Mordee expedition

The Mordee were a group of humans who organised the Mordee expedition and travelled to a planet in the hopes of colonising it. (PROSE: Doctor Who and the Face of Evil) After the Mordee's arrival on the planet, their supercomputer broke down. Eventually, the Fourth Doctor came to the world and attempted to help the Mordee repair their computer. Unbeknownst to him, the computer had already evolved into a living being, Xoanon, and in making the repairs the Doctor caused it to take on his own personality. During the generations that followed, Xoanan became a deity to the people from the Mordee expedition, and they split into two tribes, the Tesh and the Sevateem. (TV: The Face of Evil)

Behind the scenes

 * The Mordee were first mentioned in the television story The Face of Evil, in which the Fourth Doctor's dialogue did not make clear what Mordee referred to. The modified dialogue in the novelisation clarified that the Mordee the Doctor spoke of were the people.
 * The Discontinuity Guide entry for The Face of Evil, reprinted on the BBC's official website, acknowledges the ambiguity of the Doctor's dialogue, and suggests Mordee could refer either to the ship itself or to a human ethnic group.