Forêt begins while The Doctor and Dominique are away on their honeymoon. Susan and Miche, along with young Dominic lead the fight against the miners who have arrived and who claim the mineral rights on the planet.

Now, this plotline is not entirely original in one sense. It was done in the Jon Pertwee era in Colony in Space, which featured a dispute between colonists and miners. And the dispute was dealt with by independent adjudicators. In Colony in Space The Master turned up as adjudicator, having bamboozled his way in. In this case, the adjudicators turned out to be a representative of the empire of Adano-Ambrado, a system which regular readers are familiar with, and the President of the exiled people of Gallifrey. For readers of the New Lords of Time story, that presented no great mystery. The president of Gallifrey is none other than the Ninth Doctor. But that didn’t mean that Ten was going to get a free ride. There ARE hard words said between them. Nine reminds Ten of the dangers of emotionalism in such cases.

And it is possible that Ten and his friends could have lost their fight. The fact that their ancestors  crashed on the planet accidentally rather than being allocated the colony, or being indigenous to Forêt DOES leave them vulnerable. But the miners did a bit of pre-emptive vandalism and therefore lost their case.

The machine used to destroy the forest actually was going to be some kind of land machine like a JCB, but as I was writing this I saw a James Bond film – I THINK it was The World Is Not Enough, feel free to correct me - that featured a helicopter fitted with tree cutters that chased Bond down a jetty, and I decided that was EXACTLY what I needed here. Very handy.

http://www.rdwf.org.uk/doctors/D3/s8/04colonyinspace.htm