Human-Draconian War

The Human-Draconian War was a brief but devastating war between the expanding Draconian Empire and the Earth Empire. It began with a misunderstanding between human and Draconian ships.

A meeting between human and Draconian representatives had been planned, but both races' ships were damaged in a neutron storm. The Draconians arrived in a battle cruiser which had been stripped of its missiles, but their communications equipment was damaged. The human ship, commanded by Williams, was "helpless", and Williams believed that the approaching Draconian ship was planning to attack. He decided to attack the Draconian vessel, and destroyed it. Thus began the war.

Although factions on both sides of the conflict opposed negotiations, eventually a treaty was signed establishing a frontier between the two empires. The treaty also forbade subversion and espionage.

Twenty years after the peace treaty, the Daleks and tried to sabotage the treaty and start a new war. (TV: Frontier in Space)

Jon Bowman was a veteran of the conflict. (PROSE: Prisoner of the Daleks)

Steven Taylor cited the conflict, along with the Second Dalek War and the Third Dalek War, as factors which put an end to Earth's expansionist phase, leaving planets like Mechanus uncolonised. (PROSE: The Chase)

Behind the scenes

 * Reviewers have observed that the precipitating incident of the first Earth-Draconia war, as depicted in Frontier in Space, is very similar to the beginning of the Earth-Minbari War in the 1990s television series Babylon 5. Both space wars begin because an Earth vessel misinterprets the approach of an alien ship as a threat, and fires on the ship based on this misunderstanding.
 * In the televised version of The Chase from 1965, Steven merely makes reference to "interplanetary wars". By the time John Peel novelised the serial in 1989, the mythos was much larger, allowing him to replace the phrase with specific examples like the Human-Draconian War.