Nevermore (audio story)

Nevermore
Doctor:	Eighth Doctor
Companion(s):	Tamsin
Featuring:	Edgar Allan Poe
Main enemy:	Ravens
Main setting:	Nevermore
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Alan Barnes
Director:	Nicholas Briggs
Producer:	David Richardson, Barnaby Edwards
Music:	Jamie Robertson
Sound:	Thea Cochrane
Cover by:	Alex Mallinson
Release details
Number of parts:	2
Release number:	4.3
Release date:	12 August 2010
Format:	1 CD Download
Production code:	BFPDWCDMG027
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-84435-477-1
Eighth Doctor Adventures
← Previous	Situation Vacant
Next →	The Book of Kells

Nevermore was the third story in the fourth series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Alan Barnes and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Niky Wardley as Tamsin Drew.

Publisher's summary

A bizarre manifestation in the Control Room forces the TARDIS onto the Plutonian shores of the irradiated world Nevermore, whose sole inhabitant is the war criminal Morella Wendigo — a prisoner of this devastated planet. But the Doctor and his new companion aren't Morella's only visitors. Senior Prosecutor Uglosi fears the arrival of an assassin, after the blood of his prize prisoner. An assassin with claws...

There's no escape from Nevermore, whose raven-like robot jailers serve to demonstrate Uglosi's macabre obsession with the works of the 19th century horror writer Edgar Allan Poe. An obsession that might yet lead to the premature burial of everyone on the planet's surface — wreathed in the mist they call the Red Death!

Plot

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor - Paul McGann
• Tamsin Drew - Niky Wardley
• Morella Wendigo - Fenella Woolgar
• Senior Prosecutor Uglosi - Michael J. Shannon
• Dr. Berenice Ward - Emilia Fox
• Pilot / Edgar Allan Poe - Eric Loren
• Ravens - John Banks

Worldbuilding

Astronomical objects

• Nevermore was previously called Corinth Minor located in Cassiopeia, which contained volcanoes that showered semi-precious gemstones instead of lava.

The Doctor

• The Doctor quotes extensively from The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe.
• The Doctor met Poe in the autumn of 1849 in Baltimore.
• When Uglosi proclaims Poe the greatest writer ever, the Doctor observes that he's more partial to Enid Blyton.

Individuals

• The Doctor mentions Pol Pot.
• Tamsin did a circus arts module in drama school, which included escapology and contortionism.
• Uglosi tells the Doctor that a "strange little man" was brought before his court on a vagrancy charge twenty years earlier.

Locations

• Tamsin sarcastically asks if the Doctor has a furlong of Frinton.

Popular culture

• After the black cat appears in the TARDIS console room, Tamsin refers to Bagpuss and Animals Do the Funniest Things.

TARDIS

• The TARDIS has a mile of Margate beach with seagulls, a laundry, a greenhouse and a sauna.
• The Doctor has a colony of Fledershrews in the TARDIS.

Notes

• The story has numerous influences from Poe's canon of work. 'Nevermore' is also the word the Raven caws in The Raven, whilst the robotic ravens derive from the same story; a black cat is the focus of The Black Cat; the mist of the Red Death is a reference to the titular plague of The Masque of the Red Death.
• The story was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra on 9 January 2013.
• The Doctor mentions being called to attend Poe, three days before his death in 1849. He died of an unknown illness on October 7th of that year, after being found delirious on a Baltimore street on October 3rd.
• This story was recorded on 28 October 2009 at the Moat Studios.
• This story was originally released on CD and download on 12 August 2010.

Continuity

• Between this and the previous audio story, Situation Vacant, Tamsin forgets how to open the TARDIS doors from the console.
• The Doctor tells Tamsin that cats are very popular on Gallifrey and that it was standard for Lord Presidents to have cats until the incident with the giant mice. (TV: The Mark of the Rani)
• The Doctor mentions that he was the protégé of the American escapologist Harry "Handcuff Harry" Houdini. (TV: Planet of the Spiders) His fourth incarnation had previously told the Iceni cook Bragnar that Houdini kept numerous lock picks on his person. (AUDIO: The Wrath of the Iceni)
• After regaining consciousness, the Doctor refers to the temporal storm in which his future self was caught and his subsequent arrival at the Villa Diodati near Lake Geneva in Switzerland in June 1816, where he met his former companion Mary Shelley for the first time. (AUDIO: Mary's Story)
• According to a document Poe wrote, he had met the First Doctor two days prior to his encounter with the Eighth during a supernatural encounter which infected his mind, leading to his mental state in the flashback in this story. (PROSE: The True and Indisputable Facts in the Matter of the Ram's Skull)
• The Doctor has allowed the colony of Fledershrews to live in the TARDIS since his seventh incarnation. (AUDIO: Black and White)
• The Doctor would later learn the identity of the "strange little man" who was responsible for the destruction of Corinth Minor on his visit to Ireland in 1006. (AUDIO: The Book of Kells)

External links

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