(This series of posts will take a break after this, taking the companion departure, rather than the season finale, as a good place to do so. I’ll be back in a few months with Evil of the Daleks.)
Where & When
The story is set on the 20th July 1966, with a minor plot point revolving around the fact that this was also the final day of the earlier serial The War Machines. The Earth-based sections are set entirely on the grounds of Gatwick Airport in London, although there is also a brief journey to near-Earth orbit.
Setting
The first decision to be made is how close we wish to hew to the setting of the original. The story is set in a real place that many viewers would have been familiar with and in (more or less) the present day at the time of broadcast. As such, there’s an argument for moving the story forward to our own present day. On the other hand, this introduces a few issues that don’t exist with the original, and we might find that the 1960s adds at least a touch of the exotic to a story that’s set somewhere that’s otherwise relatively mundane.
If we’re going to stick with the present day, however, it may also make sense to increase the contrast between the familiar and the alien by replacing Gatwick with an airport better known to the players. The only real requirement here is that it be a large international airport that a small operator like Chameleon Tours might use as a base. There are a great many options here, with Manchester and Edinburgh being the leading contenders in the UK away from London. Frankfurt, Charles de Gaulle, and Schiphol are among the few European airports larger than Gatwick, while Munich and Rome Fiumicino are around the same size, as is Sydney in Australia. The US has even more possibilities, with JFK, LAX, and Miami being prime contenders, with others depending on just how big or local you’re willing to get.
For the purposes of this post, however, I am going to focus on Gatwick, where the TV serial is set and the non-studio sections were filmed.
Gatwick is located just outside the town of Crawley in West Sussex, about 40 km (25 miles) from the centre of London and half that from the edge of the metropolitan area. At the time of broadcast, it was a relatively new, modern airport, having opened in 1958 on the site of an older aerodrome. Strictly speaking, it has two runways, but, in practice, these are close enough together that only one can be used at a time, with the northern one acting as an emergency backup. (As of 2026, there are plans to move them further apart, thus opening up a genuine second runway, but this change has yet to be completed).
Gatwick has two terminals, each with three boarding piers. In 1966, however, the North Terminal had yet to be built, so all of the public areas we see would be in what is now the South Terminal. This has all the usual facilities we would expect of an airport terminal, including shops, bars, transport links, and so on. Most of the story, however, sees the protagonists on the other side of the security barrier, in areas that are not open to the public.
Access to these areas, which form most of Gatwick’s physical footprint, is controlled by airport security officers. In addition, Gatwick comes under the jurisdiction of the Sussex Police, with around 150 officers on site. Many of these, unlike regular British police officers, are equipped with firearms. In 1966, the responsible police force would have been the West Sussex Constabulary.
As of 2026, passport control is conducted by Border Force, while the airport is also home to a division of Immigration Enforcement that, among other things, operates a detention centre on site. (The arresting-illegal-immigrants section of this agency is, in fact, called “ICE”, although the initials don’t stand for the same thing as in the US equivalent). In 1966, both roles were taken by the Immigration Branch of the Home Office, and the detention centre had yet to be built.
PCs attempting to cross between the groundside and airside sections of the airport should, of course, be aware of the security checks and scanners in place while doing so. In the story, the time travellers arrive in the airside section (i.e. inside the security perimeter), and the airport authorities eventually give them an access pass after they gain the support of the police. Naturally, this may go differently if the PCs are armed, especially if they start off outside the perimeter.
Various other specific locations within the airport feature in the story. For instance, the aliens have taken over the medical centre to make copies of the staff. There is no public medical centre at Gatwick, but there is a facility for checking the medical fitness of pilots before flying, which should be close enough.
The Air Traffic Control tower is another key feature in the serial although, somewhat implausibly, the same room serves as the managerial office for the entire airport. The supervisor here is referred to only as ‘the Commandant’, which the novelisation explains as a nickname given by disgruntled employees rather than an actual job title. The current tower at Gatwick was built in 1984, with the earlier one standing a short distance to the west.
A proportion of the story takes place around the Chameleon Tours check-in desk, which is shown as being in a dedicated room rather than on the concourse, as it would be in reality. Since not much happens here other than seeing who comes and goes, this has little practical effect.
The hangar that the company uses is of more importance, however. The limitations of studio filming mean that it looks more like a warehouse than a real hangar, but it’s surely meant to be the latter. As in most airports, most of the planes at Gatwick are out in the open, but there are several hangars for maintenance, at least two of which in the present day are reserved for the use of specific airlines (the largest belonging to BA).
In addition to the main hangar space, the building also contains an office with a secret door leading to a concealed room. The latter contains the aliens’ equipment, including CCTV feeds, radios for contacting their planes and space station, and so on. While it’s possible that the aliens have hacked into the airport’s regular security system to get the CCTV images, most of the places they view are in areas they are in control of, such as the check-in desk. It’s thus possible that they have concealed their own spy cameras there, using technology beyond that available to the humans of the time.
Notably, the concealed room also contains a chamber filled with the atmosphere of the aliens’ homeworld, to acclimatise new visitors to Earth. Since the space station is perfectly habitable for humans, the necessity of this is unclear; there is certainly nothing toxic in the air for either species. A possibility here may be a different atmospheric density and/or oxygen concentration that is more uncomfortable for the aliens in their weakened state than the reverse is for physically fit humans.
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| Gatwick Airport 2025 1-6 - boarding piers H - hangars ATC - Air Traffic Control |
This brings us to Chameleon Youth Tours itself. The company offers package holidays exclusively to people aged 18 to 25. To British minds, this may evoke Club 18-30, a real company founded a year after the serial was broadcast, but which ceased operations in 2018. Their business model was to offer affordable European holidays to people of the relevant age range, partly by flying planes at night when fares were lower.
Despite the official upper age bound, over half of their customers were under 20, often flying alone for the first time. Whereas Chameleon flies to Rome, Athens, Zurich, and Dubrovnik, Club 18-30 operated in Mediterranean seaside resorts. Which ones were the most popular changed over the decades, but today that would mean (for British tourists) southern Spain, the Algarve, Malta, and Crete. Their customers were enticed by offers of sun, sea, sand, and (implicitly) sex and alcohol. Which raises the possibility of a modern-day Chameleon flight being full of randy teens hoping to go clubbing at their destination.
Which may or may not be something that would be entertaining for a particular PC group to have to deal with.
We are told that Chameleon has a fleet of four planes. In the modern day, the most popular model for charter airlines across the world is the Airbus A320. This twin-engined jet requires a crew of two and has between 150 and 186 passenger seats, depending on the exact configuration; given that it’s supposed to be a budget airline, the higher number would seem more likely.
It has a range of 6,200 km (3,860 miles), which presents no problems for British flights to Europe and is just about enough to get you from New York to Lisbon… for any other US to Europe flight, however, you’re going to need something bigger. Instead, given the cheap flights and ideally, the need to leave American airspace, a US version of Chameleon would more likely fly to the Caribbean or possibly Mexico. (If you don’t need to leave America, then Miami and Las Vegas are obviously prime candidates.)
In the 1960s, a plausible aeroplane for this purpose would be the de Havilland Comet – which seems to be what we see in the animation. This four-engined jet was a smaller craft, capable of carrying up to 116 passengers, and had a shorter range of 5,190 km (3,220 miles), insufficient for any transatlantic flight, but obviously fine for resorts on the same continent. Unlike the more modern plane, it requires a cockpit crew of four, including a flight engineer and radio operator, as well as the pilot and copilot.
Having said that, whatever design they have used for the outward appearance, the aliens have modified the plane significantly for their own purposes. The ceiling for both types of real-world plane is a little over 40,000 feet (12 km); just into the stratosphere, but well short of outer space. This means that the modified plane must not only be able to activate an invisible force field to prevent it from depressurising in a near-vacuum, but also to allow concealed rocket engines or some super-science equivalent to take over from the jets once out of the atmosphere.
This brings us to the space station. We are told that this is 150 miles (240 km) up, which is rather lower than one might expect. Certainly, it is officially high enough to qualify as ‘outer space’, and, from a biological standpoint, the atmosphere might as well be a vacuum. But there are just enough atoms in the atmosphere here to create drag on orbiting objects, requiring them to make constant course corrections to stop falling. Communications and weather satellites are all higher than this, and, for example, the International Space Station orbits at 250 miles (400 km).
Still, low though it might be – perhaps to make it easier for the planes to reach – it’s not impossible. Orbits at this altitude would take around 90 minutes, or, while it would require even more energy to do so, it could even be that the station hovers in place, staying in a fixed location relative to the ground. It may also be worth noting that, absent a cloaking device or similar, it’s going to be visible from the ground as a bright star, and will be even more easily spotted by anyone with a telescope.
Moving the story from Gatwick to Miami or Sydney will likely require little change to the setup, since large airports are all broadly similar on the level that we’re talking about here. Adapting the idea to a space opera setting may, however, require some adjustments.
High population worlds with a decent level of technology will probably have airports, many of them large and busy. However, in such a setting, it’s both more in-genre and more justifiable to use a spaceport. Starports are a key element of the standard Traveller universe, with this one perhaps most likely to be a type C on a planet with a population code of 6+, although anything other than E would work. They are common in Star Wars, too… albeit Mos Eisley is probably not a good fit here. Star Trek makes little use of them, but they are occasionally referred to, so they obviously exist and the same is likely true in most other SF settings that don’t use something weird like portals on planetary surfaces.
A spaceport does have some advantages over an airport. For one, you don’t need to disguise the aeroplane – it actually is the spaceship it appears to be. The issue of the space station in orbit also disappears, since the ship can simply enter hyperspace and not go where it’s supposed to; few settings have the ability or desire to regularly track ships over interstellar distances. It might go to a different system, but it’s equally possible that the station is hidden somewhere else in the world’s own star system – perhaps around a distant gas giant or a Pluto-like world. You might not strictly need FTL travel to get there, but in most settings, you certainly could do, if you wanted to disguise where you were going.
An issue that may be more of a problem is where the ship is supposed to be going, rather than where it actually is. In Star Trek, tours to places like Risa are perfectly plausible, and places that certainly appear to be resort worlds also exist in the Star Wars galaxy. The same could easily be true in other settings with rapid FTL travel.
The issue comes with settings like Traveller, where it takes at least a week to get anywhere, making the idea of taking a budget summer break on a different world rather a stretch. Here, we may have to stick with the idea of actual airports, or else come up with a different business model for our counterpart of Chameleon Tours. Something, ideally, that ensures passengers are likely to all be young and fit.
Of course, many ships of this type are going to have cabins rather than seats, since FTL travel is rarely that fast in game (or film) settings. However, this doesn’t affect anything the aliens are doing, it just changes the design of their craft. On the other hand, a Traveller type-M subsidised liner only carries 40 people – half of them in low berths, with the attendant risk of not surviving the trip in a healthy state. If we’re going with an airport in Traveller rather than a starport, that’s not an issue, but otherwise… you’re going to need a bigger boat.
Scenario
Assuming that we can set up an equivalent scheme for the aliens – and, as noted above, this is easier in some settings than others – the scenario itself becomes relatively straightforward. To get the characters involved, they simply need to be hired by a counterpart of Samantha Briggs or, if they have some official standing, take the place of Crossland and Gascoigne. In a campaign setting, there is also the possibility of them getting involved after landing their own craft at the spaceport, again, possibly by meeting Briggs. In a one-off story, one or more PCs could take Samantha’s place, investigating the disappearance of one of their own relatives or love interests.
From there on, we’re largely in an investigative sandbox story. The GM knows what Chameleon Tours are up to, and it’s down to the PCs to figure that out and find some way of stopping it. The story changes a little depending on whether the PCs start off outside or inside the security perimeter, but the basics remain, and there’s still likely to be an eventual need to persuade the spaceport authorities (rightly or wrongly) that they shouldn’t simply be arrested or deported.
Star Trek presents a problem often seen when adapting Doctor Who stories to its setting: the large, probably heavily armed, spaceship in orbit. The TARDIS is, at least in terms of its crew, much more like the Millennium Falcon or a Traveller Far Trader than it is like the Enterprise. True, the latter can’t simply shoot the Chameleon Tours spaceplane out of the sky when it has innocent hostages on board, but it would be possible to wait until it returns empty, threaten or disable it then and board the space station. (It’s probably cloaked, but you can figure out where it is by tracking the plane and seeing where it vanishes). A solution here may be to have the PCs on shore leave in a Runabout while the main ship is elsewhere, but while that may suit a Lower Decks-style campaign, it won’t make sense for the main bridge crew.
Many of the details in the setup won’t change. The traps that the aliens lay for anyone investigating their hangar remain, as does the Goldfinger-style laser death-trap for anyone captured. In a modern setting, or certain sci-fi ones, we will need to replace the pre-written postcards with something else. Relatives would reasonably expect passengers to contact them by mobile phone or email or to post on social media at some point, since that’s a lot easier these days than it was in the 1960s. The aliens, therefore, will need some more involved scheme involving sending fake messages that don’t invite direct contact – their superior technology may make it easier to hack into an Instagram account (or whatever) than it is for us today. This problem disappears if the relatives wouldn’t expect contact anyway, such as between worlds in Traveller.
In the original, the climactic events include a race to find the original bodies of the airport staff before the aliens leave. Hiding them in cars may or may not work, and a GM may want a backup in case the PCs find the intended one too quickly. There are supposed to be 25 staff duplicated at Gatwick, and possibly some at the other destinations as well, since it’s stated that the Chameleon Tours planes do actually land at Rome and so on. Self-evidently, hiding people in cars is not going to work indefinitely, even in the long-stay car park, so the implication here is that the threat of the Chameleons dying if the arm-band is removed from their victims ceases to hold once they have left the solar system. (Justifying why this is may be tougher…)
It’s entirely possible – perhaps even likely – that at least some of the PCs will want to board a flight to see what happens, as Jamie does in the story. This creates a problem if everyone ends up incapacitated and shrunk, so we will want to ensure a way around that. We are told that the process begins with eating the complementary snacks, so anyone who doesn’t do that is unaffected. The GM simply asking “do you eat the snacks?” may well be enough for at least some PCs to choose not to, so that may be all that’s required.
Otherwise, aliens with radically different biochemistry from humans will plausibly be immune, and we can interpret that as generously as we need to. Androids will naturally be unaffected, but the aliens won’t allow obvious robots to travel for that reason. We can also restrict who can sneak onto the plane by noting that the flights are only open to those under the age of 25, or who can at least pass as such, which will often ensure that at least some PCs have to remain elsewhere to monitor what’s happening.
Rules
The aliens are never named in the story, but are referred to as “chameleons” in the single tie-in short story to use them so far. In terms of statistics, they were probably identical to humans in their natural state, and must have looked very similar given their willingness to replace their original bodies with those of young adult humans. Now, however, they are only a minor threat when untransformed, their condition having physically weakened them, left them slow-moving, and probably damaged their sight and hearing, too. In game terms, we would want to reduce all of their physical attributes below the human norm, and further penalise any skills or abilities based on their senses. In 5E, for example, this might equate to -4 to both STR and CON, -6 to DEX, and disadvantage on all Perception rolls. A system like GURPS would add the Hideous disadvantage, since they are horribly scarred rather than naturally looking alien.
While the technology of the basic setting will be provided by whatever rules set we are using, the aliens’ technology is a different matter. The traps are simple enough to emulate, and the ray guns they use as primary weapons can be replaced by whatever the equivalent of a laser pistol/blaster/handheld phaser is. However, they also have weapons that paralyse, and possibly stun, the target. These are small handheld devices resembling a marker pen more than a handgun, and so are easily concealable, but have a remarkably short range – so short, in fact, that, in some systems, it automatically takes the bonus for “point blank” if it can be used at all.
5E
Damage Weight Properties
Incapacitated ½ lb. Range (5/10), capacity (10), DC 20 CON saving throw to resist
Savage Worlds
Range Damage AP RoF Shots Min ST Weight
1/2/3 Stun - 1 10 d4 1
GURPS
Damage Acc Range Weight RoF Shots ST Bulk Rcl
HT-3(3) aff 1 1/3 0.5 1 10 5 -1 1
BRP
Base Dmg Attk Special Range Hnds HP S/D Mal Ammo Enc
15% 2D6 stun 1 knockback 1 1 10 5/5 99-00 10 0.2
The miniaturisation device on the plane likely requires no particular rules; it simply does what it’s intended to. The duplication equipment may be a different matter. We know that it can physically copy anyone hooked up to it into the body of one of the aliens. The subject likely has to be humanoid in shape and of roughly human size, although precise details of build, ear shape, and so on should not be an issue, and we have no reason to suppose that gender would be either. But the (humanoid) alien has to adjust to the new body, so races such as K’kree, Edoans, and Cidi will be a step too far. The body also presumably retains the alien’s basic biology, and could be distinguished through a medical examination, especially by someone with access to a tricorder or the like.
What’s less clear is to what extent the subject’s memories are carried across. We see newly awakened subjects being tested on their name, occupation, and other details, but it’s possible that they have previously been prepped with a cover story. Polly’s duplicate, for example, doesn’t definitively know anything that the alien would not, since we only see her pretending to be someone else and giving away a piece of information that both she and the alien were aware of.
We could therefore say that there is no transfer of information, and the aliens normally research their target before subjugating them. With opportunistic takeovers that won’t apply, forcing them to develop a different cover, or just brazen it out with limited information. On the other hand, it may be intended that some knowledge is carried across, and it could work this way in a game. Here, one approach would be to have the alien make an intelligence or willpower roll to extract information, with the difficulty relating to how specific or complex it is. Names and basic identity would be easy or automatic; details of past encounters may be harder.
Finally, we have the planes. Since these are armed, it is at least possible in some games that we may need statistics for them. Below, I have taken the Airbus A320 as the model, adding a small reactionless drive to allow it to move in space; we can also assume life support and so on.
Savage Worlds: Size 13, Handling +1, Top Speed (in atmosphere) 540 mph, Toughness 20 (2), Crew 2, Weaponry: heavy laser
BRP: Pilot skill, Rated 30 (air) or 85 (space), Handling -, ACC 2, MOV 1084 (air) or 30K (space), Armour 8/3, SIZ 110, HP 110, Crew 2, Weaponry: laser turret
GURPS: Size 8, Top Speed 540 mph (in atmosphere), Accel. 5 (air) or 0.5g (space), Decel. 38, MR 9.5 (air) or 0.5 (space), SR 7, HP 11,100, DR 5, HT 12, Crew 2, Weaponry: laser cannon
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