The Macros (audio story)

The Macros
Doctor:	Sixth Doctor
Companion(s):	Peri
Main enemy:	Presidente Osloo
Main setting:	USS Eldridge, Philadelphia Bay, 28 October 1943; Capron; Washington DC, 26 October 1943
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writers:	Ingrid Pitt and Tony Rudlin
Director:	John Ainsworth
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Richard Fox and Lauren Yason
Release details
Release number:	1.08
Release date:	June 2010
Format:	2 Episodes on 2 CDs
Production code:	6Y/AH
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-84435-451-1
Official trailer
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The Lost Stories
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The Macros, formerly "The Macro Men", is the eighth and final Lost Story of Season 23 to be developed into an audio play. It stars Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown.

Publisher's summary

The TARDIS materialises on the USS Eldridge, after the Philadelphia Experiment has gone disastrously wrong. Most of the crew are dead, the ship is disintegrating, and the Doctor soon realises that the problem comes from another dimension...

As they attempt to find a way to get the ship home, the Doctor and Peri visit the distant planet Capron and meet its tyrannical ruler Osloo. But the search for a possible solution only creates increasingly dire problems. Osloo's horizons have been widened – and space and time are hers for the taking...

Plot

Part one

Two men aboard the USS Eldridge are talking. They are checking the instruments and repairing some damage that one attributes to moisture at sea. He says the interface was a few seconds off. They discuss the countdown on board and what will happen when it reaches zero.

The TARDIS lands and the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown walk out. Peri notices that there is thick fog outside. Peri is trying to get back to Baltimore to contact her family. The Doctor determines that they are on a ship at sea. Peri hears two men talking, but they don't see her or acknowledge her when she tries to make contact with them. They are repeating their previous conversation. As Peri tries to get back in the TARDIS to leave, the Doctor tells her that he noticed something went wrong as they were materializing, some sort of interdimensional temporal flux that caught them between two dimensions.

to be continued

Part two

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor – Colin Baker
• Peri Brown – Nicola Bryant
• Presidenta Osloo/Anne Tessler - Linda Marlowe
• Commander Ezz - Jack Galagher
• Lady Yka - Rachael Elizabeth
• Professor Brian Tessler - Vincent Pirillo
• Bosun/Guard - Stewart Alexander
• Mers/Admiral Greg Calloway/1st Rigger - Paul David-Gough
• Chancellor Bundth/2nd Rigger/Captain/Guard/Tannoy - Matt Addis

References

• The riggers refer to the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
• Presidente Osloo is the ruler of Capron. She imprisons her stepson Commander Ezz on a trumped charge of treason.
• Professor Tessler compares the Doctor to H. G. Wells.
• The Doctor compares the colourful sky of Capron to the aurora borealis.
• Peri cannot sing. However, she attempts to sing Row, Row, Row Your Boat for Osloo and her guests.
• Time passes much more rapidly in Capron's pocket universe than in the primary one.
• The USS Eldridge has been trapped in a state of temporal flux for 67 years.
• The Doctor tells Anne Tessler that he is Dr. John Smith and that Peri is his niece.
• Admiral Greg Calloway was the best man at the Tesslers' wedding.

Notes

Interior CD illustration showing the Macros.

• The Macros, originally The Macro Men, was an unproduced story for Doctor Who written by Ingrid Pitt and her husband Tony Rudlin after the former played Solow in TV: Warriors of the Deep in 1984. Pitt also played Galleia in TV: The Time Monster in 1972. The couple first got the idea from reading Charles Berlitz' The Philadelphia Experiment, a story about an experiment conducted by the United States during World War II in the attempts to try and make the USS Eldridge invisible to RADAR. After meeting with Eric Saward numerous times, The Macro Men became The Macros and many revisions only resulted in a draft first episode script before all work was stopped.
• This audio drama was recorded on 2 and 3 November 2009.

Continuity

• Peri requested that the Doctor take her to visit her mother Janine Foster and her stepfather Howard Foster in Baltimore, Maryland in 1984 to let them know that she is alright after she left them on Lanzarote to travel with the Fifth Doctor. (TV: Planet of Fire) They would eventually do so after Peri learned that Anthony Chambers, her best friend Katherine Chambers' father, had been murdered. (AUDIO: The Reaping)
• The Doctor tells Peri that the TARDIS was once accidentally reduced in size. (TV: Planet of Giants)
• The Doctor is able to restore Peri to full health by placing her in the Zero Room. He tells Ezz and Yka that he has used it himself to recover from accidents. (TV: Castrovalva)
• Peri tells Yka that, during her travels with the Doctor, she has been transformed into a bird (TV: Vengeance on Varos), placed on "an Androgum's lunch menu" (TV: The Two Doctors), chased by Ice Warriors (AUDIO: Red Dawn, The Bride of Peladon, Mission to Magnus) and Tractators (AUDIO: The Hollows of Time) and that she was once almost trapped on the astral place (AUDIO: Point of Entry).
• The Doctor took a battery from Reverend Foxwell's laboratory in Hollowdean, England during the early 1980s. (AUDIO: The Hollows of Time)
• The Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond would later visit the U.S.S. Eldridge during the 23rd century. (GAME: Shadows of the Vashta Nerada)

External links

• Official The Macros page at bigfinish.com
• The Macros at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• DisContinuity for The Macros at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide