The Secret of Vega X22

 

INSPIRATION

With the announcement of the First Doctor action figure in 2009 and with no (at the time) companions for him, I needed to come up with a new assistant and drew upon the rich world of Terry Nation. Agent Seven was a robot first mentioned in The Dalek Outer Space Book in 1966 who was to have been a character in Nation's proposed Dalek TV spin-off The Destroyers. I figured it would be interesting to have the first Doctor, who has only just developed a "human" morality, pass that on to a robotic companion.

Before he appeared in the AFT proper, I created this little cutaway to introduce the character.

Since then, Big Finish have done adventures with a Mark Seven, including a version of Nation's The Destroyers pilot. This is not intended to be the same character.

CAST

The Mark Seven figure is made from a wave 2 Captain Jack (in uniform as seen in The Empty Child) with bandolier, utility belt and cuff detail added in Green Stuff. There are no colour photos of the Space Security Service uniform, which I'd always envisaged to be black and yellow, though some people opt for white.

Mark's gun is a custom creation using a piece of sprue from a model kit and the bendy part of a drinking straw, held together with Green Stuff.

The infra-read view of Mark's internal workings uses a 3.75" Terminator Genesis Exoskeleton figure.

The only other figure used in this tale is the Dead Planet Dalek from the first classic Dalek three pack.

SCRIPT & SHOOTING

I didn't keep a note of dates but the story was probably written around Sept 2009. It was shot at the same time as the Dalek interiors for its accompanying story Enemy From Nowhere which would see the Doctor and Mark meet.

CONTINUITY

The year is 4005, five years after The Dalek Masterplan.

TRANSMISSION

This little cutaway was posted originally on Outpost Gallifrey's toy forums, probably in December 2009. It appeared on the AFT site proper in October 2015 alongside Enemy From Nowhere.

It was posted on this site in isolation on 8 April 2023 - the full First Doctor/ Mark 7 arc will come later.