Singularity
A time displacement brings the TARDIS down for a hard landing in 21st century Moscow, stranding the Doctor and Turlough there until they can find the source of the distortion and put an end to it. While Turlough complains bitterly about the cold, the Doctor explores the enormous glass tower erected by the mysterious Somnus Foundation. Turlough hears a woman’s cries for help, and despite trying to talk himself out of it, runs to help her, finding that she’s looking for her brother, who has gone missing after joining the cult-like Foundation. The Doctor and Turlough help her get to safety, and become even more interested in her stories of the Somnus Foundation causing its enemies to “disappear.” The Foundation claims to be advancing human evolution, but the Doctor soon discovers that it’s something much more twisted than that - something that will bring power that the human race isn’t ready for.
written by James Swallow
directed by Gary Russell
music by Steve Foxon
Cast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Eve Polycarpou (Qel), Maitland Chandler (Seo), Michael Cuckson (Cord), Natasha Radski (Lena Korolev), Oleg Mirochnikov (Alexi Korolev), Max Bollinger (Pavel Fedorin), Dominika Boon (Natalia Pushkin), Billy Miller (Tev), Marq English (Xen)
Notes: Qel talks about conducting advanced experiments with “stone knives and bear skins,” an in-joke on the classic Star Trek episode City On The Edge Of Forever, in which Spock complained about the same thing (with exactly the same phrase). An alternate cover was devised for sale through the Tenth Planet web site, and it is seen at right.
Review: This is actually one of the more interesting Big Finish audios released in 2005, with a fairly high concept SF underpinning, and the long overdue return of Mark Strickson as Turlough. Turlough’s presence actually helps the story a great deal, simply because of the character’s trademark unpredictability. You can never be quite sure which way Turlough will jump, and that plays into this story’s plot perfectly. (more…)
Suffering from a serious case of moping, the Doctor reluctantly gives in to Evelyn’s insistence that he needs a vacation…in somplace like Brighton. The TARDIS manages to take them there, in the year 1936, but things are already taking a dark turn when the Doctor overhears a young couple talking about strange noises from the water. The Doctor encounters Professor Talbot, a secretive man who, according to local legend, hasn’t been seen in 15 years. The Doctor instantly senses something horribly wrong with Talbot - he’s doing the bidding of some sort of alien consciousness, while also trying to swindle the being. But the Doctor discovers that he’s facing a power that has the ability to control nearly anyone’s mind - even Evelyn’s, and even his own.
Mel is alarmed when the TARDIS materializes without the Doctor at the controls. After leaving her on Earth briefly to take care of unspecified business, he has vanished without a trace, leaving her a holographic message in the TARDIS instructing her to follow his trail to the Klyst Institute, a grim-looking mental hospital. Rather than risk trying to fly the TARDIS herself, Mel enlists the reluctant help of a rough-and-tumble cabbie who helps her as she breaks into the Institute. There, she finds the Doctor - but his mind is gone, and he speaks in almost nonsensical phrases. Mel and her new friend try to escape with the Doctor, but they find that the Institute is no longer on Earth, having transported itself to an asteroid in an instant. The Institute also seems to be bigger inside than out, and other aliens (and humans) have been captured for horrific mind-transfer experiments. Are Time Lords operating in secret on Earth? And if so, are they renegades like the Doctor…or something darker interference in human history going on with the Time Lords’ full knowledge?
Aboard a cargo ship buffeted by the high seas during a storm, the Doctor and Peri go from being cautiously welcomed guests to murder suspects when a member of the crew is killed. The ship’s captain orders the Doctor locked up pending his court-martial…but when his own chief mate protests that the Doctor isn’t even a member of the ship’s company and crew, the captain drafts him into service to replace the ship’s missing doctor (reasoning that now the Doctor can undergo a court-martial and subsequent execution). Peri tends to a wheelchair-bound girl who receives periodic “treatments” from the chief mate, discovering that the girl is a captive specimen of a species thought to exist only in myths. Her people will be coming to rescue her soon…but will they make the distinction between the girl’s corrupt captor and everyone else on board the ship?