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Apollo 23
(Justin Richards) |
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 Name: Talerians
Format:
Book
Time of Origin: Taleria, approximately
the present day.
Appearances: "Apollo
23"
Doctors: Eleventh Doctor
Companions: Amy Pond
History: In the long list of The Doctor’s
various alien enemies, the Talerians are one of the most distinctive
due to their physically vulnerable nature. While most alien races
that The Doctor has encountered are virtually immune to bullets due
to their technology allowing them to defect the bullets or their
natural resilience, the Talerians, although normally dressed in armour
plates and about the size of human beings, are shockingly vulnerable
to outside attack, their bulbous forms bursting simply when a part
of their skin was caught in the wheels of a chair and torn slightly.
The
Talerians gained a unique opportunity to expand when they detected
a transmission from Earth broadcast from Base Diana, a secret American
facility that had been established on the Moon in the 1970s (Contrary
to public opinion, the Apollo missions had actually continued after
Apollo 17, with Apollos 18 to 22 transporting material to Diana Base
until the research staff were able to establish quantum transference
technology that allowed them to link Diana Base to a Texas facility
so that people could essentially walk from one to the other). At
the time, Base Diana was being used for experiments in prisoner rehabilitation
by using radiation bursts to ‘purge’ criminals of the
memories that prompted their violent tendencies, but the Talerians
were able to hi-jack these experiments and use them to transfer Talerian
minds into physically stronger human bodies.
Having somehow transferred one of their number
into the body of Professor Jackson, the official head of Base Diana,
the Talerians attempted to implant further members of their species into
the base’s population, but this attack was briefly jeopardised
when Liz Didbrook, one of the nurses, realised what was happening and
tried to sabotage the quantum displacement equipment. The damage from
her attack resulted in the displacement link shifting from a Texas desert
to an English park, resulting in at least two deaths by suffocation as
people literally walked onto the Moon while a member of the base’s
staff walked into a supermarket where the Eleventh Doctor and Amy had
just arrived. Tracking the source of the displacement to Diana Base,
The Doctor introduced himself as a quantum displacement expert to gain
the chance to inspect the base and learn what was happening there, Amy
questioning Didbrook - now mentally damaged after a Talerian attempt
to take control of her had failed - and gaining some fragmented pieces
of the puzzle thanks to her ramblings.
Unfortunately,
The Doctor’s attempt to reactivate the quantum displacement
backfired when it was sabotaged again after he repaired it, resulting
in him being sent back to the Earth end at Hibiscus base in Texas
while Amy and the TARDIS were left trapped on the Moon. Although
The Doctor was able to return to the Moon using Apollo 23 - the last
Apollo rocket, its mission cancelled with the perfection of the quantum
displacement method even if it had been kept ready in storage in
case it was needed -, he was not in time to prevent Amy being ‘blanked’ by
the Talerians after she realised what was happening, her mind wiped
clean of all but the basic essentials of information necessary to
lure The Doctor into a trap. Despite the odds against him, The Doctor
gained an unexpected ally in the form of Major Carlisle, another
member of the facility’s staff; while she had been ‘imprinted’ with
a Talerian mind, an unexpected power surge while the process was
taking place resulted in her retaining control of her body while
still being able to access enough Talerian knowledge to pose as one
of them.
Discovering that the Talerians retained back-up copies
of the human minds they ‘blanked out’ in case they needed
to access the human memories later, The Doctor tracked down the liquid
storage method used to preserve the back-up copies. When he gave
the phial containing Amy’s memories to her blanked body and
told her to keep it safe, the small fragment of Amy’s true
self left in her body retained enough initiative to prompt her to
swallow the liquid, resulting in her true personality asserting itself
as the data returned to her system. Inspired by this idea, as Jackson
modified the equipment to beam the Talerians into Diana Base in person,
The Doctor dispersed the liquid storage system into the sprinkler
systems, restoring the humans to their bodies as the few molecules
of their true selves present in each part of the sprinkler’s
water supply were sufficient to reassert the humans’ true memories,
although it took far longer for each human to return to normal due
to the comparatively small amount of relevant data present in each
drop that landed on each human.
Although the Talerian in Professor Jackson managed to
remove the phial containing Jackson’s personality from the
storage system before The Doctor could activate the sprinklers, The
Doctor was able to slip the contents of the phial into Jackson’s
tea - the Talerian having grown used to drinking tea despite starting
it simply to maintain the illusion that he was still Jackson -, restoring
Jackson to himself. Unfortunately, while The Doctor had been intending
to simply force the Talerians to retreat, Jackson, enraged by the
guilt of everything that the Talerian had done using his body, shattered
a window in his office, committing suicide while destroying all the
Talerians due to the rapid shift in internal pressure as the base
experienced decompression before the bulkheads could activate. |
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