Draconian (Doctor Who)

Draconian (Doctor Who)

The Draconians are a fictional extraterrestrial race from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Their only television appearance to date was in the 1973 serial Frontier in Space. Unlike many "monster" races in Doctor Who, the Draconians were articulate and portrayed as having a sophisticated and advanced culture not unlike that of feudal Japan. In later interviews, Jon Pertwee cited the Draconians as his favourite of all the monsters he had encountered during his time as the Doctor.

The Draconian Empire was a vast spacefaring feudal civilisation of reptilian humanoids, centered on the planet Draconia, with a society stratifed along class and gender lines (for example, females were not permitted to speak in the presence of the Emperor) that was bound by a strong code of honour. The Draconian Empire dated back to at least the 21st century, when a space plague that afflicted their world was dealt with by the Doctor. For his services, the 15th Emperor made the Doctor a noble of Draconia.

The Earth Empire's first contact with the Draconian Empire was in the year 2520. The ship sent by the Draconians for the peace mission was a battlecruiser, as befitted a noble of Draconia, although (as agreed) its missile banks were empty and it was otherwise unarmed. However, both Draconian and Earth ships were caught in a neutron storm, damaging the Earth ship and destroying the Draconian ship's communications systems. As a result, the Draconian ship was unable to respond to the Earth ship's signals. The commander of the Earth ship saw what he perceived to be a battlecruiser bearing down on his crippled vessel and gave the order to attack, destroying the battlecruiser and triggering off a brief but bloody war in which millions of lives were lost. An uneasy peace was negotiated in the end, leading to two decades of cold war and the carving out of a frontier between the two empires.

In 2540, several incidents involving attacks on cargo freighters along their respective borders nearly led to the war turning hot once more, with both sides accusing the other of piracy and violating the frontier. These attacks turned out to be the work of Ogron mercenaries under the orders of the renegade Time Lord known as the Master, who was using a sonic hypnosis device to make the Earth crews see the Ogrons as Draconians and vice versa. The Master had allied himself with the Daleks, who were launching another bid for galactic conquest and hoped to pick up the pieces after a new Earth-Draconia War. The plot was revealed by the Third Doctor, and instead of going to war against each other, the two empires united against the Daleks.