As with An Unearthly Child, the differing settings means that my coverage of this story will be split into two posts. This one covers the first three episodes, focussing on the alien world where it all starts off.
Where & When
The first two episodes are set on the planet Aridius. This is probably located somewhere in Earth’s galaxy, but even that isn’t certain, given the limited information. The story appears to be set not long after the events of The Dalek Invasion of Earth from the Daleks’ perspective, since they are trying to get revenge for that defeat. Assuming they haven’t travelled through time to get to Aridius in the first place, this places the story in the late 2160s or early 2170s, although the lack of connection to Earth means that this doesn’t really matter.
Setting
Aridius has, as one might expect, a breathable Earthlike atmosphere (the Doctor says “high oxygen” but that’s probably relative to places like Vortis, rather than Earth). Unusually, however, we’re told it has a slightly higher gravity than Earth. There’s no actual evidence for this in the story, so it’s probably meant to be a couple of percentage points or something, although if we’re transplanting it to a game milieu where we’d expect gravity to change more significantly, this is an opportunity to do that.
On the planet, the TARDIS arrives in what’s referred to as the Segaro Desert. Normally, there would be no reason to assume that the entire planet is like this; worlds like Xeros probably do have oceans somewhere. But, here, we’re told that the seas of Aridius have all dried up, leaving what’s genuinely a desert planet. Indeed, the Aridians are a semi-aquatic species, so it’s fair to say that if there were any habitable seas at all anywhere on the world, that’s where they would be. At best, there may be inhospitable salt lakes in deep, sheltered, spots but even that seems unlikely.
Aridius does not have any moon that we can see, but, eleven years before the debut of Tatooine, it does have two suns. Since they appear together in the sky, giving regular night and day periods, it’s likely that Aridius is in what’s technically called a P-type orbit. That is to say, the two stars are close to one another at the centre of the system, and the planet orbits them both as if they were a single object.
We also know that the day is unusually short, compared with ours on Earth. It isn’t stated by how much this is, but we can make an estimate based on the fact that the explosion in the ruins happens at noon, and the Daleks deliver an ultimatum later the same day with a two-hour deadline ending at sunset. In between, the Doctor and Barbara have time for lunch and at least some introduction to the city, so this is probably one or two hours. This makes the total day length roughly twelve to sixteen hours, although it’s worth noting that, with two suns, the period of sunlight will be slightly longer than the period of darkness (the excess coming from an extended ‘twilight’ period when one sun is above the horizon but the other isn’t).
The most significant fact about the planet is, of course, the vanished seas… and unfortunately, the way this is described doesn’t make much scientific sense. What we are told happened is that, over the course of a thousand years, the planet moved closer to the binary star, and heated up, evaporating the oceans away. This has quite a few problems if we want to stick to something at least approaching real science.
For one, planets do not randomly change their orbits unless they are hit (or nearly hit) by a similarly-sized object. If, on the other hand, the planet were in an eccentric orbit, and regularly approached this close to the sun, it’s difficult to see how the seas would reform in the interim and last long enough for semi-aquatic aliens to evolve there. We can get around this by assuming that the Aridians are mistaken about the distance to the suns, and they are actually getting brighter, not closer. This could be due to either some long-term variability in one of them or to some change in the interstellar medium through which the system is passing, giving us something like an Ice Age in reverse. Or a combination of all these explanations could be in play.
A more serious problem comes when we consider how this is supposed to have evaporated the seas. Certainly, this can happen in localised desert regions where the rate of evaporation exceeds rainfall. The Dead Sea and the Great Salt Lake in Utah are examples of this, albeit not ones where the process was completed. On a larger scale, something similar happened to the Mediterranean around six million years ago. But this is much harder to imagine across an entire planet in merely a thousand years. (It took the Mediterranean 100,000 years and even then it didn’t entirely vanish). Unless, of course, the temperature is unsurvivably hot for humans, which it isn’t.
In any event, all that water has to have gone somewhere. In the case of places like the Dead Sea, that’s back into the planetary water cycle, where it falls as rain elsewhere, but that won’t work here; the planet would have to be shrouded in clouds of steam or the like, not with clear, sunny skies. Something could have stripped the atmosphere away, leaving the world like Mars… but what was left would be thin and probably unbreathable if that were the case. Conceivably, it’s all gone underground, since we know the planet must still have drinkable water on it somewhere or the Aridians and Mire Beasts alike would have died of thirst. But then, one has to explain how that happened.
One thing that might help is that it appears that the seas, at least in the region of the Segaro Desert, were very shallow to begin with. There are supposed to have been plants on the bottom, which means that sunlight could reach it, and explains how air-breathing Aridians could colonise it without much difficulty, rather than just living on boats or on the shoreline. So perhaps the planet wasn’t quite as wet as is implied, so it didn’t take as much as we’d think to tip it over the edge.
Nonetheless, we may be best off either handwaving it away and hoping nobody notices or coming up with something exotic and beyond the reach of current science. Or ditching the intended timescale, and saying that the process took millions of years, making the Aridians more desert-adapted than their look in the original story implies.
In any event, the landscape as shown in the serial consists of sand dunes and eroded rocky ridges, dotted with strange dark-coloured organic structures that we never see up close. These are described as resembling “frozen seaweed” although the skeletons of coral would seem a better fit. Other apparently dead plants or invertebrates are also seen but, if we’re going with Aridius having been a desert world for long enough for life to evolve to suit it, we might also decide that they aren’t actually dead. Since it’s an alien planet, there’s nothing to stop us taking ideas from real-world sea life to populate our desert – things can resemble shellfish or sea urchins externally without literally being them.
As one would expect, the desert is hot during the day, and relatively cold at night but it does not appear entirely inhospitable. We do see a sandstorm, which may be a regular occurrence. If this is, however, as intended, a dried up sea-bed, then a lot of the sand would actually be salt, making some of the terrain resemble the Bonneville Salt Flats of Utah.
This brings us to the Aridians and their city. In the story, this was originally built on the sea floor and is accessible via an airlock that now serves as a crude defensive barrier. The interior is carved from the rock, although perhaps partly using natural caves, with the visible architecture all made from cut stone. There is clearly some sort of illumination in the inhabited parts, probably electric lighting powered by an unseen generator.
The majority of the city is, however, abandoned. This suggests a population crash since the city was at its height. While it’s hard to imagine that the city is a thousand years old (technological development must have massively stalled if it is, given that it required the ability to construct airlocks when it was built) this fits with a general theme of the Aridians being a dying race. Whether or not the seas vanished in the last millennium, century-long regional droughts making things worse are entirely plausible, leading to a crash in whatever sort of agriculture they have, and allowing the mire beasts to become a more serious threat than they likely were before.
We don’t know how large the city is, although the fact that it’s described as such implies the original population was substantial. Even if 90% of it is now blocked off and given over to the mire beasts (and it might not be quite that much) there could still be enough left for several thousand inhabitants – although, for obvious reasons, we only see a small number. In addition to drinking water from subterranean sources, there must also be some form of agriculture here. The local food appears to be an odd-tasting paste, but they have to be making it from something. For that matter, the mire beasts must eat something when they aren’t eating Aridians, so there must be smaller creatures/vermin in the ruins, and fungi, detritus, or other edible matter for those to feed on.
There is also no indication that the one we see is the only surviving city on the planet. Others may have been abandoned altogether, of course, but there are likely many more, along with smaller surviving settlements or bases here and there. These would likely be spread across other formerly submerged deserts across the globe, although frequent sandstorms have likely rendered roads impractical, leaving contact limited. In between would be highlands above the original water line, on whose shores the Aridians may once have evolved. These are probably almost lifeless now, too inhospitable for sustained survival, and never of any interest to the locals anyway.
The city is never named, either, although it may be ‘Segaro’, with the surrounding desert named after it. The entrance is named the ‘Taltarian Airlock’, implying that there are (or were once) others; it might be the name of a city district, or of some figure from Aridian history. We don’t see much of the local culture, although we do learn that the Aridians are governed by a group of ‘elders’, so it’s an oligarchy rather than a democracy or monarchy. Those we see are very determined to do as ordered, implying a rigid hierarchy, but we don’t know how typical they are of the wider race.
We also have to address the third episode of the serial. The first part of this takes place in the present day (i.e. 1966) on the upper observation deck on the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building – then the tallest building in the world. Since the characters never leave the deck, there’s nothing further to be said about this setting, other than that it can easily be swapped for somewhere similar elsewhere in the world, and closer to our own present.
The second segment, however, takes place on 25th November 1872 about 8 km (5 miles) off the coast of Santa Maria, the southernmost island of the Azores. The abandonment of the Mary Celeste has been the subject of exaggeration, mystery-mongering, and outright fiction since shortly after its discovery – including a common mis-spelling of the name, that the series correctly avoids. The ship was 103 feet long and 25½ feet wide (31.3 by 7.8 metres), with a single deck, two masts, and a design very similar to that in the show. In addition to the captain, Benjamin Briggs, his wife Sarah, and their two-year-old daughter there were seven crew members on board.
In reality, the crew left the ship in an orderly fashion on the lifeboat, which then likely went adrift and never reached shore. The mystery is why they should do this when the ship was perfectly seaworthy, given that there were no signs of violence or piracy (several valuables left behind, for example, and the cargo untouched). We’ll never know the answer to that, although some of the more plausible theories include fumes from the cargo of spirit alcohol or faulty equipment leading them to believe the ship was sinking when it wasn’t. Everyone panicking and jumping overboard is more dramatic than the reality, even leaving Daleks out of it, but the real tale has been embellished enough down the years and changing the details isn’t necessarily an issue in a game.
Scenario
There’s nothing exceptional about Aridius that means it can’t be placed in any science fiction setting that has room for additional worlds. In some settings, however, the presence of a pre-spaceflight native species will mean that it should be protected, and off-world access limited – say, by a Prime Directive. If that's the case, we would have to justify why the PCs are there. One possibility is that they know that the Daleks (or their stand-in) are either already there or are about to be, and drastic measures are going to be necessary to avoid contamination far more severe than anything the PCs are likely to create.
It is, however, easier to set this up in a campaign that focuses on exploration, such that the PCs, like the characters in the story, have little idea what sort of world they’ve arrived on. The Aridians being hidden underground may help with this, depending on the quality of the scout ship’s scanning equipment, if any. And the problems disappear in settings like Stargate SG-1, both because of the portal method of transport and because worlds are assumed to have at least some past contact with the outside universe, or the gate wouldn’t be there.
The story in the serial sees the protagonists splitting up early on, with Ian and Vicki becoming trapped in the abandoned parts of the city while the Doctor and Barbara encounter the Aridians and end up being taken hostage. Only once they are reunited does the plot switch to trying to outwit the Daleks, and then only for long enough for them to escape. Splitting the party like this is generally not favoured, and, here, there’s no particular reason to suppose it will happen since the only apparent options are ‘explore the surroundings’ and ‘sunbathe’. PCs are unlikely to pick the latter, and if some of them did, they’d likely be more cautious about keeping in contact with the remainder. (And this assumes they haven’t got radios).
Even so, it’s not difficult to have the PCs explore the abandoned city, become trapped inside by the demolition at the entrance, and then have to either get out altogether or reach the inhabited sections. At which point, the Aridians can still capture them, providing for the escape section of the scenario.
Up until then, there are plenty of opportunities for wandering around inside the abandoned city that don’t appear in the original. There could easily be hazards there even in addition to the mire beasts and whatever it might be that the mire beasts are feeding on. Simply navigating past the rockfall caused by the demolition could be a significant challenge. If they do reach the inhabited section, a possibility is for them to encounter friendly Aridian citizens willing to help them before police officers (or the equivalent) turn up to demand they be turned over as hostages to the Daleks. All of which introduces more complexity than the two TV episodes have space for.
The Daleks are, of course, also a key element of the plot. In a different setting, we would likely want to replace them with something else – Tal Shiar Romulans, Kaa, loyalist Jaffar, or whatever. The only real requirements are that they be sufficiently ruthless and that, if we’re following the original plot, they already have some reason to want revenge on the PCs. Indeed, for this story, they don’t need to be any kind of conquering army, just some group that’s larger than the PCs – a band of Vargr corsairs or group of Solomani agents would work in Traveller, for instance.
As for opportunities for new stories in the same setting, the main focus would likely be on the fact that the Aridians are a dying civilisation. Even if the seas haven’t literally dried up in the last thousand years, they may well be facing a centuries-long drought due to changes in solar output that have decimated their population and allowed the mire beasts to run rampant.
One can easily imagine smaller settlements out in the deserts that face disaster… perhaps they need to trek to some safer place (the one last body of water, in what was once an ocean trench?), or they need to recover something from an ancient ruin that can assist them. We would almost certainly want to add other hostile creatures to the local fauna, even if the mire beasts are the main danger, and the desert can be a hostile place (as we saw in Marco Polo). Or PCs from off-world might have the means to save the Aridians but have to contend with hidebound and dishonest elders who mistrust them and seek to twist things to their own ends.
There is less that can be done with the events of the third episode, especially out of the context of a time travel game. The New York segment is basically a protracted gag that’s all about one particular NPC. The Mary Celeste segment is also played as a comedy, but at least has the protagonists taking more of an active role – even if most of the action, such as it is, happens after they’ve left. While there is potential in the story of this particular ship, this isn’t it from the perspective of a game that focuses on PC actions rather than what some NPCs do when the villains turn up.
Which isn’t to say that the theme of the PCs being chased by some superior force that they can’t fight back against on their own isn’t a good one. It’s the basis of a fair chunk of the modern version of Battlestar Galactica, for one thing. But we probably need to give the PCs slightly more time to scope out each new system/time period/etc. that they arrive in to see if, this time, they have found something that can aid them against their pursuers. Otherwise, you’ve got a series of dice rolls (and a good plan for what happens if they fail enough rolls and get caught) and not much else. With visits as brief as that in the serial, there isn’t room for much more than a comic interlude or desperate scramble, and those are not things you’d want to stretch out too long without resolution.
Rules
There are few specific rules decisions to be made in this serial, assuming that we already have the details of our setting’s space and/or time travel worked out. We do need stats for both the Aridians and the mire beasts although, apart from some aquatic adaptations that are useless in a desert, the former are not very different from humans. A mire beast is essentially a giant octopus that lives on dry land, although clearly, one can scale that for whatever is appropriate to the PC’s abilities and the level of challenge you want them to pose.
There is little to tell us the intended tech level of Aridian society. We know that they are sufficiently advanced to live underwater even though they breathe air and that they have blast cap explosives – as shown by the use of a blasting machine with a plunger. In the absence of anything obviously more sophisticated, such as computers, this implies a 20th-century level of technology. This is 4 in Doctors & Daleks, 6 in Traveller, and 7 in GURPS. We don’t see any Aridian weapons, which may explain why they are doing so badly against the mire beasts, but if this guess of the tech level is correct, they should be ballistic firearms or (for flavour) harpoon guns.
The UWP of Aridius in Traveller is something like
X-960636-6.
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