Newbies Guide to Doctor Who

Doctor:

The Eighth The eighth Doctor has byronesque hair and tends to wear velvet coats. He is childlike and has a sense of wonder about him.

Companions:

Sam Jones: Sam is a teenaged schoolgirl from London 1997 who joined the Doctor in The Eight Doctors (BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures). She is a do-gooder with a heavy interest in groups like Greenpeace and Amnesty. She has blonde hair.

Recurring Characters:

UNISYC: UNISYC is the successor organisation to UNIT (the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce). UNIT was formed in the late 1960s to fight attempted alien invasions and the like. The Third Doctor (and later the fourth) was scientific advisor to the British branch in the early 1970s.

The Time Lords: The Time Lords are the Doctor's own people. They are immensely powerful, having the technology to control time to a certain degree. We first met them in The War Games (Classic Series Season 6), where the Doctor made contact with them because he needed their help. The Time Lords sentenced him to regeneration and exiled him to Earth. They subsequently used the Doctor to perform a number of missions for them both during and after his exile. The Doctor's exile was lifted in The Three Doctors (Classic Series Season 10) after he helped the Time Lords with a crisis. The Doctor subsequently visited his home planet of Gallifrey on several occasions. During The Invasion of Time (Classic Series Season 15) and again during The Five Doctors (Classic Series Season 20) he briefly became President of the Time Lords. Time Lord technology includes devices like the Hand of Omega, capable of destroying stars, the Demat Gun (a powerful disintegrator), and the Sash of Rassilon (which protects the wearer from energy as powerful as in a black hole and allows them to convert it for their own uses) as well as TARDISes.

The Daleks The Daleks are a race of mutants encased in powerful cyborg bodies whose shape is reminiscent of pepperpots. They view all other species as inferior, to be enslaved or exterminated. The Doctor first encountered them on their home planet of Skaro in The Daleks (Classic Series Season 1). He has subsequently fought them on numerous occasions in every single incarnation, including during their 22nd century occupation of Earth (The Dalek Invasion of Earth (Classic Series Season 2). In Genesis of the Daleks (Classic Series Season 12), the Time Lords sent him to interfere with their origins. In Remembrance of the Daleks (Classic Series Season 25), he was responsible for the destruction of their home planet, Skaro. In War of the Daleks (BBC Past Doctor Adventure), he and Sam intervened in a Dalek civil war.

The Krotons The Krotons are a crystalline lifeform made of Tellurium. In The Krotons (Classic Series Season 6), the second Doctor encountered some members of their race who had crash-landed on the planet of the Gonds. They had attempted to recharge themselves by draining the mental energy of the Gonds using a device known as the Dynatrope. The Doctor defeated them by using sulphuric acid to destroy the Dynatrope.

Recommended Viewing:

In The Dalek Invasion of Earth (Classic Series Season 2), the Daleks had successfully invaded Earth. The Doctor helped the human resistance movement to foil the Daleks' scheme to remove Earth's core so that they could turn it into a massive space vehicle. Later stories have established that this occupation began in 2157 and ended in 2167.

Recommended Reading:

If you want more information about the future war scenario established here, then the best place to start is with Faction Paradox: The Book of the War (Faction Paradox novel), which is an exhaustive encyclopedia/short story anthology about the war. However, reading it is most definitely not necessary in order to understand Alien Bodies, and may confuse you even more.

Recommended Listening:

None.