Machine (Doctor Who and the Moonmen)

Rogue ex-Time Lord Roki XII created a **machine** as part of his plan to trap the Seventeenth Doctor on the moon in 2095.

## Function

Roki's plan involved three creatures, the Moonmen, that could grant any wish anyone asked for without repercussions. This was obviously impossible, so he would have to create an illusion of this taking place. This would prove easy, using junk Time Lord technology to fashion a mind altering machine.

The machine literally altered the output of the perception areas of the brain, making the Moonmen appear as real to a person as anything else in the room. While they weren't designed to be tangible, they theoretically could be, and so was anything else generated by the machine. If the machine was tasked with creating a physical object for someone then, while said object literally didn't exist, everyone within the range of the machine could see, hear, touch and probably smell and taste it like it was there.

The machine did not limit what it could produce within people's minds, so theoretically someone could request that the universe ended immediately, and everyone within the operating range of the machine, believing it to be true, would die. Thankfully, the amount of people ever in contact with the machine while it was fully operational never allowed someone to do something like that. It was in this way that the Moonmen differed from the Wizards on Unnuna, as they had inadvertently set up a limit to their powers. (TV: *I Am The Doctor*)

## Appearance

The machine was housed in a cuboidal metal frame, the size of a large microwave oven. Inside was a football-sized glass globe, within which was a pink crystal. Two thick cables connected the sphere to two large circuit boards which branched off into an incomprehensible tangle of wires. A thick coil of metal was wedged through the middle. On top was a keypad, three metal switches and four knobs. (TV: *Doctor Who and the Moonmen*)

## History

Several years in advance, Roki and his temporary Kozak assistant, W'Katho, landed on the moon. Here, they constructed and programmed the machine, using repurposed Time Lord technology Roki had stolen. They finished it in a matter of a day, affectionately calling it the "mind weaver". Roki then murdered W'Katho, switched the machine on, and waited. (PROSE: *Moon Bait*)

In 2094, the Moonmen were discovered by Alyx Morgan and his research team, and by April 2095 they were on display. However, Roki's plan fell apart when Jayanna IX saw through his ruse and eventually managed to disable the machine, by daintily hitting it with a large moon rock. (TV: *I Am The Doctor*)

However, Jayanna's damage didn't entirely stop the machine. While most of its ongoing hallucinations immediately ended, it remained powered and a couple of them continued to broadcast. One of these was to three guests who had decided to flat out ask the Moonmen to make them gods, and so the machine did as it was told.

More worryingly the machine now started to execute functions it was not designed for, and the time travel components incorporated into the machine began to malfunction. This caused a small tear in the fabric of spacetime, and the machine and the three "gods" fell through - to the planet Unnuna in the far future. (TV: *How To Live Forever*)