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| Vashta Nerada |
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 Name: Vashta Nerada
Format: Television
show and Game
Time of Origin: Apparently live on
all the planets in the universe to some extent or another
while hatching from spores in trees, but mostly live on roadkill
they scavenge in the dark; only a few worlds have Vashta Nerada
who have explicitly resorted to killing other beings.
Appearances: "Silence
in the Library/Forest of the Dead" and "Shadows of the Vashta Nerada".
Doctors: Tenth
Doctor and Eleventh Doctor
Companions: Donna Noble and Amy Pond
History: As enemies go, the Vashta Nerada would
probably be one of The Doctor’s most powerful enemies,
as they are the only creatures he has ever fought in their natural
state that he was convinced from the beginning he couldn’t defeat.
Essentially
living shadows, the Vashta Nerada’s name means ‘the
shadows that rend the flesh’, the creatures being microscopic
beings that manifest as shadows to consume their prey, hatching
from spores in trees. In most cases, the Vashta Nerada are relatively
timid, with the species generally living on roadkill - although
The Doctor implied that even on these planets they can be responsible
for people going missing on walks in the woods or other areas
at night -, but some planets feature the Vashta Nerada actively
hunting living prey.
The Doctor encountered the Vashta Nerada en
masse for the first time when he visited the Library - an entire
planet that had been turned into a massive library filled with
every book in existence - in response to a call for help on the
psychic paper (Later revealed to be from his future acquaintance
River Song, River having accidentally sent the message to a younger
version of The Doctor she knew rather than one who knew her).
After meeting with River’s archaeological team, The Doctor
learned that the entire Library had been mysteriously abandoned
over a century ago, the last message being sent from it saying
simply ‘4022 SAVED. NO SURVIVORS’, Donna Noble’s
earlier search for other life forms having turned up over a million
non-human life forms without any trace of humanoid life.
Although
The Doctor quickly deduced the presence of the Vashta
Nerada, it was too late for him to save Miss Evangelista,
one of the expedition members, from being devoured by
the Vashta Nerada while still in her space suit, a communication
device she wore that was linked to her nervous system
creating a ‘Data Ghost’ of her personality
that could communicate with the others before it lost
all power itself. As the ship’s pilot was consumed
by the Vashta Nerada, The Doctor attempted to use the
Library teleport system to send Donna back to the TARDIS,
but the teleport was interrupted and Donna was apparently
killed, The Doctor only just managing to escape being
devoured by more shadows. However, thinking back on the
message from the Library, The Doctor realised that the
missing 4022 people had been literally saved from the
Vashta Nerada; CAL - the Library’s controlling
computer, simultaneously the mind of a terminally ill
girl who had been preserved by the Library’s founders
to give her some kind of life - had transmitted them
into her databanks when the Vashta Nerada began their
attack. Even worse, the Vashta Nerada were able to create
bodies for themselves by animating the skeleton-filled
suits of the deceased expedition members, later learning
to communicate with The Doctor by using the ‘Data
Ghost’ to teach them how to speak.
Having learned from the Vashta Nerada that they had come
to the Library because their ‘eggs’ had been in the
wood that was used to make the Library’s books, The Doctor
was able to devise a means of boosting CAL’s brainpower
enough to transfer the 4022 survivors - now including Donna -
out of her databanks. Although The Doctor was willing to use
himself as the connection to boost CAL’s processing power,
River took that position herself, reasoning that The Doctor wouldn’t
be able to survive the experience and knowing that he had to
live through this confrontation so that he could meet her past
self in his future. Although the Vashta Nerada briefly tried
to attack The Doctor as he prepared CAL for transfer, The Doctor
convinced them to withdraw simply by challenging them to access
the Library’s databanks and look him up, the information
they discovered prompting them to give The Doctor a day to evacuate
everyone from the Library (And also transfer River’s ‘Data
Ghost’ - saved in a device The Doctor had planted in a
sonic screwdriver he would give her in the future - into CAL
so that a part of River could live on).
The Doctor encountered the Vashta Nerada again in his
eleventh incarnation when he and his companion Amy Pond visited
the underwater city Poseidon Eight, one of many underwater colonies
established after a great flood had left most of Earth’s
land masses uninhabitable. Having been separated from the TARDIS when a giant shark-like creature shattered the tunnel leading
back to the area where they had materialised, The Doctor and
Amy advanced to the main building of the facility, where they
were shocked to discover that not only were the city’s
population infected by an unidentified virus, but the Vashta
Nerada were active (The Doctor immediately noting that these
had to be Vashta Nerada from another world as Earth’s ‘breed’ of
Vashta Nerada were passive creatures that fed mainly on roadkill).
Using the base’s emergency light systems, The Doctor
was able to illuminate various corridors long enough for him
and Amy to reactivate Poseidon Eight’s main power generators,
subsequently driving a couple of Vashta Nerada swarms out of
the diving suits they were using as hosts by forcing them into
an area where he could activate the emergency lighting at full
strength to ‘force’ them out of the suits. Having
identified the cause of the rift that drew the Vashta Nerada
and the ‘shark’ to Earth as the 1940s American ship
the USS Eldridge, The Doctor realised that Project Rainbow -
a secret naval experiment to create an invisible ship in the
Second World War - had created a temporal rift that had drawn
the shark, the Vashta Nerada, and the virus into Poseidon Eight.
After creating a cure for the virus, The Doctor and Amy were
able to use the base’s service tunnels to return to the
TARDIS and take a quick hop to the USS Eldridge, shutting down the
rift-generating equipment and sending the shark and the Vashta
Nerada back where they came from (Although Amy was forced to
trick another pair of Vashta Nerada-inhabited suits into entering
a bilge pump room so that she could expel them from the ship). |
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| Silence in the Library/Forest
of the Dead |
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| Silence in the Library/Forest
of the Dead |
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| Silence in the Library/Forest
of the Dead |
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| Silence in the Library/Forest
of the Dead |
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