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| BBC Audio |
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 Name: Macra
Format:
Television show
Time of Origin: An unnamed galaxy in
the future (Exactly where and when was never expressly revealed)
to New Earth in the year 5,000,000,043
Appearances: "The
Macra Terror" and "Gridlock".
Doctors: Second
Doctor and Tenth
Doctor.
Companions: Polly, Ben Jackson,
Jamie McCrimmon, Martha Jones and, technically, Captain Jack Harkness.
History: One of The Doctor’s most obviously
alien adversaries - as opposed to those aliens who appeared fundamentally
humanoid in shape - the Macra were giant intelligent crabs from a
distant, unnamed galaxy that mankind had colonised in the distant
future. According to The Doctor, their race was billions of years
old, and had once established a great empire while becoming known
as the ‘Scourge of the Galaxy’.
The
Macra eventually came into conflict with The Doctor when
the Second
Doctor, Polly, Ben Jackson and
Jamie visited
a human colony in the future. Initially, the colony appeared to be a happy
place, run along the lines of an enormous
holiday camp, but The Doctor soon learned that it had has
in fact been infiltrated and taken over by the Macra, who
had apparently
been living
under the planet’s surface. The brainwashed inhabitants were being
forced to mine a gas toxic to themselves but vital for their
oppressors' survival; unable to come up to the surface themselves
due to the lack of
gas, they had brainwashed the humans to pump it up for them,
rather than refining it for power as was originally intended.
Ben at one point came
under the Macra's malign influence and turned against his
friends, but he gradually fought it off, even managing not
to report Jamie for taking
an official’s keys. He eventually regained his senses, however, and
under The Doctor's guidance, he successfully destroyed the
gas pumping equipment. The Doctor subsequently reversed
the system to pump oxygen into
the underground tunnels, thus killing the Macra and restoring
the colony's freedom.
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| Season 29 (New Series 3) - Volume 1 |
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Centuries after this confrontation, both for
The Doctor and for them - although obviously longer for the Macra
- the Tenth
Doctor encountered the Macra once more, during a visit
to New Earth in the year 5,000,000,043. During this visit, The Doctor’s
companion Martha Jones was abducted by two people who sought access to
the ‘express way’ on the polluted underground hover-motorway
of New Earth - where cars could spend several years driving around
without getting anywhere. Determined to recover his companion, The Doctor hitchhiked to get access to the motorway and subsequently
jumped down from car to car to try and find Martha. Arriving at the
bottom lane, The Doctor and the car’s driver were able to use
the car’s antigravity systems to create a ‘breeze’ that
cleared away the worst of the fog and gas below them, revealing the
Macra at the bottom.
However,
these Macra were far from the intelligent beings that had existed
back in the past; after all the centuries between this and their
previous confrontation with The Doctor, the Macra had grown significantly
larger and more threatening, but their intellects had significantly
decreased, reducing them to little more than massive monsters, swiping
at the hovercars in the same way that a cat will swipe at a ball
of string. After a meeting with the dying Face of Boe (Who would
later be revealed to be the future version of The Doctor’s
immortal companion Captain Jack Harkness), The Doctor learned that
the Face of Boe had sealed the cars inside the motorway after a drug
inducing a feeling of bliss - preventing anyone from doing so much
as breathing, never mind anything else to keep them alive - had become
airborne, seeing it as the only way to save some people on New Earth.
As the Face sacrificed the last of its power to help The Doctor,
the motorway was opened once again, allowing the people to depart
and re-populate New Earth, leaving the Macra to die as the toxic
air they required to survive was replaced by fresher oxygen. |
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