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 to any species, and even had different floors set to different gravitational settings so as to better accommodate the unusual diversity of its patient population. The 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 have taken Destrii, a being with a completely unique biochemistry, immediately following her 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 of the institution. This allowed Lythia — who was in fact impersonating a nurse she had killed — to covertly assist her employers, the Zeronites, to infiltrate the base.

The Zeronites were invading Hippocrates Base out of revenge. Centuries before it became a hospital, the base had in fact been a genetic weapons centre where they were created. The Kulkans engineered the Zeronites to exist long enough to pilot weapons through space to their intended target. Put another way, 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 in the belief 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, Destrii also was invited to join the Doctor as a long-term companion following the events of the battle. Moreover, she picked up a device on the station that would help her in future adventures. Lythia's impersonation of the nurse had been effected by using a necklace which broadcast a holographic image of a human around her body. With it, Destrii was thereafter able to appear human at will. (DWM: Children of the Revolution, Bad Blood, Sins of the Fathers, The Flood)