WHO'S ON FIRST - PART THREE

Three days after Christmas, my friends Mark & Michael invited me over to see their copy of the 'Doctor Who' Christmas special, "Voyage Of The Damned". It's just as well because even though it was just before midnight, I'd probably have battered their door until they let me in.

There are plenty of blogs out there where you can read reviews of the special, especially at "Behind The Sofa". A lot of them are negative, some even scathing, which was surprising to me after I saw it because I liked it a lot. Of course, I'm easy to please.

Sure, it had plenty of faults (and I'm a big advocate for RTD to just come up with the stories and let someone else write them - or at least edit them), but I think it worked.

If you stumbled across here looking for a review, that's not what we do here; not really. The Toobworld Dynamic is all about the search for connections between shows. And "Voyage Of The Damned" has a good'un.

It's for a theory like this that I'm glad I came up with the 'Doctor Who'/'Journeyman' connection, so that I can keep this incarnation of the Doctor in the main Toobworld. Otherwise, I'd probably have to ditch this connection into the dustbin:
"Voyage Of The Damned" is theoretically connected to 'Battlestar Galactica'.

This will probably be a disappointment to the fannish many, but I'm not talking about the new and improved version of 'Battlestar Galactica'. That show has no place in the main Toobworld. Not only did the first 'Battlestar Galactica' establish primacy, but it's too enmeshed in the "Great Link" with real and theoretical connections to 'McCloud' and 'Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman', among others.

The ragtag fleet of ships that were shepherded by the Galactica across the galaxy from their home system reached Earth in 1980 (as seen in 'Galactica 1980', duh). Based on the supposed age of Troy, once known as Boxey, approximately thirty plus years had passed since the audience had last seen the Galactica fleet. (But this could change due to the lifespan of his people.) This gave the fleet plenty of time to cross Mutter's Spiral (known to us on Earth as the Milky Way) on its journey to Earth and visit various inhabited planets along the way. All through the first series of 'Battlestar Galactica', Adama's people kept finding outcrops of human settlements. They could have been descended from the castaways of the lost tribe who left in search of Earth, or they could have evolved from the genetic stock seeded by the Preservers ('Star Trek' - "The Paradise Syndrome").

So each of the inhabited planets in Mutter's Spiral (a list of those from 'Doctor Who' alone can be found here) could have been stopovers for the Galactica fleet on their way to Earth. and with each visit, individuals or entire ship rosters could have chosen to "jump ship" and stay with the populations of those planets, blending in.

And one of those planets could have been Sto, the planet of origin for the passengers and crew of the Titanic in "Voyage Of The Damned".

I don't think the entire population of Sto were refugees from the Galactican fleet; but there was possibly at least one person on board the Titanic who was once part of that armada.

Max Capricorn.
What clued me in to the possibility that Max Capricorn might be part of the 'Battlestar Galactica' population was of course his name. Many of the characters from that show had names similar to that of Max, based on constellations, Greek mythology, Biblical terminology:

Adama, Apollo (Lee Apollo in the new version), Cassiopeia, Sheba, Athena, Cain, Bootes, Rigel, etc.

A name like "Max Capricorn" would fit right into that collection.

Of course, if I follow that line of reasoning, then Robert Scorpio of the WSB (as seen on 'General Hospital') may have been a Galactican integrated into the Terran population of Port Charles, NY. And there would have been no reason to bring it up, even when his brother Mac showed up - if he really was Robert's brother....

(Look at that outfit Scorpio is wearing in this picture with his human wife Holly. It just screams 1980s sci-fi!)

The timing works - Galactica arrives in hidden orbit around Earth in 1980; Robert Xavier Scorpio arrives in Port Charles in 1981. (Could that middle name mean he was related to Dr. Xavier, who kept trying to alter Earth's history?) And it's not like such a storyline would be out of place on 'General Hospital' - in 1990, Shep Casey (aka Casey Rogers) materialized in Port Charles from the planet Lumina (perhaps the twin planet to Luminos from 'The Outer Limits' - "Feasibility Study").

Anyhoo......

Max Capricorn probably "jumped ship" on Sto, seeing in that world the possibilities to not only survive any incursion by the Cylons (should they find Sto), but also to carve out a niche for himself among Sto's population.

And that's what he did during his time on Sto, calling on his knowledge of spaceships to build his cruise line. (By Earth years, he was there on Sto for about half a century, but by the Stovian reckoning it was said he ran Capricorn Cruise Lines for "one hundred years". The picture on the left could be Max Capricorn earlier in his life... when he still had a body.)

I don't think Max Capricorn was the only Galactican refugee on Sto, and I think those others took measures to prepare their new world for a possible attack by Cylons. One of those measures might have been to enact laws to prevent the creation of any new breeds of Cylons on Sto - perhaps new Cylons similar to those seen in the alternate dimension of the new 'Battlestar Galactica'. And that's why Sto had anti-cyborg laws on their books (perhaps pushed through by those Galacticans who worked their ways into positions of power). But after nearly fifty years under those laws, such prejudices were being relaxed. (Not that it happened in time to do Mr. Bannakaffalatta, above, any good.)

However, Max became a "victim" of those laws when he was transformed into a cyborg himself - only his head kept alive with a tractor-like mechanical body. And that was one of the reasons his board of directors drove him out of his position of power.

The majority of the Galactican fleet reached Earth over a quarter century ago and have long since integrated themselves into the general populations. They cannibalized their ships to advance Terran technology so that they could repel any attacks by the Cylons.

And the Doctor probably learned of their presence on his adopted homeworld and may have even helped them in vanquishing the Cylons forever. Of course, this would have been an adventure that we never saw (perhaps with the Seventh or Eighth Doctor), nor are we likely to, but it would go a long way in splaining why we've never seen the Cylons again in Toobworld.

(Taking a slight detour, I'd love to see the Cylons team up with the Cybermen in much the same way as the Cybermen and Daleks didn't.)

I think that if the Doctor knew some of the Galacticans, he may have contacted them after he parted ways with Bayldon Copper on Christmas Day, 2008. He might have asked them to take Mr. Copper under their wing and guide him in the confusing ways of the Earth people so that he could live among them undetected for the alien that he was. (I think Bayldon Copper was more likely a native Stovian rather than a Galactican refugee.)
And so it goes.

BCnU!
Toby OB