Astrophia, or Astrofaaa in Sycoraxic, (PROSE: "No Place Like Home" [+]Part of The Sycorax, Jacqueline Rayner, Doctor Who Files (BBC Children's Books, 2006). Page 20., COMIC: Agent Provocateur [+]Gary Russell, IDW series named Doctor Who (IDW Publishing, 2008).) was the Sycorax goddess of darkness and death. (PROSE: "History of the Sycorax" [+]Part of The Sycorax, Jacqueline Rayner, Doctor Who Files (BBC Children's Books, 2006). Pages 10-13.)
History
Many centuries before the 21st century, (PROSE: "History of the Sycorax" [+]Part of The Sycorax, Jacqueline Rayner, Doctor Who Files (BBC Children's Books, 2006). Pages 10-13., The Visual Dictionary [+]Andrew Darling, Kerrie Dougherty, David John and Simon Beecroft, Dorling Kindersley (2007). Page 82; Edition: 2010 reprint.) the Sycorax tribes which lived under the surface of their inhospitable world in the wastelands of the galaxy all worshipped Astrophia, with shamans practising rites of blood and sacrifice to attempt to implore her to give them favour over the other tribes. Seemingly around this point, the retroactively named "lost rites of Astrophia" became lost.
Much later, after the Sycorax united to scavenge the stars and spent generations doing so, their world, which they had equipped with a travel system to pilot it from location to location, became stranded in the orbit of a planet in the edges of the solar system, and after the subsequent splitting of their world to form the Sycorax Armada, the shamans resurrected the lost rites of Astrophia, now augmenting them with technology. (PROSE: "History of the Sycorax" [+]Part of The Sycorax, Jacqueline Rayner, Doctor Who Files (BBC Children's Books, 2006). Pages 10-13.) By the time of the Sycorax invasion of Earth in the early 21st century, (TV: The Christmas Invasion [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who Christmas special (BBC One, 2005).) the shamans also practised the forbidden arts of Astrophia. (PROSE: The Final Darkness [+]Stephen Cole, Doctor Who Files 4: The Sycorax (Doctor Who Files, 2006). Page 36.)
Although the origins of the tribe were unclear, the Tribe of Astrophia were nearly entirely wiped out during the Valhalla wars in the 41st century, contributing to the decline of the Sycorax Empire. Its lone survivor was defeated by the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones. (COMIC: Agent Provocateur [+]Gary Russell, IDW series named Doctor Who (IDW Publishing, 2008).)
Behind the scenes
- A deleted scene from The Christmas Invasion [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who Christmas special (BBC One, 2005). showed Alex Klein translating a Sycorax message as "We practice the forbidden arts. The lost rites of Astrophia."[1] This line of dialogue was evidently used in The Sycorax [+]Jacqueline Rayner, Doctor Who Files (BBC Children's Books, 2006)., which expands on how these arts and rites relate to Sycorax culture.