Valerie looked through the files as well
with studied familiarity. "Yes, here's what you're looking for," she said, triumphantly pulling out a thick folder from one of the cabinets and looking through it. "Yes, this all happened back when
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was in charge of UNIT here. There was an archcriminal known as the Master who UNIT had captured and locked up in an island prison run by a
Colonel Trenchard. He was the only prisoner there and was watched constantly by cameras and by guards trained to resist his hypnotic abilities. There were even minefields. He acted like he was turning over a new leaf, but he hadn't changed, of course.
Dr. John Smith, UNIT's scientific advisor at the time, and his assistant
Josephine Grant went to visit the Master, and on their way out
Colonel Trenchard told them about ships disappearing in the area, so they checked it out. While exploring a sea fort, they were attacked by a Sea Devil, which the files describe much as our...guest. That name was given to it by a survivor they found at the fort who had gone mad from seeing the thing.
Dr. Smith saw something familiar in the Sea Devil's features. It reminded him of a land-based creature called a Silurian...there's some sort of cross-reference here to another incident...and he hypothesized that the two were related. They escaped to a nearby naval base commanded by a
Captain John Hart, who had been using the fort for some sonar tests.
"
Dr. Smith investigated further and discovered that the Master had somehow deceived
Colonel Trenchard into helping him and was practically running his prison. They had been stealing electrical equipment from the naval base to build a machine that the Master was using to control the Sea Devils. He had somehow found out about them and was intent on summoning an army of them to conquer the Earth. He started calling them forth from the sea, and they attacked the prison.
Colonel Trenchard was killed,
Dr. Smith and
Miss Grant managed to escape back to the base, where
Captain Hart told them that a submersible had gone missing. While the Royal Navy prepared the base's defenses,
Dr. Smith went down in a diving bell to look for the sub, and he was captured by the Sea Devils. They took him to their leader in their undersea base, where he tried to negotiate a peace between them and mankind.
"Unforutantely, just at that time the base was depth charged and all the chance at peace was lost. A politician named
Robert Walker had arrived at the base and taken over. He'd ordered the attack over
Captain Hart's and
Miss Grant's objections. Oh dear! He was even going to use nuclear weapons against them!
Dr. Smith managed to escape from the Sea Devils' base in the confusion.
Dr. Smith managed to convince
Walker to let him try negotiating one last time, but then the Sea Devils attacked the naval base and captured it! They did so under the Master's direction, and he then forced the Doctor to help him build a machine in the Sea Devils' base to awaken all of the Sea Devils in hibernation all over the world. But once the Master activated the device, the Sea Devils no longer needed him and imprisoned both him and
Dr. Smith, but not before
Dr. Smith had sabotaged the machine. The two archenemies had to work together to escape from the Sea Devils using equipment from the submersible they had captured.
"They were rescued as the Sea Devil base was destroyed by the device overloading, thankfully before any nukes were used. Then the Master faked a heart attack and managed to escape by stealing a hovercraft. Apparently he has two hearts, and he was able to stop one while the other kept him alive."