Death's Head (audio story)

Death's Head
Main character(s):	Kaston Iago
Featuring:	Uvanov, Carnell
Main setting:	Kaldor City, 2889
Key crew
Publisher:	Magic Bullet Productions
Writer:	Chris Boucher
Director:	Alistair Lock Alan Stevens
Producer:	Alan Stevens
Release details
Release date:	April 2002
Format:	1 CD, 60 minutes
Production code:	KC002
ISBN:	none
Kaldor City audio stories
← Previous	Occam's Razor
Next →	Hidden Persuaders

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Death's Head was the second audio play in the Kaldor City series. Written by Chris Boucher, it featured an investigation into the attempted murder of Chairholder Uvanov.

Publisher's summary

"Taren Capel? The mad god of the robots. He was famous, briefly, but then, weren't we all?"

Someone is spinning a web. Links are forming between one man's need for violence and another's desire for power; a desert ore processing station and a long dead enemy of the state. Someone, maybe everyone, is being manipulated.

Carnell is the obvious culprit, but who is the psychostrategist working for, and what could their motive possibly be?

Kaldor City - Death's Head uses the characters, situations and settings that appear in Chris Boucher's Doctor Who novel Corpse Marker, to tell a complex tale of sex, money and death.

Plot

to be added

Cast

(in order of appearance)

• Carnell - Scott Fredericks
• Sheen - Nicholas Briggs
• Rov - Robert Lock
• Rull - Trevor Cooper
• Cotton - Brian Croucher
• Landerchild - Peter Miles
• Strecker - Peter Tuddenham
• Attendant - David Bickerstaff
• Uvanov - Russell Hunter
• Hume - Alistair Lock
• Iago - Paul Darrow
• Justina - Patricia Merrick
• Blayes - Tracy Russell
• Voice 1 - Fiona Moore
• Voice 2 - Bruce McGilligan

Worldbuilding

Objects

• Plasma rifles are illegal.

Blind Heart Desert

• Stenton Rull was stuck on the edge of the Blind Heart Desert at a storm research facility, waiting for the wind to drop, for 5 days.

Notes

• This story introduces the character of Blayes, played by Tracy Russell, who features more prominently in later plays. The sixth play in the series, Storm Mine, is told entirely from this character's viewpoint.
• The story is set five months after the previous Kaldor City audio, Occam's Razor, and four months before the next, Hidden Persuaders. The third edition of Mad Norwegian Press' reference work AHistory dates Death's Head to the year 2889.
• Iago's statement you can't prove a negative echoes the words of scientific sceptic James Randi on evidence of absence.
• The copyright notice printed on the CD release of this production states: "Unauthorised copying, hiring, renting, public performance and broadcasting is strictly prohibited or Uvanov will be kicking your corpse."
• This story was part of a recording block that also consisted of Occam's Razor.
• The CD cover art was designed by Andy Hopkinson.

Continuity

• The origins of the skull presented to Uvanov are expanded upon in PROSE: Skulduggery in which a plan is articulated between Carnell and Landerchild that Cotton should strip the flesh from the head of a dead research station operative, as killed at the start of this story by Rull, and used that skull as the one Uvanov is presented with, claimed to be Taren Capel's. It will be revealed in AUDIO: Taren Capel that Cotton is working directly for Landerchild.
• Carnell muses about the existence of an alien grand manipulator whose goals and methods would be unknowable, foreshadowing the emergence of the Fendahl in AUDIO: Checkmate.
• The attendant whom Rull "helps" is later revealed, in AUDIO: Hidden Persuaders, to be an agent for the Church of Taren Capel named Manzerak.
• Uvanov's previous executive assistant, described here as the one that sold him out, was Cailio Techlan. (PROSE: Corpse Marker)
• Iago shot Rull in the leg. (AUDIO: Occam's Razor)
• Uvanov gives instructions to manipulate Blayes into the becoming a rebel leader. (AUDIO: Hidden Persuaders)
• Iago and Carnell both make reference to a great illusion; Iago also mentions it in AUDIO: Metafiction. In later instalments of the series the idea that all is not what it seems becomes an increasingly prominent theme, particularly in AUDIO: The Prisoner.

External links

• Official Death's Head page at Magic Bullet Productions
• Official Death's Head page at Random Static

• Death's Head at the Doctor Who Reference Guide