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| The Horns of Nimon |
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 Name: Nimon
Format: Television
show and Audio.
Time of Origin: Appear to have been
around since at least the time of the Roman Empire to the
future.
Appearances: "The
Horns of Nimon", "Seasons
of Fear" and "The God Complex"
Doctors: Fourth
Doctor, Eighth
Doctor and Eleventh Doctor
Companions: K9, 2nd
Romana, Charley
Pollard, Amy Pond and Rory Williams
History: The Nimon may be some of the most heartless
being that The Doctor has ever encountered. They journey from
world to world, on a pilgrimage they call 'the great journey
of life', in capsules via small artificially created black holes,
draining the worlds they leave of all their energy. They can
kill with bolts from their horns and at least some of them have
been shown to be capable of constructing a complex of shifting
walls. They normally infiltrate planets by sending one of their
kind on from their previous location during a period when the
planets involved are particularly aligned to each other, this
Nimon claiming that they were the sole survivors of their race,
and promising the people of the new planet advanced technology
in exchange for 'sacrifices' from other planets. These victims
were used to provide energy to generate the portals for the
rest of the Nimon to travel through without the need of the
planetary alignment necessary for the original transference,
thus starting the destructive events all over again.
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| The Fourth Doctor |
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However,
the Nimon eventually bit off more then they could chew while
they tried to conquer the planet Skonnos, which used to be the
centre of a vast empire which died out; only the army was left,
while their technology and weapons were virtually falling apart.
Following their usual pattern, one of the Nimon offered the people
of Skonnos advanced technology in exchange for human sacrifices
from the nearby planet of Aneth. Everything went well for a while,
but then the Fourth
Doctor and Romana arrived
on the ship transporting the last batch of sacrifices by mistake
when its engine shut down. The Doctor managed to repair it, but
the ship then left with Romana, leaving The Doctor and K9 trapped in the TARDIS,
which, unfortunately, had been going through a complete systems
maintenance check-up by The Doctor, and so wasn't capable of
dematerialising at the moment.
Fortunately, The Doctor managed to get the
TARDIS working long enough to get to Skonnos, where he and K9
managed to track down Romana and the other 'sacrifices'. Romana
discovered the capsule the Nimon had used to travel from their
previous conquest - the planet Crinoth -, and, with the aid of
the last survivor of the planet, managed to acquire a weapon
that could be used against the Nimon, also learning a great deal
about the Nimon’s methods and their technology. After the
first Nimon had been killed, The Doctor destroyed the complex
on Skonnos, thus trapping the Nimon on Crinoth as it began to
die as they had no power available to send themselves anywhere
else.
The
Doctor's next encounter with the Nimon was far less direct then
this one, and it took place four lifetimes later. The Eighth
Doctor, attempting to take his companion Charley
Pollard to a rendezvous in Singapore, was confronted by a
man called Sebastien Grayle, who claimed to be an immortal who'd
succeeded in killing The Doctor in his future; however, since
The Doctor hadn't left behind a body to gloat over after his
death, Grayle had requested that his 'masters' - the Nimon -
create a pocket timeline so he could brag to a past version of
The Doctor about his victory instead.
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Seasons of Fear
(Paul Cornell and Caroline Symcox) |
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However, The Doctor realised that Grayle's actions had
changed the normal law of time, so he could theoretically change
history so that those events never took place. Taking Charley,
The Doctor headed back in time, meeting Grayle in various points
in history; first in the Roman era, where Grayle became immortal
in the first place (Psionic energy beamed into him by the Nimon
- essentially the reverse of the method they used when dealing
with their sacrifices - allowed him to live for several centuries,
although he needs to 'recharge' after a certain length of time)
and attempted to bring his masters to Earth, then the reign of
King Edward the Confessor, Grayle's second chance to contact
the Nimon, and then Buckinghamshire in the year 1806, where the
Nimon finally arrived on Earth (The Doctor noting that he should
have realised that he was dealing with the Nimon earlier as Earth’s
position in the universe would create multiple opportunities
for the Nimon to expand).
Despite
the risks, The Doctor tried to stop the Nimon by taking
the TARDIS into the time corridor they were using to
travel to Earth in an attempt to block it, but was then
expelled into the time vortex with several Nimon. Grayle
managed to get on board the TARDIS, hoping to communicate
with the Nimon and learn how to move it, but Charley,
based on prior instructions from The Doctor, triggered
the TARDIS's Fast Return Switch, sending them back to
the Roman era at the time of their previous visit. Since
the Nimon hadn't 'topped Grayle up', as it were, he
was still mortal at this time, and as a result, he was
killed by his past self, who refused to let himself
become that thing that had lost all knowledge of love
and honour. As a result, the Nimon's invasion of Earth
failed, and history was set back on its proper course.
Although
The Doctor has not fought the Nimon themselves since then, the
Eleventh Doctor faced a minotaur-like alien that he identified
as belonging to a race similar to the Nimon in "The God Complex",
when the TARDIS materialised on board a prison ship created to
contain a member of this race. Observing it, The Doctor concluded
that it was an evolutionary offshoot of the Nimon that had evolved
to feed on faith by arriving on planets and posing as a god -
as opposed to the Nimon using others’ belief in them to
devise the necessary technology to progress on the ‘Great
Journey of Life’ -, with the prison ship having been created
by the creature’s former worshippers after they realised
the truth about it. With the ship having kept the minotaur alive
for centuries by bringing people with strong faith to the ship,
forcing them to confront their worst fears and fall back on their
faith so that the minotaur could consume them, the TARDIS was
drawn to the ship due to the strong faith that The Doctor’s
companion Amy Pond had in The Doctor. With no other way to stop
the creature, which wanted to die but had such powerful instincts
that it couldn’t deliberately starve itself, The Doctor
was forced to break Amy’s faith in him, cutting off the
creature’s food supply and allowing it to die at last. |
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| The Horns of Nimon |
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| The Horns of Nimon |
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| The Horns of Nimon |
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| The God Complex |
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