Klein's Story (audio story)

Klein's Story
Doctor:	Seventh Doctor
Companion(s):	Elizabeth Klein
Featuring:	Johann Schmidt
Main setting:	British Kenya, Africa, 1953 Inside the TARDIS (Frame story) Nazi Germany, 1962-1965 (alternative timeline) (Flashbacks)
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	John Ainsworth & Lee Mansfield
Director:	John Ainsworth
Producer:	Simon Robinson
Release details
Release number:	131a
Release date:	28 February 2010
Format:	1 part, 32 minutes
Production code:	7Z/F
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-84435-434-4
Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories
← Previous	A Thousand Tiny Wings
Next →	Survival of the Fittest

Klein's Story was part of the one hundred and thirty-first monthly Doctor Who audio release produced by Big Finish Productions. It was the final of the single part stories released together with a three part story. This story is primarily set in Elizabeth Klein's timeline. Uniquely for a single part story, it features two actors playing the Doctor, namely Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann. However, the two do not meet.

Publisher's summary

Elizabeth Klein is an anomaly, a renegade from an alternate future in which the Nazis won World War II. To get to know his latest companion, the Doctor invites Klein to tell him how exactly she came to be in possession of his TARDIS and of the events that led to her trip into the past to Colditz Castle.

Plot

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
• Elizabeth Klein - Tracey Childs
• Johann Schmidt - Paul McGann
• Major Jonas Faber - Rupert Wickham

References

The Doctor

• In Klein's timeline, the Seventh Doctor fled Colditz Castle after Ace was killed by the Nazis. Immediately afterwards in his personal timeline, he returned to Germany in 1955. The TARDIS materialised near a border checkpoint in the West. As he appeared to be carrying a weapon, the Nazi soldiers on duty shot him immediately. After examining his body, they realised that it was in actuality an old umbrella. Although the TARDIS was captured, the Doctor's body seemingly disappeared. While the Nazi assumed that it had been stolen by trophy hunters, its "disappearance" was due to the fact that the Doctor had regenerated into his eighth incarnation and absconded. He adopted the alias "Johann Schmidt" and later told Klein that he was a collector of sorts who had stolen the Doctor's body and gained possession of the TARDIS key. Klein describes him as being "handsome, in a Gothic sort of way."
• Between 1955 and 1965, the Doctor helped political prisoners escape the clutches of the Nazis and disrupted the Third Reich's "ethnic cleansing programmes." Consequently, he attracted the attention of the Nazi authorities but nevertheless maintained his liberty.
• The Doctor mentions the science fiction series Professor X. He claims that he always thought that it was better in the 1960s than it was later during its run until he actually watched several of the early serials including Vault of the Cyborgs, one of the series' best regarded stories.

Colleges and universities

• In her timeline, Klein was conducting research at the University of Cambridge in 1962, when she was recruited by Major Jonas Faber to study and unlock the secrets of alien technology stored in a bunker in Berlin. Faber and she became lovers.

Technology

• The Führer Adolf Hitler was reluctant to acknowledge the existence of superior alien civilisations and technology and therefore ordered all evidence of this to be placed in the bunker. After his death in 1961, policy was changed and research into the alien technology began in earnest. However, the succeeding ruling body was soon weakened by divisions and internal conflicts.
• Klein had been studying a Dravidian power drive. She learned how to operate the device but remained ignorant of how it worked. Consequently, she was unable to duplicate the technology.

History

• Faber tells Klein that, using the laser technology obtained from Ace's Walkman shortly after her execution at Colditz Castle in October 1944, Germany developed nuclear weaponry. They subsequently bombed New York City and Moscow, forcing the surrender of the Allies and winning World War II for Nazi Germany.

Notes

• Paul McGann stars as an alternative version of the Eighth Doctor from Klein's timeline in this story.
• Klein claims that she was unaware of the proper name of the TARDIS until she learned it from the Seventh Doctor in Colditz Castle in October 1944. However, she referred to it as such in AUDIO: Colditz before the Doctor ever used the name. However, it is possible she recalled the name from when "Johann Schmidt" used it, or was told the name by a member of the staff of Colditz who had been alerted to its name by the Doctor.
• Unlike previous Big Finish releases of three part/one part story combinations, Klein's Story precedes Survival of the Fittest in this release.
• The Doctor's reference to Professor X is a reference to an episode of Steven Moffatt's children's television programme Press Gang, which revolved around one character's relationship with a creaky old television show that he watched as a boy; the show, Professor X, was very clearly patterned on Doctor Who. Professor X himself was played in this episode by Michael Jayston, who had already appeared in Doctor Who as the character of the Valeyard. Moffatt has joked in interviews that after the end of his series Coupling, the main character, Steve Taylor, is a scriptwriter who now works on a modern revival of Professor X.
• The reference also functions as a good-natured poke at the lower quality of earlier Doctor Who episodes, since he says that he thought the show was better in the 1960s until he went back and actually watched the episodes. The title Vault of the Cyborgs is a reference to TV: Tomb of the Cybermen. Lost for many years, all four episodes of The Tomb of the Cybermen were recovered and rushed onto video in the early 1990s, at which point its reputation as a classic underwent radical, albeit temporary, reappraisal.
• Along with AUDIO: Zagreus, AUDIO: The Four Doctors and AUDIO: The Light at the End, this is one of four Big Finish audio dramas in which both Sylvester McCoy and Paul McGann appear.
• The story was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra on 24 May 2012 as the first part of Survival of the Fittest.

Continuity

• The Doctor tells Klein that the British Army has arrived in Kenya and that Sylvia O'Donnell and her husband Heinrich will be safe. (AUDIO: A Thousand Tiny Wings)
• The TARDIS' design in this story is the same as in TV: Doctor Who. Klein mentions that the Doctor has "redecorated" the ship since she last saw it when he was travelling with Ace.
• The scene from TV: The Three Doctors in which the Second Doctor voices his displeasure with the new design of the TARDIS is echoed in a similar remark from Klein.
• The Doctor mentions the TARDIS' "leopard skin" desktop theme. (TV: Time Crash)
• For her second trip in the TARDIS, the Doctor considers bringing Klein to Florana. (TV: Invasion of the Dinosaurs, TV: Death to the Daleks, AUDIO: The Elite)
• Klein had been studying a Dravidian power drive. (TV: The Brain of Morbius, The Shakespeare Code, PROSE: The Planet of Oblivion)
• In the alternative timeline, the Seventh Doctor regenerated for the same reason as in TV: Doctor Who (1996).
• "Johann Schmidt" is a German variation of the Doctor's usual alias "John Smith". The Seventh Doctor had previously referred to himself as "Johann Schmidt" while impersonating the Reichsinspektor General in May 1951 in another alternative timeline, (PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus) and the Sixth Doctor used the alias while presenting himself to Hitler as a Major General of the Fifth Medical Corps in Berlin when meeting Hitler in 1942 and 1945. (PROSE: The Shadow in the Glass) In the proper timeline, the Eighth Doctor would later use the name once more while posing as a German spy aboard the British airship R101 in October 1930. (AUDIO: Storm Warning)

External links

• Official Klein's Story page at bigfinish.com
• Klein's Story at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• DisContinuity for Klein's Story at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide