The Extracanonical Tom Baker

[Siskoid]

Although a lot of those are short stories and comics, not many of which are covered, and more television stories as well, also not really covered. So it won't be a monster like 7 and 8's books will be since they really LIVED in the expanded universe. Still, we're already pretty much at third's page count and we're not done yet!

[Catsmate]

May 14, 2015 10:55:05 GMT Siskoid said:

Although a lot of those are short stories and comics, not many of which are covered, and more television stories as well, also not really covered. So it won't be a monster like 7 and 8's books will be since they really LIVED in the expanded universe. Still, we're already pretty much at third's page count and we're not done yet!

True. Four had relatively few novels (21 including Telos) and audios (20) compared to Seven (75 and 48) or Eight (79 and 65) so there'll be a lot more to cover later on.

Keep up the good work!

[misterharry]

I think there will be another big increase for the 5th and 6th Doctor sourcebooks, purely because they each have many more audios than the 4th Doctor. And then, as you both say, a huge step up for the 7th and 8th Doctors, because of the Virgin and BBC novels - which is why those two are being split into two volumes apiece. After that, it's plain sailing!

[Catsmate]

May 14, 2015 13:08:04 GMT misterharry said:

I think there will be another big increase for the 5th and 6th Doctor sourcebooks, purely because they each have many more audios than the 4th Doctor. And then, as you both say, a huge step up for the 7th and 8th Doctors, because of the Virgin and BBC novels - which is why those two are being split into two volumes apiece. After that, it's plain sailing!

Yep. The Fifth Doctor has 16 novels/novellas and 56 audios while Sixie has 18 and 65. And I think that my listing is probably missing a few.

[Doctor X]

Page 4, paragraph 5: "[...] all from books, audios and comics based on the third Doctor’s adventures."

Should be fourth.

[Siskoid]

Yep, I'll fix that in the next update, thanks for catching it.

[Siskoid]

Update! Includes older Leela, Lord Joshua Douglas, The Hihmakk, Time Vampires, The Z'Nai, and Quarry Station. (Plus sundry corrections and pics.)

[Siskoid]

Update! Lady Millicent Ferril, Megron, The Cronquist, Lentic Trading Planets, The Map of Life, and more pictures added.

[misterharry]

Time to choose which stories to cover next. I'll go for four more audios:

Destination: Nerva - Lord Jack Corrigan, Location: Nerva Space Dock (and the Drellerin, if there's enough info on them)
Energy of the Daleks - GlobeSphere Corporation
Suburban Hell - Monocerans (with a Sidebar on Temporal Ruckage)
Night of the Stormcrow - The Stormcrow, The No Things

and another novel:

Match of the Day - Lady Hakai, Location: Sumana

As usual, the entries from each of these may change once I've revisited the stories.

[Siskoid]

New Update includes MisterHarry's new entries and a lot of pics and corrections!

[misterharry]

With the release of the latest of Big Finish's 4th Doctor audios, The Cloisters of Terror, I'll put myself forward for a couple more titles:

The Cloisters of Terror - Location: St Matilda's College, Oxford
Managra - Managra, Dangerous Byron (an ally), Location: Europa

[misterharry]

Here are the next few stories I'm looking to cover (including my current thinking on what to include for each):

Novels:
A Device of Death - Max (an ally), the Jand (another ally), Location: The Adelphine Cluster, Location: Deepcity (probably including stats for Director Kambril and the Synth-troopers), Gadget: MICA

Audios:
The Sands of Life/War Against the Laan - The Conglomerate (including stats for Cuthbert, possibly also Mr Dorrick), the Laan
The Dalek Contract/The Final Phase - Location: Proxima Major, Gadget: The Quantum Gateway

As always, the write-ups may actually vary once I've revisited each of these.

[Catsmate]

Just an FYI, the new-ish book The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who contains a number of new short stories with various Doctors, intermixed with the science. Rather like the Science of Discworld books. I flipped though it recently but I haven't got it yet.

[misterharry]

Jul 2, 2015 13:50:03 GMT Catsmate said:

Just an FYI, the new-ish book The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who contains a number of new short stories with various Doctors, intermixed with the science. Rather like the Science of Discworld books. I flipped though it recently but I haven't got it yet.

Yes, I've got the Kindle version and have read the short stories (only skimmed through the accompanying science essays though). There's a story for each of the first 11 Doctors and several for the 12th. None for the War Doctor, unfortunately.

Not all of the stories contain something suitable for inclusion in the sourcebooks though. But the 4th Doctor's story, The Lost Generation, features an excellent setting, Prosperity, which I'm planning on writing up as a Location.

[Catsmate]

Jul 2, 2015 14:01:10 GMT misterharry said:

Jul 2, 2015 13:50:03 GMT Catsmate said:

Just an FYI, the new-ish book The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who contains a number of new short stories with various Doctors, intermixed with the science. Rather like the Science of Discworld books. I flipped though it recently but I haven't got it yet.

Yes, I've got the Kindle version and have read the short stories (only skimmed through the accompanying science essays though). There's a story for each of the first 11 Doctors and several for the 12th. None for the War Doctor, unfortunately.

Not all of the stories contain something suitable for inclusion in the sourcebooks though. But the 4th Doctor's story, The Lost Generation, features an excellent setting, Prosperity, which I'm planning on writing up as a Location.

Excellent, I'm glad to see you're already on it.

[misterharry]

Apr 28, 2015 16:45:42 GMT Siskoid said:

Any reason to believe the following will NOT be the first in their respective chapters?

Companions: Fenella Wibbsey

Allies: Arboretans

Monsters and Enemies: Will Astaroth Morax (the last of the Colophon) get any entry?

Locations in Time and Space: Agratis

Gadgets and Artefacts: The Beautiful Death

Sorry, Siskoid - I've just realised that the Adelphine Cluster (from A Device of Death) will push Agratis off the top spot for the Locations section. Hope that doesn't mess up the Agratis page layout too much!

[misterharry]

Random thought: are we intending to cover The Light at the End in this volume?

I don't think there are enough potential subjects from this story for there to be something to include in each Doctor's sourcebook, as we're doing with other multi-Doctor stories (only the Vess springs to mind, and maybe the conceptual bomb as a Gadget). One solution is to cover it here, and then in the 5th to 8th Doctors' volumes we can just refer back to the 4th? Or is it best to wait until the 8th?

[Marnal]

Well from Gallifrey and the Master's POV the story seems to take place during the 4th Doctor's era, so that seems reasonable.

[misterharry]

Jul 21, 2015 16:53:23 GMT Marnal said:

Well from Gallifrey and the Master's POV the story seems to take place during the 4th Doctor's era, so that seems reasonable.

That hadn't even occurred to me!

[misterharry]

I'm in the process of finishing off the entries for the last batch of stories I bagged. So here are my next targets:


AUDIOS:
The Stealers from Saiph - The Saiph
The Pyralis Effect - The Pyralis
The Invasion of E-Space - Farrian, Location: Ballustra
Phantoms of the Deep - Location: The Mariana Trench

As always, I may add to the above suggested entries when I listen to the stories again.


NOVELS:
The Drosten's Curse has just been released and I've got the audiobook version so can also cover this one.

[Siskoid]

Watch for a heavily amended 4th Doctor draft to come out tomorrow, just in time for August!

That is all.

[Siskoid]

As promised, new and rather massive update on the document. Link reminder:
drive.google.com/file/d/0B4RRnRNaDS5wSXphcUZ3OWFVN28/view?usp=sharing

[jezmiller]

Beautiful job. One tiny, tiny niggle that I've spotted in my first hasty skim-read: shouldn't Professor Marius' tech level be 8, not 6?

[Catsmate]

Aug 3, 2015 13:01:25 GMT jezmiller said:

Beautiful job. One tiny, tiny niggle that I've spotted in my first hasty skim-read: shouldn't Professor Marius' tech level be 8, not 6?

That's an interesting point; the Bi-Al foundation (and Titan) seems to have a wide mix of technologies. I interpret this (given the 51st century setting) as an effect of the solar flares and general technological regression of the recovery period, mixed with some "Weird Science" from the era of people like Greel.

[jezmiller]

Aug 3, 2015 16:46:23 GMT Catsmate said:

That's an interesting point; the Bi-Al foundation (and Titan) seems to have a wide mix of technologies. I interpret this (given the 51st century setting) as an effect of the solar flares and general technological regression of the recovery period, mixed with some "Weird Science" from the era of people like Greel.

Indeed. The spacefaring technologies that we see appear no more advanced than those in Frontier in Space, twenty-five centuries before - more primitive, if anything. There's no indication that transmat is in use, although perhaps we just don't see it. Yet AI technologies are clearly very well developed, and the Kilbracken technique, dismissed by Marius as a mere "circus trick", is a pretty amazing achievement, albeit of limited utility. (Though as a way for PCs to sacrifice themselves without actually sacrificing themselves, it would have its uses in extremis)

The FASA game history described Earth as a galactic backwater in this era. It's possible that space travel regressed or stagnated, while other areas of research (like Vortex Manipulator technology), raced ahead. In this, both the FASA game and GURPS are ahead of Cubicle 7 in having multiple indexes for technological development, rather than a single scale.

[Catsmate]

Aug 3, 2015 20:05:10 GMT jezmiller said:

Aug 3, 2015 16:46:23 GMT Catsmate said:

That's an interesting point; the Bi-Al foundation (and Titan) seems to have a wide mix of technologies. I interpret this (given the 51st century setting) as an effect of the solar flares and general technological regression of the recovery period, mixed with some "Weird Science" from the era of people like Greel.

Indeed. The spacefaring technologies that we see appear no more advanced than those in Frontier in Space, twenty-five centuries before - more primitive, if anything.

Exactly! The spacecraft are primitive (with weight limits!) and otherwise the setting is pretty low-tech. I posit this was the result of technological regression.

Aug 3, 2015 20:05:10 GMT jezmiller said:

There's no indication that transmat is in use, although perhaps we just don't see it.

A good point, IIRR this could have short-circuited the plot a bit. Also in The Dalek Masterplan there was an experimental interstellar ranged transmat, which doesn't seem to have appeared again.

Aug 3, 2015 20:05:10 GMT jezmiller said:

Yet AI technologies are clearly very well developed, and the Kilbracken technique, dismissed by Marius as a mere "circus trick", is a pretty amazing achievement, albeit of limited utility. (Though as a way for PCs to sacrifice themselves without actually sacrificing themselves, it would have its uses in extremis)

To me this speaks of pretty directed research in some areas from a low technological  baseline. Perhaps based on recovered/preserved knowledge or intervention from more advanced societies (willing or not).

Aug 3, 2015 20:05:10 GMT jezmiller said:

The FASA game history described Earth as a galactic backwater in this era. It's possible that space travel regressed or stagnated, while other areas of research (like Vortex Manipulator technology), raced ahead. In this, both the FASA game and GURPS are ahead of Cubicle 7 in having multiple indexes for technological development, rather than a single scale.

Well my take was that Earth in the beginning of the sixth millennium is a backward, isolated and generally unimportant place. Abandoned during the Solar Flares era (the result of some ill-advised solar engineering) it now has a population approaching two billion, from cryo-stasis survivors, natural and artificial births.

The fiddling with the sun was and attempt to end the Ice Age era; itself the result of some planetary engineering gone wrong.

The population has a bit of a grudge against the Galactic Federation who, in the view of Terran nationalists, didn't help them enough during the flare era (the advice to stop messing with technology you don't understand and leave Sol alone was not well received). Technologically Earth has regressed substantially, being a mix of 19th to 21st century, though with some advanced imports. There's a moderately effective embargo against importing advanced tech.

Of course the Feds have their own problems; the split that formed the Confederacy was peaceful enough (only a few million died) but the Confed is expanding faster and encroaching on areas the Fed think are theirs. That said the rivalry is generally peaceful. One thing both powers do agree on is the New Terran Empire (a rather grandiose name for a smallish, sub-galactic, power) is not getting control of Earth. There's too much social and cultural baggage there. Plus a lot of them, especially the non-humans, remember the last human Empire and not fondly.
The Time Agency was a joint project, it didn't last. Both factions now have limited time travel and are anxious to monopolise it. Though a few Agents simply went rogue and set up as Freetimers.
Both the Galactic Federation (actually eleven galaxies have significant membership), the Confederacy (also multi-galactic and other powers things are peaceful on the large scale. This won't last of course.

World Wars Four through Six didn't help things on Earth much either, lots of effort (and resources) that could have been used in rebuilding human civilisation on it's home were wasted. However after WW6 things are rather better. Of course there's still the lack of useful mineral resources on planet, asteroid mining and salvaging of surviving pre-flare bases is big business. What will become the Bio-al Foundation is being planned, and the Second Diaspora isn't too far off.

During the Supreme Alliance period, both before and during WW6, various 'Weird Technologies' were evaluated and tested. Hence the 'organic distillation' setup Greel used, research which would culminate in the New London Horror of von Wachten. Bio-tech was also popular, including weird cybernetic genemod animals.

[Siskoid]

FINALLY! Some playtesting debate

One possible way to get around this is to give him the Cutting Edge Technology Trait, right? Between that, Boffin and Technically Adept, he should be able to make breakthroughs like K9's AI, while still respecting the apparent TL of his version of the year 5000. What do you think?

[Catsmate]

Aug 4, 2015 13:21:06 GMT Siskoid said:

FINALLY! Some playtesting debate

One possible way to get around this is to give him the Cutting Edge Technology Trait, right? Between that, Boffin and Technically Adept, he should be able to make breakthroughs like K9's AI, while still respecting the apparent TL of his version of the year 5000. What do you think?

I think this could work. A baseline TL of 6 with some breakthroughs by him, and others, to explain the advances.

[jezmiller]

Aug 4, 2015 13:21:06 GMT Siskoid said:

FINALLY! Some playtesting debate

One possible way to get around this is to give him the Cutting Edge Technology Trait, right? Between that, Boffin and Technically Adept, he should be able to make breakthroughs like K9's AI, while still respecting the apparent TL of his version of the year 5000. What do you think?

In the absence of a defined game mechanic to represent uneven technological development, I think it works very well.

Something that's bugged me for years is that there's nothing in the script to substantiate the near-universal assumption that Marius invented K9. Marius' own words are "You see, on Earth I always used to have a dog. But up here, with the weight penalty, well, it's just not possible. So I had K9 made up. He's very useful, my own personal data bank. He knows everything I know, don't you K9?"

Marius was a medical doctor, a senior consultant. He was described as a specialist in "extraterrestrial pathological endomorphisms", so presumably in modern terms he was some kind of microbiologist - or micro-xeno-biologist, perhaps - although he shows expertise in other areas, such as brain surgery. But there's nothing in the televised episode to suggest that he had any kind of expertise in robotics, other than the fact that he owns K9. I've worked in hospital IT in the past. A senior consultant who wants a new computer system doesn't usually develop it him-or herself. He picks up the 'phone to the IT department and tells them what he wants. The way Marius phrases it sounds to me as though he did the same thing - called the Bi-Al Foundation's IT department and got them to put K9 together for him. Of course, "I had K9 made up" could simply mean that he designed K9 himself and handed the plans over to Bi-Al's tech support, but why would he be an expert in two such wildly unrelated fields as xeno-pathology and robotics? The only logical answer I can think of is that by his era, AI technology is modeled closely on human brains, and that an understanding of one derives from an understanding of the other.

Ahem, anyway, getting back on topic... you show his Ingenuity as 7, which exceeds the human limit of 6. You also show his Resolve as 3, but he was quite a brave man, and not one to flinch from hard choices. "If I am taken over, I hope you won't hesitate to use that blaster on me. Because I shall certainly use mine on you". I would personally suggest dropping his Ingenuity back to 6 but upping his resolve to 4, and making the AoE ratings for artificial intelligence and robotics optional. The Cutting Edge Technology trait would apply if he were K9's inventor, but wouldn't be needed otherwise.

I've been a lurker in your extracanonical sourcebooks for a while, btw, and I'm a big fan. I've found them very interesting and often very useful.

[jezmiller]

Aug 4, 2015 9:19:10 GMT Catsmate said:

Well my take was that Earth in the beginning of the sixth millennium is a backward, isolated and generally unimportant place. Abandoned during the Solar Flares era (the result of some ill-advised solar engineering) it now has a population approaching two billion, from cryo-stasis survivors, natural and artificial births.

The fiddling with the sun was and attempt to end the Ice Age era; itself the result of some planetary engineering gone wrong.

The population has a bit of a grudge against the Galactic Federation who, in the view of Terran nationalists, didn't help them enough during the flare era (the advice to stop messing with technology you don't understand and leave Sol alone was not well received). Technologically Earth has regressed substantially, being a mix of 19th to 21st century, though with some advanced imports. There's a moderately effective embargo against importing advanced tech.

Of course the Feds have their own problems; the split that formed the Confederacy was peaceful enough (only a few million died) but the Confed is expanding faster and encroaching on areas the Fed think are theirs. That said the rivalry is generally peaceful. One thing both powers do agree on is the New Terran Empire (a rather grandiose name for a smallish, sub-galactic, power) is not getting control of Earth. There's too much social and cultural baggage there. Plus a lot of them, especially the non-humans, remember the last human Empire and not fondly.
The Time Agency was a joint project, it didn't last. Both factions now have limited time travel and are anxious to monopolise it. Though a few Agents simply went rogue and set up as Freetimers.
Both the Galactic Federation (actually eleven galaxies have significant membership), the Confederacy (also multi-galactic and other powers things are peaceful on the large scale. This won't last of course.

World Wars Four through Six didn't help things on Earth much either, lots of effort (and resources) that could have been used in rebuilding human civilisation on it's home were wasted. However after WW6 things are rather better. Of course there's still the lack of useful mineral resources on planet, asteroid mining and salvaging of surviving pre-flare bases is big business. What will become the Bio-al Foundation is being planned, and the Second Diaspora isn't too far off.

During the Supreme Alliance period, both before and during WW6, various 'Weird Technologies' were evaluated and tested. Hence the 'organic distillation' setup Greel used, research which would culminate in the New London Horror of von Wachten. Bio-tech was also popular, including weird cybernetic genemod animals.

Impressive work on the detail and potential plot hooks there. 19th to 21st century technology seems excessive, though; while the technological level of the Invisible Enemy isn't that  remarkable by Whoniverse standards, it's still many centuries ahead of where we are now. The Doctor's talk of the "great breakout" suggests some kind of Renaissance in progress, in attitude towards the universe if not (necessarily) in technology - although an impetus to progress in one area does imply, at the least, a society that's interested in advancing rather than stagnating.