The Rings of Ikiria (audio story): Difference between revisions

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{{Infobox Story SMW
{{Infobox Story
|image = The Rings of Ikiria.jpg
|image = The Rings of Ikiria.jpg
|name = The Rings of Ikiria
|range          = The Companion Chronicles
|series = [[The Companion Chronicles]]
|series in range = Series 6 (CC)
|series number in range = 6
|number in series = 12
|series = ''[[The Companion Chronicles]]''
|number = 6.12
|number = 6.12
|doctor = Third Doctor
|doctor =  
|companions = [[Mike Yates|Yates]], [[Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart|the Brig]], [[John Benton|Benton]]
|companions =  
|enemy =
|enemy =[[Ikiria]]  
|setting = [[London]], the [[1970s]]; [[Sark]], the [[Channel Islands]], the [[1970s]]
|setting = [[London]], the [[1970s]]; [[Sark]], the [[Channel Islands]], the [[1970s]]
|writer = [[Richard Dinnick]]
|writer = Richard Dinnick
|director = [[Ken Bentley]]
|director = [[Ken Bentley]]
|release date = [[June (releases)|June]] [[2012 (releases)|2012]]
|music = [[Richard Fox]] & [[Lauren Yason]]
|format = 1 disc
|sound = [[Richard Fox]] & [[Lauren Yason]]
|cover = [[Alex Mallinson]]
|release date = June 2012
|format = 1 CD<br/>Download
|production code = BFPDWCC56
|production code = BFPDWCC56
|isbn = ISBN 978-1-84435-623-2  
|isbn = ISBN 978-1-84435-623-2 (physical)<br/>ISBN 978-1-78575-841-6 (digital)
|prev = The Jigsaw War (audio story)
|prev = The Jigsaw War (audio story)
|next = The Time Museum (audio story)
|next = The Time Museum (audio story)
}}
|producer = [[David Richardson]]|team = [[Mike Yates]]|featuring = Third Doctor|featuring2 = Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart|featuring3 = John Benton|epcount=2
 
}}{{audio stub}}
'''''The Rings of Ikiria''''' was the fifty-sixth release in [[the Companion Chronicles]] audio range. It was the twelfth story of season 6. It was written by [[Richard Dinnick]] and featured [[Mike Yates]].  
'''''The Rings of Ikiria''''' was the twelfth and final story of the [[Series 6 (CC)|sixth series]] in ''[[The Companion Chronicles]]'' audio range. It was produced by [[Big Finish Productions]]. It was written by [[Richard Dinnick]] and featured [[Mike Yates]].


== Publisher's summary ==
== Publisher's summary ==
[[Unified Intelligence Taskforce|UNIT]] is accustomed to dealing with visitors from space, but nothing has prepared them for [[Ikiria]], an alien artist bearing gifts. Could Ikiria’s designs be something more than aesthetic?
[[UNIT]] is accustomed to dealing with visitors from space, but nothing has prepared them for [[Ikiria]], an alien artist bearing gifts. Could Ikiria's designs be something more than aesthetic?


As the [[Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart|Brigadier]] turns against him, [[Mike Yates]] goes on the run. Can he save the world? Or will he just learn an important lesson in betrayal?
As the [[Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart|Brigadier]] turns against him, [[Mike Yates]] goes on the run. Can he save the world? Or will he just learn an important lesson in betrayal?


== Plot ==
== Plot ==
''to be added''
=== Episode One ===
Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton are sent on a mission to Sark in the Channel Islands, to investigate a series of large pictograms that have appeared in farm crops over the past several nights.
 
Yates' driver is Jean Mercer, whom he remembers being his driver during the Silurian incident at Wenley Moor.
 
The Doctor believes the pictograms are of alien origin, and he and the Brigadier join Yates, Benton and the UNIT soldiers at the farm. While on watch that night, Yates and Benton encounter a blinding light over the farm, that leaves a sixth crop circle in its wake.
 
This event heralds the arrival of Ikiria, an ethereal alien female humanoid, up to eight-feet in height, who offers the inhabitants of earth the gift of her exceptional artisan talents.
 
The Brigadier returns to the mainland to alert his superiors, leaving Yates in charge. Yates becomes concerned at the rings Ikiria has given out as gifts to Benton and others. The jewelry appears to have a mildly possessive effect on those who have been given them.
 
Yates confronts Ikiria in her space craft, who reacts by lashing out with mental energy. Yates blacks out and comes to at the farmhouse. He contacts the Brigadier who appears oddly irritated and dismissive of Yates' alarming report.
 
Meanwhile the Doctor has gone missing, and the soldier sent to look for him is discovered dead. His face is grotesquely distorted, and not far away a new pictogram has appeared in the grass - a highly detailed depiction of the dead soldier's face.
 
The Brigadier returns to the island and demands that all resources be redeployed to find the Doctor. Yates protests, saying guarding Ikiria should take priority. To Yate's surprise, the Brigadier responds by dismissing Yates from UNIT entirely.
 
As a despondent Yates is taken away by helicopter, he realises too late that everyone, including the Brigadier, was wearing gloves - the better to hide the rings of Ikiria. Then, as the helicopter passes over Sark, Yates notices another face has been carved into the fields - the Doctor's!
 
=== Episode Two ===
Yates overpowers the UNIT guard and the pilot, forcing the pilot to land the helicopter elsewhere on Sark.
 
He secretly makes his way back to the farmhouse, where he finds Jean Mercer also under Ikiria's control, and is pursued by UNIT troops and fired upon by the Brigadier.
 
When the Brigadier's shots go wide, he suspects a ruse, and playing along, throws himself off a steep cliff.
 
Yates is rescued and revived by the Doctor, who has in truth feigned death after challenging Ikiria to a psychic dual - the faces of her vanquished victims carved into wheat being a macabre ritual flourish of Ikiria's.
 
The Doctor also informs Yates that the Brigadier is indeed feigning possession by Ikiria, and has secretly transported equipment to Sark to enable the Doctor to study the ring given to the Brigadier by Ikiria.
 
In a makeshift lab housed in a coastal cave, the Doctor has developed a crystal that will reverse the polarity of the psionic crystal in Ikiria's craft that projects Ikiria's will through her rings.
 
The Doctor distracts Ikiria by revealing himself to her and challenging her to another psychic battle, allowing Yates access to her space craft.
 
Yates manages to swap out the craft's psionic crystal for the Doctor's newly grown one, but not before Jean Mercer inexplicably appears and tries to convince Mike to stop.
 
The psychic energy emanating through the rings is reversed and reabsorbed by Ikiria, who succumbs to the psychic back-blast and is destroyed.
 
Jean Mercer is revealed to have never really existed, having been a psychic construct of Ikiria's all along.


== Cast ==
== Cast ==
* [[Mike Yates|Captain Mike Yates]] - [[Richard Franklin]]
* [[Mike Yates]] - [[Richard Franklin]]
* [[Ikiria]] / Corporal Jean Mercer / Mrs Oliver  - [[Felicity Duncan]]
* [[Ikiria]] - [[Felicity Duncan]]


== References ==
== Worldbuilding ==
* Mike states that he felt that he belonged when he was a member of [[Unified Intelligence Taskforce|UNIT]]. It was a great sign of comfort and security to him. Furthermore, he claims that he trusted [[Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart|Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart]] more than any man that he had ever met.
* During his early days with [[UNIT]], Mike rented a one bedroom flat in [[Clapham]].
* During his early days with UNIT, Mike rented a one bedroom flat in [[Clapham]]. He had few personal belongings, including several records and a record player.
* In his childhood, Mike attended prep school before being sent to public school and joining the [[British Army]].
* In his childhood, Mike attended prep school before being sent to public school and joining the [[British Army]].
* The Doctor tells the Brigadier that he deciphered the [[Rosetta Stone]]. Mike claims that the former looked at the latter "as if he were a particularly stupid child."
* The Doctor tells the Brigadier that he deciphered the [[Rosetta Stone]].
* Over the course of several nights, five large circles had appeared on a farm belonging to the Oliver family on [[Sark]], one of the [[Channel Islands]]. The [[Third Doctor|Doctor]], who refers to them as pictograms, believes them to be letters of an alien language, specifically that of a transdimensional race known as the Etherians. He determines that, based on the pre-existing pattern, another pictogram will appear that very night. This prediction proved accurate. The six pictograms spell out the Etherian word "Ikiria," which means "craft." Immediately after he translates the word, there is a blinding flash of light caused by the descent of a ship. A woman of approximately seven or eight feet tall emerges from the ship. Her limbs had several joints and she wore make up reminiscent of that worn by a [[Japan]]ese Geisha. Her name is Ikiria. She manipulates form to create objects of beauty, leading the Brigadier to describe her as an artist. She decided to make contact on Sark, a remote island, rather than in [[London]] in order to avoid causing panic among the general public.
* Over the course of several nights, five large circles had appeared on a farm belonging to the Oliver family on [[Sark]], one of the [[Channel Islands]].
* After Ikiria's arrival, the Brigadier returns to London to meet with his superiors. After Mike is rendered unconscious aboard Ikiria's vessel after refusing to accept one of her rings as a gift, he voices his concerns to the Brigadier, who dismisses them as nothing more than a paranoid fantasy. Shortly thereafter, the Doctor disappears. His [[Geiger counter]] is found near a cliff edge and Mike is concerned that he may have fallen off. He sends Private Campbell to find him, whose disfigured corpse is discovered near a field of wheat in which the image of his face has been created. The Brigadier is furious at this state of affairs following his return to Sark. He suggests that UNIT is not for Mike and has him reassigned to his previous regiment. As he departs Sark in a [[helicopter]], he sees that the face of the Doctor has likewise been sculpted in wheat.
* Mike's driver is [[Jean Mercer]].
* Mike determines that the rings which Ikiria has distributed among the UNIT forces are controlling them and that she plans to gain control of the [[Home Office]] officials who are on their way to Sark and, through them, the British government. He believes that this is the first phase of her plot for world domination.
* Mrs [[Oliver (The Rings of Ikiria)|Oliver]] owns the farm.
* After forcing the pilot to fly him to the northern part of Sark, Mike discovers that Ikiria has gotten to Corporal Mercer. After both of the Brigadier's shots have missed him, Mike determines that he is not under Ikiria's control but was merely pretending to be. He therefore fakes his own death, as the Doctor had done. After Ikiria had given the Brigadier the ring, he had the Doctor examine it, who was able to uncover its true purpose. He subsequently fought a psychic battle with Ikiria, which he almost lost. A by-product of this was the appearance of his face in the wheat.
* On his trip back to London, the Brigadier had warned the Home Office not to send anyone to Sark in any circumstances. However, he returned to Sark in order to trick both Ikiria and the brainwashed UNIT troops into thinking that he was under her control. He wore gloves to hide the fact that he was not wearing a ring.
* Using Etherian matter conversion technology, Ikiria turns the four UNIT soldiers guarding her ship into mechanised, metallic beings.
* Ikiria assumes Corporal Mercer's form in an attempt to prevent Mike from using the Doctor's [[sonic screwdriver]] on the etheric crystal so as to reverse the polarity of the psionic converter. However, her efforts prove unsuccessful. This causes Ikiria's ship and everything aboard it, herself included, to fold in on itself and disappear. In reality, Mercer never actually existed. She was a psychic projection created by Ikiria, based on various people whom Mike had known and with whom he had served during his life.


== Notes ==
== Notes ==
* This audio drama was recorded on [[21 March (production)|21 March]] 2012.
* This audio drama was recorded on [[21 March (production)|21 March]] [[2012 (production)|2012]] at [[the Moat Studios]].
* This story was told from [[Mike Yates]]' perspective.
* This story is set between ''[[Inferno (TV story)|Inferno]]'' and ''[[Terror of the Autons (TV story)|Terror of the Autons]]''.


== Continuity ==
== Continuity ==
* Corporal Jean Mercer asks Mike if there are "[[Silurian|more freaky lizards hell bent on wiping out mankind]]." He believes that she had been his driver during the Silurian clean-up but, in reality, she was a psychic projection created by Ikiria using his memories as a reference. ([[TV]]: ''[[Doctor Who and the Silurians (TV story)|Doctor Who and the Silurians]]'')
* Corporal Jean Mercer asks Mike if there are "[[Silurian|more freaky lizards hell bent on wiping out mankind]]." He believes that she had been his driver during the Silurian clean-up but, in reality, she was a psychic projection created by Ikiria using his memories as a reference. ([[TV]]: ''[[Doctor Who and the Silurians (TV story)|Doctor Who and the Silurians]]'')
== External links ==
== External links ==
* {{Bigfinish|releases/v/the-rings-of-ikiria-512|The Rings of Ikiria}}
{{bigfinish|releases/v/the-rings-of-ikiria-512|The Rings of Ikiria}}
{{CC}}
{{CC}}
{{TitleSort}}
{{TitleSort}}
{{audio stub}}
 
[[Category:Series 6 (CC) audio stories]]
[[Category:2012 audio stories]]
[[Category:2012 audio stories]]
[[Category:Third Doctor audio stories]]
[[Category:Third Doctor audio stories]]
[[Category:Companion Chronicles]]
[[Category:UNIT audio stories]]
[[Category:UNIT audio stories]]
[[Category:Stories set in England]]
[[Category:Stories set in the 1970s]]
[[Category:Stories set in the 1970s]]
[[Category:Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart audio stories]]
[[Category:Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart audio stories]]
[[Category:Pseudo-historical stories]]
[[Category:Stories set in London]]
[[Category:Stories set on the Channel Islands]]

Latest revision as of 22:24, 15 February 2024

RealWorld.png

audio stub

The Rings of Ikiria was the twelfth and final story of the sixth series in The Companion Chronicles audio range. It was produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Richard Dinnick and featured Mike Yates.

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

UNIT is accustomed to dealing with visitors from space, but nothing has prepared them for Ikiria, an alien artist bearing gifts. Could Ikiria's designs be something more than aesthetic?

As the Brigadier turns against him, Mike Yates goes on the run. Can he save the world? Or will he just learn an important lesson in betrayal?

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

Episode One[[edit] | [edit source]]

Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton are sent on a mission to Sark in the Channel Islands, to investigate a series of large pictograms that have appeared in farm crops over the past several nights.

Yates' driver is Jean Mercer, whom he remembers being his driver during the Silurian incident at Wenley Moor.

The Doctor believes the pictograms are of alien origin, and he and the Brigadier join Yates, Benton and the UNIT soldiers at the farm. While on watch that night, Yates and Benton encounter a blinding light over the farm, that leaves a sixth crop circle in its wake.

This event heralds the arrival of Ikiria, an ethereal alien female humanoid, up to eight-feet in height, who offers the inhabitants of earth the gift of her exceptional artisan talents.

The Brigadier returns to the mainland to alert his superiors, leaving Yates in charge. Yates becomes concerned at the rings Ikiria has given out as gifts to Benton and others. The jewelry appears to have a mildly possessive effect on those who have been given them.

Yates confronts Ikiria in her space craft, who reacts by lashing out with mental energy. Yates blacks out and comes to at the farmhouse. He contacts the Brigadier who appears oddly irritated and dismissive of Yates' alarming report.

Meanwhile the Doctor has gone missing, and the soldier sent to look for him is discovered dead. His face is grotesquely distorted, and not far away a new pictogram has appeared in the grass - a highly detailed depiction of the dead soldier's face.

The Brigadier returns to the island and demands that all resources be redeployed to find the Doctor. Yates protests, saying guarding Ikiria should take priority. To Yate's surprise, the Brigadier responds by dismissing Yates from UNIT entirely.

As a despondent Yates is taken away by helicopter, he realises too late that everyone, including the Brigadier, was wearing gloves - the better to hide the rings of Ikiria. Then, as the helicopter passes over Sark, Yates notices another face has been carved into the fields - the Doctor's!

Episode Two[[edit] | [edit source]]

Yates overpowers the UNIT guard and the pilot, forcing the pilot to land the helicopter elsewhere on Sark.

He secretly makes his way back to the farmhouse, where he finds Jean Mercer also under Ikiria's control, and is pursued by UNIT troops and fired upon by the Brigadier.

When the Brigadier's shots go wide, he suspects a ruse, and playing along, throws himself off a steep cliff.

Yates is rescued and revived by the Doctor, who has in truth feigned death after challenging Ikiria to a psychic dual - the faces of her vanquished victims carved into wheat being a macabre ritual flourish of Ikiria's.

The Doctor also informs Yates that the Brigadier is indeed feigning possession by Ikiria, and has secretly transported equipment to Sark to enable the Doctor to study the ring given to the Brigadier by Ikiria.

In a makeshift lab housed in a coastal cave, the Doctor has developed a crystal that will reverse the polarity of the psionic crystal in Ikiria's craft that projects Ikiria's will through her rings.

The Doctor distracts Ikiria by revealing himself to her and challenging her to another psychic battle, allowing Yates access to her space craft.

Yates manages to swap out the craft's psionic crystal for the Doctor's newly grown one, but not before Jean Mercer inexplicably appears and tries to convince Mike to stop.

The psychic energy emanating through the rings is reversed and reabsorbed by Ikiria, who succumbs to the psychic back-blast and is destroyed.

Jean Mercer is revealed to have never really existed, having been a psychic construct of Ikiria's all along.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • During his early days with UNIT, Mike rented a one bedroom flat in Clapham.
  • In his childhood, Mike attended prep school before being sent to public school and joining the British Army.
  • The Doctor tells the Brigadier that he deciphered the Rosetta Stone.
  • Over the course of several nights, five large circles had appeared on a farm belonging to the Oliver family on Sark, one of the Channel Islands.
  • Mike's driver is Jean Mercer.
  • Mrs Oliver owns the farm.

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

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