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Echoes of Extinction
(Alfie Shaw) |
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 Name: The Network
Format:
Audio
Time of Origin: Originated on the planet Orriv
Appearances: "Echoes of Extinction"
Doctors: Eighth Doctor and Tenth Doctor
Companions: None
History: A psychic entity originally created to serve as a telepathic spy network on the planet Orriv (which itself only had a civilisation as part of the temporal ripples caused by the Tenth Doctor's campaign against the Kotturh), the Network was essentially forced to be a villain.
When the Network was first created as part of an intelligence project, Jasmine, one of the scientists responsible for its existence, realised that it had become sentient and attempted to help it escape the facility where she worked. Realised that she couldn't get it out of the building, Jasmine allowed the Network to hide inside her own mind, but she was caught by her superiors and was subsequently unable to find a way to release the creature in secret. With others still seeking to use the Network for its original purpose, the government attempted to force Jasmine to tell them where the creature was by framing her for a terrorist attack (it's unclear if they caused the attack themselves or just took advantage of an independent act). She was subsequently imprisoned on a satellite in orbit above Orriv, with the government setting up a live feed to the prison that would allow basically the entire population to accuse Jasmine of murder, with the goal of leaving her so broken that she would crack and give up the Network's location.
Jasmine subsequently endured a year of being trapped on the satellite with people constantly denouncing her as a monster, her only company being the robot that had been assigned as her guardian. She was able to reprogram the robot with a personality based on her family's old butler, Edwards, but she couldn't completely delete Edward's original programming, so while he treated her in a far more civil manner he still defaulted to keeping her trapped and maintaining the transmissions. Eventually, Jasmine tried to reprogram the communications link to let her transmit her side of the story to the planet, but this had the unfortunate consequence of allowing the Network to travel down to Orriv. Having spent the last year being told that it was a killer through its link to Jasmine, the Network now believed that it was genuinely a killer, with the result that it committed itself to being the monster it had been told it should be and slaughtered the planet's entire population. The Network only returned to the satellite once everyone on Orriv was dead, but it still heard the voices of people accusing it of being a killer in its mind, with Jasmine being the only person it didn't automatically want to kill as it felt some desire to please her.
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| The Eighth Doctor |
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The Eighth Doctor eventually arrived on Jasmine's satellite while investigating the temporal anomalies of the current crisis, which led to him confronting the Network to confirm what had explicitly happened even after Jasmine tried to get him to take her away. The Doctor was able to learn the full story by forcing a psychic connection with the Network, giving him some context for what it had done so that Jasmine would then give him the full story while the creature was disorientated from breaking the link. With this discovery, The Doctor attempted to stop the Network by forcing it to possess Edwards and using that link to transmit it back down to the planet, but learned too late that it had been able to duplicate itself while possessing Edwards, creating another version of itself in Edwards. With no better solution available, The Doctor fled back to the TARDIS with Jasmine to explain the situation to the Shadow Proclamation, leaving the Network in Edwards stuck on the satellite.
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| The Tenth Doctor |
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The Tenth Doctor would later return to Orriv when he was investigating the aftermath of the temporal interference caused by his confrontation with Kotturh, only to materialize on a ship heading for Orriv crewed by mercenaries Frye, Cooke and Joshi. For various reasons - the intervening Time War, the temporal complexity of the current situation, etc. - The Doctor didn't initially realise what the mercenaries were after when Frye revealed that they were going to Orriv to find the weapon that had destroyed the planet, simply convincing them to let him come along by persuading them that he was smart enough to be a useful asset while naturally intending to find some way to sabotage their efforts. When the ship landed on the planet, The Doctor was struck by the mixed nature of the apparent weapon, as the bodies lying around had been reduced to skeletons with no sign of external trauma while the city around them had been apparently destroyed by some kind of missile. Finding a quantum pulse drive that he recognised as coming from a space station, The Doctor confirmed that the building damage had been caused by a satellite hitting the ground, establishing that the psionic weapon had been trapped in orbit until its prison crashed on the planet.
Unfortunately, by the time The Doctor realised what he was dealing with, the Network had already killed and possessed Cooke and Joshi, subsequently taking Frye as a host while The Doctor ran back to their ship. Using the satellite's com-block unit and various components from the TARDIS (as well as taking a few days in the TARDIS to carry out his work before he came back at basically the moment he left), The Doctor was able to create a psionic prison for the Network. Initially the Network still expressed a desire to kill him, but The Doctor helped it see that its attempt to stop the voices of its victims by splitting itself into three hadn't actually made any kind of impact on the voices it still heard, and if it kept killing people it would just be left with more voices. Faced with The Doctor's refusal to allow more death, the Network abandoned its hosts and let itself be sealed in The Doctor's prison, which he subsequently left on the planet after hearing the Eighth Doctor's recorded message that Orriv should be left alone in future.
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