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Mission: Impractical
(David A. McIntee) |
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 Name: The Tzun
Format:
Book
Time of Origin: Originally from the
planet S’Arl; the exact time frame is unspecified, but they
have a galactic empire extending far enough to reach Earth in the
20th century, although they were apparently rendered virtually extinct
around the twenty-second century.
Appearances: "Mission:
Impractical", "First
Frontier", "Bullet
Time", The Doctor encountered remnants
of their technology in "Lords
of the Storm".
Doctors: Sixth
Doctor, Seventh
Doctor; the Fifth
Doctor prevented the Sontarans from getting their hands on remnants of Tzun technology.
Companions: Frobisher, Ace, Bernice
Summerfield,
Sarah
Jane Smith; Turlough aided the Fifth Doctor in keeping Tzun
technology away from the Sontarans.
History: An ancient, warlike race with a long
history, the Tzun originated from the planet S'Arl, beginning their
universal expansion by going to war with a fungal race called the
Darklings from the planet Yuggoth, their victory leaving them with
corrupted DNA and a fragile genome. In order to survive, they developed
elaborate genetic engineering techniques, combining their own DNA
with other species as they brought them into the Tzun Confederacy.
As a result, the Tzun were divided into three sub-species; the S'Raph
- small grey humanoids with big heads and black eyes, altered to
react to infra-red and ultra-violet frequencies -, the Ph'Sor- created
by combining Tzun DNA with that of the race whose planet they are
colonising - and the pure bloods - genetically unaltered Tzun-, traditional
Tzun operations featuring three pure bloods.
The
Doctor had a particularly significant confrontation with the Tzun
in his seventh incarnation, when The Master hi-jacked
the first real Soviet satellite launch to use it to send a distress
signal to the Tzun Canton on Zeta Reticuli Four, offering to help
the Tzun integrate Earth into the Tzun Confederacy in exchange for
them using their genetic engineering skills to repair the damage
done to his body by his time on the Cheetah planet ("Survival").
As a result, The Master regained the ability to regenerate - although
later evidence suggests that it was only temporary, given that he
returned to his old attempts to acquire a new body in "Happy
Endings" - subsequently regenerating into a new incarnation
(Said by the writers to be based on Basil Rathborne in physical appearance)
after Ace shot him. In return of the Tzuns’ aid, The Master
- posing as American Major Kreer - had helped them to steal nuclear
bombs from an American military base, the Tzuns’ plan being
to trigger a nuclear war and subsequently arrive in public to offer
Earth assistance after America and Russia had wiped each other out,
believing that humanity would welcome their ‘saviours’ in
the aftermath of the conflict.
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First Frontier
(David A. McIntee) |
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However, the Tzun were unaware that The Master
had sabotaged their initial efforts to make contact with
a message of universal brotherhood by discrediting the humans
they’d
spoken to so far, thus meaning that their arrival on Earth
would only be met
with xenophobic hatred, The Master’s long-term goal being to make
it appear that the Tzun had been directly responsible for
causing the conflict they were planning to stop. Although
The Doctor was able to
convince the Tzun to depart Earth in peace after revealing
The Master’s
plan, The Master used one of the stolen nuclear warheads
to destroy the Tzun ship, sending the warhead up to the main
Tzun fleet in an escape
skiff while the Tzun sensors were damaged before departing
himself, The Doctor forced to leave his enemy alone to stop
the other nuclear missile
destroying Earth with a modified Tzun disruptor.
At
some point in the twenty-fifth century, the Tzun were rendered
virtually extinct in a prolonged war with the Veltrochni,
leaving only a few scattered Tzun hybrids still alive by
that point in history; the only large-scale remnants of their
existence as a society were the Ph’sor Tzun colonies,
and these were mere half-breeds rather than true Tzun. The
only pure Tzun left - Sha’ol, the last true Tzun -
had developed a surprising partnership with a Veltrochni
Karthakh
- Karthakh had allow Sha’ol’s ship to land when
it came to his home for assistance, Veltrochi laws of hospital
preventing him from killing Sha’ol despite the hostility
between the two races and thus allowing him to become friends
with Sha’ol -, the two becoming the most lethal bounty
hunters alive in their time period, particularly known for
their code of honour preventing them from simply accepting
a larger amount of money to stop hunting their current target.
As a result of their reputation, they were hired by the mysterious
Mr Zimmerman - who, based on the available evidence, may
have been The Doctor’s dark future self, The
Valeyard ("The
Trial of a Time Lord") - to
eliminate the Sixth
Doctor, who was currently working with
his current
companion Frobisher and criminal acquaintance Sabalom
Glitz to steal a Tzun data core from a top-secret government facility
to return it to the Veltrochi, who had salvaged it from a
previous conflict with the Tzun before it was stolen (The
current government being unable to return the core as they
were unaware of the previous administration’s acquisition
of it in the first place and those government employees who
did know about it were unwilling to jeopardise their
careers by admitting to the theft).
Despite the security around the core - it was located
on an asteroid base in a room protected by time dams shifting
the room an hour into the future and the safe itself was
behind dams that shifted it a day into the past, making it
difficult to break into somewhere that wasn’t there
yet and then ensuring that any thieves would be caught even
if they acquired the core as the security staff would have
known about the theft since yesterday - The Doctor was able
to acquire the core by manipulating the dams to cause the
core to materialise in the present while taking advantage
of the asteroid base being out of phase to send the core
to materialise in the location where the asteroid had been
an hour ago, allowing them to easily recover it in Glitz’s
ship. However, the gang were forced to flee to the Veltrochni
when Nicolo Mandell - the head of security and intelligence
and the man who had hired them - attempted to steal the core
for himself to use the information on Tzun technology to
set himself up as an arms dealer, only just escaping when
Sha’ol and Karthakh attacked again and distracted Mandrell’s
forces. The Doctor was able to free Sha’ol and Karthakh
from their contract by using a stolen time generator to temporarily
put himself in temporal stasis long enough for them to scan
him - thus confirming that he was legally dead, lacking a
heartsbeat or brain activity while temporarily immobilised
- allowing them to end their contract and aid The Doctor
and the gang in returning the core to the Veltrochi, the
Veltrochi keeping the now-wiped data core in memory of what
they did to the Tzun.
Even
without encountering the Tzun directly, their influence was such
that they have made an impact on several other races. On one occasion
in 2731, while visiting a human colony located on the edge of the
former Tzun empire that was suffering from a mysterious illness ("Lords
of the Storm"), the Fifth
Doctor and Turlough discovered that
the illness was caused by the Sontarans secretly installing genetic
markers in the human population. As a result of the markers, the
humans would register as Sontarans on the Rutan sensors, thus convincing
the Rutans to avoid that sector of space and granting the Sontarans
unrestricted access to the Tzun technology that remained there. Fortunately,
The Doctor was able to deduce what the Sontarans were up to after
a confrontation with the Sontaran commander, subsequently making
contact with an approaching Rutan ship and - after receiving their
word that they wouldn’t harm the humans while avoiding to mention
the Tzun technology - revealing the truth to them, allowing the Rutans
to destroy the Sontaran fleet before they could complete their plans
and leaving the existence of the Tzun technology a secret.
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Bullet Time
(David A McIntee) |
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One of The Doctor’s most difficult encounters with
the Tzun - they were never expressly identified but the available
evidence makes their identities almost certain - paradoxically came
about when he was trying to help them, a Tzun ship having been accidentally
shot down by a Chinese destroyer ("Bullet
Time") while
trying to recover equipment left behind during their previous invasion,
and the Tzun now seeking to depart Earth (Fortunately recognising
that their ship hadn’t been shot down out of malice and thus
not interested in retaliation). Attempting to help the Tzun to depart
Earth, The Doctor created an alias as Pendragon, head of both Pimms
Shipping and the Chinese Triad the Tao Te Lung (Really an organisation
created by the Chinese government to trap up-and-coming Triad godfathers
before Hong Kong became Chinese territory), using the contacts this
new identity provided to provide the Tzun with the technology they
needed to repair their ship and depart. Unfortunately, his actions
were complicated by the presence of the Cortez Project, a rogue branch
of UNIT who automatically regarded all aliens as a threat to Earth
due to the risk of cultural contamination, with matters being made
unintentionally worse due to the presence of his old companion Sarah
Jane Smith, who had been in Hong Kong reporting on the upcoming
handover to China and subsequently encountered the Cortez Project,
who revealed
his presence to her before he could explain the situation himself.
Although The Doctor had brought Sarah in because he needed
someone he could trust to expose the fanatical elements now active
within UNIT, her subsequent investigations forced The Doctor to discredit
her as a journalist to prevent the Tzun from killing her after she
saw them working with the Tao Te Lung, although the organisation
was subsequently disbanded after the Chinese government managed to
gather the would-be Triad godfathers together and capture them. The
Cortez Project attempted to recruit Sarah - believing that The Doctor’s
recent actions had ‘proved’ their beliefs about aliens
accurate -, but Sarah refused to collaborate with a death squad,
joining The Doctor as he explained the situation to her… as
well as revealing that a Tzun fleet were now approaching Earth, and
would destroy the planet if they believed the initial attack had
been hostile. Despite the efforts of one of the Cortez agents to
use Sarah as a hostage against The Doctor to stop him moving a battleship
that was preventing the Tzun from leaving, Sarah allowed herself
to be shot to prevent herself being used against The Doctor, The
Doctor subsequently taking control of the ship’s nuclear missiles
after moving it out of the way, claiming that he would destroy Tehran
unless the Project backed off. As the Project’s commanding
officer committed suicide rather than risk being ‘brainwashed’ by
The Doctor’s alien allies, The Doctor simply sat back and allowed
the Tzun to depart, revealing that he had never intended to use the
warheads; as he coldly informed the Cortez soldiers as he departed,
the greatest power any weapon gave the wielder was the power to not use it.
(After the Tzun escaped it was implied that Sarah died
of her injuries, but this was later revealed to have been at least
partly the responsible of the mysterious ‘Council of Eight’,
enemies of the Eighth
Doctor who sought to eliminate his past companions
as contact with The Doctor turned them into ‘Rogue Elements’,
who defied the Council’s predictions about the future and threatened
their power, with the Council’s defeat apparently undoing their
actions against The Doctor’s old friends ("Sometime
Never...")). |
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