The Dead Star (audio story)

The Dead Star
Doctor:	Second Doctor
Companion(s):	Ben, Polly
Main enemy:	Chicxulub Club
Main setting:	London and Auden White House, August 1968 Montoo Station, 2060s
Key crew
Writer:	Kate Orman
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Steve Foxon
Sound:	Steve Foxon
Read by:	Michael Troughton
Cover by:	Claudia Gironi
Release details
Release date:	5 January 2023
Format:	MP3 Download; 6 parts
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-83868-643-7
The Audio Novels
← Previous	Emancipation of the Daleks
Next →	Prisoners of London

The Dead Star was the fourth release in The Audio Novels. It was written by Kate Orman and featured the Second Doctor, Ben Jackson and Polly Wright.

Publisher's summary

It's 1968, and the Earth has one month to live.

The Doctor, Ben, and Polly race to escape a frightening lifeless London. But as the city folds in on itself, it is a warning of a far greater danger. Someone has misused terrifyingly advanced technology to make Earth the target of a primordial black hole - a tiny, invisible world-killer. Struggling to avert the catastrophe, the Doctor must send his companions on dangerous undercover missions.

Can the Doctor and his friends prevent the planet Earth from being erased from space and time?

Plot

Part one

to be added

Part two

to be added

Part three

to be added

Part four

to be added

Part five

to be added

Part six

to be added

Characters

• Second Doctor
• Ben Jackson
• Polly Wright
• Dr Anne Fields
• Professor Scapinelli
• Professor Christoffel
• Felicity Christoffel
• Cargill Sou
• Sister Diphylleia
• Tolman
• Novak

to be completed

Crew

• Cover Art - Claudia Gironi
• Executive Producers - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
• Music and Sound Design - Steve Foxon
• Producer - David Richardson
• Script Editor - Roland Moore
• Writer - Kate Orman

Worldbuilding

• Cygnus XI is the closest known black hole to Earth, located 6000 light-years away.
• The Astronauticus robot was manufactured on 8 April 2064.
• The Doctor uses a tuning fork he mistakenly acquired after a chat with Clara Schumann in the 19th century.
• The Chicxulub Club are named after the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico.
• Auden White House is a Chicxulub Club base located outside of London.
• The black hole Ra-atouieUnsure of this spelling, I couldn't find an actual Egyptian goddess with this name is located in the Kuiper Belt and is named after and Egyptian sun goddess.
• Those aboard the Montoo station are international ("From Venezuela to Sudan") and interplanetary.
• Sister Diphylleia is a geochemical prospector from Titan.
• Tolman is a palaeontologist from Lunar.
• Scaponelli is from the Uranian Moon Titania.
• The Doctor and Scaponelli's discussion of the physics of the black hole includes reference to Fourier transforms and Zipf's law.
• Sagittarius A* is the name of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.

Notes

Original cover.

• The cover originally featured the 2018 logo, which had been used on Big Finish releases since July 2018. It was updated to feature the 2022 logo before its release.
• The story ends without an explanation for exactly what Ra-atouie is. In narration, the Doctor does think up several hypotheses though. These include:
  • A probe from another universe.
  • A lifeform which thrives in extreme gravity.
  • A huge computer program written at the planck level on the event horizon.
  • A tool or gateway.

Continuity

• While living on Earth in 1968, Polly tries (and fails) to track down Dodo Chaplet. The two had previously met in TV: The War Machines.
• The TARDIS materialises in Fitzroy Square in 2017, the same location where Ben and Polly had first boarded the TARDIS back in 1966 in TV: The War Machines.

External links

• Official The Dead Star page at bigfinish.com