Where & When
The story is explicitly set in the year 4000, on the planet Kembel. This is an unclaimed world not directly controlled or claimed by any external power. The date is notably later than that of any of the earlier Hartnell serials, and The Daleks' Master Plan refers to the fact that technology has advanced since the time of the latter half of The Chase. Later stories will place it as (probably) happening during the early years of the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire, which reaches its height a little over a century later.
Setting
Kembel is located within our own galaxy and close enough to the sphere of Earth’s influence at the time for freighters to be passing nearby and for the pilot of the ship in the story not to think of it as being on an unusual route. On the other hand, the alien ships can visit the planet with a reasonable expectation of not being observed. Most of them are apparently correct in this belief, but one does get spotted (and not by any vessel with especially sophisticated sensors), so this isn’t due to some inherent aspect of FTL travel, such as hyperspace. Taken together, these facts imply that Kembel is near the edge of human space but not entirely beyond it. It may also be close to the edge of the galaxy.
We’ll see more of 40th-century Earth government and society in The Daleks' Master Plan, but here all we learn is that there’s a Space Security Service that, among other things, gives its agents a “licence to kill”. This fits with the idea of the Second Earth Empire or some similar centralised polity, although its size is less apparent. The humans’ spaceship bears a UN designation, which gives an idea of what the writers at the time thought the unified Earth government would have evolved from, although it also has a smaller logo indicating that it’s British, so our modern countries still exist as subnational entities.
Malpha describes the attack plan as involving the capture of Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and the ‘Moon colonies’ but does not mention any other planets. That implies they expect minimal or zero resistance from Mercury, the asteroid belt, or the planets beyond Jupiter, which is easy enough to justify. Instead, what’s notable is that they expect the conquest of Venus and Jupiter to involve significant effort. The latter may refer to colonies on the Jovian moons, but Venus is a different matter; perhaps it has been terraformed or (more realistically, given the timescale) there are substantial stations in orbit around it for some reason.
What’s perhaps more surprising, however, is that Malpha doesn’t mention any human-controlled worlds beyond our solar system. We know that they exist, not just because we are hundreds of years after the attempted settlement of Mechanus (which admittedly failed), but because of the existence of civilian space freighters this far out. They have to be travelling somewhere, and, of course, we see an off-world human settlement in The Daleks' Master Plan. Given its unusual nature, it’s hard to believe that it’s unique.
Here, it’s possible that Terry Nation didn’t put much world-building thought into that particular line, but we could perhaps justify it as implying a very centralised human population and/or defence system so that the Daleks only really need to take out the solar system to obtain dominion over the rest of human space. In any event, we can easily change this in a game setting, creating a more widespread plan that makes it easier to justify the Daleks’ belief that they need an alliance to defeat humanity – even given the presence of the superweapon we later discover they will be employing.
For what it’s worth, the Daleks' own empire is stated to consist of over a hundred planets by this time, conquered over at least five centuries.
Turning to Kembel itself, we are told that this has not been colonised because it is “the most dangerous planet in the [known] universe”. Quite why is never explicitly stated, although Lowery seems to think it is due to the native animal life, which is as good an explanation as any. Having said which, the only dangerous things we see on the planet are the Varga plants, and not only are they not native, but Cory didn’t know they were there. So they aren’t the supposed threat.
The area of Kembel on which the ship has landed is a dense jungle. Since this is also where the Daleks have chosen to set up their base, and they don’t have any particular reason to hide once they have reached the planet, we can assume that the rest of the world is no more hospitable than this. It’s possible, for instance, that most of the planet is covered by water with just a chain of jungle-covered islands or mini-continents near the equator. This would also explain why Cory happened to land the spaceship close to the hidden base when he had an entire planetary surface to choose from.
The jungle has a rich wildlife, judging from the near-constant sounds, although, for obvious reasons, we only see the Varga plants. Lowery finds the sounds of at least one of the creatures frightening, although to modern ears, they just sound like birds and monkeys, so presumably, he has heard stories indicating that they are much worse. In a game that focuses on the planet more widely, we can probably go to town with all sorts of invented carnivorous alien ‘monsters’, taking inspiration from other sources where necessary.
Whatever they are, the Varga plants and/or the Daleks seem to be keeping them effectively at bay.
The humans’ spaceship is stated to belong to “Deep Space Force Group 1”, which, from context, is a civilian agency of some kind – its normal mission is unclear, beyond the fact that Lowery thinks they’re going to rendezvous with a space freighter. The ship looks small from the exterior view, and we only see the control room on the inside. Since they have to repair the drive from outside rather than from an engine room, there may be nothing else inside other than a shared cabin space. In the original episode, the crew even wear spacesuits, suggesting that at least temporary exposure to vacuum is a common element or risk of their job.
The ship has a crew of three and looks cramped even for that. This makes it equivalent conceptually to an unarmed Star Trek runabout, although otherwise, there are few points of similarity. In many systems and settings, the closest equivalent is going to be the smallest FTL craft available – although we’re not quite as small as some of the interstellar craft in Star Wars.
The ship does not appear to have a name, and the freighter is only known by the designation ‘XM-2’, so we’re still thinking of starships (“rockets”) as being more like modern aircraft than seaborne vessels.
The only other location in the story is the Dalek “city”, although this seems a rather grandiose term for what little we see. It has sufficient facilities to allow for at least seven spaceships to land and possibly more, if the Daleks are planning to launch their invasion from there. There must be at least military support facilities at the base, but all we see in Mission to the Unknown is the conference room.
This hosts the ‘Galactic Council’, a temporary alliance of the alien powers ruling ‘the Outer Galaxies’. There are six delegates in Mission to the Unknown, but seven – and not including all of the original six – in The Daleks' Master Plan. Each seems to represent a separate galaxy-ruling power. That’s eight or nine Outer Galaxies in total, depending on whether the Daleks’ home galaxy (specifically described as ‘the ninth galaxy’) counts as one of them. Conceivably, there are more if some had the common sense not to join the alliance or don’t have anything close to a single ruling polity.
Some of these may be dwarf or satellite galaxies but if not, it’s more than the number of major galaxies in the Local Group and its closest neighbour put together – especially since we’re told in The Daleks' Master Plan that Andromeda isn’t one of them. This would require the span of galaxies included to cover a distance of at least 3.5 megaparsecs (11,500 light years) out from our own. This, of course, is a far larger scale than most SF RPG settings cover, and it’s far from clear that the writers of the show at the time really grasped what a ‘galaxy’ was and how large they are. (This may seem odd today, but the concept was only taken seriously by professional astronomers from the 1920s and may not yet have percolated down to writers of BBC sci-fi by the ‘60s).
Obviously, attempting to match individual ‘outer galaxies’ to real-world counterparts becomes increasingly speculative the further we move away from our own. What is the numbering system, and which dwarf galaxies are we discounting? All we can say is that they must include galaxies from multiple different groups, unless we’re including some particularly small galactic satellites. A possible exception is Galaxy Ten, because that’s stated in The Daleks’ Master Plan to be the largest; the Pinwheel Galaxy (M101) is a prime contender for that honour.
Of course, if we’re moving the story to a different setting, the fact that the original had the alien powers being extra-galactic rather than from distant star systems in our galaxy is easy enough to ignore.
Scenario
From an RPG perspective, the plot as written has an obvious problem: it’s a TPK. Moreover, all the TPK is doing is setting up The Daleks’ Master Plan, so it isn’t even a complete story. Essentially, we have to deal with this story as if it’s the cold open to a longer one, rather than a scenario in its own right. There are at least three approaches to this.
The simplest method is to have it happen “off-screen”, having the PCs come across the aftermath in the scenario proper. An alternative, perhaps more useful with an extended teaser like this one than it would normally be, is to have it as a “cutaway”, with the players playing disposable characters that they know will likely die. The only issue here, assuming the players are okay with the idea, is to ensure that their temporary characters get far enough to leave the clue behind for the proper PCs but still die before they can ‘win’. Which probably isn’t that hard in this case, since you just have to have the Daleks turn up at the right moment.
The third approach is to incorporate this into the main story. That is, the PCs are the ones who discover the Dalek plot and follow up on it directly, rather than discovering the evidence left behind by their predecessors. In the original story, Cory uncovers the Daleks’ secret plans because they helpfully broadcast them over the PA system into the surrounding jungle, but there are surely other ways to achieve the same result.
As to why the PCs are there, it could be that this is for the same reason as Cory in the story. That is, they are investigating a sighting of a Dalek (or whatever) ship where there shouldn’t be one. That makes the most sense if they represent some larger agency, such as the Space Patrol, the Imperial Navy, or Starfleet. If they’re the more typical random group of wanderers, we could change things so that Cory gets his message off, but whatever he’s using isn’t long-range enough to reach any further than the PCs’ ship. Once they reach Kembel, he’s already dead, and we head straight into The Daleks’ Master Plan, only with added Vargas.
However, since the planet is remote and potentially interesting, a third possibility is to have the PCs be part of a survey team that’s only there by coincidence. Assuming they know anything of Kembel at all, we’d certainly expect them to have the sort of combat support we’d find in a PC group since the wildlife is supposed to be very dangerous.
If we’re transposing the basic idea to a different setting, we need to decide who the stand-ins are for the Daleks themselves and their alien allies. It’s worth noting here that the target of the invasion doesn’t have to be Earth, just somewhere that the PCs care about. If your game is set in the Spinward Marches, for instance, Regina would probably do.
On the other hand, having Earth be the target maintains the epic feel that we probably want for The Daleks’ Master Plan. In the standard Traveller setting, this means that the Dalek-substitutes are probably the Solomani, which adds a twist. Star Trek would require less modification; it isn’t as if the show itself hasn’t thrown major threats at the heart of the Federation before.
We’d want to make the threat credible, however, and the Borg, who are the most obvious candidates, probably won’t fit well with this story. Depending on our precise setting, we could use The Dominion or some descendant of it, but a previously unknown foe could also work in this instance – perhaps something like Species 8472, but not actually Species 8472. Similar principles may apply in other settings.
One of the features of this story, however, is that the Daleks have allied with other extra-galactic powers. There is intended to be some variety amongst these races, although little of it comes out in the TV show. Malpha, for instance, is supposedly a silicon-based lifeform and likely intended to look something like Marvel’s The Thing. Among the other delegates, one breathes chlorine, two are part plant, and one is apparently intended to be gaseous, although you’d be hard put to tell that from the costume.
In a different setting, there is no need for the delegates to be galactic rulers, or to come from beyond our galaxy at all – beyond ‘known space’ will do the trick. If we do want some known races from the setting thrown into the mix, the odder or more distant ones are the best bet – Breen, Tholians, or even Kazons might fit in Star Trek. But it has to be said that, at least in the original, none of the delegates do much that's interesting; we could certainly change that, but if we don’t, odd-looking unknown races will suffice.
As for using Kembel as a setting for other stories, all we really have is that it’s supposedly inhabited by dangerous creatures. The Varga plants are the only ones we see in the original; they’re not supposed to be native, but we could always ignore that. This leads to a ‘monster hunt’ type of scenario, perhaps seeking to capture something exotic for a client, dodging the Vargas along the way. The monsters in question could be almost anything without contradicting the little we know of the planet, and you’re mostly going to have to make up the details from scratch.
Rules
Taking our above assumption about most of Kembel being water-covered (albeit possibly with super-dangerous sharks or something) and noting that, as usual, the atmosphere and gravity appear Earthlike, the Traveller UWP of the world could be X-869000-0… at least on the official star-charts that don’t know about the secret Dalek base and accompanying spaceport. And if “the most dangerous planet in the galaxy” isn’t worth at least an Amber Zone, I don’t know what is.
Judging from this story alone, the tech level of the human part of the setting is standard space opera – sufficient for small FTL craft but with nothing to indicate it’s any more than that. However, The Daleks' Master Plan will make a few nods to the technology being more sophisticated than that of Mechanus, which already had FTL craft. So, in systems with fine gradations in futuristic technology, we could place this quite high up. So, while it's probably the "standard" sci-fi TL of 10 in GURPS, it could be 13 or 14 in Traveller, and at least 7, possibly even 8, in Doctors & Daleks.
In fact, we don’t see any especially interesting technology in this story. Cory is armed with what appears to be a slugthrower pistol rather than a beam weapon… although this could be a gauss pistol, needler pistol, or similar high-tech counterpart. A possible exception is the distress signalling device, which launches a box containing an audio recording to escape velocity from a planetary surface. If we want to keep that ‘as is’, we can presume the box also includes a transmitter that, for some reason, won’t work well through an atmosphere, because nobody’s ever going to find the thing otherwise. But we can also replace it with more regular distress call technology, so long as it isn’t long-range enough to reach anyone other than the PCs… or we can be confident it won’t get used.
One thing we will need rules for are the Varga plants. We are told these are difficult to damage, at least with whatever Cory’s pistol is, but given that they are large shrubs, that’s not surprising. Flamethrowers, grenades, or even powerful shotguns would probably be more effective than a pistol that might just clip a branch off.
Despite being plants, they do move, but very slowly, by hauling themselves along with their roots. Sticking to what’s on screen, this is below the minimum Movement Rate in most game systems. They aren’t, for instance, even moving 1 ft. per round in 5E terms, let alone a Move or Pace of 1 in GURPS or Savage Worlds. This means that it’s more of a special effect than a regular Movement Rate – if you stick around long enough in one place, they might sneak up on you, but a casual walking pace will get you away from them.
The Vargas are also, of course, the first in a long line of classic Who monsters that turn the victim into versions of themselves. There should be some sort of DEX saving throw (or equivalent) to avoid being scratched, and even minimal armour will protect the wearer if it covers the relevant body part – most systems aren’t specific about that, so some logic will have to be applied. Then there are further saving throws to resist being poisoned, going mad, and eventually turning into a giant fluffy cactus, but the details of that are beyond the scope of this post, relying heavily on the system in question.
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