Mary's Story (audio story)

Mary's Story
Doctor:	Eighth Doctor
Companion(s):	Mary Shelley
Main setting:	The Villa Diodati, near Lake Geneva, Switzerland, June 1816
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Jonathan Morris
Director:	Nicholas Briggs
Music:	Matthew Cochrane
Sound:	Matthew Cochrane
Release details
Release number:	123d
Part of:	The Company of Friends
Release date:	July 2009
Format:	1 X 25 min.
Production code:	8Z
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-84435-411-5
Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories
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Mary's Story was a 2009 Big Finish Productions full-cast audio short story, featuring the Eighth Doctor and Mary Shelley. It was the fruition of a nearly decade-long gag that had been running through the Eighth Doctor's audio adventures. Since his first such adventure AUDIO: Storm Warning, he had been dropping hints of a friendship with Shelley, but that relationship had never been depicted until this story.

This story is notable for the fact that the Eighth Doctor acknowledges comics, prose and audio continuities. As of 2013, it is the first and only story to explicitly and unambiguously combine the continuities of these three media.

The story was originally released as part of the 2009 omnibus AUDIO: The Company of Friends. In October 2011, to tie in with a new series of audio dramas featuring Mary as a companion, Big Finish released Mary's Story as a limited-time, standalone download.

Publisher's summary

Switzerland, 1816: at the Villa Diodati, Lord Byron's house guests tell each other tales to curdle the blood and quicken the beatings of the heart. With a monster on the loose outside, young Mary Shelley isn't short of inspiration.

Plot

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor - Paul McGann
• Mary Shelley - Julie Cox
• Percy Shelley - Anthony Glennon
• Lord Byron - Robert Forknall
• John Polidori - Ian Hallard
• Claire Clairmont - Katrina Cooke

References

• The Doctor cries out for Gemma, Destrii and Compassion to help him.
• The Doctor mentions some of his previous companions, seemingly in order: Ssard, Trix, Charley, Lucie, Alex, Todd and Rita.
• During their travels together, the Doctor and Mary met the Cybermen, the Axons and King Harold at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066.
• A future version of the Eighth Doctor names some of his previous companions all from different ranges of stories, such as Compassion (books), Lucie Miller (audios) and Destrii (comics), in one of the rare occasions in which the different continuities are acknowledged together.

Illustration featured in DWM 410.

• The Doctor shows dislike for Percy Shelley.

Notes

• This story was recorded on 30 and 31 October 2008.

Continuity

• The Doctor left his companions Samson and Gemma Griffin in Vienna before travelling with Mary, only to pick them up later. Samson and Gemma first appeared in AUDIO: Terror Firma. While they have yet to make a second audio appearance, they were depicted travelling with the Doctor in PROSE: The Long Midwinter and PROSE: Dear John.
• The future Doctor's TARDIS regenerates with the help of the present Doctor. It would later do so again in the aftermath of his regeneration into his eleventh incarnation. (TV: The Eleventh Hour)
• The Doctor uses a small green crystal to regenerate the TARDIS. It is similar, if not identical, to the one used in TV: Rise of the Cybermen.
• The future Doctor recalls that he and Mary encountered the Cybermen in Vienna on 11 September 1873. (AUDIO: The Silver Turk)
• The future Doctor claims that he and Mary had met Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066. The First Doctor and his companions Vicki Pallister and Steven Taylor thwarted a plot by the Doctor's fellow renegade Time Lord, the Monk, to change the outcome of the battle in the Saxons' favour by thwarting an invasion of northern England by the Vikings. (TV: The Time Meddler) Furthermore, during his sixth incarnation, he and Peri Brown met Harold who was operating under the alias of "Hereward the Wake" in the aftermath of the battle. (PROSE: The Real Hereward)
• The future Doctor recalls his former companions Gemma Griffin (AUDIO: Terror Firma), Charley Pollard (AUDIO: Storm Warning), Ssard (COMIC: Descendance), Compassion (PROSE: Interference - Book One), Trix MacMillan (PROSE: Time Zero), Destrii (COMIC: Ophidius), Lucie Miller (AUDIO: Blood of the Daleks) and his great-grandson Alex Campbell (AUDIO: An Earthly Child).
• The Fifth Doctor previously expressed a desire to meet Mary's husband Percy Shelley. (AUDIO: Castle of Fear)

Footnotes