
the members of the spearhead were left trapped on Earth ever since,
using RTCs to slow their aging until they could put their plan into
action. They intended to wait until they could contact another race
with the necessary technology to complete their plan, unaware that
the beacons had moved over the centuries due to continental drift,
resulting in them now being spread out over Earth’s surface
instead of the straight line that they had been originally.
Drawn to the Victorian manor the Grange when
the Second
Doctor and Polly began to experience strange dreams of a young
Goth man during their travels, the TARDIS crew discovered a team of students
on a ghost-hunting expedition in 1994 that was led by Miss Thorsuun -
really a Euterpian living in secret who believed that the ‘ghosts’ were
attempted messages from other Euterpians using the beacons - who quickly
recognised that The Doctor and his friends were time travellers. However,
Thorsuun had also summoned the Cat People - really known as the Felinetta,
but referred to by their human adversaries as the Cat People for convenience’s
sake -, a widespread race of galactic scavengers from a variety of planets
and consisting of a variety of breeds from the planet Lynx, to help her.
Thorsuun had intended to use the Cat People’s technology to help
her activate the beacons, but swiftly realised that they were very unreliable
allies as they also sought a new energy source for their dying world
and were willing to simply strip the planet if Thorsuun betrayed them.
At
the same time, Atimkos - the man that The Doctor and Polly had been
dreaming about - was approaching the Grange, manipulating time and
flesh with his song to prevent anyone getting in his way, having
sent his psychic message to the TARDIS to lure in The Doctor, although
he had now concluded that Polly was more appropriate for his plan.
Making contact with the other Euterpians, Atimkos and Polly were
able to deduce that the lines between the beacons had become ley
lines of psychic energy, and also discovered that other Euterpians
had carried out experiments to enhance human psychic potential to
provide a new power source for the beacons. With Ben being held hostage
by the Cat People to ensure The Doctor’s good behaviour, Atimkos
took Polly as his own hostage before destroying the Grange - along
with all the students inside it - by singing one of the ley lines
active.
Although the Cat People were able to trap Thorsuun in
the past - her future self living her way back to 1994 only to be
killed when she tried to warn her younger self about their betrayal
-, Atimkos was able to hypnotise Polly and provoke her dormant psychic
potential to activate the beacons, destroying Earth by compressing
its essence into a small ball. With the Cat People and the TARDIS
having been transferred to a garden that another Euterpian had created
in a hyperdimensional nexus point, The Doctor revealed that the Euterpian
civilisation had mysteriously died out centuries ago, the other two
surviving Euterpians concluding that they preferred their life on
Earth to trying to restore a dead world.
Although Atimkos tried to force The Doctor to give him
the globe, The Doctor was able to defeat him by trapping him inside
the TARDIS after removing the ship’s Time Vector Generator,
reverting the interior to that of a simple police box. When Atkimos
tried to sing his way out of the locked ship, he failed to realise
before it was too late that the box was still indestructible even
in this state, and his ‘song’ thus reverberated around
inside the box and disintegrated him rather than the TARDIS. Having
recovered the ball containing Earth’s life energy, The Doctor
restored Earth to normal, using the RTCs to override the TARDIS’s
damaged navigation controls and rescue the students from the Grange
before it exploded, while the Cat People’s ship was destroyed
when they accidentally fired at an RTC and triggered an explosive
backlash. With their purpose having been confirmed to be a failure,
the remaining Euterpians decided to stay on Earth, where they had
come to feel at home, The Doctor confident that they would do no
harm to human civilisation. |
|
