In the depths of the TARDIS, a pessimistic Mags angrily urges the Doctor to keep to a safe distance. He helps subdue her transformation with a nifty new Sonic Modulator, and they discuss destination options. While her lycanthropic society have long been driven from their home world of Vulpana, the Doctor offers to show her a more prosperous chapter in its history.
They land in a forest, run into some nomadic poacher werewolves, and are offered shelter by Lady Ula and her sons Jacob, Tobe and Jax, of the House of Benjar. While Mags, with her purebred credentials, is an instant hit, the non-lycanthropic Doctor is discouraged from speaking out of turn, as is Dr Barton, the castle's subjugated medic. To the Doctor's surprise, his mild-mannered new colleague proves susceptible to wolfish transformation, albeit less so than her masters.
While Mags finds some happiness in acceptance among her kith, this ancient society holds revelation besides gentrified elitism...
Tropes:
- Alien Sky: Vulpana has four moons.
- Bad Habits: Sister Luma, Arch Priestess of the First House is the Doctor in disguise.
- Brains Evil, Brawn Good: Subverted; the pure blood clans’ massacring slightly lycanthropic criminals is depicted as symptomatic of an instinctual, if regressive, regard for self-preservation, but undoubtedly monstrous. The physically weaker Jax’s plan to manipulate his brethren to wipe each other out is an act of calculated depravity in which Dr Barton, the enslaved medic, is keenly complicit.
- Chekhov's Gun: The Doctor’s Sonic Modulator is eventually used as a vocal disguise, enabling him to disrupt the Shot Gun Wedding.
- Deadpan Snarker: Mags gets some good ones.
- Disguised in Drag: The Doctor, via voice modulation as Sister Luma.
- Fantastic Racism: Vulpana society centres around breeding; those without consistent werewolf tendencies are designated peasants. Those among them deemed criminals are slaughtered in the annual hunt.
- Iron Lady: Lady Ula, Matriarch of the Second House.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Jax just wants his whole society to be normal, even if it means getting loads of them to kill each other.
- Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: Isaac and Tobe, over general disputes.
- Like a Son to Me: Lady Ula takes a maternal liking to Mags.
- Lunacy:
- The Four Moons of Vulpana induce lycanthropic transformation.
- Inverted with the Fifth Moon, which inhibits the expected mass transformation and induces, to chaotic effect, unpredictable transformation in the less lycanthropic lower orders.
- Mass Hypnosis: Of a pack of Vulpana poachers, via the Doctor’s Sonic Modulator.
- Pay Evil unto Evil: With the aid of numerous scholars and technicians, Jax engineered the construction of a fifth Moon, in order to constrain the transformation abilities of his pureblood brethren and thereby getting them to massacre each other.
- Persecuted Intellectuals: Fields of learning are shunned and contained in favour of traditional purebred might.
- Resist the Beast
- Shotgun Wedding: Jax attempts one, which is quickly foiled by Mags, Lady Ula and the Doctor.
- Space Cossacks: Centuries following this story, Vulpanans are driven from their planet and refuge in disparate seclusion.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Jax.
- Women Are Wiser:
- Averted; Lady Ula defends her brutal society as proudly as anyone, but is at least honest.
- Dr Barton is just as keen as Jax to engineer a brutal revolution.
- Working-Class Werewolves: Inverted, purebred werewolves reign as gentry, whereas the less lycanthropic are deemed peasants.
