The Reaping (audio story)
The Reaping (audio story) was a 2006 Big Finish audio play featuring Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant.
It was notable for featuring significant details about Peri's life in Baltimore, Maryland, and was, at least from the perspective of Peri's mother, a direct sequel to DW: Planet of Fire. It also began a loose trilogy featuring a "future", time-traveling band of Mondasian Cybermen that had some commonality with the Cybus Industries Cybermen that had recently been featured in the BBC Wales version of Doctor Who.
Publisher's Summary
On the morning of 9 May 1984, Peri woke up. She was expecting to spend the day relaxing in Lanzarote and, that evening, leave her mother and stepfather to go travelling with some guys she'd only just met.
But things don't always go as expected as her friends and family discover when, four months later, she returns home having travelled further than anyone could have imagined.
Meanwhile her friend, Katherine Chambers, mourns her father and Peri finds herself meeting some other familiar faces.
Cast
- The Doctor - Colin Baker
- Peri - Nicola Bryant
- Janine Foster - Claudia Christian
- Anthony Chambers - Stuart Milligan
- Kathy Chambers - Jane Perry
- Nate Chambers - Jeremy Lindsay-Taylor
- Daniel Woods - Vincent Pirillo
- Lt. Doyle - John Schwab
- Mrs van Gysegham - Denise Bryer
- Natalie Hamilton - Allison Karaynes
- Cybermen - Nicholas Briggs
References
- Miami Vice is name-checked as a television show that was "new" to the Chambers family.
Notes
- The phrase '86,87' may be a reference to the Big Finish number for this story (number 86) and that of The Gathering (number 87), both by Joseph Lidster.
- The "futuristic Cybermen" in this story are realized in ways that seem homages to the then-recent Rise of the Cybermen / Age of Steel. Though definitely related to Mondasian Cybermen, these Cybermen use ear pods to influence un-converted Humans, and they make a similar "stomping" sound to the "Pete's World" Cybermen.
Continuity
- This story is resolved by the solution to The Tenth Planet – the destruction of Mondas. The original Cybermen of that story are briefly used.
- Janine Foster, Peri's mother, is both introduced and killed in this story. The young Katherine Chambers is also introduced here, who goes on to be the central guest character in The Gathering.
- Peri departs the TARDIS for an unspecified period of time — but it's long enough to re-enroll in university. She rejoins the Doctor when her mother is murdered. There is no indication that she had any contact with the Doctor between leaving and rejoining him.
- The Gogglebox — a vast library system inside the Moon — was introduced here, later seen in The Gathering.
Timeline
The Reaping had a complicated timeline. Different characters experienced it in different ways.
- For Janine Foster (and Mrs. van Gysegham), it occured after DW: Planet of Fire and before The Gathering.
- For the Sixth Doctor and Peri, it occured before the Fifth Doctor adventure BFA: The Gathering and Peri's experiences in The Veiled Leopard, two adventures that occurred simultaneously.
- From the Doctor and Peri's perspective, relative to adventures featuring the Cybermen, it occurred after Attack of the Cybermen and The Tenth Planet — but for Earth's inhabitants, it occurred before.
