The Crimes of Thomas Brewster (audio story)

The Crimes of Thomas Brewster
Doctor:	Sixth Doctor
Companion(s):	Evelyn
Featuring:	Brewster, Flip, Menzies
Main enemy:	Terravores
Main setting:	London 2011 Symbios
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Jonathan Morris
Director:	Nicholas Briggs
Producer:	David Richardson
Post production:	Howard Carter
Cover by:	Anthony Lamb
Release details
Release number:	143
Release date:	January 2011
Format:	4 Episodes on 2 CDs
Production code:	7C/NA
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-84435-543-3
Main Range stories
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Next →	The Feast of Axos
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Next →	The Feast of Axos

The Crimes of Thomas Brewster was the one hundred and forty-third story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Jonathan Morris and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, Maggie Stables as Evelyn Smythe and reintroduced John Pickard as Thomas Brewster.

It was notable for featuring the third appearance of DI Patricia Menzies, for featuring the first appearance of the Doctor's future companion Flip Jackson, for turning the Fifth Doctor's former companion, Thomas Brewster into a companion of the Sixth Doctor and for retconning Evelyn's personal timeline to include a time where she shared the TARDIS with another companion.

Publisher's summary

Sent down south to assist the Metropolitan Police in their efforts to investigate the gangland kingpin known only as "the Doctor", Detective-Inspector Patricia Menzies finds herself up to her neck in laser-armed robot mosquitoes, gun-running criminal overlords, vanishing Tube trains... and not one, but two Doctors.

Meanwhile the real Doctor, and his academic assistant Professor Evelyn Smythe, have become ensnared in the machinations of an old acquaintance — time-travelling Victorian guttersnipe Thomas Brewster. But what's Brewster's connection to the rapacious robot Terravores? And can anyone contain the gathering swarm?

Plot

Part one

The Sixth Doctor and Evelyn find themselves in the middle of a disaster taking place in London involving robotic mosquitoes. They jump onto a boat and make a break for it. The Doctor manages to take one out, but it explodes, ruining his coat in the process. Luckily, they are rescued by DI Patricia Menzies. While holding them at the station, she explains privately to Evelyn that she has already met the Doctor, however, she explains that she can't reveal that she knows him due to being warned. Menzies goes home to sleep and the two are placed in cells for the night. After being held at the station, they are released in the morning into custody but end up getting kidnapped by someone under the employ of a man named Mr. Gallagher.

They are brought to a place that the Doctor suspects is Bermondsey, and speak with Mr. Gallagher, who reveals that the Doctor is not the Doctor he's after, however, he can't let them go in case they inform the police. Meanwhile, Menzies returns to the station only to find that the officer who released the Doctor and Evelyn into custody made a huge error and failed to check the legitimacy of the authorization, and didn't realize the squad car that picked them up was the same one as one that had been reported as stolen that very morning. They commence a search, while Mr. Gallagher, under threatening pretenses, has Evelyn go find and meet the other Doctor who is threatening Gallagher's criminal business, and has the Doctor held hostage to ensure her cooperation. Just then, the Doctor and Gallagher and company are attacked by the Terravores. Evelyn finds the other person claiming to be the "Doctor" in an abandoned building, surrounded by the robotic mosquitoes and dressed in Edwardian clothes...

Part two

The Doctor manages to escape Gallagher and the Terravores and is rescued by Menzies. Meanwhile, Gallagher makes a deal with the Terravores to help them, who are also looking for the Doctor, once he discovers they can convert organic matter into diamonds. Evelyn and Thomas Brewster have a chat and once she discerns his real identity, he tries to kidnap her but she manages to escape and gets onto the tube, where she bumps into Flip and Jared, although is not aware of their identity. Suddenly, Evelyn notices her pursuers managed to board the other car and suddenly the train is transported to another planet, the planet Symbios, as revealed by Brewster, who has caught up with her.

In the meantime the Doctor and Menzies find his TARDIS which he uses to locate Evelyn. They step out to go find her just as they are found and cornered by Gallagher and the Terravores. They manage to evade Gallagher and capture a Terravore which they interrogate. Brewster forces the passengers to pick up the machine guns from Gallagher's shipment he brought aboard the train and to follow his instructions, where he marches them through the jungle while Evelyn, Flip and Jared discuss the current situation. They are suddenly attacked by a swarm of Terravores and get stuck in quicksand, sitting ducks for their attackers...

Part three

to be added

Part four

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor - Colin Baker
• Evelyn Smythe - Maggie Stables
• Thomas Brewster - John Pickard
• DI Menzies - Anna Hope
• Raymond Gallagher - David Troughton
• Jared - Ashley Kumar
• Flip - Lisa Greenwood
• Sergeant Bradshaw - Duncan Wisbey
• Terravore Queen - Helen Goldwyn

References

Cultural references from the real world

• Menzies compares the interior of the TARDIS to "Captain Kirk's ship."
• Flip's ringtone is Pokerface by Lady Gaga.

The Doctor

• While being interviewed by Menzies, Evelyn tells her that the Doctor's name is "Dr John Smith."
• As the Doctor asks the Terravore to tell him about themselves, they ask who he is. He states he is the Doctor's companion and it's "kind of my job to ask stupid questions".

Fashion and clothing

• The Doctor's coat is destroyed in the explosion of the Terravore. He tells Evelyn that he has twelve other identical coats in the TARDIS wardrobe.
• The Doctor wears a jumper and jeans throughout the rest of the story to replace his outfit after it gets soaked.

Individuals

• Menzies asks Evelyn what has become of Charley Pollard.
• Menzies was recently seconded from the Greater Manchester Police to the Metropolitan Police Service due to her experience with mysterious individuals calling themselves "the Doctor."
• When Evelyn attempts to test Brewster's claim that he is the Doctor, she mentions the Daleks.
• Brewster tells the Doctor that his girlfriend Connie Winter was hit by a car and left in an irreversible coma.

Planets

• Sarcasm is a capital offence on Literalis Two.

Species

• The Locus tells the Doctor that all life on Symbios exist in symbiosis, hence the name of the planet.
• A future incarnation of the Doctor saved Symbios from the Drahvins at a considerably earlier point in the planet's history.

Technology

• Menzies mentions iPhones and Twitter.

Theories and concepts

• The Doctor tells Menzies that, due to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, he experiences a prickling sensation on the back of his hand when one of his past or future incarnations is in the vicinity.

Transport technology

• Brewster sends a Great Portland Street tube train to the planet Symbios on the other side of Mutter's Spiral through a space-time wormhole.

Vehicles

• The Doctor claims to know how to drive a speedboat, though his efforts are less than successful.

Notes

Textless cover

• This audio story was recorded at The Moat Studios.
• Although Menzies says that the events of AUDIO: The Condemned, set in 2008, were two years ago, the next story in this trilogy (AUDIO: The Feast of Axos) places it in 2011.
• This story was originally released on CD and download.

Continuity

• The Doctor and Evelyn were previously imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1554 (AUDIO: The Marian Conspiracy) as well as visiting it in 2003 in an alternate timeline. (AUDIO: Jubilee)
• Brewster becoming a companion of the Sixth Doctor was foreshadowed in AUDIO: A Death in the Family as Evelyn reminisced with the Seventh Doctor about each of them spending time "in a spacesuit bouncing about Axos with that poor boy Brewster." This remark also foreshadowed the events of the following audio drama AUDIO: The Feast of Axos.
• The Doctor tells Evelyn that he once passed under the original London Bridge in a boat with King James II (AUDIO: The Glorious Revolution) and that mudlarks used to scavenge for goods in the River Thames. (AUDIO: The Haunting of Thomas Brewster)
• This is the Doctor's first meeting with DI Menzies in his personal timeline. However, it is their third meeting from her perspective, following AUDIO: The Condemned and AUDIO: The Raincloud Man. Menzies elects not to inform the Doctor but he correctly guesses that this is the case. He promises to return the favour when they meet for the first time in her personal timeline.
• DI Menzies refers to the Ackley House incident in Manchester in February 2008. (AUDIO: The Condemned)
• Brewster once again poses as the Doctor, as he did while the TARDIS was in his possession. (AUDIO: Time Reef)
• Menzies comments that the Doctor looks about five years younger than he did during her two previous encounters with him. (AUDIO: The Condemned, The Raincloud Man)
• Menzies tells Evelyn of the time that Charley Pollard claimed to have met the Doctor out of order. (AUDIO: The Raincloud Man)
• In AUDIO: The Raincloud Man, the Doctor politely refuses Menzies' request to travel with him, citing the growing mystery surrounding Charley's true identity, though he states that one day he may return and take her up on the offer. As his encounter with her in The Raincloud Man takes place later in his personal timeline than the events of this story, he would have been aware at that time that Menzies had never become his companion when they met in 2011. Consequently, granting her request in 2008 would have altered history and damaged the Web of Time. It is possible that the Doctor's grounds for refusal, namely the mystery surrounding Charley, may have simply been an excuse to avoid revealing to Menzies that he had already met her future self.
• The Doctor recalls visiting the then newly opened Great Portland Street Tube in the company of Brewster and Nyssa in 1867 during his fifth incarnation. (AUDIO: The Haunting of Thomas Brewster)
• Menzies compares Brewster to the Artful Dodger from Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. Later in his sixth incarnation, the Doctor would meet a 23-year-old version of the Artful Dodger in the Land of Fiction (AUDIO: Legend of the Cybermen) whereas the Ninth Doctor and his companion Rose Tyler would later meet Dickens himself in Cardiff on 24 December 1869. (TV: The Unquiet Dead)
• Captain Ruth Matheson would later tell Warrant Officer Charlie Sato about the 2010 Terravore incursion in the London Underground and that a deactivated Terravore was stored in UNIT's Vault. (AUDIO: Tales from the Vault) In 2014, Rees would use his mind to control this Terravore to help him search for his music box. (AUDIO: The Screaming Skull)
• The Doctor would later visit another sentient planet, Unity, during his seventh incarnation. (AUDIO: Shadow Planet)
• In order to fool Brewster, Menzies poses as the Doctor and introduces him as her companion. However, when the ruse is uncovered, Brewster claims that he 'thought it a bit odd, [him] turning into a lady'. The Doctor would later regenerate into a woman in his thirteenth incarnation. (TV: Twice Upon a Time)

External links

• Official The Crimes of Thomas Brewster page at bigfinish.com
• The Crimes of Thomas Brewster at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• DisContinuity for The Crimes of Thomas Brewster at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide