Hippocrates Base



Hippocrates Base was a non-profit hospital funded by the Kulkan Collective. It was a space station which prided itself on its ability to provide care for any species, and even had different floors at different gravitational settings to better accommodate the unusual diversity of its patients. The Eighth Doctor considered it to have the densest concentration of different species of any place he had ever seen. It was a natural place for the Doctor to take Destrii, a being with a completely unique biochemistry, immediately following her brutal bludgeoning by Jodafra.

At the base, Destrii was attended by Dr. Partho, himself a Kulkan. He was able to effectively minister to her unusual biology, due in part to research previously done by Dr. Alison Lavelle on the Argus, and in part to a sentient master computer called "Bob". Nevertheless, her recovery didn't go smoothly. Her nurse, Lythia, injected Destrii with an amount of chlyorizine that made her temporarily psychotic, a rampaging lunatic who distracted the staff. This allowed Lythia — who was in fact impersonating a nurse she had killed — to covertly assist her employers, the Zeronites, in their infiltration of the base.

The Zeronites were invading Hippocrates Base for revenge. Centuries before it became a hospital, it had been a genetic weapons centre where they were created. The Kulkans engineered the Zeronites to pilot weapons through space to their intended target. The base was the birthplace for what the Doctor called "a kamikaze race". Though the initial force of Zeronites were defeated, the Doctor and Destrii left the station believing that more Zeronites would follow. Bob felt that the base would perhaps never fully return to its role as a "place of welcome".

Though the site of worrying developments for the Kulkan Collective, it was a place of significance for the Doctor and Destrii. Not only was she healed of the injuries suffered at her uncle's hands; the Doctor invited her to join him as a long-term companion after the battle. She also picked up a device on the station that would help her in future adventures. Lythia's impersonation of a nurse had been effected by using a necklace which broadcast a holographic image of a human around her body. With it, Destrii was able to appear human at will. (DWM: Children of the Revolution, Bad Blood, Sins of the Fathers, The Flood)