Catastrophea

En route back to Earth, the Doctor senses a planet in great distress and alters the TARDIS course to go there. The planet is Katospheria but it has been nicknamed Catastrophea by the human colonists who live there; the planet and its native population, known only as the People, have been used and abused by an intergalactic Company but are now under the protection of Earth’s empire itself. The planet has attracted its fair share of drug smugglers and freedom fighters, and right now sits under a Draconian blockade with invasion imminent. But beyond the visible dangers is a deeper threat from the planet’s old days, a threat which could see everyone wiped out on all sides.

So here we have another offering to the BBC Books line by Terrance Dicks, a man so deeply involved in the Pertwee era on television that it makes sense for him to write a tale set exactly then, with the Doctor and Jo in their starring roles. The story opens right after the final scenes of Planet of the Daleks just as did the audio The Conquest of Far so it’s up to the viewer / listener / reader to decide which of the two is the legit follow-up – I only picked Conquest for my purposes because I was excited to listen to it. There’s a clumsy recap of the previous story but at the time Planet of the Daleks hadn’t been released on home video so perhaps Dicks felt it was warranted to remind people of what went on. And the Doctor has this moment where he realizes that Jo is growing as a woman and will leave him soon (I hate this kind of retcon foreshadowing by the way) but then has a kind of Obi Wan Kenobi moment with his sometimes-referenced Time Lord telepathy picking up the distress of an entire world crying out in pain. It makes a certain sense why that happened as the story unfolds but at the time it just seems like something the TARDIS could have picked up on its own with its own circuits.

Anyways, down to the planet they go and find a colonial world with lower level technology and a subjugated native population being whipped and beaten and not actually doing anything about it (obvious parallels to the British Empire are made). Except for here and there when one goes berserk and slaughters anyone in the way. The people living here are farmers and plantation owners but they’re none too nice – but neither are the drug smuggling group headed by a guy named Dove. There’s little real law and order in the colony with displaced Company security outnumbering and outgunning the legitimate police, and a token branch of Earth military is onsite for general security. And then there are the activists – they’re there to be political and fight for the rights of the People even if the People don’t really care what happens to them. And there are Draconians in orbit with their own agenda.

I found it’s a bit of a mixed bag of a cast with nobody really getting much in the way of character development. Some of these characters could have been dropped in favour of exploring the others better; even the whole subplot about drugs could have gone away along with anyone associated with it. But as I was reading it I realized this setting was not too far off that of Combat Rock which was written beautifully and packed full of detail and suspense, as well as blood and gore which Catastrophea has but it’s just not brought off the same. And Combat Rock had its own set of bad boys who were far more alarming than Dove and his guys could ever be. And the People. There’s more going on there than anyone suspects, and the real trouble, when it starts, will start there.

Timeline wise this takes place at the height of tensions between Earth and Draconia, so some years before Frontier in Space. The two empires are butted up against each other and events on Catastrophea would be just what is needed to plunge them both into war for no real reason except for imperial Draconian court politics. It’s actually an era of “future history” which would be interesting to explore – it’s a shame that Dicks didn’t go there instead of what he eventually did produce.

Oh well. I’m sure it would have been an interesting six episode script back in its day.

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