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{{Infobox Story SMW
{{Infobox Story
|image          = Apocalypse revised.jpg
|name= The Apocalypse Element
|range          = Main Range
|image=The Apocalypse Element cover.jpg
|number in range = 11
|series=[[Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories|Big Finish ''Doctor Who'' audio stories]]
|series         = ''[[Main Range]]''
|number= 11  
|number         = 11
|doctor=Sixth Doctor  
|doctor         = Sixth Doctor
|companions= [[Evelyn Smythe]]  
|companions     = [[Evelyn Smythe|Evelyn]]
|featuring=[[Romana II]]
|featuring       = [[Romana II]], [[Vansell]]
|enemy= The [[Dalek]]s
|enemy           = [[Black Dalek (The Apocalypse Element)|Black Dalek]]
|setting= {{il|[[Etra Prime]]|[[Archetryx]]|[[Gallifrey]]}}
|setting         = [[Etra Prime]], [[Archetryx]], [[Gallifrey]]
|writer= [[Stephen Cole]]
|writer         = Stephen Cole
|director= [[Nicholas Briggs]]  
|director       = [[Nicholas Briggs]]
|producer= [[Jason Haigh-Ellery]] and [[Gary Russell]]  
|producer       = [[Jason Haigh-Ellery]] and [[Gary Russell]]
|post production=[[Nicholas Briggs]]
|music          = [[Nicholas Briggs]]
|publisher= [[Big Finish Productions]]
|sound          = Nicholas Briggs
|cover=[[Clayton Hickman]]
|cover           = [[Clayton Hickman]]
|release date= [[August]] [[2000]]
|publisher      = Big Finish Productions
|format= 4 Episodes on 2 CDs  
|release date   = 7 August 2000
|production code= [[List of production codes#Big Finish production codes|7C/C]]  
|format         = 2 CDs<br/>2 cassettes<br/>Download
|isbn= ISBN 1-903654-01-7
|production code = [[List of production codes#Big Finish production codes|7C/C]]
|trailer={{StoryTitle}}.ogg
|isbn           = ISBN 978-1-90365-401-9
|prev= Winter for the Adept (audio story)  
|prev           = Winter for the Adept (audio story)
|next= The Fires of Vulcan (audio story)}}
|next           = The Fires of Vulcan (audio story)
'''''{{StoryTitle}}''''' was the eleventh [[Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories|monthly ''Doctor Who'' audio story]] produced by [[Big Finish Productions]]. It was the first audio story to feature [[Lalla Ward]] reprising her role of [[Romana II]]. It was also the first audio story to feature the [[Sixth Doctor]] and the Daleks. The last story to feature the Sixth Doctor and the Daleks was [[1993]]'s ''[[Doctor Who Magazine]]'' comic story ''[[Emperor of the Daleks! (comic story)|Emperor of the Daleks!]]''. The spine of this story's CD case was marked "[[Dalek Empire (audio series)|Dalek Empire]] Part Two", marking it as taking place as part of Big Finish's series of linked audio stories that formed a large and long setting for the [[Dalek Empire]] during a particular phase of their galactic expansion.
|series2        = ''[[Main Range]]'' ''[[Dalek Empire (audio series)|Dalek Empire]]''
|prev2          = The Genocide Machine (audio story)
|next2          = The Mutant Phase (audio story)
|made prev      = The Spectre of Lanyon Moor (audio story)
|made next      = The Fires of Vulcan (audio story)
|epcount = 4
}}{{audio stub}}
{{spotify|album=5TlDetRzAG4R2wss33kOkj|height=350}}
'''''{{StoryTitle}}''''' was the eleventh story in [[Big Finish]]'s [[Main Range|monthly range]]. It was written by [[Stephen Cole]] and featured [[Colin Baker]] as the [[Sixth Doctor]], [[Maggie Stables]] as [[Evelyn Smythe]], [[Lalla Ward]] as [[Romana II]] and [[Anthony Keetch]] as [[Vansell]].
 
It was the first audio story to feature Ward reprising her role of [[Romana II|Romana]]. It was also the first audio story to feature the Sixth Doctor and the Daleks. The last story to feature the Sixth Doctor and the Daleks was 1993's ''[[Doctor Who Magazine]]'' comic story ''[[Emperor of the Daleks! (comic story)|Emperor of the Daleks!]]''.
 
The spine of this story's CD case was marked "[[Dalek Empire (audio series)|Dalek Empire]] Part Two", marking it as taking place as part of Big Finish's series of linked audio stories that formed a large and long setting for the [[Dalek Empire]] during a particular phase of their galactic expansion.


== Publisher's summary ==
== Publisher's summary ==
When the planet [[Archetryx]] is threatened by a [[Dalek]] assault squad, the [[Sixth Doctor]] and [[Evelyn Smythe|Evelyn]] become embroiled in an ever-deepening mystery. What has become of [[Romana II|President Romana]], missing for twenty years? What lurks in the vast [[gravity wells]] of Archetryx? What is the secret of the ancient element the Daleks are synthesising -- and how does [[Gallifrey]] feature in their plans?
When the planet [[Archetryx]] is threatened by a [[Dalek]] assault squad, the [[Sixth Doctor]] and [[Evelyn Smythe|Evelyn]] become embroiled in an ever-deepening mystery. What has become of [[Romana II|President Romana]], missing for twenty years? What lurks in the vast [[gravity well]]s of Archetryx? What is the secret of the ancient element the Daleks are synthesising — and how does [[Gallifrey]] feature in their plans?


The Doctor finds that if his oldest enemies cannot conquer the universe they will watch it go up in flames...
The Doctor finds that if his oldest enemies cannot conquer the universe they will watch it go up in flames...


== Plot ==
== Plot ==
The Time Lords aren’t the only race to develop time travel. In fact, twenty such races—and by default, twenty of the most powerful civilisations in the universe—are gathering on the planet Archetryx for a conference regarding time travel and its limitations. Archetryx’s monitors get a strange reading before the conference, but there is an explanation: the Monans, whose time vessels are even more highly powered than the Time Lords’ TARDISes, have arrived, and their ship’s powerful engines created a disturbance in Archetryx’s temporal defence shields. It’s done more than that, however; it has dragged in a straggler, the TARDIS occupied by the Sixth Doctor and his companion, Evelyn Smythe.


Part One
They shouldn’t be there, but they are saved from trouble by Coordinator Vansell of the Gallifreyan Celestial Intervention Agency, who declares them part of the Lord President’s entourage. Nevertheless, there’s no time to rest, because strange things are still happening.
 
Twenty of the greatest powers in time and space are attending a conference on the planet [[Archetryx]], the site of a rather disturbing incident in the recent past. Monitor Trinkett is determined to ensure that nothing goes wrong, but despite her best efforts there have been a number of unexplained energy surges from her planet's gravity wells, and the delegates are becoming concerned. The TARDIS materialises in the conference hall, drawn through Archetryx's temporal shields in the wake of a powerful time vessel -- presumably the ship from the Monan Host world. The Doctor and Evelyn are nearly arrested by Commander Vorna when they emerge, but to the Doctor's surprise, Co-ordinator Vansell of the Celestial Intervention Agency steps in and identifies them as members of the Time Lord President's personal staff. Vorna, irritated by the Time Lords' apparent disdain for Archetryx's security procedures, takes Evelyn to the security centre, while the Doctor accompanies Vansell to speak with the President and learn why the isolationist Time Lords have chosen to attend this conference.
 
Once the gravity wells are stable again, Trinkett's assistant Ensac leaves to escort the High Minister to the delegates' lounge. Soon afterwards Evelyn arrives to be fitted with a security bracelet, but before she can return to the lounge, Trinkett picks up a gravitational disturbance in a nearby sector of space. It appears that the phantom planet of [[Etra Prime]] has returned, and that Archetryx's defensive shields are now unstable -- which should be impossible, as the High Minister himself had examined them just the other day. But the High Minister is no longer entirely in control of himself. Moments after addressing the delegates, he hears a high-pitched tone in his mind, and orders Ensac to escort him back to his quarters -- where Ensac also hears the sound in his mind. Entranced, Ensac returns to Control, where he tells Trinkett that the instrumentation is giving faulty readings, and shuts it all down for "repairs" before she can stop him. Even as they speak, the [[Dalek]]s are approaching Archetryx, ready to put their latest plan in motion...
 
[[The Doctor]] is greeted warmly by the elderly President, who explains that he was called out of retirement to serve during [[Gallifrey]]'s current state of emergency. Twenty years ago, unique elements which seemed to disobey the laws of physics were found on Etra Prime, the oldest known planetoid in the Universe. Since Etra Prime was in Archetryx's space, representatives from numerous interested worlds traded with them in exchange for permission to send a scientific team to Etra Prime. Shortly afterwards, however, Etra Prime vanished into time and space, taking 500 people with it, including the newly elected President of the [[Time Lords]]. One year later, three hundred of the missing scientists were found dead on Archetryx, their bodies riddled with time distortion. Only the fact that Archetryx clearly did not possess the means to commit such a crime prevented a war, and its desperate people were only too happy to volunteer their world as the site for this conference on the limitation of temporal manipulation. The Doctor realises that Vansell is attending in the hopes of conducting a little espionage on the other species which possess time-travel technology -- but the President is here in the hope of learning who or what is responsible for the disappearance of Etra Prime... and of President Romanadvoratrelundar.
 
The Doctor is disturbed to learn that his former companion has been missing for twenty years, but his more immediate concern is the temporal wake which brought him here. What if it wasn't caused by the Monan Host vessel, but by Etra Prime? The Doctor and Vansell decide to question Trinkett, and although she tries to convince them at first that nothing untoward is happening, she is eventually forced to admit that before Ensac switched off her monitors she had detected what appeared to be a planetary body moving through the system at high speed. It was not massive enough to be Etra Prime -- unless the minerals beneath its surface had been entirely mined out... The Doctor notes Ensac's strained behaviour, and when he tries to get a closer look at what Ensac is doing Ensac attacks and nearly kills him. Vorna restrains him, and the Doctor discovers that Ensac has sabotaged the sensors and shields, effectively blinding them and trapping them within the conference hall. The Doctor attempts to repair the damage -- and picks up life signs directly outside the building...
 
While searching for the Doctor, [[Evelyn]] spots the High Minister behaving suspiciously, and follows him to the hall's berthing bays -- where she sees him plant a bomb by the exterior wall. She is nearly buried under the rubble when the bomb goes off, killing the High Minister, bringing down the wall and allowing a squad of Daleks into the building. The Doctor repairs the internal sensors just in time to see his greatest enemies invading the building, preparing to destroy the engineering section. As long as the shields remain active the delegates will be unable to escape. Vansell offers to rescue Evelyn on the condition that the Doctor use his expertise to lower the shields again. As the Doctor gets to work, Ensac dies, his usefulness as a Dalek pawn fulfilled. But what do the Daleks want -- and why are they apparently steering Etra Prime on a collision course towards [[Archetryx]]?
 
Vansell and Vorna rescue Evelyn, but are too late to prevent the Daleks from destroying the engineering section. Rather than proceeding to exterminate the delegates, the Daleks instead attempt to steal the Monan Host vessel -- the only ship powerful enough to force its way through the active shields, and the reason that Vansell came to the conference in the first place. The Monan craft is not dimensionally transcendental, however, and only eight Daleks will fit inside. They are able to pilot it through the shields and back to Etra Prime, however, and the remaining Daleks fan out through the docking bays and self-destruct, bringing down the walls and blocking the doorway with rubble. The delegates, already trapped behind the shields, have now been cut off from their time machines.
 
The [[Sixth Doctor]] is unable to circumvent Ensac's work, and realises that to lower the shields he will have to go directly to their power source, the gravity wells. Although Trinkett is reluctant to reveal her world's secrets to an outsider, she has no choice, and thus warns the Doctor about the recent power surges. There appears to be a high level of organic impurity within the wells, and the Doctor fears that this may explain where the remaining bodies from the Etra Prime expedition are located. He must enter the gravity wells both to save Archetryx and to find out what has happened to [[Romana]]. He and Trinkett don survival suits and enter the wells, but encounter an unexpected threat within. The wells are full of [[Kaled]] mutants, outside their travel casings and manouevring freely within a zero-gravity environment. Before the Doctor and Trinkett can retreat to safety, they are overwhelmed by the attacking mutants...
 
Part Two
 
For twenty years, [[Romana]] has been a Dalek slave on [[Etra Prime]], confined to a small lightless cell for days at a time, given barely enough food and exercise to keep her alive, and forced to carry out those tasks which the Daleks cannot or will not perform themselves. The soul-numbing routine is killing her a little bit each day. When the stolen Monan ship arrives, Romana and a former Monan engineer named Vrint are ordered to remove its main drive and use it to construct a temporal centrifuge. As they work, Romana notes that the Daleks are communicating with a science team still hidden on Archetryx, using crystal implants which seem to channel Dalek mental energy; presumably they are avoiding conventional transmitters in order to prevent their team on [[Archetryx]] from being discovered. The science team's creation, something with the ominous name of the Apocalypse Element, is to be transmatted into an inertia chamber on Etra Prime, and Romana deduces that it must be too volatile to handle by conventional methods -- and that the temporal centrifuge is required to accelerate the process and allow the [[Dalek]]s to harvest the Element before they abandon Etra Prime for good.
 
[[The Doctor]] gets Trinkett to safety, and just as he is about to be overcome by his attackers a surge of energy through the gravity wells weakens the Daleks and allows him to escape. Evelyn has followed the Doctor, seen his predicament and tampered with the wells' controls to create a distraction; unfortunately, although she has saved his life, she's also created a feedback loop which threatens to blow the wells open and kill them all. The Doctor sets up a counter-harmonic vibration and stabilises the power surge, but is forced to devote the console's entire programme to maintaining this stability -- which means that the only way to lower the shields is to enter the gravity wells once again, risking another attack from the mutants.
 
The Black [[Dalek]] informs the trapped delegates that the surviving Daleks in the berthing bays are plundering the secrets of the delegates' time machines. Attacks have been launched on the delegates' home worlds, and the people of Archetryx will not be of any help; their leaders were replaced with Dalek duplicates long ago, who manipulated the powers of the galaxy into holding their conference here. Soon Etra Prime will collide with Archetryx, destroying both worlds. Realising that they have been played for fools, the delegates agree to work together to break through into the berthing bays. [[Vansell]] contacts the Doctor to update him on the situation, and Evelyn offers to help clear the rubble away from the berthing bays. As soon as the delegates break through, however, the Daleks open fire upon them, driving them back. Evelyn and Trinkett offer to look for another way through; perhaps if they find an inspection hatch they can get behind the Daleks and create a distraction.
 
As Vrint and Romana work, they learn that the Daleks intend to crash Etra Prime into Archetryx, destroying both worlds and all evidence of what they have done here. As soon as the two planets are within transmat range, the science unit on Archetryx transmats the Apocalypse Element to Etra Prime, and the Black Dalek orders Romana to operate the temporal centrifuge so the Element can be harvested. Romana claims that she must first examine the transmat to ensure that the Element was not damaged by its transfer. The Black Dalek is suspicious and orders his guards to exterminate her, but Romana and Vrint take shelter behind the inertia chamber, and the Daleks are unable to fire upon them for fear of damaging the Element. Romana reverses the settings on the transmat and sends herself and Vrint back to Archetryx, along with one of the Daleks' focussing crystals -- a vital element of their plan. The transmat is damaged when the Daleks attempt to gun down the escaping Romana and Vrint, and they are thus unable to follow her. The spearhead on Archetryx must recover the crystal, whatever the cost.
 
The Doctor enters the gravity wells to complete his work, and this time, by keeping his torch off and staying quiet, he avoids the Dalek mutants long enough to reach the shield controls. They soon find him again, but as they launch themselves at him Romana and Vrint materialise nearby, distracting the Doctor's attackers. The Doctor manages to switch the lights on inside the wells, disorienting the mutants long enough for him to switch the gravity on as well. The mutants are crushed against the walls by the sudden return of gravity to the wells, and the Doctor completes his work and switches off Archetryx's temporal shields. He is then joyously reunited with Romana, and finds that she and Vrint have materialised a Dalek laboratory set up to synthesise a substance which could only be created in the unique conditions of Archetryx's gravity wells. The Dalek embryos in the wells have also been implanted with the thought-transfer crystals, but the Doctor and Romana have no time to ponder their discoveries. As they flee back to the berthing bays, the Doctor is shocked by Romana's callous dismissal of her fellow slaves, trapped on Etra Prime and doomed to death; twenty harsh years as a Dalek slave have changed his former friend.
 
Vorna and Evelyn locate an inspection hatch and distract the Daleks while the Time Lord President rallies his fellow delegates into an attack. The Doctor and Romana arrive and join the attack, but there is little time for a reunion, as the Daleks immediately head for Romana to recover the stolen crystal. The Doctor tosses Evelyn the TARDIS key, and he and Romana retreat once again to lure the Daleks away. They are cornered in the corridors, but the Doctor holds off the Daleks by threatening to smash the crystal against the wall, and as they hesitate Trinkett arrives and destroys them. The Doctor flings the crystal back at the pursuing Daleks, who immediately retreat and evacuate from Archetryx. The Doctor, Romana and Trinkett get to the TARDIS, where Evelyn is waiting for them, and escape from Archetryx mere seconds before Etra Prime collides with it. As the Doctor prepares to return Romana home, Trinkett realises that her planet has just been destroyed, but as she tries to cope with the shock, the Doctor picks up a rather disturbing transmission from his own home world...
 
The President and Vansell return to Gallifrey, and the furious President demands an immediate meeting of the High Council to determine their response to the Daleks' latest outrage. Captain Reldath then reports that a delegation from the Monan Host world has arrived in Gallifreyan space, seeking sanctuary; they are being pursued by Daleks which have invaded their own home world. The President sympathises but is unwilling to intervene in matters of war; however, [[Vansell]] points out that the Monan Host time ship is smaller and sleeker than the one they saw on Archetryx, and therefore must be more advanced. He still wishes to learn the secrets of the Monan Host's technology, and therefore suggests that they allow the flagship through the transduction barriers; they will then be able to set terms for future assistance. Even as they speak, a Dalek fleet is approaching Gallifrey and the Monan refugee fleet; the desperate Monans will agree to any terms the Gallifreyans set. Reluctantly, the President agrees to let the flagship through the transduction barrier, and Captain Reldath transmits the co-ordinates of the TARDIS cradles to them. It is this transmission which the Doctor picks up, and only he suspects the truth. But he has no way of warning the Time Lords, who go to greet the Monan delegates -- only to be attacked by a spearhead of twenty Daleks. This is not a Monan ship at all, but a disguised [[Dalek time machine]]... and the Daleks are invading [[Gallifrey]].
 
Part Three
 
Trinkett wants to return to Archetryx to find out if her world has survived, but the Doctor can't afford to leave until he's sure whether Gallifrey is safe. However, as he watches, the "Monan" ships transform into [[Dalek ship]]s -- and if the camouflage is no longer necessary, this must mean that the Daleks have achieved their objective and reached [[Gallifrey]]. [[Romana]] connects herself to the [[TARDIS]] telepathic circuits, hoping to use her Presidential access codes to get them through the transduction barrier; however, as she struggles to synchronise herself with the antique Type 40, the [[Dalek]]s notice the nearby TARDIS and open fire. Romana feels each impact through her telepathic link to the TARDIS, but with effort she manages to transmit the codes and pull them through the transduction barrier. Straight into a war zone...


The Time Lords never expected anything like this. The Daleks have seized the TARDIS cradles, and as the guards have been forced to retreat, leaving their dead and wounded behind, the Daleks have harvested the eyes from a wounded soldier and used them to bypass the cradle's retinal security locks. As the residential areas of the Capitol are evacuated, the guards fight their way back step by step, trying to prevent the Daleks from reaching the access ports, through which they will be able to travel anywhere in the Capitol. The President blames himself for listening to Vansell and throwing away the [[Time Lord]]s' isolation in the hope of gaining a minor strategic advantage. But if the Daleks have already invaded the Monan Host world and assimilated all of their discoveries -- technology which even the Time Lords wanted for themselves -- what do they want with Gallifrey? Meanwhile, the Black Dalek monitors the progress of the invasion; the team from Archetryx has returned with the focussing crystal, and the Daleks on Gallifrey have secured the means to override the Time Lords' security systems. Soon they will shut down the transduction barriers and the fleet will be able to invade en masse...
Twenty years ago, the nearby planetoid of Etra Prime—the oldest planetoid in the known universe, coincidentally—vanished from time and space. It took with it five hundred scientists, mostly from Gallifrey, including the newly-elected Lord President Romanadvoratrelundar, Romana for short. A year later, three hundred of them reappeared on Archetryx, dead and distorted by time. To avert an accusation and a war, Archetryx agreed to host this conference, which has now come to fruition. Romana, however, is still to be found. Now, the Archetryxans detect that Etra Prime has returned—and it is on a collision course with Archetryx! And worse…it becomes clear that the Daleks are behind it.


The [[Sixth Doctor]]'s TARDIS materialises in the cradles, and as the Doctor prepares to face the Daleks, the others offer to accompany him; if Gallifrey falls, what will the Daleks set their sights on next? The TARDIS doors open upon a massacre; the ceremonial guards in the cradles never stood a chance against an invasion force. The Daleks surround the Doctor and his friends and prepare to exterminate them, but Romana offers to give them the Presidential codes they need to lower the transduction barriers. Vansell and Reldath arrive with their forces, but fortunately they hold off to see whether Romana is bluffing, and she is able to penetrate the Dalek neural net using a stolen thought-transfer crystal and release twenty years of repressed loathing and hatred upon the Daleks. The spearhead is stunned, and the Doctor and his friends manage to escape from the cradles; however, the Daleks detect the presence of an intruder in their group mind and expel her. The Doctor gets her to safety before the spearhead recovers, but she has touched the Dalek mindset and knows that they are planning something truly evil with the Element they harvested from [[Etra Prime]].
The Doctor begins to investigate, at the behest of the current Lord President, who was raised to the post when Romana failed to return; he is also loyal to Romana, and tries to uphold her decisions. The Doctor quickly finds that the Daleks have agents among the Archetryxans, operating under mind control. They kill themselves, but not before the sensors and shields are sabotaged, letting the Daleks into the complex. Another spy also destroys an exterior wall, allowing them in, and unintentionally trapping Evelyn. Vansell, accompanied by the Archetryxan Monitor Vorna, rescue her, but can’t stop the Daleks. However, rather than attack directly, the Daleks steal the Monan time ship. It is not dimensionally transcendent like a TARDIS, and so only a few Daleks fit inside; the rest move deeper into the building and self-destruct, blocking all the delegates from escaping.


A chance comment from Evelyn inspires the Doctor, who takes her and [[Vansell]] to security control while Romana confers with the President. Trinkett and Reldath remain, trying to hold off the Dalek spearhead and buy the Doctor time. At the security centre, the Doctor has Vansell order the operators to stand down and then uses Vansell's security override to erase every Gallifreyan retinal print from the Matrix and install [[Evelyn]]'s. The Daleks will no longer be able to use slaughtered Gallifreyan soldiers to bypass the security systems -- now only Evelyn's eyes can access the grid. The Doctor sends Evelyn and Vansell to pull the isolated guard patrols together, while he tells the President and Romana what he has done. Romana in turn warns him what she sensed in the Dalek neural net; the ancient essence mined from Etra Prime has been imbued with the evil of all the thousands of Daleks connected to the neural net, and the result is something almost inconceivably malevolent and destructive. The Doctor has no choice but to ask Romana to enter communion with the Daleks again, so they will have some idea of what it is they're up against.
The Doctor goes to the gravity wells in the facility to effect repairs and raise the shields. He is attacked by Daleks—but not their machines. The mutants have left their casings in the zero-G environment of the wells, and are attacking personally.


The Daleks shoot out the power lines, plunging the TARDIS cradles into darkness; whereas the Daleks can see in infrared, the Gallifreyan defenders are helpless. Reldath chokes up, and it is left to Trinkett to order the guards to retreat. They manage to escape seconds before the Doctor seals the bulkheads, locking the Daleks in the cradles. As they rest outside, Reldath confesses to Trinkett that he's completely out of his depth; the Time Lords thought themselves above the barbaric concept of war, and were never prepared for anything like this. Evelyn and Vansell arrive, but as Vansell explains the importance of protecting Evelyn, the Daleks burn through the wall of the cradles, cutting off their retreat. Meanwhile, the Black Dalek learns that the Apocalypse Element is now ready for use, and sends a soldier Dalek on a suicide mission. It is to take the Element to the heart of Galaxy 17A53, otherwise known as Seriphia, and there it is to self-destruct, thus demonstrating the power the Daleks now hold over the entire Universe.
Inside Etra Prime, Romana has been a slave for twenty years. The years have weighed on her, but she retains her identity and sanity by force of will. She and another slave, a Monan engineer named Vrint, are pulled out to cannibalise the Monan ship; they are instructed to use its engines to build a temporal centrifuge. Etra Prime contains a ridiculously rare element, which, when refined, has fantastic power over space and time; the Daleks call it the Apocalypse Element. As they work they overhear the Daleks’ plans. Later, they finish the centrifuge, but sabotage it; they then use a nearby transmat to escape to Archetryx. The transmat is destroyed in Dalek crossfire. Romana takes with her a strange crystal; it a communicator of sorts, used by the Daleks to telepathically communicate with their spies, so as to avoid detection of conventional signals. It is a rare item, and the Daleks want it back, as it has another purpose—and is vital to their plan.


As Romana struggles to interpret the images she is receiving from the Dalek neural net, the Black Dalek contacts the President and threatens to destroy Seriphia if he does not surrender. Romana realises that it's not bluffing; the Apocalypse Element the Daleks have synthesised reacts catastrophically with the fabric of space, and could conceivably set the Universe ablaze. The reaction can only be controlled using Gallifreyan time technology to distort time around the Element, containing it within a separate time continuum. The Doctor and the President refuse to believe that even the Daleks would release such a hideously destructive and uncontrollable force, and call their bluff... and the Black Dalek therefore ignites the Element. Romana tries and fails to contain the mental signal, and as she collapses from the psychic shock, the centre of Seriphia begins to blaze. Unless the Time Lords act to contain the effect it will spread out throughout the rest of the Universe -- but they will have to lower the transduction barriers to do so, and this will allow the Dalek task force to land and conquer Gallifrey. Either way, the Universe is doomed...
The Doctor escapes the Dalek mutants, and rendezvoused with Evelyn; she helps him escape, but it’s only temporary, as he must go back in. Meanwhile, the Daleks are stealing technological secrets from the various time machines (though, presumably, the TARDISes have sufficient security to resist entry). The Black Dalek leading the force also tells the delegates that attacks have been launched on their homeworlds. Evelyn volunteers to help clear the way to the ships. Vorna goes with her, and Romana joins the Doctor. The delegates also attack the Daleks. The Doctor gives back the crystal, and the Daleks evacuate, clearing the way; the delegates escape. The Doctor, Evelyn, Vorna, and an Archetryxan security agent named Trinkett escape in the TARDIS immediately before Etra Prime crashes into Archetryx, destroying both worlds and killing everyone remaining behind.


Part Four
The President and Vansell arrive on Gallifrey before the Doctor. Immediately they learn of a Monan ship seeking refuge there; the President and security Captain Reldath are suspicious, but Vansell, hungry for the Monan’s time travel secrets, persuades them to allow them in. It is a ruse; the Daleks, possessing their own version of a chameleon circuit, have created an illusion of the Monan ship to hide their own ships. Now inside the transduction barriers, they invade Gallifrey.


With every second's hesitation countless lives are added to an already incalculable death toll. Nevertheless, when Vansell calls from the TARDIS cradles to report that they are trapped, the Doctor goes to the rescue, opening a bulkhead, locating a Daleks whose eyestalk has been shot off, and using it as cover to steer the others to safety. He then pushes the Dalek towards the rest of its comrades, and as the blinded Dalek fires randomly into the darkness, the other Daleks delay to destroy it while Evelyn shuts the bulkhead. Reldath takes Evelyn to close the remaining bulkheads between the cradles and the Council Chamber and delay the Daleks for as long as possible, and then she joins the [[Doctor]] and [[Vansell]] in the operations chamber while Trinkett and Reldath remain to hold off the Daleks. The President is monitoring the devasation in Seriphia, and [[Romana]], recovering from the mental backlash of the Element's ignition, accompanies the Doctor to the Eye of Harmony to set up the equipment they will need to contain the effect.
Romana, whose presidential codes have never been revoked (unlike the Doctor’s), links to the TARDIS telepathic circuits to gain entrance to the Gallifreyan citadel. The Daleks have taken the TARDIS cradle area under the citadel, and have harvested the eyes of a dead soldier to defeat the retina scans on all the security doors. Being forced to get by the Daleks, the Doctor prepares to try his luck; but Romana offers them her presidential codes if they will spare them. It is a ruse, but they fall for it; they need the codes to take down the barriers and allow invasion en masse. She links with them telepathically to transmit the codes; but instead, she unloads twenty years of pain and hatred into their minds, stunning them and allowing her and her companions to escape. They force her out of the link, but she senses enough of their plan to get an inkling of their plans for the Element…


Vansell and Evelyn set off to collect the stellar engineering equipment the Doctor will require, but Vansell is still bemused by the insanity of the Daleks' scheme. Their ultimate goal has always been their own survival, so why risk unleashing a force which will destroy even them? Even now, the Daleks are discovering that the rate of destruction is exceeding their own predictions; Seriphia will be destroyed within six hours and after that the firestorm will be uncontainable. The Black Dalek contacts the President and informs him that there is insufficient time remaining for the Time Lords to contain the effect themselves; they must allow the Daleks to land on Gallifrey and assist them if the Universe is to be saved. The President refuses even to consider such an action, at least out loud... but what if the Daleks are telling the truth? The Dalek spearhead on Gallifrey is self-destructing its way through the bulkheads, suggesting either that they are confident of victory -- or are desperate to get to the Eye of Harmony before it's too late...
Reaching security control, the Doctor has Vansell erase every Gallifreyan retinal print from the Matrix, and install Evelyn’s human retinal print instead. As she is the only human around, she is now the only key to any door—and the Daleks do not have her, nor can they risk killing her. The Doctor sends her with Vansell to rally the guards. He then seals the bulkheads on the TARDIS cradles, trapping the Daleks there. Evelyn and Vansell meet up with Trinkett and Reldath, but are cut off as the Daleks burn through the wall of the cradles.
The Black Dalek learns that the Element is ready, and sends a Dalek with it to the centre of the Seriphia galaxy—four times the size of the Milky Way, and heavily populated—to prepare to ignite it. The Black Dalek demands the help of the Time Lords, as the Element, once ignited, can only be controlled via time distortion—essentially, a bubble time continuum around its field of effect. Otherwise, it will quickly consume the entire universe in a massive chain reaction, ending everything. The President thinks it is bluffing—and so the Black Dalek ignites the Element in Seriphia. Now the Time Lords are forced to act to contain it.


Even if the Doctor and Romana succeed in controlling the Effect they will be handing the Daleks the means of controlling the ultimate weapon, but even so, the Doctor insists that they must save as many lives as they can. His frustration is getting the better of him even as Romana strives to remain objective, knowing what a mistake will cost at this stage. When Vansell and Evelyn arrive with the equipment they need, the Doctor installs it and tries to coax as much power through as he can... but it is ultimately not enough. Romana is forced to shut it down before the Eye blows them all to bits, and the President reports that the effect is still uncontained. The Doctor, frustrated, loses his temper when Evelyn seems unable to comprehend the scale of the disaster they are witnessing; an entire galaxy four times larger than the Milky Way is burning as they speak, six hundred billion stars and an unimaginable number of lives have already been lost, and if they cannot contain the firestorm then it will spread out until nothing is left, anywhere. The Doctor calms down and apologises for his outburst, but Evelyn now understands the incomprehensible scale of the disaster, and goes with Vansell to fetch the power boosters which the Doctor requires.
The Doctor and his group make their way to the Eye of Harmony in the Panopticon. He sends Evelyn and Vansell to collect power boosters, which he will need to create enough power from the Eye to contain the Element.


The President, knowing that the Doctor and Romana have tried and failed, has no choice but to contact the Black Dalek and offer a conditional surrender. He will allow an unarmed scientific team to land on Gallifrey if the Black Dalek orders the spearhead already on Gallifrey to self-destruct. The Black Dalek rejects his proposal and makes a counter-offer; if the President raises the bulkheads and allows the spearhead through to operations control, then they will allow him to disarm them. Trusting to the Daleks' urge to survive, the President accepts these terms and proceeds to the front lines, where he orders Reldath and Trinkett to fight to the last man should the Daleks renege on their agreement. He then raises the bulkheads, and allows the Dalek squad leaders through. As promised, they permit him to begin disarming them.
The Daleks discover the Element is proceeding far faster than they predicted. They realise that they must work with the Time Lords to be able to contain it, or they will be destroyed too. They strike an uneasy bargain with the Lord President, allowing them to land at the Citadel. Evelyn and Vansell get the boosters, but Evelyn is wounded by a Dalek and temporarily paralyzed; she sends Vansell ahead, trusting that the Daleks won’t kill her, as they need her eyes. However, this undoes the president’s plan; with her in custody, the Daleks don’t need his cooperation to get inside, and they kill him. With Evelyn’s forced cooperation, the Daleks already in the citadel shut down the transduction barriers, allowing the fleet to land, and marking the fall of Gallifrey.


Evelyn and Vansell find the power boosters which the Doctor requires, but are then confronted by a lone Dalek, which managed to slip through the bulkheads when the Doctor rescued them and which has now circled around behind them. As they flee, Evelyn is caught by the fringe of a blast and loses the feeling in her legs. Knowing that the Doctor needs the boosters and that the Daleks will have to keep her alive to use her eye-print, she urges Vansell to flee and gives herself up to the Dalek scout. Once it verifies that her eyes are indeed Gallifrey's sole security clearance print, it contacts the spearhead leader to inform it that access to the Council Chambers is now assured. The President has only disarmed one Dalek when they receive the news, and as they no longer require his co-operation, the other Daleks exterminate him. Furious, Reldath snatches up the dropped gun and destroys the disarmed Dalek, but he and Trinkett are then forced to flee as the remaining Daleks advance. The spearhead then shuts down the transduction barriers, allowing their fleet access to the planet. Gallifrey has fallen to the Daleks.
The Doctor and Romana use the boosters with the Eye, but it is not enough. The Black Dalek, however, via one of the communication crystals, adds the combined mental might of all the Daleks on Gallifrey to the Eye. The combined power is enough, and the Element is contained; moreover, the containment field has been modified to accelerate time within. This not only burns out the Element, but also leads to the creation of a new galaxy from the rubble—billions of stars and planets, all unoccupied…and all ripe for occupation by the Daleks. The sacrifice of the Daleks on Gallifrey, it seems, was not as altruistic as it appeared. A new Dalek Empire will soon be born.


The Doctor and Romana have recalibrated the Eye of Harmony and are ready to try again. Evelyn arrives under guard, but Trinkett and Reldath also arrive and destroy the scout. The Doctor orders Evelyn to open the Eye of Harmony, but as she does so, a Dalek time machine materalises in the chamber of the Eye and the full invasion force emerges to seize control. They appear to be too late; even the stunning amount of power now flooding through the Eye is not enough to contain the Effect. The Black Dalek, however, tells the Doctor to throw Romana's captured thought-transfer crystal into the Eye; the neural energy of the Dalek group mind will give the Eye the power boost it needs. Although unconvinced that this will be enough, the Doctor has nothing to lose, and he therefore tosses the crystal into the Eye. An enormous explosion rocks the chamber, and when the smoke clears, Romana finds that the effect has indeed been contained -- and that the Daleks are all dead, having poured their entire life essence through the crystal to contain what they had unleashed. What's more, the Dalek operating the console has set time into acceleration within the new barrier, and even as Romana watches the Element burns itself out -- and new matter forms in place of the destruction, a new galaxy born out of Seriphia's ashes. It appears that the Daleks overreached themselves, but the dying Black Dalek reveals that this was always their contingency plan. They knew that the Element was too unstable to use as an instrument of destruction -- but they have just created a whole new galaxy in place of Seriphia, millions of virgin worlds which the Daleks are poised to transform into their new empire...
With the president dead, Romana—who was never removed from office—is now Lady President. Evelyn’s retinal print is removed and replaced with Gallifreyan prints; but the Doctor suggests that traces of it may remain. Romana promises help to any survivors of Archetryx and the Monan homeworld, but there is nothing to be done for the dead of Seriphia. She also promises intervention against the Daleks in that galaxy, and promises to strengthen Gallifrey for the future.


Later, as [[Gallifrey]] recovers from the invasion, the Doctor prepares to slip away again. Vansell is upset with the Doctor for leaving just as the cleaning up begins, but it's no more than Romana had expected. Evelyn's eye-print has been removed from the security matrix, but the Doctor advises her not to look too closely at the TARDIS; there's no telling how it will react to a human retinal print in future. Reldath has taken Trinkett back to Archetryx to help locate survivors of the devastation, and Romana promises to help both [[Archetryx]] and the Monan Host world to recover from the Dalek attack and to ensure that Seriphia doesn't fall to the Daleks. As long as she remains President, Gallifrey will never be isolated and defenseless again...
== Cast ==
== Cast ==
* [[Sixth Doctor|The Doctor]] - [[Colin Baker]]
* [[Sixth Doctor|The Doctor]] - [[Colin Baker]]
Line 102: Line 82:
* [[Vorna|Commander Vorna]] - [[Andrea Newland]]
* [[Vorna|Commander Vorna]] - [[Andrea Newland]]
* [[Vansell|Coordinator Vansell]] - [[Anthony Keetch]]
* [[Vansell|Coordinator Vansell]] - [[Anthony Keetch]]
* The [[Monan Host]] - [[Toby Longworth]]
* [[Monan Host|The Monan Host]] - [[Toby Longworth]]
* The [[Lord President]] of [[Gallifrey]] - [[Michael Wade]]
* [[Lord President (The Sirens of Time)|Lord President of Gallifrey]] - [[Michael Wade]]
* The [[Dalek]]s - [[Alistair Lock]] / [[Nicholas Briggs]]
* [[Dalek|The Daleks]] - [[Alistair Lock]] & [[Nicholas Briggs]]
* [[Vrint]] / [[Raldeth|Captain Raldeth]] - [[Andrew Fettes]]
* [[Vrint]]/[[Raldeth|Captain Raldeth]] - [[Andrew Fettes]]
 
* [[Alien Delegate (The Apocalypse Element)|Alien Delegate]] - [[Neil Corry]]
== References ==


== Worldbuilding ==
=== Daleks ===
=== Daleks ===
* The Dalek force is led by a [[Supreme Dalek|Black Dalek]].
* The Dalek force is led by a [[Black Dalek]].
* Twenty years ago the Daleks removed Etra Prime from space-time, kidnapping a Monan and Time Lord delegation including [[Lord President|Lady President]] [[Romana II|Romanadvoratrelundar]].
* Twenty years ago the Daleks removed Etra Prime from space-time, kidnapping a Monan and Time Lord delegation including [[Lord President|Lady President]] [[Romana II|Romanadvoratrelundar]].
* Evelyn is [[Dalek weaponry|shot by a Dalek]], paralysing her legs.
* Evelyn is [[Dalek weaponry|shot by a Dalek]], paralysing her legs.
=== The Doctor ===
* The Doctor's status as [[Lord President]] has been revoked.
=== Elements ===
=== Elements ===
* Particles found on Etra Prime are what the Daleks call the '[[Apocalypse Element]]', an entropic power present in crystals which can channel mental energy and behave contrary to the laws of physics.
* Particles found on Etra Prime are what the Daleks call the "[[Apocalypse Element]]".


=== Galaxies ===
=== Galaxies ===
* The Daleks detonated a particle of the Apocalypse Element in the [[Seriphia Galaxy]], destroying everything in it.
* The Daleks detonated a particle of the Apocalypse Element in the [[Seriphia Galaxy]], destroying everything in it.
* Gallifrey's galaxy is a neighbour of the Seriphean Galaxy. It is four times the size of the [[Milky Way]] galaxy and home to over six hundred billion stars.
* The Seriphean Galaxy is four times the size of the [[Milky Way]] galaxy and home to over six hundred billion stars.


=== Gallifreyan technology ===
=== Gallifreyan technology ===
Line 132: Line 108:


=== Planets ===
=== Planets ===
* [[Archetryx]] is host to a 'Time Treaty' of 'twenty of the greatest powers in space-time'.
* [[Archetryx]] is host to a "Time Treaty" of "twenty of the greatest powers in space-time".
* [[Etra Prime]] is the oldest planetoid in the known universe.
* [[Etra Prime]] is the oldest planetoid in the known universe.


Line 140: Line 116:
=== Species ===
=== Species ===
* The Monan Host haven't yet managed [[dimensional transcendence]] with their time technology.
* The Monan Host haven't yet managed [[dimensional transcendence]] with their time technology.
* Species attending (and part of the treaty include: the [[Time Lord]]s, the [[Monan Host]] and the [[Virgoan]]s.
* Species attending (and part of the treaty) include the [[Time Lord]]s, the [[Monan Host]] and the [[Virgoan]]s.


=== Science ===
=== Science ===
* The [[Gravity well]]s on Archetryx are subterranean shafts where zero gravity able is able to be manipulated.
* The [[Gravity well]]s on Archetryx are subterranean shafts where zero gravity is able to be manipulated.


=== TARDIS ===
=== TARDIS ===
Line 151: Line 127:
* Archetryx is protected by a [[temporal barrier]], inside which everything is one minute in the future.
* Archetryx is protected by a [[temporal barrier]], inside which everything is one minute in the future.
* The Monan Host's time craft has powerful engines, more so than even the Time Lords' [[TARDIS]]es.
* The Monan Host's time craft has powerful engines, more so than even the Time Lords' [[TARDIS]]es.
== Gallery ==
<gallery position="center" captionalign="center" hideaddbutton="true">
The Apocalypse Element cassette cover with cassettes.jpg|Cassette cover and cassettes
The Apocalypse Element cover.jpg|Original CD cover art
Apocalypse revised.jpg|Revised cover art
Lee Sullivan BF 6 5 Apocalypse Element.JPG|Art by [[Lee Sullivan]] from [[DWM 294]]
The Apocalypse Element DWM preview clean.jpg|Textless version of the DWM preview art
</gallery>


== Notes ==
== Notes ==
[[File:Lee Sullivan BF 6 5 Apocalypse Element.JPG|thumb|Art by [[Lee Sullivan]] from [[DWM 294]]]]
* This story is marked as being "[[Dalek Empire (audio series)|Dalek Empire]] Part Two".
* This story is marked as being "[[Dalek Empire (audio series)|Dalek Empire]] Part Two".
* An illustrated preview for this story appeared in ''[[Doctor Who Magazine]]'' [[DWM 294|issue 294]] with art by [[Lee Sullivan]].
* An illustrated preview for this story appeared in ''[[Doctor Who Magazine]]'' [[DWM 294|issue 294]] with art by [[Lee Sullivan]].
* [[Russell T Davies]] wrote in the ''[[2006 Doctor Who Annual]]'' that this story marks the first battle in the [[Last Great Time War]].
* This story was originally released on both CD and cassette.
* [[Michael Wade]] reprises his role as the Lord President of Gallifrey from [[AUDIO]]: ''[[The Sirens of Time (audio story)|The Sirens of Time]]''.
* [[Russell T Davies]] references the Etra Prime Incident in ''[[Doctor Who Annual 2006]]'' as one of the inciting incidents to the [[Last Great Time War]].
* This audio drama was recorded on [[26 February (production)|26]] and [[27 February (production)|27 February]] [[2000]] at [[The Moat Studios]].
* This audio drama was recorded on [[26 February (production)|26]] and [[27 February (production)|27 February]] [[2000 (production)|2000]] at [[the Moat Studios]].<ref name=":0">https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-the-apocalypse-element-626</ref>
* ''[[aHistory]]'' dates the parts of this story not set on Gallifrey to circa the same year as ''[[The Genocide Machine]]'' (4256 in the first two editions, 5256 in the third).
* ''[[aHistory]]'' dates the parts of this story not set on Gallifrey to circa the same year as ''[[The Genocide Machine (audio story)|The Genocide Machine]]'' (4256 in the first two editions, 5256 in the third).
* This story is set between [[Season 23 (Doctor Who 1963)|''The Trial of a Time Lord'']] and ''[[Time and the Rani (TV story)|Time and the Rani]]'', and after ''[[The Spectre of Lanyon Moor (audio story)|The Spectre of Lanyon Moor]]''.<ref name=":0" />


== Continuity ==
== Continuity ==
* It was established in [[PROSE]]: ''[[Happy Endings (novel)|Happy Endings]]'' that Romana was [[Lord President|Lady President]] of the [[High Council]] of the Time Lords.
* It was previously established that Romana was [[Lord President|Lady President]] of the [[High Council]] of the Time Lords. ([[PROSE]]: {{cs|Happy Endings (novel)|Happy Endings}})
* This story goes some way to explain why the Eye of Harmony in the TARDIS in [[TV]]: ''[[Doctor Who (TV story)|Doctor Who]]'' required a human eye in order to open.
* This story goes some way to explain why the Eye of Harmony in the TARDIS required a human eye in order to open. ([[TV]]: {{cs|Doctor Who (TV story)|Doctor Who}})
* Evelyn's legs are temporarily paralysed when she is shot by Dalek weaponry, as previously happened to the [[First Doctor]]'s companion [[Ian Chesterton]] during his first time encounter with them on [[Skaro]]. ([[TV]]: ''[[The Daleks (TV story)|The Daleks]]'')
* Evelyn's legs are temporarily paralysed when she is shot by Dalek weaponry, as previously happened to the [[First Doctor]]'s companion [[Ian Chesterton]] during his first encounter with them on [[Skaro]]. ([[TV]]: {{cs|The Daleks (TV story)|The Daleks}})
* The Doctor refers to Romana's time in [[E-Space]]. ([[TV]]: ''[[Warriors' Gate (TV story)|Warriors' Gate]]'')
* The Doctor refers to Romana's time in [[E-Space]]. ([[TV]]: {{cs|Warriors' Gate (TV story)|Warriors' Gate}})
* Due to these events, Romana later established the [[Temporal Powers]], an alliance with multiple time-active factions. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Insurgency (audio story)|Insurgency]]'')
* During their attack of [[Gallifrey]], the [[Dalek]]s redirect their attention towards the Doctor upon detecting his presence. ([[TV]]: {{cs|The Day of the Doctor (TV story)|The Day of the Doctor}})
* [[The Matrix]] records this event as happening during the [[Rassilon Era]] year 6796.8. ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Neverland (audio story)|Neverland]]'')
* Due to these events, Romana later established the [[Temporal Powers]], an alliance with multiple time-active factions. ([[AUDIO]]: {{cs|Insurgency (audio story)|Insurgency}})
* Romana would later meet a [[Burner Doctor|version of the Sixth Doctor]] from an [[alternate timeline|alternative timeline]] who referred to himself as "Lord Burner." ([[AUDIO]]: ''[[Disassembled (audio story)|Disassembled]]'')
* [[The Matrix]] records this event as happening during the [[Rassilon Era]] year 6796.8. ([[AUDIO]]: {{cs|Neverland (audio story)|Neverland}})
* Romana would later meet a [[Burner Doctor|version of the Sixth Doctor]] from an [[alternate timeline|alternative timeline]] who referred to himself as "Lord Burner." ([[AUDIO]]: {{cs|Disassembled (audio story)|Disassembled}})


== External links ==
== External links ==
* {{bigfinish|releases/v/the-apocalypse-element-626|The Apocalypse Element}}
{{bigfinish|releases/v/the-apocalypse-element-626}}
* {{dwrefguide|who_bf11.htm|The Apocalypse Element}}
{{dwrefguide|who_bf11.htm|The Apocalypse Element}}
* {{tetrap|6/apocalypse.html|The Apocalypse Element}}
* {{tetrap|6/apocalypse.html|The Apocalypse Element}}
{{BFA monthly}}
 
== Footnotes ==
<references />{{BFA monthly}}
{{BFDE}}
{{BFDE}}
{{Dalek audio stories}}
{{TitleSort}}
[[ru:Элемент апокалипсиса (аудио история)]]


{{TitleSort}}
[[Category:Sixth Doctor audio stories]]
[[Category:Doctor Who monthly audio stories]]
[[Category:2000 audio stories]]
[[Category:Dalek audio stories]]
[[Category:Dalek audio stories]]
[[Category:Romana audio stories]]
[[Category:Audio stories set on Gallifrey]]
[[Category:Stories set on Gallifrey]]
[[Category:Time Lord audio stories]]
[[Category:Time Lord audio stories]]
[[Category:Dalek Empire arc]]
[[Category:Romana II audio stories]]
[[Category:Audio stories that use Delia Derbyshire's 2nd theme]]
[[Category:Stories set in the Rassilon Era]]
[[Category:Dalek Empire audio series]]
[[Category:Sixth Doctor Main Range audio stories]]
[[Category:2000 Main Range audio stories]]

Latest revision as of 20:34, 3 November 2024

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The Apocalypse Element was the eleventh story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Stephen Cole and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, Maggie Stables as Evelyn Smythe, Lalla Ward as Romana II and Anthony Keetch as Vansell.

It was the first audio story to feature Ward reprising her role of Romana. It was also the first audio story to feature the Sixth Doctor and the Daleks. The last story to feature the Sixth Doctor and the Daleks was 1993's Doctor Who Magazine comic story Emperor of the Daleks!.

The spine of this story's CD case was marked "Dalek Empire Part Two", marking it as taking place as part of Big Finish's series of linked audio stories that formed a large and long setting for the Dalek Empire during a particular phase of their galactic expansion.

Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

When the planet Archetryx is threatened by a Dalek assault squad, the Sixth Doctor and Evelyn become embroiled in an ever-deepening mystery. What has become of President Romana, missing for twenty years? What lurks in the vast gravity wells of Archetryx? What is the secret of the ancient element the Daleks are synthesising — and how does Gallifrey feature in their plans?

The Doctor finds that if his oldest enemies cannot conquer the universe they will watch it go up in flames...

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Time Lords aren’t the only race to develop time travel. In fact, twenty such races—and by default, twenty of the most powerful civilisations in the universe—are gathering on the planet Archetryx for a conference regarding time travel and its limitations. Archetryx’s monitors get a strange reading before the conference, but there is an explanation: the Monans, whose time vessels are even more highly powered than the Time Lords’ TARDISes, have arrived, and their ship’s powerful engines created a disturbance in Archetryx’s temporal defence shields. It’s done more than that, however; it has dragged in a straggler, the TARDIS occupied by the Sixth Doctor and his companion, Evelyn Smythe.

They shouldn’t be there, but they are saved from trouble by Coordinator Vansell of the Gallifreyan Celestial Intervention Agency, who declares them part of the Lord President’s entourage. Nevertheless, there’s no time to rest, because strange things are still happening.

Twenty years ago, the nearby planetoid of Etra Prime—the oldest planetoid in the known universe, coincidentally—vanished from time and space. It took with it five hundred scientists, mostly from Gallifrey, including the newly-elected Lord President Romanadvoratrelundar, Romana for short. A year later, three hundred of them reappeared on Archetryx, dead and distorted by time. To avert an accusation and a war, Archetryx agreed to host this conference, which has now come to fruition. Romana, however, is still to be found. Now, the Archetryxans detect that Etra Prime has returned—and it is on a collision course with Archetryx! And worse…it becomes clear that the Daleks are behind it.

The Doctor begins to investigate, at the behest of the current Lord President, who was raised to the post when Romana failed to return; he is also loyal to Romana, and tries to uphold her decisions. The Doctor quickly finds that the Daleks have agents among the Archetryxans, operating under mind control. They kill themselves, but not before the sensors and shields are sabotaged, letting the Daleks into the complex. Another spy also destroys an exterior wall, allowing them in, and unintentionally trapping Evelyn. Vansell, accompanied by the Archetryxan Monitor Vorna, rescue her, but can’t stop the Daleks. However, rather than attack directly, the Daleks steal the Monan time ship. It is not dimensionally transcendent like a TARDIS, and so only a few Daleks fit inside; the rest move deeper into the building and self-destruct, blocking all the delegates from escaping.

The Doctor goes to the gravity wells in the facility to effect repairs and raise the shields. He is attacked by Daleks—but not their machines. The mutants have left their casings in the zero-G environment of the wells, and are attacking personally.

Inside Etra Prime, Romana has been a slave for twenty years. The years have weighed on her, but she retains her identity and sanity by force of will. She and another slave, a Monan engineer named Vrint, are pulled out to cannibalise the Monan ship; they are instructed to use its engines to build a temporal centrifuge. Etra Prime contains a ridiculously rare element, which, when refined, has fantastic power over space and time; the Daleks call it the Apocalypse Element. As they work they overhear the Daleks’ plans. Later, they finish the centrifuge, but sabotage it; they then use a nearby transmat to escape to Archetryx. The transmat is destroyed in Dalek crossfire. Romana takes with her a strange crystal; it a communicator of sorts, used by the Daleks to telepathically communicate with their spies, so as to avoid detection of conventional signals. It is a rare item, and the Daleks want it back, as it has another purpose—and is vital to their plan.

The Doctor escapes the Dalek mutants, and rendezvoused with Evelyn; she helps him escape, but it’s only temporary, as he must go back in. Meanwhile, the Daleks are stealing technological secrets from the various time machines (though, presumably, the TARDISes have sufficient security to resist entry). The Black Dalek leading the force also tells the delegates that attacks have been launched on their homeworlds. Evelyn volunteers to help clear the way to the ships. Vorna goes with her, and Romana joins the Doctor. The delegates also attack the Daleks. The Doctor gives back the crystal, and the Daleks evacuate, clearing the way; the delegates escape. The Doctor, Evelyn, Vorna, and an Archetryxan security agent named Trinkett escape in the TARDIS immediately before Etra Prime crashes into Archetryx, destroying both worlds and killing everyone remaining behind.

The President and Vansell arrive on Gallifrey before the Doctor. Immediately they learn of a Monan ship seeking refuge there; the President and security Captain Reldath are suspicious, but Vansell, hungry for the Monan’s time travel secrets, persuades them to allow them in. It is a ruse; the Daleks, possessing their own version of a chameleon circuit, have created an illusion of the Monan ship to hide their own ships. Now inside the transduction barriers, they invade Gallifrey.

Romana, whose presidential codes have never been revoked (unlike the Doctor’s), links to the TARDIS telepathic circuits to gain entrance to the Gallifreyan citadel. The Daleks have taken the TARDIS cradle area under the citadel, and have harvested the eyes of a dead soldier to defeat the retina scans on all the security doors. Being forced to get by the Daleks, the Doctor prepares to try his luck; but Romana offers them her presidential codes if they will spare them. It is a ruse, but they fall for it; they need the codes to take down the barriers and allow invasion en masse. She links with them telepathically to transmit the codes; but instead, she unloads twenty years of pain and hatred into their minds, stunning them and allowing her and her companions to escape. They force her out of the link, but she senses enough of their plan to get an inkling of their plans for the Element…

Reaching security control, the Doctor has Vansell erase every Gallifreyan retinal print from the Matrix, and install Evelyn’s human retinal print instead. As she is the only human around, she is now the only key to any door—and the Daleks do not have her, nor can they risk killing her. The Doctor sends her with Vansell to rally the guards. He then seals the bulkheads on the TARDIS cradles, trapping the Daleks there. Evelyn and Vansell meet up with Trinkett and Reldath, but are cut off as the Daleks burn through the wall of the cradles. The Black Dalek learns that the Element is ready, and sends a Dalek with it to the centre of the Seriphia galaxy—four times the size of the Milky Way, and heavily populated—to prepare to ignite it. The Black Dalek demands the help of the Time Lords, as the Element, once ignited, can only be controlled via time distortion—essentially, a bubble time continuum around its field of effect. Otherwise, it will quickly consume the entire universe in a massive chain reaction, ending everything. The President thinks it is bluffing—and so the Black Dalek ignites the Element in Seriphia. Now the Time Lords are forced to act to contain it.

The Doctor and his group make their way to the Eye of Harmony in the Panopticon. He sends Evelyn and Vansell to collect power boosters, which he will need to create enough power from the Eye to contain the Element.

The Daleks discover the Element is proceeding far faster than they predicted. They realise that they must work with the Time Lords to be able to contain it, or they will be destroyed too. They strike an uneasy bargain with the Lord President, allowing them to land at the Citadel. Evelyn and Vansell get the boosters, but Evelyn is wounded by a Dalek and temporarily paralyzed; she sends Vansell ahead, trusting that the Daleks won’t kill her, as they need her eyes. However, this undoes the president’s plan; with her in custody, the Daleks don’t need his cooperation to get inside, and they kill him. With Evelyn’s forced cooperation, the Daleks already in the citadel shut down the transduction barriers, allowing the fleet to land, and marking the fall of Gallifrey.

The Doctor and Romana use the boosters with the Eye, but it is not enough. The Black Dalek, however, via one of the communication crystals, adds the combined mental might of all the Daleks on Gallifrey to the Eye. The combined power is enough, and the Element is contained; moreover, the containment field has been modified to accelerate time within. This not only burns out the Element, but also leads to the creation of a new galaxy from the rubble—billions of stars and planets, all unoccupied…and all ripe for occupation by the Daleks. The sacrifice of the Daleks on Gallifrey, it seems, was not as altruistic as it appeared. A new Dalek Empire will soon be born.

With the president dead, Romana—who was never removed from office—is now Lady President. Evelyn’s retinal print is removed and replaced with Gallifreyan prints; but the Doctor suggests that traces of it may remain. Romana promises help to any survivors of Archetryx and the Monan homeworld, but there is nothing to be done for the dead of Seriphia. She also promises intervention against the Daleks in that galaxy, and promises to strengthen Gallifrey for the future.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

Daleks[[edit] | [edit source]]

Elements[[edit] | [edit source]]

Galaxies[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • The Daleks detonated a particle of the Apocalypse Element in the Seriphia Galaxy, destroying everything in it.
  • The Seriphean Galaxy is four times the size of the Milky Way galaxy and home to over six hundred billion stars.

Gallifreyan technology[[edit] | [edit source]]

Other realities[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • The Doctor mentions Romana having been in E-Space.

Planets[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • Archetryx is host to a "Time Treaty" of "twenty of the greatest powers in space-time".
  • Etra Prime is the oldest planetoid in the known universe.

Psychology[[edit] | [edit source]]

Species[[edit] | [edit source]]

Science[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • The Gravity wells on Archetryx are subterranean shafts where zero gravity is able to be manipulated.

TARDIS[[edit] | [edit source]]

Time technology[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • Archetryx is protected by a temporal barrier, inside which everything is one minute in the future.
  • The Monan Host's time craft has powerful engines, more so than even the Time Lords' TARDISes.

Gallery[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • Cassette cover and cassettes

    Cassette cover and cassettes

  • Original CD cover art

    Original CD cover art

  • Revised cover art

    Revised cover art

  • Art by Lee Sullivan from DWM 294

    Art by Lee Sullivan from DWM 294

  • Textless version of the DWM preview art

    Textless version of the DWM preview art

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • It was previously established that Romana was Lady President of the High Council of the Time Lords. (PROSE: Happy Endings [+]Loading...["Happy Endings (novel)","Happy Endings"])
  • This story goes some way to explain why the Eye of Harmony in the TARDIS required a human eye in order to open. (TV: Doctor Who [+]Loading...["Doctor Who (TV story)","Doctor Who"])
  • Evelyn's legs are temporarily paralysed when she is shot by Dalek weaponry, as previously happened to the First Doctor's companion Ian Chesterton during his first encounter with them on Skaro. (TV: The Daleks [+]Loading...["The Daleks (TV story)","The Daleks"])
  • The Doctor refers to Romana's time in E-Space. (TV: Warriors' Gate [+]Loading...["Warriors' Gate (TV story)","Warriors' Gate"])
  • During their attack of Gallifrey, the Daleks redirect their attention towards the Doctor upon detecting his presence. (TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)","The Day of the Doctor"])
  • Due to these events, Romana later established the Temporal Powers, an alliance with multiple time-active factions. (AUDIO: Insurgency [+]Loading...["Insurgency (audio story)","Insurgency"])
  • The Matrix records this event as happening during the Rassilon Era year 6796.8. (AUDIO: Neverland [+]Loading...["Neverland (audio story)","Neverland"])
  • Romana would later meet a version of the Sixth Doctor from an alternative timeline who referred to himself as "Lord Burner." (AUDIO: Disassembled [+]Loading...["Disassembled (audio story)","Disassembled"])

External links[[edit] | [edit source]]

Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 https://www.bigfinish.com/releases/v/doctor-who-the-apocalypse-element-626
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