The Eternal Battle (audio story)

The Eternal Battle
Doctor:	Fourth Doctor
Companion(s):	Romana II, K9
Featuring:	Sontarans
Main enemy:	Sycon Computer
Main setting:	Unnamed planet Centre of Academic Excellence, far future
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writers:	Cavan Scott and Mark Wright
Director:	Nicholas Briggs
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Jamie Robertson
Sound:	Jamie Robertson
Cover by:	Anthony Lamb
Release details
Release number:	6.02
Release date:	15 February 2017
Format:	2 parts, 1 CD
Production code:	BFPTOMCD039
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-78178-711-3
Official trailer
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Fourth Doctor Adventures
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The Eternal Battle was the second story in the sixth series of the Fourth Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Cavan Scott and Mark Wright and featured Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, Lalla Ward as Romana II and John Leeson as K9.

Publisher's summary

The TARDIS has landed in a war zone. The Doctor, Romana and K9 find themselves traipsing through an inhospitable battlefield. Strange lights flicker in the sky, and stranger creatures lurk in the darkness.

When rescued from an attack by a Sontaran tank, the time-travellers discover they’re facing a far more dangerous foe than the battle-hungry clones. This terrifying fight has been going on longer than anyone can remember... and shows no signs of stopping.

With the TARDIS missing and their luck running thin, the Doctor and his friends’ only hope of survival is to uncover the truth about what is happening on this planet. If they can discover the secret of the eternal battle they might just survive... but it might just mean the end of them all.

Plot

Part one

to be added

Part two

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor - Tom Baker
• Romana - Lalla Ward
• K9 - John Leeson
• Field Major Lenk/Sergeant Major Stom - Dan Starkey
• Captain Nina Albiston/ Sycon Computer - Jane Slavin
• Brennan/Trooper Varn - John Banks

References

• Romana refers to the savage creatures as zombies and revenants.
• K9 triangulates a temporal waveform to detect chronons. He later detects low level chronons in the undying Varn's brain.
• Using logic, the Doctor tricks the Sycon Computer into believing that it's raging war on war itself, causing it to shut down.
• Albiston makes reports to Earth Command.
• The Doctor gives Stom a jelly baby.
• Stom detects a star drive.

Time technology

• A temporal projection node generates a time bubble and creates a time field, also called a "chronal field," trapping the Sontarans and humans in a time loop, which the Sycon computer calls a "pocket continuum".
• If the pocket continuums are shut down, all subjects within would be atomised and scattered into the time vortex.

Sontarans

• Lenk comments that a Sontaran being afraid of death is disgraceful. For a Sontaran, there is either battle or death in battle.
• All Sontaran battalions have orders to shoot the Doctor and his associates.
• The Doctor comments that "trench warfare," in the rain and the mud, is not the Sontarans' style.
• The Sontarans make use of tanks, which are vanguard-class heavy assault units, armed with concussic chambers.
• Sontarans face battle "eyes forward, probic vents behind."
• Lenk's forces were ordered to annex an occupying force of humans on the planet, a "backwater colony world" which the Doctor comments as a "couple of parsecs" from Earth. The humans had automated battlements.
• The Sontarans have been battling the undying forces for years or decades, but he cannot remember.
• The Doctor mentions a Sontaran Academy.
• Stom prefers grenades for weapons. He becomes the last Sontaran in a time period where Sontar doesn't exist.

Sayings

• Romana quotes "All quiet on the Western Front".
• The Doctor says "X marks the spot".
• Upon obtaining a Sontaran tank, Albiston claims "this is a red letter day".
• The Doctor begins to choose a control by saying "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe, catch a Kaled by-"
• He refers to the computer as the "ghost in the machine".
• He says he's very good at "jiggery pokery".
• The Doctor remarks that all computers say "insufficient data" when they don't want to admit they're wrong.
• Romana quotes "the shoe's on the other foot" and the Doctor quotes "turn the other cheek".

Sycons

• The Sycon race is from millennia in the future, from the universe's "twilight years," when the Sontarans are extinct.
• By the new calendar, the Centre of Academic Excellence was established in the year 97391.
• To illustrate "the futility of war," subjects were gathered by technology similar to a Time Scoop, taken from battles throughout history, but no major wars, so as not to attract attention. Visitors from every major race in the cosmos were to be invited to observe.

Notes

to be added

Continuity

• Romana is familiar with Sontarans from their invasion of Gallifrey. (TV: The Invasion of Time, PROSE: The Shadow of Weng-Chiang)
• The Doctor mentions the Rutan Host, (TV: The Time Warrior, Horror of Fang Rock) and vampires. (TV: State of Decay)
• The Doctor mentions Dunkirk. The First and Eighth Doctors were present at Dunkirk. (PROSE: Just War, Byzantium!, AUDIO: Fugitives)
• The Seventh Doctor would later encounter scared Sontarans again. (AUDIO: Terror of the Sontarans)
• The Doctor comments that he's never had a Sontaran as a companion. He'd later befriend the Sontaran nurse Strax. (TV: A Good Man Goes to War, The Name of the Doctor)
• Albiston believes in a goddess, as did Benny Summerfield. (AUDIO: The Shadow of the Scourge)
• The Doctor says some of his best friends are soldiers, including the Brigadier. (TV: The Invasion, Spearhead from Space, et al)

External links

• Official The Eternal Battle page at bigfinish.com