The Shadow Of The Scourge
The Doctor, Ace and Bernice arrive at a hotel in Kent which is playing host to three simultaneous conventions: one for a cross-stitch club, another for a con artist holding a seance, and the third for the demonstration of a physics experiment that could lead to time travel. But the seance actually does make contact with something otherworldly - an alien group consciousness hell-bent on emerging into Earth’s dimension to feed upon the despair and guilt of the human race. The time travel experiments provide a convenient interdimensional conduit through which the Scourge travel. The Doctor, of course, has orchestrated all of this very carefully…but this time, whether he’s planned it or not, whether he wants it or not, the Scourge have him, and can consume his mind on their whim. With the Doctor out of the way, only Ace and Benny stand in the way of the Scourge…but they, like everyone else on the doomed Earth, have their own personal demons which will render them helpless to the power of the Scourge.
written by Paul Cornell
directed by Gary Russell
music by Alistair LockCast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Lisa Bowerman (Bernice), Michael Piccarilli (Doctor Michael Pembroke), Holly King (Annie Carpenter), Nigel Fairs (Gary Williams), Lennox Greaves (Michael Hughes), Caroline Burns-Cook (Mary Hughes), Peter Trapani (Scourge Leader)
Timeline: between the New Adventures novels “The All-Consuming Fire” and “Blood Harvest”
Review: Wow! So that’s what a New Adventure would sound like. Paul Cornell, my favorite NA author (and creator of one Professor Bernice Summerfield), hits all the pre-requisite NA marks with Scourge: the Doctor has something up his sleeve which doesn’t quite go right; the Doctor puts Ace and Benny - and this time, the whole human race - in dire jeopardy as a result; and the villains of the piece are far more horrible than anything that the BBC could ever have put on television. There’s also a visit to the landscape of the Doctor’s subconscious mind, which the Scourge have infested. Not that I don’t like the story, but Cornell took many of the most familiar elements from about a dozen NAs and combined them into one story. (more…)