Project Destiny (audio story)

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Project: Destiny
Doctor:	Seventh Doctor
Companion(s):	Ace, Hex
Main enemy:	William Abberton (Nimrod), The Forge
Main setting:	London, April to May 2025
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writers:	Cavan Scott, Mark Wright
Director:	Ken Bentley
Post production:	Howard Carter
Cover by:	Simon Holub
Release details
Release number:	139
Release date:	September 2010
Format:	4 Episodes on 2 CDs
Production code:	7W/M
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-84435-475-7
Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories
← Previous	The Cradle of the Snake
Next →	A Death in the Family

Project: Destiny was the one-hundred-and-thirty-ninth monthly Doctor Who audio story produced by Big Finish Productions. It was a direct sequel, leading directly on from June 2009's The Angel of Scutari, the last Seventh Doctor story featuring Philip Olivier as Hex and Sophie Aldred as Ace. It was also the third in the "Project:" series of audio stories Project: Twilight (which featured the Sixth Doctor) and Project: Lazarus (which featured the Sixth and Seventh Doctors).

Publisher's summary

1999: Leaving her infant son behind, a young mother named Cassandra Schofield departs Bolton, seeking a better life amid the lights of London.

2004: Despite the best efforts of the time-travelling Doctor, "Cassie" Schofield dies on Dartmoor, a vampirised victim of the sinister organisation called the Forge.

2021: All grown up, and a nurse at St Gart's Hospital, Thomas Hector Schofield, known as "Hex", meets and becomes a companion to that time-travelling Doctor… but remains unaware that his alien friend knew his mother, and watched her die.

1854: In the Crimean War, Hex takes a bullet, and is seriously injured. The Doctor promises to return him to St Gart's.

2025: Now. In a London ravaged by a deadly contagion… destiny awaits.

Plot

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
• Ace - Sophie Aldred
• Hex - Philip Olivier
• Sir William Abberton - Stephen Chance
• Captain Lysandra Aristedes - Maggie O'Neill
• Sergeant Jarrod - Philip Dinsdale
• Helen/Oracle - Ingrid Oliver

References

The Doctor

• The Doctor's files concerning "Project: Twillight" are listed under "T" in the TARDIS' filing cabinet.

Cultural references to the real world

• Ace refers to Nimrod as "Dracula" and to Lysandra as "Rambo".
• Ace always hated A-ha.
• She's also never seen Dawn of the Dead.

Organisations

• Nimrod refers to Internal Counter-Intelligence Service (ICIS), a British ultra-nationalistic group which served as a rival organisation to UNIT until it was closed down in 2005 following its involvement in ethnic cleansing and an attempted coup.

People

• Mark Matthias was one of Hex's St Gart's associates.

Politics

• In 2025, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is a woman.

Science

• It requires just a drop of family-blood to regenerate Cassandra Schofield's dusty remains into a body.

Species

• The "contagion" aliens exist as a hive mind.

Substances

• The Forge archive is reinforced with Dalekanium.

TARDIS

• Ace looks for the TARDIS key in the cubby-hole above the "P" in "Police Box" on the roof of the TARDIS.
• The Seal of Rassilon is displayed above the inner doors of the TARDIS.

Textless cover art

Notes

• According to writers Cavan Scott and Mark Wright, this story was at one point written with Elizabeth Klein as the director of the Forge. This had to be rewritten after the character was brought back to serve as the Doctor's companion in AUDIO: A Thousand Tiny Wings.
• This audio drama was recorded on 26 and 27 April 2010 at The Moat Studios.
• Ingrid Oliver would later play the recurring role of Petronella Osgood in the Doctor Who TV series, debuting in TV: The Day of the Doctor.
• Subscribers whose subscriptions included this story also received the audio short story Lepidoptery for Beginners.

Continuity

• The events of AUDIO: Project: Lazarus (to which this story serves as a sequel) are in the past but are in the Doctor's personal future. Nimrod informs the Doctor that he was present at the destruction of the Forge's alpha facility in 2008. The Doctor attempts to prevent Nimrod from telling him too much about his personal future so as not to disrupt the Web of Time.
• The Seal of Rassilon is displayed above the inner doors of the TARDIS as is seen in TV: Doctor Who, confirming that the console room now looks as it did in the TVM.
• The Fourth Doctor previously visited London on 30 January 2025 in the company of Leela. On that occasion, he encountered the Daleks. (AUDIO: Energy of the Daleks)
• The Forge's files on Hex state that he was present during the Charnage Hospital incident in the north of France during World War I in 1917. (AUDIO: No Man's Land)
• Ace mentions that on their previous visit to St. Gart's Brookside Hospital, when the Doctor mentions her fire safety training, that she was the one in Human Resources and he was the caretaker, so there was no need to quote the book at her. (AUDIO: The Harvest)
• UNIT had records of Ace's involvement in this incident. (AUDIO: Signs and Wonders)

External links

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

Footnotes