The Children of the Future (audio story): Difference between revisions

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The Children of the Future was the second story in Sontarans vs Rutans, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Tim Foley and featured Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor, Sadie Miller as Sarah Jane Smith and Jon Culshaw as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

It was released in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Sontarans and the first mention of Rutans.

Publisher's summary

The war between the Sontarans and the Rutans has been going on for Millennia. And is likely to continue for millennia more.

The Brigadier is used to the Doctor acting strangely, but this time there’s something decidedly different about the whole affair. As he looks into the Time Lord's odd activities outside of UNIT, there's a mystery that'll take Lethbridge-Stewart to a site very familiar to Sarah Jane Smith.

Can the Brigadier trust his old friend? Who are his mysterious new allies? And is the future of humanity really at stake? A Sontaran threat could spell the end of their long-standing friendship...and the entire planet!

Plot

Sarah answers the telephone for the Brigadier and is told by Private Larkins that the Doctor is being held up at the gate as the Brigadier requested. She realises that the Brigadier means to follow the Doctor incognito and joins him, agreeing that the Doctor has been acting strangely recently and wanting to know where he is sneaking off to in Bessie. In addition to the Doctor being secretive, the he has been ordering equipment similar to that that he had been using to fix the TARDIS during his exile which he has been taking off-site and looking at old maps of Hampshire, towards which he is driving. The Doctor speeds up, apparently having realised that he is being followed, and disappears.

Inquiring about Bessie at a petrol station, Sarah sees a postcard of the ruins of Lindsay Castle, which she recognises as the castle where she met Linx. They find that the castle is surrounded by soldiers led by Sergeant Moss, who demands that they leave until the Doctor shows up and has her lower her gun. The Doctor and Moss take the two of them to Captain Saint and they explain that they belong to the Earth Defence Force and are survivors of a Sontaran invasion in 1994. Saint recounts the invasion and how they managed to travel back in time thanks to the battery of Linx's osmic projector leaking into the castle's walls, creating a time tunnel which the Doctor detected when the first group arrived.

The Doctor, feeling that he is nearing the end of his regeneration, wants to help the survivors' immigration and integration into 20th century society and does not want UNIT involved, but Sarah and the Brigadier disagree with the survivors, who have augmented their physical abilities and mental capacity, breeding with 20th century people and changing history. As she and the Brigadier leave, Sarah realises how unlikely it is that the Doctor would agree with this project, named the Cascade Project, and is suspicious of the survivors and their claims; she has a dictaphone from 1997 Taiwan, noticed the survivors' strange vocabulary and believes that she recognised some of the soldiers, casting doubt on Saint's story.

Return to the petrol station so that Sarah can call a friend at The Herald, the Brigadier advises Stanley, who works there, to stick with a friend he is afraid he is drifting away from as much as possible, seeing a similarity with his own relationship with the Doctor in his varying incarnations. Sarah identifies an old copy of The Herald she saw at the castle and finds that the people there are all copies of people depicted in it, with Moss and Saint being copies of a pair of actors. They realise that they must be Rutans, whom the Doctor mentioned to them, and Sarah suspects that the Doctor too might be an impostor given his strange behaviour. As Stanley was briefly in the army, the Brigadier makes him an acting private.

Stanley pretends to be making a delivery to the castle and the Brigadier inside whilst Sarah gets herself captured by Moss in the nearby woods to distract the soldiers and is brought before the Doctor and Saint. The Doctor gets Sarah on her own and reveals that he knows that the soldiers are Rutans, that he has been trying to find out what they are up to and that he has been delaying the Cascade Project by making them believe that the crossings had to be gradual. When the Brigadier accidentally travels through the time tunnel, he arrives on a spaceship orbiting another planet and is followed by Saint and Moss, the latter of whom he shoots after he takes his form. The time tunnel starts to give way and the Doctor comes through to save him.

Saint takes the Doctor's form and the Brigadier is uncertain of which of the two Doctors is real until one of them calls him by his full name, after which he pushes him and leaves with the other. Sarah and Stanley get all of the Rutans through the tunnel to their spaceship so that they are not separated from the rest of their people and the tunnel closes. The Doctor explains that he felt that he had to complete this mission on his own as he is afraid of how he and UNIT will cope without one another and that they will never know the complete story of the time tunnel or the Rutans' interest in Ireland. Stanley admits that he is a Rutan and was being punished by Saint by acting as a lookout for leaving his brood and is given leave to remain on Earth.

Cast

Uncredited cast

Crew

Worldbuilding

Fashion

Food

History

Individuals

Locations

Media

Organisations

Rutans

Science

Technology

Notes

Alternate cover

Continuity

External links

Footnotes

Notes

  1. ↑ The Brigadier's birthday is tomorrow, which Blood Heat [+]Loading...["Blood Heat (novel)"], No Future [+]Loading...["No Future (novel)"] and The Forgotten Son [+]Loading...["The Forgotten Son (novel)"] establish as 22 February, with nothing contradicting this in other DWU sources.
v • e
Classic Series - Special Releases
Excelis Saga
Bonus Releases
DWM Free Gifts
Classic Doctors,
New Monsters
Volume One
Volume Two
The Stuff of
Nightmares
Broken Memories
Other releases
Single releases
The Comic Strip
Adaptations:
Volume One
The Legacy
of Time
Peladon
Sontarans vs Rutans
v • e
Rutan stories
For the purposes of this list, a "Rutan story" is one in which one living, authentic Rutan plays a part within the confines of the story, outside of flashbacks to previous stories and cliffhangers that lead into the following story.
Television
Broadcast
Home video
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Complete list of appearances
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