The Doctor and Charley arrive in the far future, on a far-flung human colony world. What they find there is troubling: the colony’s command structure is breaking down, and the colony’s leader is directing all of his attention toward the hunt for an elusive but valuable mineral called K7…even to the point of disposing of those who question his all-consuming obsession. When the Doctor and Charley show up asking questions, they find themselves at the top of the shortlist of people likely to disappear without a trace. An attempt to dispose of them via a convenient (but, of course, regrettable) underground explosion doesn’t kill them, but instead reveals a spacecraft that’s been buried on this planet for centuries. The spacecraft’s technology is crystalline, much like K7, and only then does the Doctor realize that he’s up against not only a despotic colony leader, but a very old enemy indeed.
written by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas BriggsCast: Colin Baker (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charlotte Pollard), Philip Madoc (Rag Cobden), Matthew Burgess (Ned Gillespie), Susan Brown (Eleanor Harvey), Glynn Sweet (Professor Lyle Woodruff), Ian Brooker (Romilly), Andrew Dickens (Security), Nicholas Briggs (The Krotons)
Timeline: after Brotherhood Of The Daleks and before The Raincloud Man
Review: Released as a special one-off story for subscribers only – Big Finish’s equivalent of the BBC’s annual special Christmas episode of Doctor Who – Return Of The Krotons is a nice present for the faithful: the return of an enemy whose presence would befuddle the casual audience (if, indeed, Big Finish audios even have such an audience) or new-series-only fans. (more…)
The Doctor is convinced that the TARDIS has returned him to Spiridon, the jungle planet where he’s done battle with the Daleks on more than one occasion. But despite the presence of the planet’s disctinctively deadly foliage, and a desperate band of outnumbered Thals who claim to be fighting a larger force of Daleks, something doesn’t add up – and finally the Doctor discovers that it isn’t Spiridon at all. Worse yet, in this artificial environment, even the beleaguered Thals are not who they appear to be…but who’s behind the deception? Daleks? Thals? Or someone else? Whoever it turns out to be, chances are that they won’t allow the Doctor to escape alive with whatever secrets he learns.
The Doctor’s travels through time are interrupted by an unwelcome guest – not Charley, his strange new traveling companion who seems to know more than she’s saying (and claims to have amnesia), but rather a small ‘bot which arrives to tell the Doctor that a library book he checked out is long overdue. The book in question, a rather paint-by-numbers 18th century romance which makes a romantic hero out of notorious highwayman Dick Turpin, captures Charley’s imagination, but now she’ll have to help the Doctor return it before she can finish it. At the library, the Doctor and Charley discover a group of Grell arguing over the merits (or lack thereof) of fiction. Unable to grasp anything but the truth, the Grell have little tolerance for fiction, and it looks as though they’re about to put literary masterpieces into a bonfire. Charley interrupts their plans, but the book she was trying to return to the library is charred almost beyond recognition. The TARDIS next destination is the 18th century itself, but when events begin to unfold that parallel the plot of the damaged book, the Doctor grows suspicious. The plot developments spiral out of control, and Charley lterally loses herself in the story, becoming first the heroine of the piece, and then Dick Turpin’s deadly sidekick. Can the Doctor bring this land of fiction back to reality before Charley has a fatal date with destiny?