J is for... Jacondans

 

A race of bird-like humanoids from the planet Jaconda. This idyllic world had for many years been ruled by a Time Lord named Azmael, who at one point had been visited by the Fourth Doctor. An ancient legend told of how the planet had once been blighted by giant slug-like creatures called Gastropods, which devoured all the vegetation and left the population starving. This had been caused when the queen of the planet had slighted their sun god. The sun god relented and destroyed the Gastropods. However, the story was more than mere myth. One Gastropod egg had survived and this resulted in Mestor, a Gastropod with great mental powers. He took over the planet and his people once again laid waste to it. Once again the Jacondans starved, and anyone caught stealing food was executed by Mestor, aided and abetted by his unctuous Jacondan Chamberlain.

Azmael was forced to work with Mestor on a scheme to use neighbouring planets as food sources for Jaconda - bringing them into closer orbit with their sun. Azmael abducted a pair of mathematically gifted twins - Romulus and Remus Sylvest - from Earth to help achieve this. Azmael was given two Jacondans as helpers in this task, the friendly Noma and the duplicitous Drak. The newly regenerated Sixth Doctor stumbled into this scheme, along with companion Peri and an Earth space security officer named Hugo Lang.

The Doctor realised that Mestor's true scheme was to destroy Jaconda and its neighbouring planets in a cosmic explosion which would send millions of Gastropod eggs across space to colonise other worlds.

Mestor killed Noma after using him to psychically spy on the Doctor and Azmael. Once the Gastropod had been defeated, the treacherous Chamberlain attempted to escape the planet but Lang refused to allow him to take the TARDIS. Azmael had died in defeating Mestor, and Lang decided to stay on as the new ruler.

Played by: Oliver Smith (Drak), Barry Stanton (Noma), Seymour Green (Chamberlain). Appearances: The Twin Dilemma (1984).

• Seymour Green had earlier played Harrison Chase's butler Hargreaves in The Seeds of Doom.
• As I pointed out in my review of this story, it is very odd that the Time Lords would have allowed one of their own to rule another planet, even if benignly. A relatively junior space security officer then just sets himself up as new ruler, and the Doctor - who has only known him a short time - doesn't see anything wrong with this.