Name:
Helen A
Species:
Human
Place of Origin:
Terra Alpha
Spouse:
Joseph C
Appearance:
Main Actor:
Sheila Hancock
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Helen A was the rulerof the human colony on Terra Alpha, enforcing her rule through the Happiness Patrol. She was overthrown by a revolt of the factory workers begun by the Seventh Doctor.
Helen A and her husband Joseph C were responsible for Terra Alpha, with Helen A building many factories where drones – forbidden from entering the city – worked. After being alerted to the over population of the colony by Trevor Sigma of the Galactic Census Bureau, Helen A ignored the programme that she was given to solve the problem and instead began executing those that she deemed Killjoys, with the Happiness Patrol rooting them out and Gilbert M’s Kandyman killing them.
Six local cycles after Trevor Sigma’s visit, the population of the colony had been brought down by 17%, with more than 500, 000 dead and the remaining population fearing her. However, the Seventh Doctor stirred up the factory workers to revolt. She sent her Stigorax Fifi to exterminate the pipe people and decided to flee because of the revolution taking place, finding that Joseph C and Gilbert M had escaped in her spaceship. The Doctor confronted Helen A and explained that happiness had to be juxtaposed with sadness to be meaningful and that love was important. She disagreed but broke down upon finding Fifi dead. (The Happiness Patrol)
As villains go, Helen A earns points forone of the most bizarre and twisted motives ever conceived, wanting to create a ‘happy’ planet where everyone was always smiling, but seeking to achieve this goal through threats and murder dressed up in as cheerful a manner as possible. The original name of the planet where Helen A set up this colony was never specified, but it came to be known as the Terra Alpha colony, with people being sorted by rank according to a letter after their first names, Helen A was in charge, her consort was Joseph C, and heroriginal joke-writer was known as Harold F before being demoted to Harold V. She drove the original residents of the planet underground, forcing them to live in the pipes, classifying them as vermin and ordering them to be shot on sight, and ‘controlled’ the human population by eliminating 17% of them to deal with the overcrowding, even after she destroyed the most depressing township on the planet for not going along with her attempt to offer them the ‘opportunities’ to be happy.
BEHIND THE SCENES
The production crew intended Helen A to serve as an allegorical representation of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.