Doctor Who, the TARDIS

[md3633]

Goaded by a friend of mine, who was disappointed by the TARDIS mod, I wrote this to satisfy him.

He would very much like this sort of thing to be folded into the TARDIS mod.

01_VozaLabs with TARDIS

TARDIS

 

Why, sir, I thought you'd never ask!

 

Trying to reconcile several facts, I can come up with something. In Fallout 1 you are treated to a downed alien craft, and a TARDIS random encounter. As well as a federation shuttle-pod crash in Fallout 2. Further complicating things are the Alien involvement in the Great War and their lone downed craft which they didn't bother to recover until 200 years later. Oh, also, the other Mothership (Fathership?) which attacks you at the end.

Oh, and let's not forget the Guardian of Forever.

 

First, the UFO crash in Fallout 1 is clearly labeled "Property of Area 51, return if found." This clearly indicates that, the US Government had captured UFOs well before the war, but could not implement them in the war effort, because of a lack of understanding of the technology. Furthermore, learning from the ship that there were other habitable worlds, could have been the catalyst for the Government contracting Vault Tech on the Vault Experiment, which was, as you know, meant to test whether people could survive generation ships, in an effort to colonize another planet. During the war, someone at the base attempted to use the ship to escape, but, because of his lack of skill, crashed the damn thing. The act of crashing caused it's homing beacon to be activated. A beacon which attracted no attention from the Aliens, because, they were busy.

 

Busy with what? Well, as it turns out, they had just instigated the war. However, that was not their intended goal. They had meant to unleash Giddyup Buttercups on the world to eradicate the human population. You might ask "if the Aliens had been there long enough to kidnap Samurai and Cowboys, why did they wait?" Well, you're a fool. A silly, silly fool. These aliens are delicate. They didn't want to colonize a planet which was, to them, little more than mud huts and sharp rocks. No, they were playing the long game. Waiting until the scientific technology and infrastructure could be utilized and inhabited by them, without needing to change it much. Maybe a few glowing balls for ambiance. They don't want to tear everything down and then rebuild it. That poo takes effort. Indeed, there is an entire fleet of Alien ships, not unlike Mothership Zeta, parked behind the moon. The massive cryo-bays inside the ship are evidence of this. They can't only contain random people and creatures. It must be mostly Aliens. Zeta is one of several monitoring ships. Every 50 years, a ship was to wake up, hover over Earth and monitor the situation. And, because they could not be sure from broadcasts, they had to abduct people. Which they did, like clockwork, every 50 years. This accounts for the seemingly 50 year spikes in Aliens Abductions which I won't go into here. Anyway, they come in waves every 50 years.

 

When the crew of the Zeta accidentally caused the war, they kind of lost their minds. Not, like, I AM NOW THE JOKER NOW, crazy, but, they were *banned*. Now they'd have to wait another 1,000 or 2,000 years for the planet to be up to snuff for their snooty Alien asses. So, they kind of schlepped about. Doing whatever struck their fancy, instead of returning to cryo-sleep.

 

They delayed the awakening of new ships every 50 years by saying they were already on it. The ship would start to wake up, and they'd send resend orders through their alien network. They did this four times after the war. In the 200 years they *banned* off, they collected a ton of specimens and played with DNA for fun.

 

Oh, also, certain pieces of Alien technology produce restoration fields, meaning no one on board, even the little girl (who was seemingly never frozen), ever aged. Alien or otherwise. Also, this is why the 201 year old dead alien at the crash site isn't decomposed.

 

Now, if you're familiar with the Star Trek canon, you'll know that there a massive nuclear holocaust somewhere between 1997 and 2097. I'm not sure of the date. Let's call it October 23rd 2077. All instances of Star Trek related materials in Fallout games are the result of time travel and/or intra-universal incursions. Now, I'm pretty sure the Trek universe was back to normal by the year 2277, so, we can discount this universe as being the exact same one as TOS and TNG, but we can just call it a mirror universe and be done with it. An example of this is In a Mirror Darkly, where, a Federation ship from the year 2268 went back in time to the year 2155 and to that Mirror Universe we're all so fond of. The Federation crash in Fallout 2 is a similar situation. A shuttle-pod from roughly the TOS era hit a spatial interphase and crashed on Fallout Earth in the year 2241.

 

The Guardian of Forever will be explained later.

 

From here, I can go one of two ways. I can use The Doctor or Pete's World Meta-Crisis Doctor. If you want to female dog about the TARDIS, watch this horrible thing [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un47J4vsGqI]. In any case, the story is the same, but, it ends with him dead, so, would you rather it be a 13th Regeneration, lost forever in a shitty radioactive dust bowl on an unfashionable backwater planet? Or, would you rather it be David I'm-so-great Tennant, dead of old age? Really, whichever you pick, it doesn't change what I am about to say. The Doctor is engaged in a pitched battle with an unseen enemy. Something that can damage the TARDIS. Maybe Dalek ships. Anyway, his TARDIS is heavily damaged, and he is very wounded. Not bad enough to regenerate if he's the real one. Anyway, because all Doctor Who episodes hinge on him just randomly showing up, at just the right time, he passes through one of the myriad Star Trek phenomenons which span universes. I'm thinking of the quantum clusterf*#@ in the episode Parallels or the anti-time eruption in the finale All Good Things... The point here, because of this happenstance, he is forced through time/space/the void and turns up in Fallout Universe, without having defeated his pursuers, whoever they were. He is close to Earth, but the TARDIS is too damaged to noticed the giant fleet of alien ships behind the moon. Instead, it homes in on the first UFO crash site, but misses it by a few miles or a few hundred miles. Random encounters, y'know. When the Vault Dweller walks over the horizon and sees the Blue Box, he is just in time to wonder what the hell it was, as it's gone, now. For his troubles, he receives a Motion Sensor, which the Doctor had used for a minor repair then discarded on the ground because he doesn't give a *ban me*.

 

Having partially repaired the TARDIS, he finds the alien craft again, and investigates. He sees what it is and disregards it. Just some US Government trash. He turns off the homing beacon so as not to stumble upon it again. The TARDIS has ADD and will aim at anything shiny or making a pinging noise, apparently.

 

Repaired, he is free to explore this Earth and find some way to go back to his universe. Hopefully in time to defeat his enemies, less he become the demons.

 

Landing in 2277, he finds Recon Craft Theta. This just so happens to be just before the 50 year cycle for a monitor ship to awaken. HAPPENSTANCE IS THE DOCTOR'S FORTÉ.

 

While poking around the downed craft, he accidentally does that stupid thing where simply touching something causes it to repair itself. Daleks tend to do this, a lot. And the craft suddenly becomes a giant glowing beacon as opposed to a dying, low-level beacon that can barely broadcast a mile in any direction. This is why, when Mothership Zeta is installed, the beacon can be detected from anywhere in the Wasteland and space. The Mothership, which until now could not find it (and had likely forgotten it was lost) decides to beam up the ship, but the Doctor is a giant, targeting-computer scrambling anomaly, and, he is beamed up in its place. The Aliens summarily freeze him, without waiting for him to talk his way out of it. And likely procure his Sonic Screwdriver for their massive pile of junk. Or, it becomes the prize of the Alien Captain. Whichever.

 

THIS PRODUCES A FEW CONTINUITY PROBLEMS:

One: The TARDIS translated alien languages inside peoples heads, but they have to either have been inside it or standing near someone who has been inside it.

Two: The *ban* Recon Craft sat undisturbed for 201 years, which is mind-boggling, because the US Government knew where it had gone down and they could've easily retrieved it.

 

The first can be hand-waved by saying the TARDIS is still really broken/The Doctor being frozen has the same effect as when he was sick and dying, when Tennant took over and the Sycorax were going untranslated.

The second can be explained with a perception filter. Oh, and, maybe, with high enough Perception, a perception filter can be negated.

 

When the Lone Wanderer shows up, happenstance once again plays a hand as that was THE EXACT MOMENT the Aliens got around the beaming the ship up. It can only work this way.

Except, Somah says she was picked up while investigating the distress signal. Perhaps, she was acting as the Doctor's momentary companion.

 

 

 

Now, for the meat of the mod.

 

The TARDIS would be somewhere not far from the Theta site. I say tucked away near the power plant, which, has a nice little spot with a couple of dumpsters. That would be a perfect little alcove and it's just a brisk walk to the crash site.

 

The Doctor is dead and/or frozen on Mothership Zeta. In his inventory is a TARDIS key, which, once picked up, will reveal the location of the TARDIS on the map. Just the map marker for the power plant, if the player hasn't wandered there, yet.

 

Even with the key, the ship might still need to be lockpicked, because, I don't want to make it easy, and the key might not fully function, with the Doctor dead. We don't know. Once inside, the ship is just barely not what you would consider "shambles" and all the lighting is dim and the ambient TARDIS sounds are all droning and slowed down. It cannot move. But, as is, will function as a player house. To repair it you need high Intelligence, high Repair, high Perception, and, why not, high Science. Also, Alien technology. All that poo in Mothership Zeta which you can't pick up. A lot of that. Maybe some of those alien crystals that serve no function.

 

Anyway, once you meet all the requirements, and repair it, it can take you to any part of the Wasteland (map markers) and effectively replaces Fast Travel, which should be disabled, anyway.

 

 

She still wont travel in time, because you're not her master and she still thinks he'll come back, and she doesn't want to not be in the general area when he does. But, until then, she's more than happy to make trips that, to her, would be like you moving slightly in your chair. Seriously, all of time and space and she'll only take you within a 100x100 miles box. You're just barely getting to use her.

 

Oh, yeah, the Guardian of Forever, being a time-travel entity (not unlike a TARDIS itself), came to Earth when it perceived another thing like itself. It overshot the trip, then lost "sight" of the TARDIS but detected an ontological paradox. It waited for the Chosen One so that it could task him/her with going back in time and breaking Vault 13's water chip.

 

Oh, also, the other Mothership attacked Mothership Zeta because it perceived them as mutineers and traitors, not because you were taking the ship over at that point. That's like burning down a house full of assholes because the rats and roaches are slightly more annoying than usual. No, you did it because the occupants were assholes.

 

How's that?

[coorscollector]

Sounds like an amazing concept unfortunately it sounds like it would need ten craploads of scripting to accomplish and I have no experience with such things. You should start a team if you're serious cuz if you actually make this it would be a great mod.