 |
The Moon Cruise
(Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson) |
|
 Name: Marilyn Moon
Format:
Book
Time of Origin: Distant future
Appearances: "The Moon Cruise"
Doctors: Fifteenth Doctor
Companions: Belinda Chandra
History: Like many of The Doctor's wealthy adversaries, Marilyn Moon was a dangerous foe due to her sheer financial resources, but her potential threat was undermined by her ego and incompetence.
According to history, Marilyn Moon was one of the wealthiest women who ever lived, deciding to use that wealth to fund Moon Cruises, an elaborate journey across the galaxy on a vast spaceship, so vast it had its own economy, filled with shops, spas, cinemas and entertainments such as mini-golf. The maiden Moon Cruise had seemingly disappeared for decades and then returned, but since there had been no record of fatalities The Doctor initially treated it as just a minor mystery.
 |
| Ncuti Gatwa |
|
However, when The Doctor arrived on the ship, he soon learned that Marilyn Moon had taken action that guaranteed The Doctor would see her as her enemy. In order to secure crew for the voyager, Marilyn had set up what she claimed was a 'work release program' that would allow criminals with less severe charges to work off their sentences by acting as staff on the cruise. Officially these people would be sent home once their sentences had been completed, but in reality the system added extra time to the workers' sentences for relatively limited justifications, such as taking too long to deal with a customer's query while the 'prisoner' was working retail. The prisoners were fitted with bracelets that not only kept track of the wearer's sentence, but also set off alerts if they tried to leave their designated areas, and generated a subconscious influence that would deter the prisoners from trying to leave (although truly determined prisoners could overcome this compulsion). As a further extension of her ego, Marilyn attempted to create clones of herself to deal with some of her lesser duties, but the first clone she created (which adopted the name 'Monroe') soon made it clear that she wasn't interested in being second to someone any more than the original Marilyn was, forcing Marilyn to leave Monroe trapped in the ship's lower levels and abandon the cloning program in favour of robot servitors.
The Doctor became aware of Marilyn's efforts when the TARDIS materialised on board the cruise while the Fifteenth Doctor was trying to take new companion Belinda Chandra home. Initially The Doctor assumed the TARDIS was just indulging his curiosity about the cruise's mysterious fate, but when he couldn't remember exactly what had been so mysterious beyond the cruise taking such a long time he decided that he and Belinda could use the opportunity to just look around the ship. Unfortunately, when the two of them became separated while exploring, Belinda ran into Jax and Vanessa, a pair of prisoners attempting an escape through the staff corridors, with Jax putting her discarded bracelet onto Belinda to serve as a distraction. Since the bracelet couldn't distinguish between Belinda and Jax, Belinda was now forced to essentially take on Jax's role on the ship, with The Doctor soon confirming that he couldn't get the bracelet off with the sonic screwdriver.
With no way to help Belinda directly, The Doctor made his way further into the ship, and soon found Jax as she was trying to make her way to the lifepods. While he wasn't happy about Jax using Belinda like that, The Doctor concluded that she wasn't a fundamentally bad person, agreeing to work with Jax to reunite with Vanessa and stop the abuse of the crew in order to get Belinda released. Their search revealed that the ship's robot mannequins were actually cyborgs, using material from other prisoners who had almost escaped as part of their operating system. Using the psychic paper to infiltrate the upper decks, The Doctor and Jax infiltrated a party Marilyn was throwing, during which she revealed that she had been dealing with attempts to expose the inhumane work conditions on the ship by claiming that those making the accusations had been 'brainwashed' by her business rivals. Marilyn revealed that she intended to deal with this new threat to her empire by using a new weapon to induce amnesia with her workers, presenting it to her guests as wanting to open a new cruise line and staff it with supposedly 'fresh' convicts.
At the same time as The Doctor and Jax made their way through the ship, Belinda was able to escape her own captivity during her scheduled 'rest period'. While the bracelet could force her to join the other 'crew' into returning to their small pods for their mandatory rest periods, since Belinda was slightly taller than Jax she was able to escape her pod and explore the ship's staff corridors further. This led to Belinda running into Monroe, who revealed that she had been manipulating the programming of the mannequins to make them loyal to Monroe over Marilyn until she was ready to stage a coup. Monroe attempted to make Belinda her latest mannequin, but The Doctor found Belinda in time, confronting Monroe with the fact that she was ultimately no different to Marilyn apart from being angry that she was the one who had no power in their dynamic. When Monroe attempted to attack The Doctor, he managed to trap her in the equipment used to convert people into mannequins; The Doctor had intended to just leave her locked away, but the chamber's automated processes converted Monroe into another mannequin before he could stop it.
Unfortunately, by the time The Doctor returned to confront Marilyn, she had managed to capture Jax and Vanessa, intending to use the amnesia gun to wipe all their memories and stop the revolution they had been attempting to start in its infancy. However, when Marilyn turned the gun on The Doctor, Belinda stepped in to try and protect him, only for the weapon to strike Belinda's bracelet and then be deflected back at Marilyn. Not only did the weapon wipe Belinda's bracelet so that her alleged sentence now registered as 'Time Served', but when it bounced back on Marilyn it completely wiped her memory. With Marilyn no longer a threat, The Doctor helped Jax and Vanessa access the ship's internal networks, transmitting a message denouncing Marilyn's claims that the crew had been brainwashed. They made it clear that the upper classes could keep their wealth so long as the former crew could live in freedom, creating a society on the ship that would provide for everyone, The Doctor also programming the mannequins to obey Jax and Vanessa rather than Marilyn or Monroe.
While The Doctor took the amnesia gun away so that it couldn't be a threat to anyone else, Jax and Vanessa told Marilyn that she just ran a gift kiosk selling sunglasses. Although Marilyn was uncertain about this, Jax assured her that was the case, while privately reflecting that this scepticism was evidence that Marilyn's sheer ego meant that she couldn't conceive of herself as someone so 'small' even without any conscious memory. As the TARDIS left, The Doctor observed that once the cruise ended, Marilyn would donate all her money to charitable causes and drop out of society, with the Moon Cruise never sailing again even as the current passengers would enjoy a more pleasurable experience until their return.
|
|
