Trail of the White Worm (audio story)

Trail of the White Worm
Doctor:	Fourth Doctor
Companion(s):	Leela
Main enemy:	The Master
Main setting:	Dark Peak, Derbyshire, 1979
Key crew
Publisher:	[[publisher::Big Finish Productions]]
Writer:	Alan Barnes
Director:	Nicholas Briggs
Release details
Release number:	1.05
Release date:	May 2012
Format:	1 CD - 1 part
Production code:	4S/E
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-84435-616-4
The Fourth Doctor Adventures
← Previous	Energy of the Daleks
Next →	The Oseidon Adventure

Trail of the White Worm was the fifth story in the first series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures.

Synopsis

The legend dates back to Roman times, at least: a great White Worm, as wide as a man, slithers out of the rocks of the Dark Peak Gap to take animals, sometimes even children, for its food.

When the Doctor and Leela arrive in the wilds of Derbyshire, only to get caught up in the hunt for a missing girl, they soon discover that the legend of the Worm is very much alive – even now, in 1979.

Worse still, it seems that the Doctor isn't the only renegade Time Lord on the trail of this deadly and mysterious Worm…

Plot

Part 1

The Doctor and Leela arrive to their destination to meet a curious sight. Tracks lead into the forest, that appears to be made by some kind of long slithering-beast. Leela steps in mucus, which she realises is from the large beast, which the Doctor accidentally steps in as well. Soon enough, men arrive with vicious dogs, which are hunting the scent of the beast now on the Doctor and Leela. They escape into the woods, after the tracks of the beast. The men try to hunt them down in order to interrogate them.

Part 2

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor - Tom Baker
• Leela - Louise Jameson
• The Master - Geoffrey Beevers
• Colonel Spindleton - Michael Cochrane
• Demesne Furze - Rachael Stirling
• Carswell / Mercenary - John Banks
• Julie - Becci Gemmell
• John - Mark Field

References

• Leela describes the serpent as being "as wide as a greedy child and as long as four men stretched out on a rack."
• The Doctor was once imprisoned in the Tower of London on the Duke of Exeter's daughter.
• After finding the TARDIS, Carswell claims that he has not seen a police box since going to Derbyshire in 1952.
• According to the Doctor, Time Lords are not descended from primates.
• Leela uses the Doctor's scarf to swing over an electric fence.
• Colonel Hugh Spindleton refers to Leela as "my long limbed lovely" and "my athletic Aphrodite." His estate Lampton Manor, on which Leela is trespassing, is surrounded by a minefield. He owns a remote controlled Chieftain tank which he uses to fire on Leela for "target practice." After the tank runs out the fuel, Leela boards the tank and threatens to fire its guns at Colonel Spindleton, which causes him to surrender.
• After discovering the corpse of a fellwalker (which only has one shoe, suggesting that the body was moved), the Doctor determines that it was not killed by any Earth creature.
• Although Carswell believed that it was his niece Julie Ledger had been killed by the Great White Worm, she was planning to hitchhike to London as she wanted to hang out with punk rockers such as Sid Vicious and Siouxsie and the Banshee in Carnaby Street. Demesne Furze kidnapped her, put her in the boot of her car and returned her to Dark Peak.
• Colonel Spindleton has the mounted heads of a tiger named Terry and a gorilla named Gerald, both of which he killed personally.
• According to legend, a knight named Sir Edgar killed the Great White Worm by cutting "in twain" during the Middle Ages. In Old English, "wyrm" does not mean "worm" but "dragon."
• The caves under Lampton Manor were used as a place of worship by Romans during the occupation of Britain.
• Although Colonel Spindleton claims that the scowled Mwalimu is his manservant, he is in actuality his master. He lives in the caves underneath the manor, where he sacrifices animals such as goats and sheep to the Great White Worm.
• The Doctor offers liquorice allsorts to Julie Ledger and John Grove.
• Julie and John find mummified corpses in Demesne Furze's home, White Cottage.
• Demesne Furze is able to smell the Time Vortex off the Doctor. She transforms herself into the Great White Worm.
• As "Mwalimu" is the Swalihi word for "master" or "teacher", the Doctor determines that Spindleton's Mwalimu is his fellow renegade Time Lord, the Master. He tells John that the Master is "a vengeance fixated sociopath with megalomaniacal tendencies."
• The Doctor is ingested by the Great White Worm and finds that Leela is already in its stomach. The Doctor tells her that an engineered, quasi-organic alien entity.
• The Great White Worm's original purpose was to create spatio-temporal wormholes. It refused the Master's instruction to create such a wormhole as doing so would result in its own destruction. The Doctor refers to it as a Ouroboros, an ancient symbol of a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The Great White Worm regurgitates the Doctor and Leela in the Dark Peak churchyard and reclaims its human skin of Demesne Furze.
• The Doctor gives Leela a message to "UNIT, Doctor, TARDIS, Master, Zygons, Krynoids, Axons too" in the hope of attracting the attention of his good friend Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
• The Master has a device which allows him to control the weather. He destroys the Great White Worm using lightning.

Notes

• This is the first Big Finish audio drama to feature the Master since AUDIO: Master in October 2003.
• Geoffrey Beevers reprises his role as the Master from TV: The Keeper of Traken, AUDIO: Dust Breeding and AUDIO: Master.
• This is the first Fourth Doctor story in performed Doctor Who to feature the Master since TV: Logopolis in 1981.
• The Master stays true to form and initially adopts an alias. In this case, it is "Mwalimu," which is Swahili for "teacher" or "master."
• This story leads directly into AUDIO: The Oseidon Adventure.
• This audio drama was recorded on 18 August 2011.

Continuity

• Leela mentions that she has met Romans. (AUDIO: The Wrath of the Iceni)
• Leela once again refers to the police as "blue guards." (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang, AUDIO: The Renaissance Man)
• The Doctor refers to the Zygons (TV: Terror of the Zygons), the Krynoids (TV: The Seeds of Doom) and the Axons (TV: The Claws of Axos).
• The Doctor notes that the Master has a slightly less "putrescent" appearance than when they last met on Gallifrey. This can most likely attributed to his own theory that the Master was able convert the energy from the Eye of Harmony and effectively heal himself, albeit partially. (TV: The Deadly Assassin)

External links

• Official Trail of the White Worm page at bigfinish.com
• DisContinuity for Trail of the White Worm at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide