The last serial to be missing entirely in its original form, it has been fully animated, which may have rehabilitated it in the eyes of some fans. Even so, it’s generally regarded as middling today, not one of the greats, perhaps best known for featuring both a companion departure and the debut of the sonic screwdriver. But let’s see what we can do with the exciting world of the British gas supply industry…
Where & When
The story is set in and around a refinery somewhere on the east coast of England and in the accompanying gas field in the North Sea. Although there are several indications that it’s the near future, no specific date is given. However, a later straight-to-video fan production gave the date of this story as 1975, and this is widely accepted as accurate today.
Setting
The precise location of the refinery is, of course, never given, beyond it being somewhere on the east coast. We are, however, told that it supplies gas to the whole of southern England, and also Wales, which implies that it must itself be in the southern half of the country. In fact, Britain’s largest gas fields are indeed in the southern reaches of the North Sea, so (while others exist further north) this also makes sense geologically.
The beach scenes were filmed at the eastern tip of Kent, between Margate and Broadstairs. We could simply use that as the location, and we may have to if we want to keep the white cliffs mentioned in the serial. However, Kent is further south than is likely for a refinery, and the cliffs don’t play even a peripheral role in the story – there’s no difficulty accessing the facility from the shore, for example.
Thus, it may make more sense to ignore the cliffs and move the setting a little further north, to Essex, East Anglia, or Lincolnshire. Of these, East Anglia is perhaps the best fit, as indicated by the fact that it really does have a large gas refinery, at Bacton in northern Norfolk. Even if we choose somewhere fictional, we can at least use this real location as a guideline for what the one in the serial might be like.
Bacton covers an area of about 75 hectares (185 acres) and employs a staff of around 150. It consists of six terminals receiving gas from the rigs and a second area that feeds the treated gas into the national supply network. The primary purpose of the refinery is to extract contaminants from the gas supply, many of which condense out as oil, which is then pumped elsewhere. Water vapour is mostly extracted at the rigs themselves, but the refinery also conducts further dehydration, as well as adding the sulphur compounds that give gas its distinctive smell.
The pipes connecting the real-world refinery to the rigs vary in size, with most being 30 inches (76 cm) across. Unlike that in the story, there are several of them, but so long as at least some of the gas is being pumped from the contaminated well, this may not make much difference, and we can, of course, ignore it.
While Bacton, like most UK refineries, is jointly operated by multiple companies – three, in its case – that in the story is run by only one: Euro Sea Gas. We are told that this is a multinational company headquartered in Britain, but at least partly owned by the Dutch government. This implies that it operates at least one other refinery elsewhere – in the Netherlands – and, if it’s anything like BP or ExxonMobil, there are probably several.
If we wish to move the story to another location more familiar to the players, we are, perhaps, even more restricted in our options than we are with The Web of Fear. The great majority of the world’s gas reserves are in Russia and the Middle East, which (for most players) would mean adding an additional layer of complications that may defeat the object.
Nonetheless, Norway and the Netherlands both drill for gas in, and to the north of, the North Sea, so we don’t even need to move far to use those. The US obviously has the Gulf of Mexico, which is better known for its oil reserves, but also supplies a significant amount of gas. Smaller sites exist elsewhere across the globe, for example, in Australia and Japan, although many such gas fields are on land, which removes a key element of the original story.
Moving the story to a regular science fiction setting may prove problematic for a couple of reasons. Firstly, there’s the question of whether anyone uses natural gas at all. This is easiest to justify in a setting such as Traveller, where petrochemicals are likely to be a key resource for most worlds with a TL between 5 and 8. (TL4 is slightly different; gas is widely used, but the technology for deep-sea drilling doesn’t exist, so it’s chemically extracted from coal.) For higher tech levels, however, we can simply replace the natural gas with hydrogen, which is the main starship fuel; drilling is likely to be particularly important in systems with no gas giant.
We can use similar logic in settings with more uniform technology. Star Wars, for instance, needs fuel for its spaceships, especially on the Outer Rim, and could potentially use drills to get at it, rather than gas giants. Refuelling doesn’t tend to be a major element of the films and TV series, for obvious reasons, but the ships do use reaction drives, and hydrogen, or some other gas, is the most likely fuel for that. Fuel tanks tend to be tiny, or even ignored, on official deck plans, but, supposedly, the fuel is super-compressed, so there must be a lot more of it in use than superficially appears to be the case.
The aesthetic is, however, a weaker fit for Star Trek, and there, we’re likely to have to resort to a world outside the Federation and/or come up with some fictional substitute for the resource they’re trying to extract.
The second issue of gas drilling on alien worlds is how many such worlds would have any gas to extract in the first place. Natural gas, like other petrochemicals, is a product of fossilised life, so it won’t be found on most planets that lack native life – the frequency of which varies, depending on the wider setting. Having said which, the life doesn’t have to be especially complex, and it may be that the human colonists believe that regular seaweed is the most advanced life on the planet… if they even know that much.
If we want to avoid native life, there can be petrochemicals on chilly, uninhabitable ice worlds like Titan in our own solar system, with methane in the atmosphere and lakes of unrefined petroleum products. But we’re pretty far away from the original concept by that point, in a story that requires insulated space suits to venture outside. More plausibly, extracting hydrogen is a good fit here, too, on worlds with suitable technology (Traveller TL 7+ to do it at scale), since it can be produced by inorganic chemical reactions in deep rocks.
 |
| Layout as shown in the animation |
In the story, once they are incapacitated, the protagonists are taken to holding cells and an interrogation facility inside the refinery itself. This part is more plausible than it may sound, since Bacton (and some similar British facilities) does have a small police station on the premises. This is staffed by the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, a special police force that mostly deals with things like the transport of nuclear waste, but also protects the gas supply network. In the serial, of course, the security appears to be private, but it doesn’t alter much for them to be real police; they may intend to move the PCs to a more regular station (of the Norfolk Constabulary, in the case of Bacton) to process them later, but the weed would likely become a more pressing issue before that happens.
In the serial, there is a residential area just outside the compound for the use of staff and their relatives; the animation makes these look relatively luxurious, at least for managers. That Harris and his wife live in a “married block” also implies that smaller accommodations exist for single staff. Notably, this is outside the security area, so that you need to pass a checkpoint (or scale the fence without being shot by the darts) to enter the refinery from it, but equally, it has no particular protection of its own.
The landing pad for the helicopters is also outside the compound, a short distance away by car.
Robson, however, lives inside the refinery compound, although it’s just a single room, so he probably owns a house or flat somewhere else that he simply isn’t using in the context of the story. But since he does actually live on the premises most of the time, there’s probably a canteen or similar that we don’t see. There is a medical centre, but only one doctor, who is out at sea during the story, leaving a senior nurse to take his place at the refinery.
Other than this, and the cells that the Doctor and his companions are initially locked up in, we see the control room, impeller room, and pipe room, although the refinery must have many other areas that aren’t relevant to the plot. Of these, the impeller room is perhaps the most important. The impeller itself (a turbine-like device that acts as a pump to draw in gas from the offshore platforms via the pipe) is underneath the room, accessed via a vertical shaft.
The shaft is fitted with a two-man elevator capsule controlled from the room at the top, and also has an emergency ladder. The main gasometer tank for the inflowing gas lies underneath the impeller rather than, as one might expect, above ground in the facility proper. Anyone descending the shaft is required to wear a gas mask and a protective body suit; since methane isn’t toxic, the main threat is likely to be asphyxiation through lack of oxygen, so oxygen supply tanks might make more sense than just a filter.
Part of the story takes place on the gas rigs out at sea. There are nine of these, all feeding gas to a central “control rig” that directs it into the main pipe running up to the shore and the refinery. We don’t know how far they are from the refinery, but the main field supplying Bacton is about 30 miles (50 km) offshore (and also acts as a transit point for gas from more distant fields). This, it should be noted, is outside the UK’s true territorial waters, but inside the Exclusive Economic Zone. Legally speaking, this means that ships travelling through the area are not subject to UK laws so long as they don’t actively interfere with British rights to access and exploit the gas fields – or other natural resources.
Getting there from land would take about 15 minutes using the sort of light utility helicopters featured in the serial. The sea here is very shallow, at less than 25 metres (80 feet). The sandstone gas reservoir that the rigs drill into is obviously much deeper, about 1800 metres (6000 feet) into the rock.
In terms of the climate, we can note that, while it’s often stormy, it’s cold in winter on the North Sea, and not especially warm in summer. It isn’t entirely devoid of sharks, but the dangerous ones live further south, and there really isn’t anything to fear from the natural wildlife. This might, however, change if we move the story to the Gulf of Mexico, let alone an alien planet.
One thing that isn’t clear from the story as presented is what the weed creature is supposed to be, and where it came from. It’s implied in the TV serial that it’s native to Earth, living on the seabed, and has simply never been encountered before; the novelisation describes it as ‘alien’, but may be using the term metaphorically, since there’s no indication of how it could have got here from some other world.
If we don’t just want to leave it an open question, there are at least three options that could be used in a game, with varying levels of plausibility depending on the wider setting. We could go with the TV serial and say that it is a form of native seaweed; this makes most sense if we set the story on an alien planet to begin with, especially if it’s a colony world that may not have had time to catalogue every form of deep-sea life yet.
Secondly, it could be alien, perhaps a psychic entity that has taken over the native (normal) seaweed before moving on to humans. If there is some external clue to this having happened, such as an odd energy signature or signs of a crashed capsule, this might give PCs a reason to investigate the area.
A third option combines elements of these two. Here, rather than being alien, the controlling entity might live deep in the rock, actually in the natural gas reservoir that’s being tapped. This would make it much easier to explain why it has not been discovered before, and, given the right background assumptions, works equally well in a story set on Earth or offworld.
Judging by the visuals in the animation, the seaweed in question appears to be a form of kelp, although it’s much harder to classify in the surviving images from the original. Since kelp lives in the North Sea, and the banks on which the rigs are built are likely shallow enough for 10 to 25% of sunlight to reach the bottom – sufficient for photosynthesis – this is entirely plausible. Kelp consists of a flat blade-like “leaf” attached to a narrow stalk and a gripping root-like holdfast, but there are many different species. The largest can grow to a whopping 80 metres (260 feet) in length, but these live in the Pacific, and the largest in the North Sea reach only 5 metres (16 feet). In this case, of course, an alien influence may have made it grow larger, or it’s simply an unknown species.
In any event, we’ll certainly need to make it larger and more active if we want to allow it to attack escaping helicopters.
We are told that the weed creature breathes in methane. Obviously, real seaweed doesn’t do this, but this needn’t matter if we are either on an alien world or have our seaweed chemically mutated or infiltrated by a microscopic, possibly alien, parasite. Methane is the primary component of natural gas, with the remaining 5 to 10% being largely a mixture of ethane, propane, butane, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide. In its natural state, it is colourless, odourless, and non-toxic, and it’s also lighter than air, so it will tend to float upwards, rather than gathering at ground level. It is also, of course, flammable if concentrations in the air are between about 4 and 17%. (Any more than this, and there isn’t enough oxygen for combustion… unless the gas leaks out into the surrounding atmosphere.)
Scenario
With most base-under-siege stories, the obvious set-up for a one-off scenario is for the PCs to be the regular base crew. In this case, however, that gives a more limited range of character types than we might normally get. Refinery employees are most likely to be mechanics/engineers, although a chemist or two is also a possibility. There must also be administrative personnel and some low-paid jobs such as cleaners, but these won’t fit typical PC roles… depending, of course, on how competent we want them to be. Fortunately, large British gas refineries have police officers, and those elsewhere will, as a minimum, have some security force that can provide combat or investigatory skills. It may also be possible to bring in some locals, such as the families of workers, given the presence of the residential block nearby, or a biologist visiting the beach to follow up on rumours of unusual seaweed.
It may, however, be slightly harder to fit the setting into an ongoing campaign, since Robson isn’t going to admit there’s a problem that needs outside assistance and PCs don’t normally visit gas refineries. If they represent a survey organisation, such as Starfleet or a Scout Service, it’s possible that the PCs might notice an anomalous energy signature or the like from orbit, and want to investigate. In this situation, it helps if they have official standing of some kind, but it isn’t necessary. For instance, if the signal indicates alien involvement on a pre-warp planet, Starfleet might consider an undercover operation to preserve the Prime Directive, putting the PCs in a position not unlike that of the time travellers in the TV serial.
In the case of a typical wandering group of adventurers, however, we will probably have to make some adjustments to the setting itself to give them some reason to visit. A possible example here is to make the refinery also a refuelling point for passing starships, perhaps on a low-population world, so there are few other nearby alternatives. In this case, it’s most likely processing hydrogen, rather than natural gas, but other than requiring tighter seals to contain it, this would have little effect on the plot.
Another possibility is to have the PCs actually be what the refinery staff initially believe the Doctor and his companions to be – saboteurs. There could be all sorts of reasons for this, from general ecoterrorism to the refinery discharging toxic waste, harming the local community (unlikely in the case of somewhere real like Bacton, given that the waste would mostly be petrochemicals that would be better sold on elsewhere than dumped, but possible in an offworld setting). If we do go this route, however, the PCs won’t have any motive to get the refinery started again, but hopefully, we could arrange things so that they don’t want humanity to be overrun by a mind-controlling seaweed monster, or at least to save some of the more sympathetic workers.
Once they are at the base, the plot is relatively straightforward; the weed creature expands steadily and facilities are knocked out one by one until (hopefully) the PCs come up with a way of defeating it. When the story starts, the refinery has already lost contact with Rig D, but has been talked out of investigating further when the possessed crew managed to restore communications. The timeline for how rapidly the rest of the attack happens should be adjusted to the speed of the players’ response in order to create a suitable climax. In the original, however, a second rig fails later in the day, then three more overnight. The Control Rig is taken over early the next morning, the remaining four rigs going down not long after.
It’s quite likely that, if given the chance, the PCs will want to investigate the rigs before it gets this far, which gives the opportunity for a rescue mission at one or more of those that are still online by that point. But, at least if they have yet to devise a means of destroying the weed permanently, this will merely be a prelude to the showdown at the refinery. We can also combine it with the scene at the Control Rig in the original, since that doesn’t have to take place in order, and it may be more satisfying if the PCs can rescue people at the same time. Much the same goes for the scene where the helicopter is being attacked by giant fronds.
Most of the characters in the story are not key NPCs, and they may be replaced by the PCs themselves if it’s a one-off story. Nonetheless, a few are more important. Robson is one of these, as the man in charge of the refinery, he refuses to believe anything is happening (a key theme in base-under-siege stories in the classic era), and can act to limit the PCs’ actions until he is taken out of the picture. Going over his head by contacting Megan Jones may be one way of doing this, if not a very satisfying one, but we can arrange a mental breakdown or possession by the weed later on in the story anyway. PCs may also be more inclined to ignore him than characters in the story are, in which case, we can assume that the guards/police are loyal to him for sufficiently long to make that difficult until we need to reach the final showdown.
Maggie Harris is another significant character, since she illustrates what happens when the weed takes somebody over, and provides an opportunity for action at her home as the foam and weed try to take it over. In the case of a game, it’s possible that a PC could fulfil some of this, especially if they happen to touch the weed early on, but we can’t rely on that, and we probably don’t want to keep them out of the action for too long. Having her be somebody that’s mostly offstage until it becomes clear she needs rescuing or her house investigating should make this easier to achieve without the PCs stopping things too early.
This, of course, leaves Oak and Quill, and however many other possessed staff we may need to provide a suitable challenge – it’s worth noting, for instance, that everyone working at Rig D is already possessed when the story starts, although they would need a way of getting to the refinery. One theme in the original is that the weed tries to destroy the refinery’s oxygen supply (which will be a lot more concerning if we move the story to a planet without a breathable atmosphere…) on at least two occasions. This provides possibilities for action and investigation beats in addition to the inspection of the impeller, which it’s hard to imagine somebody isn’t going to do at some point, even if we don’t keep van Lutyens as an NPC.
Of course, at some point, we need a way of fighting back against the thing. In the story, it’s vulnerable to loud sounds at a certain high-pitched frequency, but it’s unlikely that the PCs are going to scream in terror whenever it turns up to provide the clue. We could have an NPC do it, of course, but we should probably also be open to changing the weed’s weakness, or at least allowing alternative methods. For example, it’s apparently poisoned by oxygen, and feeds on methane, either of which may provide a suitable approach. Fire might also work, with the obvious limitation that much of the weed is underwater, or at least protected by damp foam.
Another interesting point about the story is that, in the original, the weed is driven back, but never destroyed. Perhaps the implication is intended to be that the gas field is closed off until it can be depth-charged by the Air Force, with the weed being destroyed off-screen. But, obviously, we don’t need to stick with that. Even assuming that there isn’t more weed somewhere else – and how likely that is depends on how we justified it being there in the first place – there may easily be more of it nearby. Many PCs will want to ensure that this happens, perhaps creating some ‘clean-up’ scenes after the creature is repelled from the refinery. This might allow for some underwater action, although other options may present themselves, such as flooding the pipes with oxygen from the surface.
Rules
Although the setting is near-future, even the little ‘futuristic’ technology on display is, if anything, behind where we are today. So, for most vehicles and other equipment, we can use whatever the standard is for the setting.
The only weapons in the story are the tranquiliser dart guns, which, since they are rarely used against humans in the real world, due to the difficulty of getting the dose right, are not included in many RPG systems. Since the dart guns are supposed to be fixtures rather than things you can pick up and use, we may not need full weapon statistics. We can, however, note that the dart itself likely does about the minimal possible damage for the system, but if it penetrates armour, there will be some kind of saving throw to avoid unconsciousness.
While the details probably don’t matter, the drug being used would most likely be ketamine, or else some fictional substance that’s safer. In most science-fiction settings, we would be better off just using regular stun guns, and tasers may be another option.
Oak and Quill, and any other similarly possessed workers, may present a more serious threat. They breath out a toxic gas, to which they themselves are immune, that causes rapid unconsciousness but, unlike the darts, is unaffected by armour. We may assume that it’s short-range, only affecting one person at a time, simply because it dissipates too quickly to do much else. How difficult the saving throw would be, and whether there might be limited effects even on a pass, will vary according to the game and the abilities of the PCs, but as poisons go, it isn’t exceptional.
The methane isn’t a problem, beyond being flammable, unless somebody goes somewhere that it has displaced the oxygen, such as the impeller room, in which case, we use standard rules for asphyxiation.
The weed initially creates a stinging sensation in the skin when it is touched with bare flesh, although even gloves should be sufficient to protect against it. It then invades the body, likely requiring a series of saving throws over a few hours to avoid succumbing. That Oak and Quill attack Maggie after she has already been affected by the weed implies that the saving throws become more difficult when the victim falls unconscious, giving them a motive to accelerate the process.
As always, if we are using the weed in a science fiction setting, not all the potential victims, PCs included, may be human. Since the weed itself is likely to be alien in such settings, this may not make much difference, unless the character is a robot or has a particularly odd biochemistry, but we can always adjust this as needed.
No comments:
Post a Comment