Unregenerate! (audio story)

Unregenerate!
Doctor:	Seventh Doctor
Companion(s):	Mel
Main setting:	London, 1957 and 2007
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	David A. McIntee
Director:	John Ainsworth
Music:	Ian Potter
Post production:	Ian Potter
Illustrator:	Chris Gregory (CGI imagery)
Cover by:	Lee Binding
Release details
Release number:	70
Release date:	June 2005
Format:	4 Episodes on 2 CDs
Production code:	7D/A
ISBN:	ISBN 1-84435-158-0
Big Finish Doctor Who audio stories
← Previous	Three's a Crowd
Next →	The Council of Nicaea

Unregenerate! was the seventieth monthly Doctor Who audio story produced by Big Finish Productions. A Seventh Doctor story, it is the first of two Big Finish stories set explicitly and immediately after a Doctor's regeneration. The second is Psychodrome. Occurring in the wake of Time and the Rani, it is the Big Finish story which happens earliest in the Seventh Doctor's timeline. Moreover, it's likely the third Seventh Doctor story in all licensed fiction, behind only Rani and The Useful Pile. It provides an account of greater post-regenerative distress than was indicated in Rani, suggesting that the Doctor's sixth regeneration was at least as problematic as his previous two.

The story is also significant for its thematic connections to The Doctor's Wife. As in the 2011 story, Unregenerate! deals with the difficulties of transferring the consciousness of TARDISes into the brains of other species.

Publisher's summary

In a run-down asylum, screams echo in the halls as mysterious creatures roam, terrorising the staff. Patients complain of betrayal rather than illness, and no-one is quite what they seem.

Mel knows that the Doctor is the best person to find the answers — but she is stranded on Earth, and the TARDIS has returned without him...

Why does a medical facility need to be under armed guard? What procedures are the staff carrying out, and to what purpose? What is the price that must be paid for making an agreement with those who run the asylum?

As the answers begin to be uncovered, the Doctor finds that the past may yet come back to haunt him...

Plot

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
• Melanie Bush - Bonnie Langford
• Louis #2 - John Aston
• Rigan - Gail Clayton
• Johannes Rausch - Hugh Hemmings
• Shokhra - Sam Peter Jackson
• Professor Klyst - Jennie Linden
• The Cabbie - Toby Longworth
• Louis - Jamie Sandford

References

Books

• By the age of nine, Mel had read the entire canon of the Sherlock Holmes series.

Culture

• A BBC News bulletin on 15 October 1957 reports on the recent launch of Sputnik, Earth's first artificial satellite, by the Soviet Union.
• A BBC News bulletin reported in 2007 that the United States and United Kingdom governments were anticipating final victory in the Iraq War in the near future.

Time Lords

• Louis, Professor Klyst and Rigan are all Time Lords in the employ of the Celestial Intervention Agency. Rigan kills Louis with a staser-gun, triggering his regeneration into his second incarnation. Professor Klyst tells him that the first regeneration is always more painful than subsequent ones, suggesting that she was in at least her third incarnation.
• Rigan suggests taking the Doctor back to Gallifrey and repatriating him into Time Lord society, which the recently regenerated Louis describes as "a fate worse than death."
• The Time Lords use the Institute to study important scientific experiments.

Notes

• The title is taken from a Sixth Doctor line in Part One of TV: The Twin Dilemma.
• Chronologically, this is the earliest audio drama to feature the Seventh Doctor, excluding the Sixth Doctor's regeneration scene in The Brink of Death.
• This audio drama was recorded on 16 and 17 November 2004 at The Moat Studios.

Continuity

• The Doctor is still recovering from the effects of his sixth regeneration. (TV: Time and the Rani) The fact that the Doctor recently regenerated is confirmed by the presence of the lindos hormone in his system. (PROSE: The Twin Dilemma)
• The Doctor records a non-interactive TARDIS hologram for the benefit of Mel. Towards the end of his ninth incarnation, he would record another such hologram for the benefit of another temporally stranded companion, namely Rose Tyler. (TV: The Parting of the Ways) A hologram of the Tenth Doctor would later appear to Sally Sparrow and Larry Nightingale in the TARDIS console room (TV: Blink) whereas a hologram of the Eleventh Doctor subsequently appeared to the Doctor himself after he had been poisoned by River Song in 1938 (TV: Let's Kill Hitler).
• The Doctor mentions in his holographic recording that most circuitous routes are more interesting than straight lines. (TV: The Time Warrior)
• Mel tells the Cabbie that she has the "memory of an elephant." (TV: The Ultimate Foe, AUDIO: The One Doctor, TV: Time and the Rani)
• In his delirium, the Doctor claims that he can survive in the vacuum of space for a brief period of time. (TV: Nightmare of Eden, TV: Four to Doomsday, AUDIO: The Death Collectors, TV: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe)
• Mel mentions the Sixth Doctor's trial at the hands of the Time Lords. (TV: The Trial of a Time Lord)
• Mel mentions her recent encounter with the Rani on Lakertya and jokingly compares the TARDIS to an intergalactic taxi service given that the Doctor spent an appreciable amount of time returning the geniuses whom the Rani had kidnapped to their native eras. (TV: Time and the Rani)
• Klyst complains that she is starting to sound like the humans she works alongside, similar to Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen finding herself going "native" as Lord Mayor of Cardiff. (TV: Boom Town)

External links

• Official Unregenerate! page at bigfinish.com
• Unregenerate! at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• DisContinuity for Unregenerate! at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide