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A summit of the temporal superpowers is scheduled on a secluded artificial planetoid, and Coordinator Narvin is sent by President Romana to represent the Time Lords. Going with him, barely camouflaged, are Leela and K-9. But the out-of-place savage and her robotic dog aren’t there to protect Narvin; Romana has personally charged them with rooting out those responsible for an expected attempt to disrupt the conference. Leela does indeed find danger lurking, but all is not as it seems. Is someone sabotaging the summit to ensure its success?

written by Stephen Cole
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Lalla Ward (President Romana), Louise Jameson (Leela), John Leeson (K9), Miles Richardson (Cardinal Braxiatel), Sean Carlsen (Coordinator Narvin), Jane Goddard (Liaison Officer Hossak), Lucy Campbell (Baano), Daniel Hogarth (Flinkstab), Daniel Barzotti (V’rell)

Notes: The temporal superpower summit in this story refers back to the disastrous attempt at a similar meeting that was a plot point of the Doctor Who audio adventure The Apocalypse Element.

A powerful coalition of time-traveling races monitors access to history, stopping newly-emergent time travelers and redirecting them to the planet Gryben for “processing” - though that process often strands them there permanently. That logjam of stranded time travelers has given rise to a new movement - Free Time - seeking to force these temporal superpowers to allow free access to the timeways.

Several delegates from the time-traveling powers, including a Time Lord and a Monan (a symbiotic race consisting of noncorporeal intelligences, and human “thralls” whose bodies they inhabit), arrive to investigate what appears to be the emergence of another sophisticated time-traveling race - but one of the delegates turns out to be a member of Free Time, and soon she has her hands on a timeonic fusion device - a weapon of temporal mass destruction banned by the coalition of time-traveling superpowers. Torvald, the Time Lord operative assigned to this delegation, is recalled to his home planet of Gallifrey.

There, President Romana of the Time Lords’ High Council assigns Torvald to go undercover to retrieve the forbidden weapon. To this end, she also assigns Leela - a mere human primitive who stayed behind on Gallifrey years ago to marry another Gallifreyan - to go with him, and to take her loyal robotic dog K9 with her. Romana, too, has a K9 unit, capable of linking with its counterpart through time and space. Leela, Torvald, and Leela’s K9 travel to Gryben to find the Free Time operative and retrieve the weapon - but while there, they discover that other members of the coalition are willing to overstep their bounds to obtain the weapon, even if it means risking war with Gallifrey. And when she tries to defuse the situation at home, Romana meets a challenge from the ambitious Coordinator Narvin - ambitious enough to set her impeachment in motion.

written by Alan Barnes
directed by Gary Russell
music by David Darlington

Cast: Lalla Ward (President Romana), Louise Jameson (Leela), John Leeson (K9), Miles Richardson (Cardinal Braxiatel), Sean Carlsen (Coordinator Narvin), Andy Coleman (Commander Torvald), Lynda Bellingham (Inquisitor Darkel), Hugo Myatt (Arkadian), Helen Goldwyn (Nepenthe), Daniel Hogarth (Ba’aruk), Stephen Mansfield (Scragbite), Trevor Littledale (Outsider)

Notes: The Gallifrey audio miniseries is a fascinating mixture of elements from televised Doctor Who and professional fiction postdating the original TV series. Leela, Romana and K9 appeared in the original TV series. At the end of her tenure on TV, Romana was left stranded in a dimension called E-Space with the Doctor’s second K9 unit; in the Missing Adventures novels printed by Virgin Publishing, Romana and K9 escaped E-Space, after which she returned to Gallifrey and successfully ran for the Presidency. With that acknowledgement of the novels’ continuity in mind, it’s curious that the Gallifrey audios and their immediate antecedent, the 2003 Doctor Who audio Zagreus establish that Romana and Leela have only just met; the penultimate Virgin New Adventures novel establishes a different first meeting for Romana and Leela. Braxiatel was established in throwaway dialogue in City Of Death (1979), but was later fleshed out in Virgin’s New Adventures novels, including those which postdate Virgin’s loss of the Doctor Who print fiction license, and has also appeared in Big Finish’s Bernice Summerfield audios; Braxiatel was established in print and in audio as the owner of the Braxiatel Collection for which Bernice is a curator. Inquisitor Darkel also appeared in the TV series, presiding over The Trial Of A Time Lord, though she was known only as the Inquisitor during her television appearances.

Timeline: all of the Gallifrey audios take place sometime after the Doctor Who audio Zagreus.

For every Time Lord who has ever meddled in history, a divergent timeline has been created, for every divergent timeline is then tied off and anchored to the Axis, a transdimensional dumping ground for the timelines (and their occupants) that have been “corrected” out of existence. But if the Axis breaks down, all hell will break loose in time and space. The Axis and its Overseer have a special, if not necessarily cozy, relationship with the Time Lords in general, and with that race’s most prolific meddler in particular. But when the TARDIS brings the Doctor, Peri and Erimem to the Axis in response to a distress call, they find the Overseer on the brink of death…and a sinister Jester is now in charge, trying to break down the barriers between the isolated timelines, and then trying to unleash them into the primary timeline of the universe. The Doctor tries to reason with the Jester, but discovers that the being that now holds the fate of multiple universes in his hands is quite mad.

written by Simon Furman
directed by Gary Russell
music by Andy Hardwick

Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Nicola Bryant (Peri), Caroline Morris (Erimem), Roy North (The Overseer), Garrick Hagon (The Jester), Liza Ross (Jarra To), Marc Danbury (Tog), Stephen Mansfield (Bird Trader), Daniel Hogarth (Carnival Barker)

Timeline: after Nekromanteia and before The Roof Of The World

Review: A step into some pretty wild science-fantasy even for Doctor Who, The Axis Of Insanity pits the Doctor and company against an idea that sounds really cool - someone’s about to bust through the cap of the dumping ground for all of the timelines left over by the meddlings of the Doctor and other time travelers. That’s a fascinating idea, and its potential is barely even scratched by the time we reach the end of part four. It’s a plot device that recalls Zagreus‘ Divergent Universe (where the Doctor’s eighth incarnation is still stuck, story-wise, as of this writing), and that’s something else that occurred to me immediately upon first listen: these two stories could have somehow been tied together, for who’s to say that one of the timelines disposed of at the Axis isn’t the universe in which the Doctor’s own future self is trapped? (Really, I’m not pining for a McGann/Davison team-up here, but that thought did occur to me. (more…)

The Doctor, Charley and C’rizz continue their search for the TARDIS into another “zone,” where they find themselves on a jungle world where a band of freedom fighters is taking refuge from their pursuers. Led by, and fanatically devoted to, the mysterious Major Koth, the guerillas have strange changes in attitude on very little notice. When the Doctor is captured and taken into a nearby cave where the fighters have set up camp, he becomes aware of a powerful telepathic presence, and he suspects that it is influencing everyone else around him - a suspicion confirmed when Charley betrays him during their attempt to escape, and when C’rizz takes up arms to help the freedom fighters. But is Koth the mind manipulating his army, or is he just the first victim?

written by Will Shindler
directed by Gary Russell
music by ERS

Cast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Michael Keating (Major Koth), Alan Rothwell (Janto), Ann Carus-Wilson (Vayla), Dale Ibbetson (Quillian), Jeremy James (Bryn), Vivien Parry (Tysus), Alison Sterling (Koth’s Wife), Stephen Perring (The Kro’Ka)

Timeline: after The Natural History Of Fear and before Faith Stealer

Review: The final adventure in this “season” of the eighth Doctor’s adventures seems like fairly standard stuff with a few twists. Michael Keating - best known for his four-year stint as Vila, the only character to appear in all 52 episodes of Blake’s 7 - is deceptively engaging as Major Koth, with a seemingly friendly demeanor hiding something that’s equally sinister and tragic. But in some places Twilight Kingdom’s story is very familiar stuff: the rebel soldiers here sometimes seem like refugees from The Caves Of Androzani, and there’s a fairly major element of the story that is perhaps a bit too close to a central element of the Babylon 5 two-parter A Voice In The Wilderness - the resemblance is uncanny. There also seems to be a major element similarly borrowed from the Blake’s 7 episode Trial, so Michael Keating probably felt right at home. The character best-served here is C’rizz, as we continue to explore his pacifist nature (though just three stories into his stint as the Doctor’s companion, he’s been mentally taken over twice, so it’s difficult to tell if he’s acting out of character until someone verbally points this out to the listener). The biggest complaint I can lodge against Twilight Kingdom is that all of these borrowed elements do not a new story make… though it could also be that this story is, in and of itself, just fine, and perhaps I have become too accustomed to higher-concept eighth Doctor stories like Scherzo and The Chimes Of Midnight. (more…)

The Doctor, Charley and C’rizz arrive in Light City, a self-contained biodome whose citizens happily toil for - and all but worship - the State. State-approved broadcasts outline the approved behavior of a citizen of Light City, but certain ideas are considered thought-crime - and questions are illegal. Naturally, the three travelers are bursting with questions about where they’ve arrived, and they soon learn first-hand of the State’s other means of controlling its populace: those who break the rules are forcibly brainwashed and “revised,” and their original memories are recorded and become part of the broadcasts as a warning to others. The “revised” citizens are implanted with new, productive, docile personalities - and yet problems keep cropping up with the beings who think they were once a trio of time-travelers.

written by Jim Mortimore
directed by Gary Russell
music by Jim Mortimore

Cast: Paul McGann, India Fisher, Conrad Westmaas, Geoff Serle, Alison Sterling, Sean Carlsen, Wink Taylor, Jane Hills, Ben Summers

Timeline: after Creed Of The Kromon and before The Twilight Kingdom

Review: A little bit off-putting at first, The Natural History Of Fear almost requires a second listening to really “get it.” The very structure of the story, and even the design of the soundscape in which it takes place, is unusual and perhaps just a little bit deceptive. Just when you think you’re figuring it out, Jim Mortimore throws you a curveball. And just when you think you’re catching it, turns out to be a 600-pound curveball. One has to commend Mortimore - a well-liked author of several grim Who novels with significant body counts, dating back to the New Adventures and making his Big Finish scriptwriting debut here - for single-handedly crafting his story. The music and the sound design are also Mortimore’s creations, and it’s clear that he’d had this whole thing rattling around in his head for a while. (more…)