September, 1991: the TARDIS brings the Doctor and Lucie to a town which seems to be frozen in time. With no electricity, nothing here has been cleaned for years, and the friendly locals have no problem with the idea that yesterday’s date was the same as today’s – just like tomorrow’s will be. Surrounding the town is a bleak desert, though everyone living there swears that the tide is out. One thing disrupts the calm here: armored vehicles routinely patrol the area, crossing the desert that shouldn’t be there, and all the locals have to do to avoid detection is stand still. Lucie is captured by one of the patrols, and discovers that their occupants seem fairly certain that it’s 2008. The Doctor, trying to track down a missing local girl, discovers that the town – and the desert – are actually deep inside the borders of Uzbekistan, and that the locals are anything but. They’re Autons who, without control from the Nestene Consciousness, have blended in to the point that they think they’re human. But somewhere in the desert, a Nestene control unit is trying to re-establish contact with its Auton army, and the innocuous townsfolk may justify the armed presence patrolling their home.
written by Jonathan Clements
directed by Jason Haigh-Ellery
music by ERSCast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Derek Griffiths (Jason Taylor), Adrian Dunbar (McCarthy), Lorna Want (Sally Taylor), Nick Wilton (PC Sharp / Karimov), Katarina Olsson (Margaret / Vitas)
Notes: This marks the Autons’ first appearance in a Big Finish audio production; they had already appeared as both the first villain and the first classic villain in 2005’s Rose, the first episode of the new TV series. The Autons also inspired a trilogy of fan-made video productions in the 1990s, though the interpretation of them seen there is very different from either Rose or Brave New Town.
Timeline: after Max Warp and before The Skull Of Sobek
Review: A clever trip into the seldom-explored territory of the recent past, Brave New Town milks a lot of laughs out of little details that will hit cringe-inducingly close for many fans (i.e. the repeated mentions of Bryan Adams’ repetitive #1 song “Everything I Do, I Do For You”). Underneath that, though, lies one of the most inspired rethinks of a classic series baddie that anyone has graced us with in recent years – on television or off. (more…)
The Doctor and Lucie arrive at a live taping of the hit spacecraft hot-rodding show, Max Warp… just in time to see the show’s seasoned test driver plunge to his apparent death when he loses control of a Kith ship and it slams into a nearby moon. Immediately the Doctor is convinced that the ship was sabotaged, and its pilot murdered. He and Lucie split up to try to narrow down the list of suspects – and Lucie ends up with the unenviable task of going undercover as a new host of Max Warp, and while the regular hosts think she’s just providing something for the dads to watch, she’s trying to figure out of either of them is a killer. The Doctor focuses on the intrigue between the humans and the Kith, who exist in an uneasy truce, with some on both sides ready to resume a state of war. An assassination attempt on the contentious Kith ambassador may be the last straw before shots are fired… until the Doctor realizes that something
The Doctor and Lucie travel to 21st century London so Lucie can conquer her most dangerous foe yet: her urge to go shopping. But when London changes around them, both of the time travelers are in danger. Lucie finds herself in London at the height of World War I, with zeppelin bombing runs an imminent danger, while the Doctor’s court appearance for a TARDIS parking violation becomes a more deadly affair when he winds up in an 18th century court. What’s even stranger than the time shifts is the fact that the residents of London are not only aware of them, but take them in their stride. With the Doctor sentenced to be hanged, time is running out to find out what’s happened to London, in the past and the present.