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| Image of the
Fendahl |
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 Name: The Fendahl
Format:
Television
Time of Origin: Planet Five - the fifth
planet in Earth’s solar system, between Mars and Jupiter -,
approximately twelve million years ago; the last remnants of it confronted
The Doctor on Earth in 1979.
Appearances: "Image
of the Fendahl",
referenced and played a vital role in the events of "The
Taking of Planet 5"
Doctors: Fourth
Doctor
Companions: Leela, technically K9 (K9 had begun
travelling with them at this point but he remained in the TARDIS for the duration of the confrontation)
History: The Fendahl is essentially the most powerful
predator ever to evolve anywhere. Described by The Doctor as a ‘super-vampire’,
the Fendahl is capable of sucking all other life into itself, converting
other organisms into component parts to form a gestalt, and was capable
of eating its way across the smorgasbord of space and time while
always being assured of finding something to eat wherever it went.
It was such a dangerous life-form that the Time Lords broke their
usual rule of non-interference in order to stop the Fendahl from
spreading beyond Planet Five - the fifth planet of our solar system,
between Mars and Jupiter -, trapping Planet Five in a time loop that
would keep it contained from the rest of the universe for all eternity.
Although
the majority of the Fendahl was contained on Planet Five, it was
able to at least partially escape by transmitting itself as psionic
energy to the inner planets, one of these ‘fragments’ arriving
on Earth twelve million wears in the past and hiding in a humanoid
skull, apparently influencing human evolution to create a situation
that would allow it to escape. The skull was eventually discovered
by millionaire scientist Doctor Fendelman, who, accompanied by his
team - chronology technician Thea Ransome and palaeontologists Adam
Colby and Maximillian Stael - set out to investigate the skull using
a time scanner he had devised, the distortion the scanner caused
in the time vortex attracting the Fourth
Doctor’s attention
and prompting him and Leela to investigate.
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The Taking Of Planet 5
(Simon Bucher-Jones & Mark Clapham) |
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Learning of a suspiciously rapidly-decomposing
corpse that had been discovered outside the priory the previous night,
with the only sign of foul play being a mark on the back of his neck,
The Doctor’s fears were proven when he confronted a monstrous creature
that nearly killed him when he was briefly immobilised by the time distortion
caused by the scanner. As Thea began to transform due to her previous
contact with the skull, The Doctor recognised the creatures as Fendahleen,
but he was prevented from taking action when Stael, believing that the
Fendahl was the being that he worshipped as a member of a cult, attempted
to use Thea as a sacrifice to awaken the power within the skull but only
succeeding in completing her transformation into the Fendahl Core.
As
the Fendahleen began to emerge from the cult members, Stael committed
suicide to weaken the Fendahl and prevent the full manifestation
of the gestalt. With this sacrifice buying them time, Leela and the
rest of The Doctor’s allies subsequently used rock salt to
keep the Fendahleen at bay - sodium chloride killed the Fendahleen
by affecting the conductivity and throwing the overall electrical
balance preventing the disruption of localizing the osmotic pressure
- before The Doctor was able to set the time scanner to run until
it imploded, destroying the Core and embryo Fendahleen, The Doctor
and Leela subsequently taking the skull to the heart of a supernova
to destroy it once and for all.
Four lifetimes after this encounter, the Eighth
Doctor fought to prevent a group of Time Lords from Gallifrey’s future
from releasing the time lock around Planet Five and thus unleashing
the true Fendahl, the future Time Lords seeking to use the Fendahl
as a weapon in the War (A war that would be waged in The Doctor’s
personal future between the Time Lords and an initially -unidentified
Enemy). Although The Doctor failed to prevent the time loop being
broken, it was revealed that time inside the loop had actually been
accelerated, resulting in the evolution of The
Memeovore, a devourer
of concept that had evolved to kill the Fendahl itself, The Doctor
later managing to expel the Memeovore from the universe with the
aid of a platoon of highly evolved TARDISes (One of which created
the temporal rift which Fendelman’s time scanner had originally
accessed after it crashed). |
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