Where & When
The story is set in the year 2493… or at least, that’s when Vicki says she left Earth, and it’s hard to imagine that more than a few months have passed since. It takes place on the planet Dido, a world that is within the bounds of human space at the time, but that the authorities on Earth have never bothered to explore.
Setting
Relative to the two future-set stories that precede it, the story is set about three centuries after The Dalek Invasion of Earth, leaving plenty of time to rebuild, but about the same length of time before The Sensorites, implying a much earlier phase in space exploration. Interstellar travel is slow, since Vicki has clearly been on Dido for some time, and the rescue ship, which presumably set off more or less straight away, is still 69 hours from the planet. We’re told that they’ll have to be guided towards it, but this likely refers to the landing site rather than the planet as a whole – after all, it has a name, and they clearly didn’t get that from the locals.
Regardless of the slow speed of travel, humanity does have some form of space radio at this time, which allows near-instantaneous communication with the rescue ship and could signal Earth when the ship initially had its accident. Significantly, this technology isn’t in evidence in The Sensorites, set three hundred years later. It could be that it’s simply too bulky to fit on the ship in that story – which is much smaller than the one in this – or it could be that it requires a previously established set of deep space buoys to carry the signal, which wouldn’t exist for the long-range exploratory mission.
The ship that Vicki is travelling on is never named in the TV serial, but it does bear a British flag on the fuselage above the number ‘201’, so that may be a flight number in the style of modern airliners. The audio sequel to the story accordingly refers to it as the UK-201. On the other hand, the original novelisation of the story refers to the ship as the Astra Nine, so either will do. Regardless, we know that Vicki is travelling on it so that her father can take up a new job on a colony world, so it’s most likely a long-distance passenger transport similar to the liners that carried people across the Atlantic before air travel became common.
It doesn’t look especially large from the outside, perhaps not much larger than a jumbo jet, but the interior shots indicate that it’s bigger than it appears. Even so, it doesn’t seem to be a luxury liner, and the journey may well have been quite tedious. The radio room has a door to the outside (it doesn’t look much like an airlock, but we don’t need to stick to the visuals that precisely in a game) and Vicki has set up her bed there although it clearly wasn’t designed for that purpose. The interior door leads to a corridor containing damaged equipment, with Bennett’s more comfortable-looking cabin on the far side.
We obviously don’t see the rest of the ship, although the external view implies that most of it must be at least habitable. The most likely arrangement is a series of cabins along a central corridor running down the fuselage, interspersed with other rooms, with a cockpit up one end and the rocket engines at the other. At least one of these rooms must contain food supplies, since it’s hard to see what else they are eating, although Vicki does have to collect water from outside, so that system must be broken. The ship also still has electrical power, since the interior rooms are illuminated, and equipment such as the radio works.
The ship cracked in two during the crash, and the nose cone containing the cockpit also looks badly damaged. Our view of the corridor makes it look impassable beyond the two rooms we see, but since the camera is only pointed towards the rear, we’re probably looking towards the most badly damaged section, and passage may be easier in the other direction (via the ‘fourth wall’).
It's also worth noting that, at one point, Koquillion enters Bennett’s cabin and Vicki later assumes that he has left the ship despite the fact that he didn’t go past her to do it. This indicates that she is aware of another functioning exit, or possibly that she believes it’s easier to get out through the hole in the hull than the damage to the corridor might imply. In reality, of course, there’s a way out that she doesn’t know about, through the cabin floor. This might lead to a cargo hold and some tears in the hull that aren’t immediately obvious from the external view.
Moving on to the planet Dido, this has the breathable atmosphere and Earthlike gravity that we would expect. The part of it that the spaceship has crashed in is a desert, but there’s nothing to indicate that the rest of the planet is like this and, for all we know, there are oceans, forests, and so on elsewhere. Certainly, the planet has indigenous life, including people indistinguishable from humans, so a lack of oceans seems unlikely on the face of it.
Nonetheless, the region that the story is set in is indeed, a desert, a sandy and rocky area between two sheer-sided mesas (described as ‘mountains’, although this may be an exaggeration). Abandoned buildings are seen dotted about, and there is also a spring or small oasis – apparently within 50 yards (45 metres) of the ship since Koquillion allows Vicki to use it as a source of water. The patch of ground around the spring is vegetated, with palm trees and cactuses, and must be why the village is located where it is.
Vicki states that “it gets dark early” on Dido, a statement that, in the absence of a defined clock, could be interpreted in at least two ways. For instance, it could mean that the day-night cycle is significantly shorter than 24 hours so that sunset comes sooner after the dawn than you might think. Assuming that the TARDIS arrives shortly after sunrise, since there has yet to be a second dawn when the rescue ship signals the planet 17 hours later, the minimum length for the day is around 18 hours – short enough to be noticeable, but not truly dramatic.
Alternatively, she might be referring not to the planet as a whole, but merely the crash site. If this is at a high latitude, and it is currently winter, then the days will be short and the nights long. Despite being a desert, there is no indication that the crash site is especially hot, and even if it were, if the planet’s average temperature is higher than that of Earth, it could still be warm near the poles, even in the winter.
There is no indication of a moon, nor specific evidence of the absence of one, either. The novelisation, however, states that there are three so, depending on where they are in the sky at the time and how large they appear to be, the night may not be as dark as it might be away from a city on Earth.
The Doctor states that, on his previous visit, the planet had a population of only around a hundred people. This seems remarkably low and, if literally true, would mean that the inhabitants were virtually extinct. It’s also very difficult to reconcile with the little of their technology that we see, which would surely require a substantial population and resource base to develop in the first place. A way out of this is to assume he’s referring only to this locale; individual settlements are normally about this size and are distributed widely across the planet’s surface for some reason, but there are several of them.
Even then, some sort of population decline – perhaps over centuries – seems likely. This could even be deliberate, perhaps as a means of reducing their ecological footprint. The novelisation, on the other hand, postulates an ecological catastrophe, although it’s not one that makes scientific sense and, since it’s not directly supported by the TV serial, I’ll therefore pass on it here.
The natives are only ever referred to as ‘Dido people’ in the TV serial, although the novelisation opts for “Didoi” (playing on the name of the planet being Greek) and the spin-off media for “Didoans”. So far as we know, they are indistinguishable from humans.
The cave where the TARDIS materialises has an exit that leads to a cliff ledge overlooking the village and crash site, although it’s not high enough for a fall to be particularly dangerous. A second passage leads deeper into the mesa, past a trapped wall and the entrance to the Hall of Judgement.
Why the trap is there is difficult to say, since it can hardly have been built by Bennett (although he may have repaired it) and it’s not obvious why the Dido people would want to prevent access to the Hall from the difficult direction, but the not from the easy one. It consists of a series of sharp blades that spring from the wall if anyone uses a nearby ring as a handhold while traversing the ledge, either stabbing the victim or pushing them into the lair of a sand monster… which, since it’s apparently herbivorous doesn’t seem much of a threat. Perhaps, when the trap was first made, something fiercer was kept in the lower section and whatever barrier stopped it wandering off has since broken or decayed.
Speaking of the sand monster, apart from being a herbivore, we are also told that it is diurnal, using the cave as a sleeping place. It accesses the cave through a separate tunnel that comes out near the bottom of the cliff face and which may not be tall enough for humans to stand up in. Given its lack of hind legs, the monster is slow-moving and may look scary but seems to be pretty harmless and tameable. But, again, it seems reasonable to assume that actual predators live in the desert somewhere, even if we don’t see any.
The People’s Hall of Judgement is the remaining location, where the final showdown occurs. It’s here that the Dido people dress up in costumes with insect-like masks and fake claws on their hands and feet – the relevant robes are kept in a box here. It’s a sacred place, probably with some other chambers off of it that allow for the locals to set up the ambush in the serial.
Scenario
The story as told in the serial is straightforward, partly because the Doctor figures out what’s going on at an early point. An issue with running it as a game is making sure that the PCs have any reason to leave the cave through the long, dangerous route with the trap rather than just walking out the front. In the serial, they have to do this because they get split up and Koquillion destroys the cave entrance while Barbara is still outside. This may be harder to arrange with a group of PCs, but one way might be to have them spot Koquillion at the end of the exit tunnel and have him collapse it before they reach him – or have any reason to shoot him.
But even so – or if the tunnel is already blocked/nonexistent before the PCs get there – we still need some reason for them simply not to leave. Without being split up as a motive, a possibility here is to have them already aware of the crashed ship by picking up a distress signal so that they know there is somebody out there in need of rescuing. Alternatively, the PCs might need something that they can only get from the village or some other nearby location and only coincidentally find the crashed ship.
It's easy enough to justify why a group might want to visit Dido in settings that don’t rely on time machines turning up at random. They could have picked up the distress call in space, or they could even be the rescue ship. They could also be there by coincidence, exploring a world that’s largely been ignored by Earth up to this point, whether for untapped resources, scientific curiosity, or whatever else might motivate them.
But this creates a different problem: if the PCs are beaming down to the surface or landing a shuttlecraft/spaceship then they’re not going to start off inside the cave. (They might in something like Stargate SG-1, but we’d then have to explain how they know there is anyone to rescue). In such a setting, the plot as written would be largely circumvented; they’d just rescue/beam up the castaways and Bennett would probably get away with his scheme.
The way around this is to give the PCs some reason to stick around on the planet long enough to have to explore it and not immediately rescue Vicki and Bennett. (This is harder to achieve if they have Star Trek transporters and a large crew in orbit, so you’d probably also need to have something that forces the PCs to land and take off using a shuttlecraft instead). The reason could be related to the PCs' motive for visiting Dido in the first place, if they’re not specifically there to rescue people.
For instance, if there’s some reason to explore the village nearby it’s easy enough to drop clues about the cave system having importance to the locals so that the PCs want to explore that too, as well as to drop hints that Bennett’s story may not be accurate. If they’re on the planet to prospect for minerals, the caves are an even more obvious target, although this may eventually lead to an encounter with the Dido people who don’t want them there.
If they are rescuers, whether heading to Dido on the trail of the lost ship or only picking up the distress call while passing through (refuelling at a gas giant, say) then we can add one or two other survivors. If those others have headed off in search of food or other resources, and haven’t returned, then the PCs are going to have to go looking for them, and the caves once again present themselves as a possible place to look – although, for example, another oasis further off might also work. Here, unless these extra survivors are working with Bennett, he either has to be confident they don’t know he was under suspicion of murder before the crash… or he has secretly killed or trapped them all, and it takes the PCs some while to find them and have a chance to deduce what’s happened.
It would also be fitting, in a game, to add some further traps and side passages in the cave system, as well as some genuinely dangerous creatures. The same applies should it come to a final showdown with Koquillion/Bennett; since one person alone might not be much of a threat to a party of PCs, he could have trapped some local predators that he can set on them if he’s found out. Certainly, having the Dido people turn up and save the day, as in the original, would be anticlimactic in a typical game.
Although there must be far more to the planet than we see, the fact that it’s almost entirely uninhabited may limit the options for new stories here beyond wilderness exploration. A mission could be sent to the planet to try and make peace with the locals, something that would be complicated by Bennett having killed off a large proportion of them and then defiled the Hall of Judgement. But it’s perhaps notable that the only sequel to this in the spin-off media, The Crash of the UK-201, focuses on prior events on the spaceship and has little to do with the planet.
Rules
The only local technology we see is the demolition device Koquillion uses to collapse the tunnel. This indicates a technological level that’s slightly beyond what we have on present-day Earth, or that has developed down a different path but still isn’t, on average below us. This is TL8 in both Traveller and GURPS, and 5 in Doctors & Daleks. We know very little about Dido society, but it’s hard to believe that such a small population would have much in the way of formal government, although the fact that they have a Hall of Judgement implies that they aren’t entirely without one either.
Taking the Doctor’s statement about the population size as literally true, this would give Dido a Traveller UWP of something like
We can also address the unnamed construction tool. Koquillion doesn’t use this as a weapon, partly because he doesn’t need to and probably because that’s not what it’s designed for, but it’s hard to argue that it wouldn’t work as such in a pinch. (One could, after all, attack someone with a blowtorch or a chainsaw, and that’s not what they’re for, either). We can assume that it does similar damage to a hand grenade, but is an aimed weapon with short range, a narrow focus, and rather unwieldy for its size.
Savage Worlds
Range Damage AP RoF Shots Min ST Weight
3/6/12 3d6 - 1 5 d6 4 Heavy weapon
GURPS
Damage Acc Range Weight RoF Shots ST Bulk Rcl
6d cr - 5/10 3 1 5 10 -2 1
BRP
Base Dmg Attk Special Range Hnds HP S/D Mal Ammo Enc
05% 4D6 1/2 knockback 5 2 15 9/5 98-00 5 1.5
In addition to this, we will need a description of the effects of the trap and stats for Sandy the Sand Monster. The former is straightforward, just being stabby sword blades that need to be dodged or avoided. The latter is a slow-moving herbivore that can be easily tamed with offers of food but is probably dangerous if enraged – perhaps about as much so as a wild boar, which you wouldn’t want to tangle with unarmed, but wouldn’t be much of a threat to a forewarned PC with a gun.
Since the spaceship has crashed, we don’t need anything for that beyond, at most, some deck plans. For what it’s worth though, its size and function make it a close match for a Traveller M-class subsidised liner.
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