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The Devil
Goblins From Neptune
(Keith Topping & Martin Day) |
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 Name: Waro
Format:
Book
Time of Origin: Triton,
Neptune’s moon, 1971.
Appearances: "The
Devil Goblins from Neptune"
Doctors: Third
Doctor
Companions: The
Brigadier, Captain
Mike Yates, Sergeant
Benton and Liz
Shaw.
History: The Waro were some of The Doctor’s most ruthless and cruel adversaries. They were a fairly
intelligent species, capable of constructing a very efficient means
of one-man flight and skilled biochemists, but they had one small
problem; they were continually angry at everything in the known Universe,
even themselves. This would normally have meant that the Waro would
have eventually driven themselves into extinction, but they managed
to manipulate their brains so that the anger was directed away from
each other and at anything else. Eventually an Earth probe from Britain
arrived on Triton, putting the Waro in contact with a man called Viscount
Rose. Rose, believing that humanity had gotten too corrupted to be
allowed to continue, and saw the Waro as his means to an end.
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| The
Third Doctor |
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One
batch of Waro arrived on Earth earlier, and set up a false operation
within the Soviet Union in Siberia, while a later group would do the
genuine operation. Captain Valentin Shuskin, of UNIT’s Soviet
branch, tried to contact UNIT-UK to enlist the aid of the Third
Doctor after people started vanishing around the area where the
Waro were located, but The
Brigadier apparently rejected their request. With no other choice,
they attempted two separate attacks on The Doctor, neither proving
successful; if it wasn’t The Doctor’s superior unarmed
combat skills that stopped them, it was his abilities at escaping.
Eventually Captain Shuskin and the Brigadier met, and the Brigadier
learned about what had driven them to the attempted kidnaps. While
The Doctor and Liz
Shaw joined Shuskin in Russia, the Brigadier checked up on the
reasons why his refusal had been staged at UNIT, leaving Captain
Yates in charge of UNIT-UK.
While The Doctor was investigating
the incidents in Russia, UNIT was attacked from the inside by a man
claiming to be Bruce Davis of UNIT’s American branch, but was
really Thomas Bruce of the CIA. Bruce murdered a UNIT scientist, made
it look as though the scientist had killed him by disfiguring the
man’s face with acid, planted a bomb in The Doctor’s lab
that nearly killed Sergeant
Benton, and then ran off to catch up with the Brigadier in Geneva.
The Brigadier, meanwhile, had traced the corruption in UNIT to a Major-General
Hayes, who murdered the men who were helping the Brigadier and took
him to his real boss. That man was known as simply ‘Control’,
and was in charge of the CIA. It turned out that the CIA had been
dealing with alien threats long before UNIT was even set up, and they
thought that UNIT didn’t know where their loyalties lay due
to their working with The Doctor.
Meanwhile,
in Russia, The Doctor had managed to get to the site of the Waro’s
landing, but it wasn’t very successful; his attempts to read
the mind of a captured Waro had lead to his going into a coma after
it killed itself, and then went into another when several Waro knocked
him out after he worked out a way to shut down their flying devices.
Fortunately The Doctor managed to recover in time to save Liz and
Shuskin from several attacking Waro, although they were horrified
to learn that there was actually nothing remarkable in the valley
where the Waro were. Having gotten back to UNIT-UK, The Doctor managed
to get the UK’s supply of cobalt moved away, but the Americans
destroyed in order to bait their own trap for the Waro.
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| The Brigadier |
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Meanwhile the Brigadier had discovered
that the CIA were holding hostage an alien race called the Nedenah,
old enemies of the Waro and a remarkably likable lot. The CIA intended
to destroy the Waro and defeat the upstart UNIT, but they underestimated
the Brigadier and he managed to escape. He encountered Rose and Professor
Trainor of the Neptune Project (And also an old mentor of Liz’s),
opening the Nedenah’s cages, but it was only so that Rose could
kill them. However, Trainor and the Brigadier managed to save them,
and the Nedenah broke out of the CIA bunker in their ship.
Just
as they left, The Doctor, Liz, Shuskin and Yates parachuted in, right
into the middle of the battle. The Americans had underestimated the
Waro and were being slaughtered, but the Nedenah had a failsafe option;
a chemical that would shut off the blocks on the Waro’s anger
and turn them against each other. It succeeded, but at a price; Trainor
died of a heart attack when the Nedenah spaceship crashed. With their
work over, the Nedenah departed, while Shuskin returns to the Soviet
Union and the others return to England. Yates admited to himself that
he was overwhelmed by the pressure of command and vowed to do better
next time. The Doctor, however, suspected that the CIA was being supported
by another Agency that was far more familiar to him, and feared that
UNIT's troubles weren’t over… |
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