Thicker Than Water (audio story)

Thicker Than Water
Doctor:	Sixth Doctor
Companion(s):	Mel
Featuring:	Evelyn, Seventh Doctor
Main enemy:	Andrew Szabó
Main setting:	Világ
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Paul Sutton
Director:	Edward Salt
Producer:	Gary Russell, Jason Haigh-Ellery
Music:	Andy Hardwick
Sound:	Andy Hardwick, Gareth Jenkins
Cover by:	Lee Binding
Release details
Release number:	73
Release date:	September 2005
Format:	4 Episodes on 2 CDs
Production code:	7C/U
ISBN:	ISBN 1-84435-159-9
Main Range
← Previous	Terror Firma
Next →	LIVE 34
Production order
← Previous	LIVE 34
Next →	Singularity

Thicker Than Water was the seventy-third story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Paul Sutton and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, Bonnie Langford as Melanie Bush and Maggie Stables as Evelyn Smythe.

A sequel to Arrangements for War, this story is set following Evelyn's first departure from travelling with the Doctor, which is presented in flashbacks in this episode and was previously briefly alluded to in The Juggernauts.

Publisher's summary

Three years after Világ was all but laid waste by the Killorans, the Doctor is back alongside a different companion. And a lot has changed.

Now elected Principal Triumvir, head of a tripartite government, Rossiter is working to secure a peaceful future for the planet by researching the technology the Killorans left behind. But he has to contend with opposition from his daughter, Sofia, who heads a public campaign demanding the destruction of all alien artefacts.

Politics has caused a rift between father and daughter, and as if that weren't enough, Sofia doesn't approve of her new stepmother either. Emotions soon boil over into violence — violence that seems to have gripped the entire city.

Friendships bind people close, but they say that blood is...

Plot

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor - Colin Baker
• Evelyn Smythe - Maggie Stables
• Melanie Bush - Bonnie Langford
• Principal Triumvir Rossiter - Gabriel Woolf
• Dr Sofia Rossiter - Rachel Pickup
• Dr Andrew Szabó - Patrick Romer
• Dr Sebastian Lawrence - Simon Watts
• Jenner - Matt Dineen
• TV Interviewer - James Parsons

Uncredited

• The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy

References

• At some point during their travels together, the Doctor and Evelyn eventually visited the court of Elizabeth I.

Notes

• This account of Mel's first meeting with Evelyn, along with Evelyn's post-TARDIS life, is contradicted by that offered in the novel Instruments of Darkness.
• As in the audio story The Wormery, Sylvester McCoy makes an uncredited cameo appearance as the Seventh Doctor in the final episode.
• Along with the audio stories The Sirens of Time, Zagreus, The Wormery, Project: Lazarus, The Four Doctors, The Light at the End and The Brink of Death, this is one of eight Big Finish audio dramas in which both Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy appear.
• Although the Seventh Doctor discovered that Hex was the son of Cassie Schofield in the audio story The Harvest, released in June 2004, this information was not revealed to either Evelyn or the audience until this story.
• This audio drama was recorded on 27 and 28 June 2005 at The Moat Studios.
• This story is set between The Trial of a Time Lord and Time and the Rani.
• This is a sequel to Arrangements for War, taking place three years afterwards.
• This story was originally released on CD. It is now available as a download only.

Continuity

• Sofia Rossiter was the best friend of Princess Krisztina. (AUDIO: Arrangements for War)
• Evelyn tells Mel about her encounters with the Daleks. (AUDIO: The Apocalypse Element, AUDIO: Jubilee), and mutant vampire hunters. (AUDIO: Project: Twilight, Project: Lazarus)
• The Sixth Doctor mentions his aggressive post-regenerative phase. (TV: The Twin Dilemma)
• Whereas Evelyn saw the Seventh Doctor from a distance in The 100 Days of the Doctor, she does not appear to recognise him in this story, though she correctly guesses from his manner that he is a future incarnation of the Doctor. They would later meet for a second and final time in A Death in the Family.
• The Seventh Doctor informs Evelyn that his companion Hex is in actuality "Little Tommy", the son of Cassandra Schofield, whom they previously met in AUDIO: Project: Twilight and saw die in AUDIO: Project: Lazarus. Having seen him from afar in AUDIO: The 100 Days of the Doctor, Evelyn would later meet Hex formally in AUDIO: A Death in the Family.
• The Seventh Doctor tells Evelyn that he stumbled across Hex, who chose to travel with him of his own volition. (AUDIO: The Harvest)
• Shortly before travelling to Világ, the Seventh Doctor dropped Ace and Hex off in Monte Carlo in 1966 and instructed them to steal the Veiled Leopard while the Fifth Doctor's companions Peri Brown and Erimem were simultaneously trying to prevent it from being stolen. He briefly conversed with his past self and was observed doing so by Peri and Erimem, who remained unaware of his identity. Peri described him "as a goofy little guy in a weird pullover." (AUDIO: The Veiled Leopard)
• The Sixth Doctor mentions using a fire extinguisher to repel enemies before. (TV: Inferno)
• While living on Világ, Evelyn discovered a temporal device which transported her to Pelachan billions of years in the past. (AUDIO: A Death in the Family)

External links

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