Project Earth scour was, in a very tiny part, inspired by watching the director’s cut of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, possibly the dullest science fiction film after 2001: A Space Odyssey. Both those films spend too long on looking expensive and impressive and are as dull as watching paint dry. But I got to thinking about setting a story somewhere in paranoid America, somewhere in the desert, perhaps.
So I used Google Earth to look at the mojave desert. I wanted an interestingly remote place to base my story. The mojave desert has the distinction of not being the Nevada desert and having nothing to do with Area 51 and any of those usual clichés. It didn’t take very long to come across the Solar Two instillation. It sticks out rather impressively in the desert and there is plenty of information about it.
So I now had a story with Solar Two as the focus point. The idea of using the solar power to project some kind of energy beam into space then came to mind, and with it the idea that aliens wouldn’t be abducting people, but people would be abducting aliens.
Of course, secret facilities for researching aliens isn’t new. There’s Torchwood for a start, and the x-files and a couple of American series that have touched on the idea. But there are few new ideas in fiction, still less in science fiction, so this is a variation on the theme.
Harry is a great character. He was underused in Doctor Who, mainly because he was created to be the fighting man in The Doctor’s crew but Tom Baker, being younger than previous Doctors, was able to do most of the fighting himself. I like to use him when I can, though the idea that Harry is no longer with us is firmly established in most of my stories. So by 2015, Sarah Jane is living in Ealing and has a grown up son, Luke, as seen in the Sarah Jane Adventures, but Harry has passed away and is remembered fondly by her. There is, of course, a picture of Harry in Sarah Jane’s attic along with other memorabilia from her time with The Doctor.
The aliens encountered in the cells include Draconians, as seen in the Third Doctor story, Frontier in Space. They are a fiercely proud race with a rigid code of etiquette something like Imperial China. Sontarans are the other classic race mentioned. Sontarans are warriors. They have no other frame of reference but war. Harry’s truce is something of a coup, as is The Doctor persuading Commander Asak not to shoot to kill. I thought it was time to show a Sontaran with something more than the jarhead mentality. It is implied in the course of the story that Asak is the first Sontaran to come to Earth, and they were not aware of it as a populated planet until then. That is perfectly possible since Sontarans have limited time travel. He could easily be an earlier hatching than Lynx who landed in medieval England or others encountered over the years.
The reptilian Sevess and the Carellian Brood Mother are my own invention, although the baby Carellian vomitting is very definitely a homage to Men in Black.
The
President of the USA depicted here is female, and it is the year 2015.
While writing this one I was talking to a couple of American friends who
were a little pessimistic about Obama getting a second term. A few people
assumed that I was talking about Hillary Clinton as a Democratic president.
Actually, what I had in mind was Sarah Palin leading a Republican government.
I don’t much like Sarah Palin, so having an alien baby vomit on
her and then subject her to the humiliation of kneeling before the Draconians
was a fun idea. I rather hope she doesn’t become President, though.
The world doesn’t deserve that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Solar_Project
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_plants_in_the_Mojave_Desert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Desert
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Harry_Sullivan
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Sarah_Jane_Smith
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Draconian
http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Sontaran
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin
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