The Kamelion Empire (audio story)

 was the two hundred and forty-ninth story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Jonathan Morris and featured Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, Janet Fielding as Tegan Jovanka, Mark Strickson as Vislor Turlough and Jon Culshaw as Kamelion.

Publisher's summary
Once upon a time, a people of great artistry and great knowledge ruled the planet Mekalion: the Kamille. For a thousand years, they prospered peacefully.

Then came disaster, when their sun set forever. Facing extinction, the Kamille made the Locus, a device to sustain their minds; and fashioned shape-changing machines, to act out their wishes on the physical plane...

Servants they called the Kamelion.

Part one
Following a recall signal for all of Kamelion's kind, the Doctor pilots the TARDIS to an underground chamber on Mekalion. He and Kamelion are separated from Tegan and Turlough by a collapsing staircase, after which he throws a TARDIS key to them and tells them to wait a few hours in the ship whilst he and Kamelion head to the surface. On the way, Kamelion explains that he was sent to Xeriphas as an ambassador for the Kamille and shut down after he suddenly and inexplicably lost contact with them.

Tegan and Turlough enter a throne room where four dormant robots sit and Kamelions with missing limbs are strewn across the floor. They hide from the gorilla-like Grolls, but Turlough accidentally triggers an alarm with a tripwire and he and Tegan flee back to the temple.

They find other dormant Kamelions and the Locus, the Kamille's repository of knowledge which Kamelion attempts to reactivate. The Doctor waits outside and is captured and taken away by the Grolls, apparently to be sacrificed. He is soon joined by Tegan and Turlough, who were captured by the Grolls after watching the Kamelions in the throne room reawaken. The three of them are saved, however, when Kamelion arrives with an army of his own kind, telling them that the Locus is activated and that his kind now have a guiding hand.

Part two
Kamelion apologises for deceiving his companions and admits that his kind are soldiers, now being led by the sole survivor of the Kamille. The Grolls return and Tegan and Turlough hurry back towards the TARDIS in the ensuing scuffle, not immediately realising that Kamelion has refused to let the Doctor leave and has taken him to the throne room. Captured by the Grolls once again, Turlough agrees to help them defeat the Kamelions and tells them that the Doctor is essential to success in this.

Kamelion introduces the Doctor to the enthroned robots, Authority, Harmony, Liberty and Chaos; they recite the history of Mekalion and how the Kamille built the Locus to sustain the minds of the Kamille to survive a drop in solar luminosity, later building the Kamelions so that they could continue to interact with the physical world and expand the Kamille Empire. The true reason that Kamelion was on Xeraphas was as part of an invasion force ordered by the Kamille to wipe out the Xeraphin, which the Doctor finds unacceptable. The Kamille split into four divisions and fought a day-long War in Heaven with their respective Kamelions which Harmony won, but Mekalion was destroyed and Chaos cut the connection with the Kamelions.

Tegan and Turlough are taken by the Grolls to the Locus, which Turlough shuts down by removing a control block in order to disable the Kamelions once again. The Grolls start destroying the dormant androids. The Doctor and Kamelion, who wants his kind reactivated and claims that the Kamille no longer want war, regroup with Tegan and Turlough and return to the TARDIS. There, Kamelion shoots the Doctor and Turlough, taking control of the TARDIS and revealing to Tegan that he is being controlled by Chaos, the true survivor of the Kamille.

Part three
Kamelion briefly regains control long enough to tell Tegan that the Doctor and Turlough are merely stunned and to ask her to use her influence to help him. He surrenders control to Chaos in exchange for Tegan's life, after which Chaos flies the TARDIS back in time 10,000 years to the War in Heaven and takes Tegan to the Court of the Kamille. The Doctor and Turlough wake up and go after them as the war begins and the Kamelions, previously dancing, start destroying one another. Chaos enters the Locus and Kamelion transduces his own mind in there as well, taking Tegan's with him without her consent.

The Doctor and Turlough enter the Locus by interfacing with the thrones and find themselves in a war zone shaped by the Doctor's memories. They soon find Chaos, who denies intending to change the course of the war; his victory is assured, but he intends to keep Authority from trapping him in the Locus this time.

Meanwhile, Tegan and Kamelion are in a landscape based on Tegan's memories of her grandfather's war story about Gallipoli. They are captured and taken to the younger Chaos, who tortures Kamelion until Tegan lets him into her mind and then learns of her mission to defeat his future self. To stop the Doctor, he orders an obliteration strike which will inadvertently trap himself inside the Locus. Whilst the future Chaos returns to Kamelion, the Doctor and Turlough save Tegan and the three of them confront Chaos in the TARDIS. The Doctor activates the self-destruct.

Part four
The console blows up, shattering the central column and preventing the TARDIS from dematerialising or opening its doors. Whilst the Doctor and Tegan head to the secondary control room, Turlough remains with Chaos and asks to join him, having him check Kamelion's memory to confirm that such a request is not out of character. Chaos accesses the ship's operational matrix via a roundel, during which Kamelion briefly reasserts control, and drags Turlough to the secondary control room. Turlough tells Chaos that he can switch off the room's force field and the temporal grace circuit at the ancillary power station, which he could also use to absorb more energy. This does not restore Kamelion as he had hoped.

Chaos breaks into the secondary control room and kills the Doctor and his companions when he reveals that he has disengaged the controls to keep him prisoner. However, the three of them are actually Kamelions, being controlled by the real ones who are still in the Locus. They return to their real bodies and deactivate the Locus per established history before returning to the TARDIS, which remains accessible from the outside and which discreetly travels 10,000 years into the future when the doors close. Chaos returns to the Locus and finds himself alone, so he attempts to return to Kamelion. Kamelion resists him with the help of the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough and he is trapped once more, the strain of which burns Kamelion out.

Kamelion shares Tegan's belief that he cannot be trusted and intends to remain on Mekalion, deactivated like the rest of his kind. The Doctor instead offers him a spare storeroom on the TARDIS, which he will reconfigure as a Zero Room to protect him from outside influence, until he feels that he is able to withstand psychic attack. He accepts on the condition that the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough act as though he is not there and to never think of him. Using the secondary control room, the Doctor flies to the Eye of Orion to repair the console and shows Kamelion the moonset before he begins his rest aboard the ship.

Cast

 * The Doctor / Authority - Peter Davison
 * Tegan Jovanka / Harmony - Janet Fielding
 * Vislor Turlough / Liberty - Mark Strickson
 * Kamelion - Jon Culshaw
 * Alternative Kamelion / Chaos Soldier - Christopher Naylor

Uncredited cast

 * Chaos - Jon Culshaw (BFX: The Kamelion Empire)

Worldbuilding

 * The Doctor carries a torch.
 * Kamelion is in contact with the Kamille via a subliminal tachyon pulse.
 * Tegan jokes that Turlough has never been to a Black Sabbath concert before.
 * The four factions of Kamelions engage in a conflict known as War in Heaven.
 * Tegan's grandfather, Albert Jovanka, fought at Gallipoli in World War I. He lied about his age and was only 16 when he enlisted with the Anzacs.
 * The Doctor opens a door to the TARDIS library but finds that the TARDIS laundry room is there instead.

Continuity

 * The TARDIS crew were on their way to Turlough's planet when Kamelion joined them. (TV: The King's Demons)
 * As the Doctor wakes up, he mutters about "deadly nightshade in the city's water supply". (TV: The Sensorites)
 * The Doctor mentions wars on Skaro, (TV: The Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, etc.) Comfort (AUDIO: The War To End All Wars) and the Death Zone. (TV: The Five Doctors)
 * The Doctor takes Tegan, Turlough and Kamelion to the Eye of Orion and intends on repairing the console. Turlough intends to sketch the landscape. (TV: The Five Doctors)
 * According to a previous account, the Kamelions were created by the Gelsandorans (PROSE: The Ultimate Treasure) as weapons of war during their invasion of Xeriphas. (PROSE: The Crystal Bucephalus, TV: The King's Demons)