For our purposes here, however, the real point of significance is different again: this is the show’s first true base-under-siege story. That will become a standard trope of the series going forward, and it’s notable here because it’s a different style of story than the exploratory adventures that Hartnell is better known for and less of a fit for what I’ve been doing. That leaves the question of whether I will move on to Troughton open (there will certainly be a lengthy pause), but until that’s decided, let’s take a look at the setting of the final First Doctor story.
Where & When
The story is set in the “near future” of December 1986. It takes place at Snowcap Base, Antarctica, which is described as being at the South Pole. While this is generally interpreted as meaning the literal geographic pole, since ‘Antarctica’ is never mentioned by name, it may be only a euphemism for the continent in general.
Setting
While the setting is reasonably well defined in the TV serial, if we are converting it to a game, there are some decisions to be made about how closely we stick to it, even if we’re using a universe that approximates to the original (rather than, say, adapting it for a standard space opera RPG). Firstly, there’s the date.
1986 is meant to sound futuristic, being 20 years ahead of the time of broadcast. To us today, it sounds anything but, which gives us at least three options to play with. We could stick with the original date, although we’re probably leaning heavily into ‘alternate universe’ territory if we do this, unless we seriously alter the technology seen in the episode. We could also stick with the idea of it being futuristic, and just adjust the date accordingly (to 2045, as of this writing), which makes it easier to handwave away the Z-bomb and the busy space program.
A middle ground where we set the story more or less in the present day is also perfectly reasonable, since the plot doesn’t really require anything very futuristic, but isn’t supposed to feel like four decades' worth of retro, either. The Z-bomb is perhaps the only real issue here, and, as we’ll see, that isn’t necessarily as big a problem as it might appear (even ignoring the possibility of one secretly existing in a suitable game world).
The second question to consider is where Snowcap Base is within Antarctica. The phrasing in the episode implies we’re literally at the South Pole, and this has been confirmed in licensed works since. But, oddly, it doesn’t fit with what we see – just with what we hear everyone say. Notably, for instance, the panoramic view of the area around the base shows rocky hills or mountains, a large glacier, and what looks very much like a coastline in the distance. If that’s the case, Snowcap is actually on the edge of the Antarctic continent, not near its centre.
This has advantages. For one, since the base is supposed to be underground, it allows for it to be dug into the rock. The way that the base crew talk about recovering the Zeus capsule after ‘splashdown’ implies that they’re close to the coast – although it’s possible that they are using ‘we’ in a general sense for their organisation and aren’t expecting to do it personally. It also explains a couple of comments about penguins being nearby, although these are said in a jokey tone, and may not be intended seriously.
Another factor is that it’s a better fit for the weather that we see and, from a gaming perspective, makes it far easier for the PCs to survive without specialist survival gear, so long as they have good warm-weather clothing. It’s December, so about as warm as Antarctica ever gets, which, along much of the coast, means somewhere around -3°C (26°F). So, yes, absolutely, you will want insulated jackets and trousers, worn over multiple layers of other clothing beneath. But, if we assume reasonable precautions, it’s more of an inconvenience to PCs than a serious risk, albeit one amplified by the blizzard and accompanying snow and wind chill. (It’s said to be “force 8”, which means that it’s noticeably hard to walk against, and you could be hit by flying debris were there anything around to break). We can also note that, since it’s December south of the Antarctic Circle, there is no night, so the average temperature may not change much over a 24-hour period.
If we do go with this option, there is also a lot of coast to choose from. It’s where most Antarctic bases actually are, but they’re far enough apart that adding an extra, fictional one won’t involve displacing anything that exists in the real world.
Having said all of this, there is something undeniably cool about being at the Pole itself. This is, however, a different environment. Here, there are no snow-covered hills such as we see in the serial, just a flat expanse of ice around 2 km (1.2 miles) thick. Which means that either the base is on the surface, or it’s tunnelled into ice rather than rock, which doesn’t sound like a good idea when you need to keep the place warm enough to inhabit comfortably and keep lots of computers in. And there is a real base at the pole – Scott-Amundsen, which is run by the US and has a summer population of around 150. So, we need to either replace that or at least morph it into something functionally more like Snowcap.
If we do place the story here, we need to acknowledge that, because we’re not only further south (obviously) but also at a higher altitude, it’s going to be quite a bit colder. Again, it’s the middle of summer, but in this case, that means day-round temperatures of about -27°C (-17°F). This is ‘breath freezing on your face and you really need goggles’ sort of weather, so the kind of regular cold-weather clothing we see people wearing in the story just wouldn’t cut it if you want to avoid rapid frostbite.
On the bright side, the centre of Antarctica is a desert, so, perhaps surprisingly, it doesn’t snow very much. In a typical year, you could expect a grand total of around 3 cm (1.3 inches) of snow, which is clearly not what we see in the story. Although, admittedly, once it does snow, that snow isn’t going anywhere since the warmest temperature ever recorded at the Pole is still well below freezing.
Regardless of where it might be, Snowcap Base is intended as a rocket control site, something that seems fairly odd to place in Antarctica, not least because orbits that take rockets over the poles are expensive and difficult to achieve, and so are only used for narrow purposes. It’s underground, which is also strange, but is easier to ignore without making significant changes to the story; it’s probably just to make it cheaper for the show to depict from the outside and to explain the lack of windows on the sets. Views of the surface are obtained through periscopes that probably need to be dug out of the snow regularly if the sort of storm we see is common.
We see a total of 20 personnel at the base, many of them non-speaking extras. This includes the 3-star general in charge of the base, two scientists, nine technicians, and eight soldiers, the latter being led by a major. A medical officer is also mentioned, but never seen, and it seems likely that there must be some other crew, even though we are told that the base is heavily automated.
The base is powered by a nuclear reactor, although it also has fuel tanks, perhaps to operate snowmobiles that we don’t see, or just to fuel the rockets. We are told that the base can survive for one hour on emergency batteries if the reactor goes down. While there won’t be instant death once that hour is up, conditions would probably get grim rapidly if the base is really at the pole, although the rock insulation and slightly warmer climate would provide a longer grace period at the coast.
Although we don’t see it, a side exit is mentioned in addition to the main entrance. Within the base, we see barracks, the missile silo, a storeroom, and the mission control room. The latter has an observation room off to one side, which will be useful for any PCs wanting to plot out of earshot of the base crew, much as it is for the protagonists in the story. There must be many more rooms than this, but we only see a projection room, probably attached to a small theatre showing movies to keep the troops entertained during their lonely tour of duty.
In the real world, military activity is banned by international treaty in Antarctica. This is obviously not the case in the story. In addition to the fact that there are armed soldiers, and the base is commanded by a US general, we are told that it is defended with ‘Cobra anti-missiles’, although they never get used.
Zeus 4 is a two-man rocket, and the fact that it requires a splashdown to return to Earth suggests a non-reusable rocket like the old Mercury or Saturn V models. However, nothing much is changed by making it a space shuttle or some more modern equivalent. It is described as an ‘atmosphere testing probe’ and is intended to orbit 980 miles (1,580 km) above the Earth’s surface. This would give it an orbital period of just under two hours.
This is far higher than the space shuttle or the ISS, and thus well above what we’d normally consider to be the ‘atmosphere’. A more likely height would be around 530 miles (850 km), where polar orbiting weather satellites operate – giving them an orbit that’s just long enough to see each area of the Earth at the same time of day, due to the planet’s rotation.
The Zeus 5 rescue ship is stated to have twice the energy reserves of the Zeus 4, but it only has a single pilot. It is launched from Woomera in Australia. That it can be prepped at such short notice indicates an active space program, in the context of which, we’re told that there have been several manned missions to the Moon, which, unlike those in our world, are still ongoing as of the 1980s.
Although International Space Command is headed by a civilian secretary-general, it seems to be a largely military organisation. We can say this because Snowcap Base, in addition to being a tracking station for spacecraft on polar orbits, also houses the Z-Bomb, and General Cutler doesn’t think he needs any authorisation to fire it from an individual national government.
Quite what the intended purpose of the Z-Bomb is is difficult to determine. We are told that there are “two or three” placed at strategic positions across the globe, and that any one of them could destroy all life on Earth. A possible analogy here is the real-world concept of the ‘cobalt bomb’, a nuclear weapon that distributes slow-decaying, but still deadly, radioactive isotopes across the world, thus ensuring that anyone sheltering in bunkers will starve to death before it's safe to venture outside. Although this is perfectly possible, nobody has ever built such a thing since it’s hard to see why anyone would want to use a weapon designed to kill off their own side as well as the enemy.
Of course, in the story, they want to fire it at Mondas, which, while it’s probably not a very intelligent idea, is no crazier than Mutually Assured Destruction, and arguably less so. In theory, if the bomb goes off on another planet, Earth could be safe, but various characters point out that there is a high risk of radioactive debris showering down on the Mondas-facing side of the Earth, destroying “all life” there. Plus, there’s a smaller risk of Mondas exploding “like a sun” which would presumably destroy life on the other side of Earth as well.
As plans go, it’s not a great one.
At any rate, we are told that the Z-Bomb is mounted on a Demeter rocket. This is presumably like an ICBM launcher, although with the capability of reaching space. It doesn’t need to fire its engines all the way to Mondas (although that might help), just to do so for long enough to reach escape velocity from Earth and then fall into the other world’s gravity field. It’s highly radioactive, and the silo is stated to be the deepest room in the base.
The upper half of the silo is shielded, although it’s unclear how that could be achieved. If the radioactive source only emitted alpha rays and were denser than air, that would do the trick, since you’d have to breathe it in or otherwise absorb it into the body for it to be dangerous. This, however, seems unlikely. Cobalt-60 emits both beta and gamma rays, so physical shielding, such as the radiation suits we see the people in the lower half of the room using, will be required. However, a label on the bomb/rocket indicates that it uses tritium, albeit possibly amongst other things. Tritium also emits beta rays, and, moreover, it’s both lighter than air and able to leak through most regular seals.
It's possible that Barclay is just lying about the risk to get Ben into the room, but, in-game, we’re probably better off having the PCs come up with a scheme that requires them to get hold of radiation suits.
The six-exaton elephant in the room is Mondas itself. We are told that this was once a twin planet of Earth, but that it drifted away into space and is only returning now to gather energy for its depleted reserves. Needless to say, this makes no sense. Planets don’t just wander around across the solar system, and if they somehow did, they would be visible from Earth well before they could affect the altitude of spaceships. Indeed, in the case of an object the size of our own planet, it would probably be visible before it crossed the orbit of Pluto, even if we weren’t specifically looking for it.
Fortunately, there is an easy way around this if we are adapting the story to some other science fiction setting or just want to avoid awkward questions. While Mondas is an existential threat in the story and the subject of the serial’s title, we never go there, so its details are largely irrelevant. We can, in other words, easily replace it with a giant spaceship, and the plot doesn’t really change.
How big it might be depends on the setting we are using. In Star Wars, for example, mobile space stations the size of a small moon are self-evidently a possibility. In others, we could have a giant ark ship full of Cybermen, that could either appear out of hyperspace or have some sort of cloaking device to hide it. If the ship is a hollowed-out asteroid, perhaps it has been noticed on its approach to Earth, and it’s only when it gets close that its influence indicates its artificial nature.
Not only does this sound a lot more plausible (in an SF RPG, anyway) than a wandering planet that nobody has noticed, it also does away with the more extreme problems of the Z-bomb. Now, it merely needs to be a large thermonuclear weapon that can punch through whatever shields (if any) the spaceship happens to have. There’s also no concern about the gravitational influence of an approaching planet doing any damage by its mere presence, since, realistically, something the size of Mondas would have pulled Earth out of its orbit when it approached. Plus, we don’t have to worry about whatever’s left of the place once it’s destroyed at the end of the story – bits of giant spaceship might shower down in an impressive meteor display, but it’s easier to justify them being harmless than it is an Earth-sized debris field.
Scenario
Assuming that the PCs aren’t just travelling randomly through time and space, this story presents more than the usual difficulties getting them involved. If it’s being used as the basis for a one-off story, of course, then the problem disappears – the PCs are simply the crew of the base. The nature of Snowcap, which employs soldiers, scientists, technicians, and medics, provides for a good mix of potential characters, perhaps just leaving the crazy commandant as a significant NPC.
Although we never see any, the base could also employ PR staff for dealing with the outside world, or be hosting journalists as guests, introducing further potential PC roles. This also provides a way in for campaign play where the PCs represent some sort of agency. That could be a government role, making them inspectors at the base, but it works just as well if the PCs are employed as journalists or the like – possibly as a cover for some other role that investigates flying saucers or sinister cults, etc. They could be there by coincidence, either out of casual interest, or because there’s some red herring that draws them there before the alien invasion plot picks up. But, equally, there could be hints of something going wrong that will later turn out to be connected with the Cybermen, such as rockets failing or going off course for no obvious reason.
It's harder, however, if the PCs are freelancers who have no good reason to be in Antarctica. It’s unlikely to be somewhere they are just passing through, after all. The same applies if we take the basic plot and transfer it to a space opera setting, since the story requires that the base be isolated, but that the planet it is on is heavily populated. That in itself isn’t difficult to arrange (under the rules-as-written, an average population-7 planet in Traveller has a population density about 0.5% that of Earth and even a high population world may have some equivalent of Antarctica), but it only raises the question of why the PCs have randomly turned up at the remote bit when there’s so much more to visit.
How this could be achieved depends on the campaign, but possibilities include a message from an old friend of one of the PCs asking for assistance… which again, may or may not be connected with what eventually happens.
Once we have the PCs on site, we can provide some introduction to the base and the harshness of the weather outside, perhaps by having some of them go out to fix a piece of external equipment. When the story proper starts, the initial segments don’t really give the PCs much to do, since what’s happening is mostly on the rocket, so we may want to deal with that quickly (depending on what the players are likely to be interested in). Things naturally change once the Cybermen arrive, when PC actions will surely make things diverge from the plot of the TV serial.
Clearly, a major question here is who we’re going to have stand in for the Cybermen in a story that isn’t set in the Doctor Who universe. For Star Trek, we have a ready-made answer to that question, since the concept for the Borg was partially inspired by the Cybermen, and they’re essentially the same idea. An interesting point here, however, is how primitive the Cybermen of this story are compared with the versions we will see later. To keep something close to the original, therefore, we may have the story feature Borg early on in their ‘evolution’, with more basic and clunky cybernetics, or have these ones be cut off from the Collective and its usual technological resources; a Borg story where the enemy doesn’t have access to overwhelming power.
In most other SFRPG settings, a cyborg race is still a perfectly reasonable concept, and, in some, a suitable candidate may already exist. They could be humans from some outlying colony or space-faring community that has chosen to evolve along this path. Equally, they could be an alien race, although if they’re too different from humans, we lose some of the ‘body horror’ elements, and the underlying message has less impact. In Traveller, of course, we can go somewhere in between by making them a minor race of Humaniti (which is more or less what they are in the serial), although we would have to explain why nobody has noticed them before. In Star Wars, we could envisage some cult that has tried to make its members more like droids and hasn’t managed to get it quite right yet.
In the serial, a small Cyberman force lands ahead of the main fleet, taking over the base and jamming all radio signals. While it may depend on what has happened in the scenario so far, letting them infiltrate the base without being spotted is likely to work best here, giving the PCs the chance to repel them through guerrilla action. Once they are removed, there is a gap of several hours while the Cyberman fleet approaches, pausing 1,500 miles away for some unknown reason before completing their journey. (If Snowcap is at the south pole, this is roughly at the coast, while, if the base is at the coast, it’s either over Patagonia or southerly waters).
It's here that Cutler proposes his plan to use the Z-bomb, giving PCs the chance to act against him (or not) however they see fit. Eventually, the full Cyberman force arrives, and we approach the final showdown.
In the serial, the Cybermen are defeated because the equipment they are using to drain Earth’s energy is too effective, and their own planet is destroyed, cutting them off from an unspecified essential supply. If Mondas is going to be a planet, this will either take the Earth with it (if it explodes) or leave a smouldering lava world close by to our own (if it doesn’t). Both of these are problematic, but if we go with Mondas being replaced by a giant spaceship, we’re on safer ground.
A more serious problem, from a gaming perspective, is that the protagonists have nothing to do with this. Essentially, they just had to wait for the Cybermen to blow themselves up. While we can certainly introduce other options here (it’s hard to imagine in Stargate SG-1, for example, that the team wouldn’t sneak on board the mothership and blow it up), this could work if we make it clear enough in the first place. Frame the struggle as one that would be impossible on its own, but that requires the Cybermen to be distracted long enough that they don’t notice what’s happening in sufficient time to reverse it. You could then have a desperate fight to keep them out of the base’s control room, for example, or cut them off from their lander. You still get a fight, but we don’t need to have a small band of PCs defeat a million-strong army single-handed.
It’s worth noting here that we are told the Cyberman spaceships land at multiple points across the Earth, which could help ramp the tension up if the PCs discover that loved ones elsewhere are threatened.
There have, of course, been several follow-up stories to The Tenth Planet, but inevitably, they all used different settings. The Base itself could, however, be used to tell entirely new stories. Its isolation, which is about as extreme as it's possible to get on Earth, makes it ideal for other base-under-siege stories, or indeed, anything in which you don’t want significant support turning up to steal the PCs’ thunder.
The concept of ‘something scary being dug from under the ice’ is a longstanding one in science fiction and, indeed, it’s been used twice more in Doctor Who itself. Stories such as The Thing or At the Mountains of Madness are at least as much horror as they are sci-fi, and Snowcap Base is as good a setting for adaptations of those stories as anywhere else on the frozen continent.
The fact that it’s a military base as much as a research one could also make it fit in other genres, with some sinister new weapon being developed there. This could even be the Z-Bomb itself, if the concept hasn’t been used previously in the campaign. In this context, it could work for action adventures or superhero stories or sci-fi investigations in the style of Torchwood, all with the added bonus of an inherently hostile environment. For more traditional ‘dungeon crawl’ scenario, everyone on the base could go mad or turn into ice zombies, leaving a courageous party of PCs to venture inside and wipe them out.
Finally, it’s entirely possible that some of the cybertech survived. For instance, while it may not fit with the ‘60s/’80s ambiance of the original, nanotech that invades the brain is entirely in keeping with the Cyberman concept. For something less extreme, cybermats hiding in the heating system or in remote storage rooms would also work.
Rules
Although the story is set in the ‘near future’ of the 1980s, and there are signs that rocket science, at least, has developed to a point beyond what was possible at the time of broadcast, there is little in the story that relies on truly futuristic technology. Even the Zeus spaceships, for example, are no more sophisticated than the real-world space shuttle, enhancing the ‘80s vibe. In short, as depicted, the tech level is that of the late 20th century, which makes it 7 in both Traveller and GURPS and 5 in Doctors & Daleks. This may, of course, be altered if we’re using a different setting, be that the early 21st century or the universe of Star Trek. However, it’s worth noting that, in settings like Traveller that allow for it, if we can set the story on a world with the tech level of the original story, we will likely require less adaptation.
For what it’s worth, the Cybermen in this story don’t seem that far ahead of the humans technologically. It’s unlikely that more than one level of difference will be required, and we might not even need that much in Doctors & Daleks, since the Cybermen here don’t (so far as we can tell) have faster-than-light travel.
It’s unlikely that we will need detailed statistics for the Zeus rockets since, without significant changes to the plot, the PCs are never going to see them up close, let alone get any opportunity to fly them. The Cyberman ships might be a different matter, especially if the PCs have a spaceship of their own or some other means of fighting back before their enemies land. Shown as disc-like craft, they appear to be sublight troop transporters, perhaps similar to a Traveller 95-ton shuttle. Despite a relatively small size, they can carry large numbers of Cybermen because they don’t require the space and comfort that a human passenger would, even on a troop ship.
Although it plays only a limited role in the serial, beyond being an implied threat, we might also want to consider the effects of the energy drain. We are told that Mondas is drawing energy from the side of the Earth facing it, and that this increases as it approaches. (Here, if we’re using a spaceship instead of the planet, we may want to consider whether or not it is in a geostationary orbit and, if not, what the orbital period is).
This energy drain is primarily electrical, so that equipment just starts failing, or battery life gets shorter, something it’s easy to rule for. We’re also told that it drains energy from people, although the only clear evidence of this is on the pilots of the Zeus rocket, so it may not do much at ground level. If we are going to have it affect PCs or key NPCs, it’s just a matter of making physical tasks harder, with good old fatigue rules being one way of reflecting this. But, if we’re following the original, it’s not doing this much, and it’s only a real risk to people with a low constitution score (or similar) to start with.
The Cybermen’s weapons are distinctive. In story terms, it doesn’t really matter what they are, with any medium-sized weapon of the appropriate tech level being suitable. For flavour, however, we might want to use something that looks more like the original, a bulky spotlight-like device with a wide beam that… well, ‘shotgun laser’ doesn’t really make much sense, but that seems to be the implication. How this might play out in different systems depends, in part, on how they view regular laser weapons.
5E
Damage Weight Properties
2d10 fire 20 lb. Range (40/120), capacity (20), heavy, two-handed
Savage Worlds
Range Damage AP RoF Shots Min ST Weight
12/24/48 2d6 1 1 20 d6 20
GURPS
Damage Acc Range Weight RoF Shots ST Bulk Rcl
3d(2) burn 2 160/470 20 2 20 10† -6 1
BRP
Base Dmg Attk Special Range Hnds HP S/D Mal Ammo Enc
20% 2D8 1 impaling 20 2 16 9/7 99-00 20 3.0
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