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The Vardans Arrive
(The Invasion
of Time) |
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 Name: Vardans
Format:
Television show and Book
Time of Origin: Planet and time of
origin unspecified; although they once attempted an invasion of Gallifrey,
it was never revealed precisely where and when they came from in
relation to the Time Lords, and their later invasion of Earth in
the 1970s was aided by the Meddling
Monk.
Appearances: "The
Invasion of Time" and "No
Future"
Doctors: Fourth
Doctor and Seventh
Doctor
Companions: Leela, K9, Ace, Bernice
Summerfield, The
Brigadier,
Sergeant
Benton and Captain
Mike Yates.
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The Vardans
(The Invasion of
Time) |
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History: The Vardans were one of The Doctor’s
most mysterious adversaries. Initially appearing to him as simple
energy forms, The Doctor was at first unaware of even the location
of their homeworld, although he was aware that they were telepathic.
As time went on, it was also revealed that the Vardans were capable
of teleporting themselves along various wavelengths, being capable
of ‘broadcasting’ themselves from place to place and
even travel along telephone lines. Operating on a strict military
policy of ‘survival of the fittest’, they developed a
significant military presence, establishing a military dictatorship
on their world and spreading outwards.
This
policy brought them into contact with The Doctor in his fourth incarnation,
when they sought the assistance of a renegade Time Lord to aid in
their planned conquest of Gallifrey. To stop another, less scrupulous
Time Lord from doing it themselves, The Doctor pretended to help
the Vardans by returning to Gallifrey and accepting the position
of Lord President - having become the only remaining candidate after
the events of his last visit to Gallifrey and his subsequent defeat
of The Master - thus granting him full access to the transduction
barriers that protected Gallifrey from external attacks.
Despite
the Vardans’ telepathic nature, The Doctor was able to prevent
them from reading his thoughts by taking advantage of his traditionally
chaotic thought patterns, thus making it impossible for them to ever
determine his true plan as he was always thinking about something
else. As a result, even when he lowered the transduction barriers
to allow the Vardans onto Gallifrey itself, they failed to realise
that he was planning to deceive them until it was too late, although
only K9 - whose mechanical nature naturally prevented his mind being
read - and Borusa - who remained in a lead-lined room The Doctor
had created to prevent the Vardans sensing anyone within it - knew
the truth about The Doctor’s agenda; The Doctor was even forced
to temporarily banish Leela to the Gallifreyian wastelands as her
faith in him was so strong she would have unintentionally tipped
the Vardans off that The Doctor was up to something. Having determined
the location of the Vardan homeworld, The Doctor was able to trap
the Vardan planet in a time loop, ending the threat of their invasion
once and for all (Although he was then forced to deal with the Sontarans,
who had been manipulating the Vardans simply to gain access to Gallifrey)
("The
Invasion of Time").
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| The Invasion of Time |
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Eventually, however, the Vardans were freed
from the time loop by the First
Doctor’s old enemy the Meddling
Monk, who had recently captured a Chronovore called Artemis and now sought
to gain his revenge on The Doctor. Recruiting the Vardans as his allies,
The Monk convinced them to conquer Earth as the perfect means of revenge
against The Doctor and the Sontarans, due to The Doctor’s fondness
for the planet and its strategic value to the Sontarans’ campaign
against the Rutans. With the aid of The Monk, who set up an identity
as the wealthy Robert Bertram to supply UNIT with VR training equipment
that would brainwash them to regard The Doctor as the enemy and side
with him, the Vardans were able to establish themselves as aliens in
the simulation, simultaneously creating a presence as subliminal messages
in various media formats to influence the general population. Although
these signals were discovered by some people, the discovery actually
worked to the Vardans’ benefit as they resulted in the formation
of the terrorist group Black Star, who were convinced that UNIT were
using the subliminal messages to keep threats secret from the public
for their own purposes.
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No Future
(Paul Cornell) |
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Although
The Monk attempted to eliminate The Doctor and prevent his interference
by using Artemis to arrange for the Third
Doctor to be killed by
the Silurians in his first encounter with them, this action only
resulted in the creation of an alternate timeline ("Blood
Heat")
rather than The Doctor’s permanent death, forcing The Monk
to subtly change history in the real universe, such as by saving
the Land of Fiction from its destruction at the hands of the Second
Doctor ("Conundrum") or ensuring the creation of a creature
called the Garvond ("The
Dimension Riders") from the Dark
Matrix ("Matrix") to keep his enemy occupied. Despite the
failure of these plans to prevent The Doctor from tracking The Monk
- The Doctor discovering information in the Land of Fiction regarding
an alien invasion being thwarted by punk band Plasticine in the 1970s
- The Monk scored a crucial victory when he apparently managed to
win The Doctor’s companion Ace over to his side, taking advantage
of the recent hostility between the two of them while promising Ace
that he would save her dead lover Jan ("Love
and War")
once his plans had succeeded.
However, despite The Monk’s attempts to deprive
The Doctor of the information left by his future self to help The
Doctor solve the crisis by introducing the CD ten years early - thus
allowing The Monk to edit out the information that The Doctor would
have discovered on the LP version of Plasticine’s debut and
used to save the world. Thanks to Danny Pain - the band’s lead
singer - having bootlegged a taped copy for himself, The Doctor was
able to overhear a Vardan mentioning to The Monk that the music was
similar to sonic weapons used in the Vardan civil war. As the Vardans
prepared to transfer themselves into the minds of humanity - weakened
by the subliminal messages that had been planted in the media earlier
- during the debut concert, Plasticine instead played the chords
The Doctor had given them, The Doctor subsequently using the TARDIS to create a standing wave between the BBC transmitter and the satellites,
trapping the Vardan army within the carrier signal. Having released
Artemis - who had taken The Monk with her to make him pay for her
imprisonment - The Doctor sent the Vardans back to their homeworld,
the journey taking so long that, by the time they arrived, the Vardan
soldiers discovered that their people had abandoned military conquest
after a government revolution. The Doctor has since never encountered
the Vardans.
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