Settings: Atlantis (The Underwater Menace)

 

With the last of the Hartnell-style historicals out of the way, the next story is more of a science fiction adventure, albeit one set on near-contemporary Earth. The specific setting, however, is an unusual one, used in other science fiction stories, certainly, but less often than one might think. Its reception has traditionally been poor, but in recent years, many younger reviewers have embraced its over-the-top pulpy feel. And that’s a good match for some TTRPGs, so let’s see what we can do with it…

Where & When

The story is set in the Lost City of Atlantis at some time in the very near future. While no date for the setting is explicitly given, Polly estimates it to be 1970, and nobody contradicts her. We can be more confident about the day, since the narrative starts on the vernal equinox, which occurs on 20th March, almost (but not quite) regardless of the year; at the most, the story finishes the day after, and it may not even be that long.

Settings: Inverness and Culloden (The Highlanders)

The Highlanders is partly notable for introducing one of the longest-running companions in the show’s history, but perhaps more so for being the last of the Hartnell-style historicals. This doesn’t mean it will be the last of these posts to address a historical setting, but even the one story after this that lacks SF elements is very different from anything in the black-and-white era. The story is entirely missing and has a relatively weak reputation, typically regarded as being below average but not actively bad. 

Where & When

The story takes place in and around the city of Inverness in northern Scotland. As with some of the other pure historicals, it includes a real-world event, allowing us to date it precisely: the TARDIS arrives around 2 pm on 16th April 1746, and leaves late at night on the following day. 

Setting

The historical event that opens the story is the Battle of Culloden. I’ve gone into the background of this before in another context, but here it is again. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 saw King James II expelled from the country, and was followed by a law banning his descendants from taking the throne. Over the following decades, he and, later, his son, strove to do so anyway. Their supporters were referred to as ‘Jacobites’.

The closest they ever got was the Rising of 1745, in which James II’s grandson, Charles Stuart (or “Bonnie Prince Charlie”), led an army of his supporters from Scotland to as far as the English Midlands before being forced to turn back. They retreated further and further north, making their final stand at Culloden, where they were decisively defeated. Jacobitism was effectively over, leaving the way clear for the family from which our current monarch is descended.

The story depicts the Jacobite army as consisting entirely of Highland warriors, but, in reality, these only made up around half the force. The others were mostly Lowland Scots, Irish rebels, or English deserters, plus a few French soldiers. Many were inspired by Charles’ promises of greater autonomy for Scotland, restoring the Scottish Parliament that had been abolished in 1707. Others may have had religious motivations or more general complaints about taxation. Many more were simply told to fight by their local lords.

This may influence which side the PCs sympathise with, although since Grey is a villain either way, that might not make a significant difference. What will almost certainly impact the PCs, if some of them are captured as the time travellers in the story are, is their real or apparent nationality. For which we need to take our usual look at the status of the rest of the world at the time.

The King against whom the Jacobites are rebelling is George II, with Henry Pelham as his Prime Minister. (The country is, incidentally, still Great Britain, using the older version of the flag without the red ‘X’, and is not yet the United Kingdom). France, under Louis XV, is an ally of the Jacobites largely because they are enemies of the English. Italy has yet to be unified, and the Holy Roman Empire is still going strong, stretching between what are now Belgium and the Czech Republic. Characters appearing to be Scottish, French, Spanish, or Italian will be assumed to be on the rebel side, but Germans may have an easier time of it, as the Doctor tries to in the story. Depending on how they act, those appearing to be English may be identified as deserters, as happens to Ben.

We don’t see the battle itself, which, in any event, is finishing just around the time the TARDIS arrives. What is more relevant is what happened to captured Jacobite soldiers afterwards. Although we are well before the Geneva Conventions, there were still agreed-upon rules on what could be done with prisoners of war. These did not include summary execution, so the sergeant in the story is overstepping his authority – which isn’t to say that such things never happened.

Instead, prisoners would be taken before a court to be tried and, in almost all cases, sentenced to death. In practice, with the exception of senior officers and English deserters, this sentence was usually commuted to penal servitude before it could be carried out. The prisoners would be shipped out to the American and Caribbean colonies to work on plantations alongside African slaves and would experience a similar life.

Unlike the slaves, their period of indenture was time-limited (although, as indicated in the serial, this didn’t guarantee you’d live that long) and their legal status was not passed on to any children they may have had. Having said which, they were barred for life from returning to Britain and, when this proscription was eventually lifted, passage may well have been too expensive anyway.

In 1746, there were fifteen British colonies in continental North America, although the northern two would later refuse to rebel and ended up in Canada. However, just as the more southerly North American colonies relied on slaves, so did the British colonies in the Caribbean, focusing more on sugar cane plantations than cotton at the time.  Barbados is mentioned in the story and was, indeed, a major centre for the sale of slaves, with the Atlantic slave trade being at its height.

For what it’s worth, the Australian colonies didn’t exist yet, which is why transported convicts and rebels were sent to the Americas.

The battlefield and moor

The TARDIS arrives on Culloden Moor just as the battle is concluding. The moor is quite extensive, but the battlefield proper stands about 7 km (4½ miles) east of the centre of Inverness. Today, it’s a mixture of agricultural fields and woodland just outside the modern suburbs, but in 1746, it was more open, having been used to graze sheep. Heather and gorse would have been the dominant vegetation other than grass, with trees restricted to some walled-off orchards. 

PCs staying on the moor for any length of time should note that it would be cold in April, but not freezing. Temperatures typically range from 12° C in the day to 4° C at night (54 to 39 °F), and it rains about one day in three. The exposed nature of the moorland means that it can often be windy, and it’s cloudy more often than not.

The time travellers seek shelter in a cottage in a part of the moorland away from the main battlefield. This is plausible, although the real equivalents might be cruder than what we see in the reconstruction, a simple shepherd’s hut that might only have a single room. Larger cottages did exist on the north side, but these were being used as field hospitals by the English, so they were probably not the best place for Jacobites to hide. 

At another point, Kirstie and Polly hide in a cave. There aren’t really any significant caves in the area, but the River Nairn forms a steep-sided valley along the southern edge of the moor. This was lightly wooded at the time and largely undeveloped, so hiding there would be possible. Beyond that, the land rises into a range of barren and rugged hills that might provide another alternative.

The action soon moves to Inverness. This is Britain’s most northerly city, which had a population of just under 8,000 when the first census was conducted in 1791. It had been under Jacobite control for some time prior to the battle, with both the old castle and Fort George guarding the mouth of the river having been destroyed to prevent them from serving as a base for the English. (A new ‘Fort George’ was subsequently built further along the coast, and is the one you’ll see on modern maps, while the castle was rebuilt in the 19th century). After the battle, of course, it was under military occupation.

The serial visits four locations in the city. One of these is a barn on the outskirts, which can be placed just about anywhere. The jail is more significant. The Jacobites had removed all the regular prisoners to make way for English prisoners of war, and now, naturally enough, that situation was reversed. We can fairly assume that it was at least as crowded as shown in the serial.

As described, the bottom of the cell has about six inches (15 cm) of water on the floor, and a tide mark higher up the wall, indicating that it’s below the water table and affected by the tides in the Moray Firth. The tidal range at Inverness varies from around 120 to 200 cm (4 to 6 feet), so we had better hope that the six inches doesn’t represent low tide or else that we’re far enough inland that it isn’t quite so extreme.

The characters spend rather more time at an inn taken over by the English. This is never named in the serial, but is called ‘The Sea Eagle’ in the novelisation. In addition to the common room, this includes the room that Grey has set up for his office and a back room with a trapdoor leading to an underground channel to the sea. (One imagines this may originally have been built by smugglers since there’s little reason for it otherwise.) It is evidently a large inn, although its rooms must currently all be taken by the occupiers.

The final location is the docks. 18th-century Inverness was not a significant port, with just a couple of small harbours for fishing and rowing boats, and for the ferry to the north side of the Beauly Firth. Full-sized ships had to anchor elsewhere along the coast and send boats out to pick up supplies, load and unload passengers and crew and so forth. The supply ships for the English army, for example, were anchored about nine miles (15 km) away near the northern end of what was then called the Firth of Inverness and is now the Inner Moray Firth. The Annabelle is likely closer than that, but it still has to be in the Firth, not the Ness River, and can’t be too close to the shore or it would ground on sandbanks.

The Annabelle is described as a brig, which is a moderately sized two-masted ship with square sails. These were often used for taking convicts across the Atlantic, so it makes sense – it’s where we get the term ‘brig’ for a shipboard prison cell from. Later brigs could be much larger, but a length of around 120 feet (36 metres) is quite plausible for the Annabelle. 

The story includes no real historical figures, but the closest equivalent is probably the laird, Colin McLaren (sic). Clan MacLaren was present at the battle, although Colin and the other clan members we see are fictional. Their slogan and battle-cry was, as mentioned here and in later Doctor Who stories, “Creag an Tuirc!” 

For what it’s worth, however, the MacCrimmons served the MacLeods, not the MacLarens. Clan MacLeod had backed the government, and their main force was not present at Culloden, although a breakaway group did fight on the Jacobite side under a different banner. But, unless we’re directly re-running the original serial as a scenario, we probably want to replace Jamie with somebody else anyway.

Algernon Ffinch is said to serve in Colonel Attwood’s regiment, which is fictional. Plenty of government regiments were present at the battle, of course, and we could pick any of them, should we wish to be historically accurate.

Scenario

Regardless of its merits as a TV serial, as written, The Highlanders presents some issues when adapting it to an RPG scenario  - at least, if the PCs aren’t stumbling randomly into the middle of the situation as they do in the story. One of the reasons for this is that it begins with a large-scale defeat for the characters we’re supposed to be sympathising with. In most typical settings, whether we’re doing this as a straight historical, or perhaps adapting it for a fantasy world, the PCs are going to be aware of the conflict, and they’ll have to either join in and be railroaded into losing or turn up just a little too late to take part, which is likely to feel disappointing.

The second problem is that the plot, as written, requires at least half the party to be captured. While that can be achieved by railroading and/or the sudden arrival of overwhelming force, in general, it may not be something you want to rely on.

Some genres, however, can get around this issue. For one thing, it’s less of a problem in a one-off game, where the players can be presented with the starting situation and will know that they’re not “missing out” on a dramatic combat scene, or the chance to turn things around for the rebels. An example here might be an 18th-century Call of Cthulhu (or similar) scenario where a desperate start to the game is potentially in-genre. In this instance, we’d want to add something supernatural to the plot, most likely that Grey is a cultist planning to sacrifice his captives rather than enslave them. Trask could then be a Deep One hybrid able to call on more of his batrachian allies at the climax of the story.

Inverness, 1746

Another way of using the original setting is in a game based around a Time Patrol keeping history on track or seeking to change it in some specific way. Here, the characters are not seeking to alter the outcome of the Battle of Culloden, so they expect to arrive in its immediate aftermath. Instead, their goal is to protect one of the NPCs, preventing them from being shipped to Barbados and dying on a sugar plantation. They might not even know that that’s the NPC's fate, just that they mysteriously disappear from history.

The laird is the obvious candidate here, since he’s the one everyone in the story is focused on, but he may not be the most interesting choice. The story would work just as well if the person to be saved is someone who won’t abandon the laird, thus compelling the PCs to come up with a scheme for rescuing everyone. If their information on their target is limited, having some of their own be captured to get in among the people they are trying to rescue might even be a viable plan, albeit not the only one. Suitable targets here are Kirsty and the stand-in for Jamie.

Assuming we can get around the issue of starting with a predetermined defeat for the ‘good guys’, fitting the general idea of the battle and its aftermath into other genres can work. In fantasy, we could even keep the basic reason for the rebellion intact, since fighting to restore the rightful king to his throne is very much in genre. But we could change it to some other battle, so long as the losing side is potentially sympathetic to the PCs. Given the highland theme, replacing the Jacobites with dwarves might work… or then again, it might be a bit too obvious.

On the other hand, we might not want to make the stand-ins for the English too villainous. That’s not just because we might want some counterpart to Ffinch, but also because it changes the theme of the story. If we replace the Duke of Cumberland with a mighty necromancer, for instance, then defeating him after we’ve rescued the convicts could become more of a focus than we’d want. Although, if we’re planning that sort of war for a campaign anyway, inserting this as a side-quest could be effective.

When we’re talking about rebels against an oppressive Empire, Star Wars is another setting that’s likely to spring to mind. Here, the PCs might be called in on a sudden mission of mercy to lift some rebels from a planet where things have recently gone badly for them and end up facing the risk of being captured themselves. Ffinch becomes a decent, if clueless, Imperial officer, Perkins is a droid press-ganged into working for the Empire, and Trask is an alien slaver.  

Here, a key point to bear in mind, if we’re sticking to the themes of the original, is that since sending captured rebels to slave camps is exactly the sort of thing we’d expect the Empire to do anyway, we need Grey (or whomever) to be subverting that somehow. Most likely, he’s snatching them away to make a profit for himself, not declaring his income to his superiors and fiddling the books to cover it up. The Empire may expect some degree of corruption from its agents, but it’s probably not going to like it…

Rules

As with most previous straight historicals, we don’t require many rules decisions for this scenario, assuming our system covers pre-industrial technology – as most generic or sci-fi systems do.  The serial as broadcast includes the use of a range of skills, including Disguise and Escapology, not to mention Persuasion, Swimming, Stealth, and good old combat. But these are all easy enough for any system to handle, even if we follow things precisely, which we probably don’t want to. The animal trap that Polly falls into, for instance, is pretty much a default concept in many games.

The tech level is 4 in GURPS, 3 in Doctors & Daleks, and 2 in Traveller, although, with the Industrial Revolution around the corner, only just in each case. Soldiers are no longer wearing armour by this point, with those on the government side wearing highly visible red coats to distinguish themselves, making stealth difficult during the daytime. Typical English soldiers would be armed with a .75 calibre flintlock musket with a bayonet (which essentially turns a musket into a spear) and a shortsword. 

The weaponry of the highland clans was less standardised. In theory, most clansmen should also have been armed with flintlock and sword, but swords were in short supply. Reports of looted bodies and captured prisoners after the Battle of Culloden indicate that only around one in five carried a sword. Although muskets were essential, they were not mass-produced to a single standard, so the calibre could vary. This means that bullets can’t be swapped from one batch to another, although it’s unlikely that the difference is large enough to affect the weapon’s statistics in most game systems. 

Apart from the musket, and any sword he might have had, most clansmen would also be carrying a dirk (dagger) and a targe. The latter is a kind of shield, something the English (and foreign troops employed by the Jacobites) no longer bothered with. It is comprised of two layers of thin wooden boards pegged together and covered on the outer edge with a sheet of leather bolted on with brass or silver studs. At about 50 cm (20”) in diameter, it likely qualifies as a medium shield in systems that make a distinction between types.

Settings: Vulcan (Power of the Daleks)

The Second Doctor’s run kicks off with a Dalek story, providing continuity with the previous seasons despite the change of lead actor. The fourth season of the show is notable for having no serials that fully survive in their original form, and The Power of the Daleks is one of four that are entirely missing. Like most of the missing stories from the Troughton era, however, it has been reconstructed in animated form from the sound recordings and, as of this writing, has been widely available for some time. It has a good reputation, generally considered well above average for its era, and is often highly praised. 

It’s the first of many Second Doctor base-under-siege stories, which tend to lack the detailed background we had in the more exploratory Hartnell tales. Nonetheless, the setting did break ground for the series at the time, and there’s arguably much that’s implied by it that we don’t get to see directly. So, with Hartnell’s run completed, let’s see what we can do with the stories of his successor…

The Companions That Weren't: the '60s

In Doctor Who stories, it's not unusual for there to be a character who takes on a companion-like role, but who does not, in the end, join the TARDIS crew. Granted, this is often at least partly because they've just died, and many wouldn't make great player characters anyway. But there are some exceptions, who can, if nothing else, give us inspiration for character ideas that fit with the setting.

I'm going to start on the Third Doctor's era shortly after the relevant sourcebook comes out, but that leaves me with a slight gap. So today I'm going to look at four characters from the show's first six seasons who either came close to being actual companions, or are particularly suited for it.

First up, and my only choice from the Hartnell era, is Jenny, from The Dalek Invasion of Earth. She's a resistance fighter against the Daleks and their robomen, and, from the dates given on screen, therefore hails from the 2170s, or thereabouts. She appears on my list because the character was seriously considered as an ongoing companion, replacing Susan, who left in that story. In the event, the writers decided they wanted somebody younger, and introduced Vicki in The Rescue, but it could have been otherwise.

She isn't given a surname, nor do we know how, exactly, she joined the resistance. Unlike the menfolk, she doesn't really do any fighting, although it's hard to imagine that she can't if it comes to it. Her main roles in the resistance are organisational, including such things as manning the communications system. But, given that she's been living in a post-apocalyptic world for ten years, it's also a fair assumption that she has good survival and stealth skills.

DW Companions as PCs: Zoe Heriot

As has become almost traditional for companions by this point, Victoria leaves in the penultimate story of a season - in her case, the fifth. Having concluded the story arc of Victoria's desire for a normal life eventually getting the better of her, her player comes up with a character that, in some ways, breaks the mould: Zoe Heriot.

Apart from the mumsy Barbara, all the female companions on the show so far have been, to a greater or lesser extent, Peril Monkeys, whose primary function is to be menaced by the monsters. It's true that this does happen to Zoe, too - for example, she spends a couple of episodes of The Invasion drugged and locked in a trunk while the bad guys use her to lure Jamie and the Doctor into a trap. But that's combined with the fact that she's a technical and scientific genius.

In a sense, we've been here before: both Susan and Vicki could be described in this way. But Vicki's skills only rarely saved the day, and Susan might as well not have had any, for all she used them after the first episode. Zoe, on the other hand, does so frequently, making her a competent scientific specialist - a Science Geek, whose player has maxed out on Intelligence and science skills. In DWAITAS, she has to take two levels of 'Experienced' to justify her skills, and, she's obviously had plenty of boosts over the course of her adventures, since she's over-powered even for that.

(In fairness, this is also true of Ben, while Jamie appears to be under-powered, and might justifiably get three extra story points to compensate).

DW Companions as PCs: Victoria Waterfield

Ben and Polly leave in the penultimate episode of the fourth season. With Jamie already filling the 'action hero' role, it's only Polly that needs to be replaced.

If we're honest, it's been hard to really see Doctor Who as the account of a role-playing game since The Dalek Invasion of Earth, or thereabouts. That's because it's about that time that the Doctor really becomes the hero of the show, and the other regular characters 'just' his companions. In the first season, he may have been the title character, and, to some extent, the focal point, but he was still more or less evenly balanced with Ian and Barbara, if not Susan.

But, from the second season onwards, he's much more obviously the hero, and that becomes even more the case once Troughton takes over and the mythology of the Doctor really starts to build. This works well in a TV show, but having most of the PCs be in the shadow of one of the others isn't such a good recipe for an RPG. The stories arguably also diverge from a 'gaming' look as they become more tightly plotted, again, from about the second season onwards.

Nonetheless, I'm going to stick with the analogy, at least for now. Because, why not?

DW Companions as PCs: Jamie McCrimmon

One clear problem with setting a game during a specific period of Doctor Who's television history is that the Doctor rarely travels with more than two companions, creating problems for any group with more than three players. Indeed, there are only four points in the history of classic Who where there are more than three regular characters. The first of these occupies the first two seasons, with the Doctor, Ian, and Barbara, plus either Susan or Vicki. The second occurs during the fourth season, when Ben and Polly are joined by a third companion.

In fact, it's interesting to note that this season includes one of the few points where we can definitely say that there must (rather than 'might') be a whole bunch of stories we don't see. Most of the stories in this period end with the beginning of the next one, so that there's no gap at all. But not only is that not true of the gap between The Macra Terror and The Faceless Ones, but, in the first of those stories, Polly gets her hair cut short. By the start of the latter story it's grown back to full length, suggesting a few months have passed at the very least. Who knows where they travelled during that period?

At any rate, with the number of companions having gone back to three again, a new player has obviously joined the group. He comes up with an idea that has apparently never struck the existing players: since this is a time travel game as much as a science fiction one, there is no reason he can't play a character from the past. The character he comes up with is Jamie McCrimmon, a Jacobite piper from the year 1746.

DW Companions as PCs: Polly Wright

While Steven's former player decides to make his next character, Ben, more down-to-earth, Dodo's has the opposite problem, and decides to make her next character useful at... well, anything, really. The result is Polly Wright.

Polly's surname is never mentioned on-screen, and for a long time there was fan speculation as to what it might be, with a number of suggestions being made. Once it was confirmed, however, that the BBC's audition scripts for the character gave her surname as 'Wright' that became the one that everybody accepted. It's unclear as to whether this ever intended as any more than a place-holder at the time - it's also Barbara's surname, and the two characters are entirely unrelated. Possibly nobody at the BBC took it seriously as a name, but neither did they bother to come up with anything else, so it's what we have.

While her predecessors are mostly sixteen-year old girls, Polly is a grown woman. Assuming she's the same age as Anneke Wills was at the time, she's 24, notably younger than Barbara, and clearly cut from a different mould. She's a secretary from London in 1966, which, at first glance, may not be the most exciting concept ever for a player character. While the ability to brew a nice cup of tea is one that's quite important in British culture, for instance, it's rarely high on most player's wish-lists.

DW Companions as PCs: Ben Jackson

Steven and Dodo left in consecutive episodes at the end of the show's third season. Although the actual reasons probably had more to do with the new producer's desire for a more glamorous cast, in our imaginary RPG campaign, perhaps the imbalance between the over-powered Steven and the under-powered Dodo was becoming a bit of an issue rules-wise. Which might explain why their replacements are both down-to-earth, while still being fairly capable.

Stepping into the 'Action Hero' role recently vacated by Steven is Ben Jackson. Like Steven, he's served in the military, but that's about as far as the resemblance goes. While Steven is a fighter pilot from the future, Ben is a regular rating on a Royal Navy ship from 1966. From the perspective of someone watching the show, it's the difference between the wish-fulfilment of wanting to be Dan Dare, and the feeling that somebody who's kind of like you might still have a chance at exciting adventures with the Doctor. Which is still wish-fulfilment, admittedly, but of a different kind.

Merely from his profession, we can deduce quite a bit about the skills he ought to have. He should be good at fighting, have some ability as a mechanic or electronics operator, be able to swim, and have at least some idea how to steer a motorboat. Aside from the last one, these are all things that we do, indeed, see him doing to quite high levels of competency. In The Highlanders, for example, he's thrown into a deep firth while tied to a chair, and still manages to swim away to safety without breaking the surface. (So we'd better add escapology to his skill set, then... don't know if the Navy teaches that).

DWAITAS: 2nd Doctor Sourcebook

The Second Doctor's era is a crucial one in the development of Doctor Who as a series. There's the obvious point that the regeneration itself, and the show's re-invention that followed it, are a large part of why it has survived so long. But it's also significant that much of what we now associate with the show originated with the Second, not the First, Doctor. The First Doctor's adventures, as I mentioned in the previous review, were quite different to what we have now, and often at least tried to be fairly sophisticated science fiction, with a focus on alien culture, moral quandaries, and the practicalities of surviving in a hostile past.

While there certainly are some pretty sophisticated stories in the Second Doctor's era (The Mind Robber particularly springs to mind), there was also a change in focus. This era became about monsters in a way that the first three seasons had never really tried to be - aside, of course, from the Daleks. Other features of the era that have since been commonplace include the 'base under siege' trope, with an isolated outpost menaced by hostile aliens. That's first seen in The Tenth Planet, the very last Hartnell episode, but it becomes much more common under Troughton, notably describing all but one story in the fifth season.

It's also the first time we have a companion joining for the sheer fun of time travel, and the last of the truly reluctant companions. In this respect, the dynamic of the show is also becoming something we more readily recognise today. It's also, for that matter, the first appearance of the sonic screwdriver. This, incidentally, is first seen in Fury From the Deep, a story in which it's only used to, of all things, undo some screws! Even in this era, it gets to do more later on...

This gives the second volume in the DWAITAS sourcebook series an advantage that the first volume could never really have. The stories here are more familiar in style, more the sort of thing somebody who'd only ever seen Nu Who (or, indeed, much of the colour era of the classic series) would expect. In particular, there are a host of monsters to throw into our own scenarios, where in the first sourcebook there were only Daleks and a bunch of alien cultures - many of which, like the Drahvins and the Moroks, look essentially human.