The seventh Doctor, traveling alone, is looking forward to a holiday on the planet Armelia. The TARDIS doesn’t quite get him there, however, landing instead inside an enormous spacecraft. The Doctor becomes stranded there when, moments after stepping out of the TARDIS, he sees his timeship plummeting into the vessel’s gigantic furnace (thanks to a less-than-fortuitous landing on a deck hatch). In the course of trying to retrieve his only means of escape, the Doctor befriends Vilgreth, an enormous and slightly slow-witted being who claims to originate from – of all places – Devon. Vilgreth mentions that many have come to destroy him, and he’s glad that the Doctor isn’t one of them. Just such a creature arrives, and insists that the Doctor leave, since a bomb has just been planted on Vilgreth’s ship. The Doctor, infuriated, disarms the bomb, but also grows increasingly suspicious of why anyone would try to harm his seemingly innocuous host. The truth soon becomes apparent: Vigreth’s ship is, not unlike its captain, a dangerous relic. The ship’s fuel is entire planets. Its next stop is Armelia.
written by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Alistair LockCast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Nicholas Briggs (Vilgreth), Alistair Lock (Stelpor), Lennox Greaves (Professor Pat Trethui), Holly King (Mrs. Burden)
Timeline: after The Sirens Of Time and before Doctor Who
Notes: This was a thirty-minute, single-episode story distributed exclusively on a CD included with issue #300 of Doctor Who Magazine, a CD which also included a preview version of episode one of Storm Warning. Last Of The Titans has not been released on CD to date, but was released as a free downloadable podcast in 2011. The script was originally written by Nicholas Briggs for the Audio Visuals amateur audio drama cassettes.
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
Review: This intriguing one-parter has sadly been confined to the readers of the somewhat overpriced Official Doctor Who Magazine (well, sadly overpriced if you happen to live on this side of the Atlantic). But Last Of The Titans is certainly worthy of a general release, and it’s an interesting study in style: an almost film noir-ish running narration throughout the story, giving us a rare internal monologue from the Doctor. Special care is taken to ensure that the narration isn’t confused with the Doctor’s dialogue in the story itself.
All in all, Titans is a worthy entry in the Audio Adventures, and points to new directions that never could have been taken on television. Perhaps a four-part story, each episode starring only one of the post-Tom Baker Doctors in an adventure in which each incarnation’s actions have consequences which will be borne by the next regeneration, minus the obvious gimmick of having all four meet (a la The Sirens Of Time). However, I can’t help but observe that Big Finish Productions’ schedule has no entry for November 2001, the 38th anniversary of the television dèbut of Doctor Who, so I would not be surprised if we soon discover that someone at Big Finish has already concocted such a story.