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The Indestructable Man
(Simon Messingham) |
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 Name: The Myloki
Format:
Book.
Time of Origin: Earth's Moon, 2066
to 2068, returned in 2098.
Appearances: "The
Indestructable Man"
Doctors: Second Doctor
Companions: Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot
History: The Myloki, a pan-dimensional race whose
nature was never fully understood, arrived on Earth in the year 2066,
setting up an alien city on the moon. Captain Karl Taylor was sent
to investigate it, but the sights and sounds of the city were so
incomprehensible that he tried to destroy the city, thus triggering
a war between humans and the Myloki - specifically, the Myloki fought
PRISM, a secret organisation apparently crewed by members of the
society that UNIT had become. The Myloki, for reasons unknown, mainly
attacked Earth by transforming ordinary humans into their puppets,
thus stopping them registering any self-damage and making them push
themselves further than humans could manage, creating the appearance
that they were physically superior to humans. These beings, known
as 'Shiners', were the Myloki's main weapons, but there were two
exceptions to the normal rule; two humans who were duplicated by
replicating and improving DNA. The first of these was Captain Taylor
himself, who, as a result of the process, gained superhuman strength,
no longer needed to eat, sleep or breath, and could not be killed
in combat by any normal means.
The
second duplicate was Captain Grant Matthews, a high-ranking member
of PRISM, but in his case, the duplication process was so good that
PRISM officers actually managed to bring his original personality
back and turn him against the Myloki, even though he knew that he
was only a clone of Matthews, and not the original. Matthews and
Taylor quickly became arch-enemies, the two of them constantly fighting
to a draw due to their inability to actually kill the other, even
though Matthews had the obvious advantage of appearing sentient while
Taylor appeared to be little more than a more effective Shiner; he
could operate machinery and other things, but he never even spoke
so much as a single word, and seemed to show the same lack of initiative
as the normal Shiners did.
Eventually, Taylor was lured into a trap by
Matthews and sealed in 6,000 litres of modified liquid concrete
at the bottom of the sea, while Matthews, armed with a twenty-megaton
bomb,
went straight to the Myloki base and destroyed it, causing
every Shiner on the planet to collapse. However, the war
effort had drained so much
of Earth’s resources that the world economy collapses, and the
planet fell into chaos and social disorder. A disgruntled
member of PRISM, Neville Verdana- who resented the fact that
the ordinary Grant Matthews
got the gift of immortality instead of him - then published
a tell-all exposé revealing the truth about the war, and revealing
that Matthews survived the nuclear explosion and was still
alive somewhere on Earth.
In the face of public outrage, PRISM was forced to go underground
as a clandestine organisation named SILOET, but it continued
to draw on
the shattered world’s resources to maintain a constant watch in
case the Myloki should return. Matthews, on the other hand,
tired and weary at the prospect of immortality - something
the human mind was never
designed to accept - left SILOET and began to wander the
world...
Eventually,
this state of calm ended in 2098, when the TARDIS,
containing the
Second
Doctor, Jamie and Zoe, materialised
on SKYHOME - PRISM's old airborne base- by accident. Believing them
to be a Myloki attack
force, Hal Bishop, commander of SILOET, had them brought down to
Earth, but when the three of them tried to escape, Jamie and Zoe
were forced to watch as The Doctor was shot in the head- not only
having his skull and frontal lobe damaged by the bullet, but then
breaking his nose, jaw, right femur, and collarbone, along with suffering
spine damage. Under normal circumstances, these injuries should have
caused The Doctor to regenerate - indeed, his DNA started to rewire
itself even as he was wheeled into the medical bay - but, while trying
to 'block' the process, the surgeons injected him with Shiner DNA,
which stopped The Doctor regenerating while keeping him alive long
enough for his body to begin to heal the damage done to it, although
it necessitated him staying in a coma for six months.
While The Doctor recovered from his injuries,
Jamie and Zoe managed to make some sort of life for themselves in
the outside world, but unfortunately, they both got separated and,
due to the trauma of recent events, quite literally fell apart. Zoe,
unable to take the trauma of the real world, had retreated into her
new job and become fixated with the sheer logic of it; at least in
number-crunching, everything made more sense than in the real world.
Jamie, meanwhile, had fallen into the hands of the charismatic Mr
MacKenzie, who, seeking an explanation for the destruction caused
in the war, had become convinced that the Myloki had been God coming
to punish mankind for their wickedness, and the Shiners were those
blessed with the 'gift' of immortality. Just as things began to get
serious for the two of them, The Doctor regained consciousness, and,
although weak and shaken by his near-regeneration, he was soon able
to realise that something serious had happened; when he had been
injected with Shiner DNA, for a few brief moments, he had become
a Shiner himself... and that brief moment of renewed contact with
Earth had given the Myloki all they needed to find Earth again.
Having
convinced Bishop of his non-Myloki status, The Doctor had Bishop
find his friends, but unfortunately neither meeting went well; Jamie,
believing The Doctor to be dead, convinced himself that The Doctor
was merely an robotic double of the original (Otherwise he couldn't
justify the terrible things he'd done earlier), and, in their recovery
of Zoe, the SILOET agents had killed a man Zoe had come to love,
and she actually tried to kill herself twice before The Doctor showed
up. Once The Doctor had convinced SILOET that the Myloki were coming
back, he was sent off with Captain Alex Storm (A former psychopath,
unfortunately) to try and track down Matthews, while Zoe was forced
to work with SILOET and Jamie was kept in an underwater base called
OCEAN FLOOR to ensure The Doctor's good behaviour. (During her time
on SKYHOME, however, Zoe was shaken out of her retreat into the world
of computers by her encounter with another scientist who was uncomfortably
like her).
The
Doctor and Storm eventually tracked Matthews to the island base of
the Sharon family, who used to run a worldwide rescue service called
Global Response before they were exposed and the father committed
suicide in despair when their chief scientist, Professor Dwight “Boffin” Graham,
went to work for PRISM; only John Sharon, the youngest of the five
brothers, was left alive, now working as a doctor for the isolated
tribe in the island's rainforest. The Doctor and Storm eventually
found a figure on the beach that appeared to be Matthews, but then
two disturbing facts arose. Firstly, that Bishop had sent Storm along
on the mission with a device designed to kill the 'Indestructible
Man', believing that he was what the Myloki had come back for...
and secondly, that the figure was actually Captain Taylor, freed
from his prison by a disturbed Jamie who didn't realise just what
had been trapped there. Storm was killed in the fight, but, just
in time, Matthews arrived, keeping Taylor occupied until Jamie could
use Storm's weapon to take out Taylor (It then destroyed itself,
as it was designed for one use only). Thankfully, Jamie now believed
that The Doctor was real, after seeing him fighting Taylor before
Jamie and Matthews arrived... because Taylor had been evil, and The Doctor always fought evil.
SILOET
troops then arrived to arrest Matthews, who gave himself up willingly
on The Doctor's advice, and they went up to SKYHOME, where SILOET
was fighting an apparently losing battle against the Myloki. As soon
as they entered, however, Boffin killed Matthews with a second device,
Bishop then resigning after hostilities seemed over. Jamie assured
The Doctor that Matthews had wanted to die, but The Doctor revealed
that Matthews' death wasn't his only concern. The Myloki had needed
to alter the nature of this reality in order to interact with it;
the Shiners and Taylor were prototypes, but Matthews was their greatest
achievement, half-human and half-Myloki. Unfortunately, the Myloki
put too much of themselves into Matthews, and his continued presence
in this continuum meant that they could not completely withdraw from
it, even though it proved painful to them. They had returned to Earth
in order to find and remove him, and now, thanks to Bishop, that
may have been impossible... at least, until Matthews' body rebuilt
itself from the dust itself.
With
no other option, Bishop was finally prepared to accept The Doctor's
theory that they needed to take Matthews back to the Myloki; if they
didn't, the Myloki would turn Earth into their kind of reality so
they could tolerate its existence. Bishop, Matthews and The Doctor
entered the Myloki energy grid, where they encountered a dimensional
bridge that Matthews perceived as Westminster Cathedral from his
childhood memories. The Doctor explained his theory that the Myloki
were literally the opposite of humanity; they embodied everything
that humanity couldn't comprehend about the Universe, and vice versa.
The two realities could never truly interact, but neither can exist
without the other... and Matthews was the only being who could see
and handle both. As Bishop vanished, The Doctor told Matthews that
he envied him; after all, who wouldn't want to know themselves completely?
However, as Matthews entered the bridge, he reminded The Doctor that
Jamie and Zoe still needed him, and they were worth more than any
of this. As SKYHOME began to descend towards the Pacific, the Myloki
energy grid vanished, and The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe returned to the
TARDIS; their friendship, having been pushed to its limits, now stronger
than ever. |
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