The Caged Assassin (audio story)

The Caged Assassin
Doctor:	Fourth Doctor
Companion(s):	Harry, Naomi
Main enemy:	Top the Wombat
Main setting:	London, 1870
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Matthew Sweet
Director:	Jamie Anderson
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Jamie Robertson
Sound:	Toby Hrycek-Robinson
Release details
Number of parts:	2
Release number:	13.4
Part of:	Metamorphosis
Release date:	11 June 2024
Format:	Download 2nd of 3 stories
Production code:	BFPTOMCD094
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-83868-459-4 (physical) ISBN 978-1-83868-460-0 (digital)
The Fourth Doctor Adventures
← Previous	Matryoshka
Next →	Metamorphosis

The Caged Assassin was the fourth story of the thirteenth series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Matthew Sweet and featured Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, Christopher Naylor as Harry Sullivan and Eleanor Crooks as Naomi Cross.

Publisher's summary

It's very unusual to find a tiger in the TARDIS. But it's even more unusual to find one heavily dosed in radiation. But this is far from the most unusual occurrence the Doctor, Naomi and Harry are going to encounter today. Because they are about to meet Charles Jamrach, supplier of exotic animals to the rich and royal, who is unaware that his famous menagerie conceals a deadly terror. A strange creature out for blood...

Plot

Part one

After burying Top the Wombat, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Alexa Wilding head to Shadwell where the Doctor is complaining that a pie he purchased tastes of cat. The Doctor saves street urchin Tom Peck from the grip of a tiger which he takes back to Harry and Naomi in the TARDIS, the instruments of which identify the tiger as radioactive. Charles Jamrach, the tiger's owner, is pointed to the TARDIS by Tom and demands the tiger's return so that he can gift it to Queen Victoria, something the Doctor refuses to do until he has checked it over in a stasis field. Jamrach shows the three travellers his menagerie aboard a ship in a warehouse in the East End and explains that the tiger's escape was inexplicable and at the same time that his wombats burrowed out. Inside the tiger's cage are scorch marks left by an energy weapon.

Rossetti, a wombat enthusiast, visits Jamrach and is fascinated by the Doctor and Naomi, who speak with him whilst Harry investigates the wombat cage. He is rendered unconscious by Alexa after hearing high-pitched voices in the walls and learns upon returning to consciousness that the wombats have returned, meaning that Rossetti is able to take one which he names Top the Wombat. Alexa distracts the Doctor, but he realises this and finds that the new Top has stunned Naomi and is being painted by Rossetti whilst other wombats dig up their Wombat Queen's casket from the garden. However, the body inside is not that of their Queen and Top declares that London will be obliterated as a result.

Part two

Top and the wombats go to capture Queen Victoria and the Doctor, Naomi and Rossetti take a cab to save Harry and Jamrach, whom the wombats have kidnapped and taken to Jamrach's to find a bomb hidden there. Naomi saves them and the Doctor fetches the tiger, Gertie, whom he and Harry discover is the bomb that the wombats intend to use to destroy the city. Harry also finds the living Wombat Queen inside of Gertie after the Doctor, Naomi and Rossetti go to stop Top and takes her to them. She explains how she and her companions landed on Earth to conquer it, but they instead studied the wombats that they found there, unsure as to whether or not they were the same species, before being captured and sent to Jamrach's menagerie.

The Wombat Queen and her companions were purchased by Rossetti and came to appreciate art and pleasure, causing them to abandon thoughts of war. They killed a would-be assassin who brought the bomb and intended to return home with stories of battle and left his body on the table where Rossetti found it and mistook it for hers. She then returned to Jamrach's menagerie where she was swallowed by Gertie whilst looking for the bomb and entered a trance. Now awoken, she cancels the colonisation programme and, asked to show mercy by Naomi, spares Top from declawing by exiling him to Earth instead. The Doctor, Harry and Naomi assure him that there is no place better.

Cast

• The Doctor - Tom Baker
• Naomi Cross - Eleanor Crooks
• Harry Sullivan - Christopher Naylor
• Dante Gabriel Rossetti - Mark Gatiss
• Alexa Wilding / Wombat Queen / Tom - Isabella Inchbald
• Charles Jamrach / Wombat Commodore - Michael Fenton-Stevens
• Top the Wombat - Glen McCready

Uncredited cast

• Pub Landlord / Pie Man / Lad - Glen McCready (BFX: The Caged Assassin)

Crew

to be added

Worldbuilding

• The wombat assassin choked to death on a Cox's Orange Pippin.
• Dante buried an armadillo and Jesse the Owl.
• A kangaroo died by matricide.
• The Doctor complains that his pie tastes of cat.
• The Doctor mentions George Eliot.
• The Doctor mentions Burke's Peerage.
• Naomi mentions The Italian Job.
• Harry is reminded of Portsmouth Naval College.
• Billy works for Jamrach.
• Jamrach's father lived in Hamburg and was head of the River Police.
• Llamas spit.
• Rossetti uses chlorodyne to help him sleep.

Notes

to be added

Continuity

• The Doctor recalls the Third Doctor's exile to Earth, which began in TV: The War Games ^[+]Loading...["The War Games (TV story)"].

External links

• Official The Caged Assassin page at bigfinish.com