The Contingency Club (audio story)
The Contingency Club was the two hundred and twenty-second story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written Phil Mulryne and featured Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, Matthew Waterhouse as Adric, Sarah Sutton as Nyssa and Janet Fielding as Tegan Jovanka.
Publisher's summary
London, 1864 - where any gentleman befitting the title ‘gentleman’ belongs to a gentlemen’s club: The Reform, The Athenaeum, The Carlton, The Garrick... and, of course, The Contingency. Newly established in St James', The Contingency has quickly become the most exclusive enclave in town. A refuge for men of politics, men of science, men of letters. A place to escape. A place to think. A place to be free.
The first rule of the Contingency is to behave like a gentleman. The second is to pay no heed to its oddly identical servants. Or to the horror in its cellars. Or to the existence of the secret gallery on its upper floor... Rules that the Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan are all about to break.
Plot
Part one
The Doctor sets the TARDIS's coordinates for Heathrow, but Nyssa is no longer sure that Tegan wants to leave. After Tegan and Adric join them in the control room, arguing about the merits of Tegan's cassette player which the Doctor goes on to confiscate, the TARDIS shuts down and falls out of the Time Vortex, arriving in the Contingency Club in 1864. They go with Granville Wakefield to the drawing room and are surprised to find that they do not attract any attention and it is staffed by identical men named Edward.
George Augustus, a journalist, is unsuccessful at joining the Contingency Club and is approached by Marjorie Stonegood, who incorrectly assumes that he is a member and informs him of her father, an engineer who went missing after joining. Not being a member, Augustus is unable to help in her investigations and she says that she will have to resort to extreme measures.
Edward reports the presence of the Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan to Mr Peabody and the Red Queen, the latter of whom suspects that they might be spies and orders them to be gotten rid of immediately. Mr Peabody goes to the drawing room with a number of Edwards and attempts to detain the travellers, but Tegan fights back and manages to free the others and run. Whilst Adric and Nyssa run into Marjorie and escape with her, the Doctor and Tegan hide in a bedroom and are found by the Edwards, who prepare to throw them out of the third-storey window.
Part two
Mr Peabody stops the Edwards from throwing the Doctor and Tegan from the window and orders them to throw them out of the front door instead. Tegan lands on Augustus and he complains of a hurt ankle, so they escort him home and Tegan stays with him whilst the Doctor heads back to the club to look around the outside of the building, making him realise that the dimensions do not make sense. Wondering if something might be below the building, he asks a cabby to take him to the building site of the Metropolitan District Railway.
Having been admonished by the Red Queen for letting the travellers go, Mr Peabody sneaks into Augustus's house with an Edward whilst he is playing cards with Tegan and is soon discovered. He mesmerises Augustus to help get rid of the travellers and tells Tegan that she and her friends must die for having entered the club. He hands Augustus a knife and orders him to kill her.
Marjorie leads Adric and Nyssa through the kitchens and into the wine cellar where she explains that she came to the club in search of her father, whose map, which she has now misplaced, made her aware of the tunnel system by which she was able to enter the building. In the tunnels, they find dozens of baths full of Edwards in amniotic fluid and Nyssa decides to take samples. As she does so, the Edward that she is taking a sample from grabs her wrist and all of the ones start to wake up as well.
Part three
The Edwards, unsteady like newborns, manage to say "serve the Red Queen" and start making their way to the club. Adric, Nyssa and Marjorie arrive at the railway works and bump into the Doctor, who sends Nyssa to check on Tegan and returns with Adric and Marjorie through the tunnels to the club. They find that the Edwards are in possession of several boxes of dynamite and locate a dormant spaceship around which the club has been built.
Augustus reveals that he has been pretending to be mesmerised to confirm that Mr Peabody is actually Professor Lafayette, a stage illusionist, and orders him at gunpoint to take him and an unwilling Tegan to the Red Queen, whom he has been sent to defeat. Nyssa is captured by one of the Edwards whilst following them and brought inside, where Augustus gets control of the Edwards and orders them to take Nyssa and Traken to the cellar full of explosives.
The Red Queen accuses the Doctor and Adric of being sent to ruin her game and, after presenting a rifle, orders the two of them and Marjorie to stand against the wall. She explains that the explosives are a bargaining chip in her plan to overthrow Queen Victoria as part of a wager that she has with her brother.
Part four
The Red Queen belongs to the Contingency, a race of game-players, and that she is proving that she can take over Earth without the use of anachronistic technology, the presence of which would cause her ship to make a hyperspace jump. The Doctor hits a cricket ball at a steam-powered clock and runs with Adric and Marjorie in the confusion, but Adric only he and Marjorie are able to escape the ship before the door closes. In the club, Augustus forces the Doctor to take him and Mr Peabody to the Red Queen and attempts to detonate the explosives in the cellar when she refuses to concede the game, but Tegan, freed by Marjorie, has removed the blasting caps.
The Red Queen shoots Mr Peabody herself when Augustus tries to force her to concede by threatening his life and allows Augustus to run to her brother. With Mr Peabody dead, the Edwards, who were connected to his mind, start to degenerate, but Tegan gets one to order an evacuation before he dies. The Red Queen commands the Doctor to deliver her ultimatum to Queen Victoria in return for Adric's life, but he instead throws Tegan's cassette player into her hands and gets out of the ship with Adric, activating her ship's hyperspace jump. The ship vanishes with her inside and the club begins to collapse.
Augustus is left to die in the club by the Red Queen's brother, but the Doctor, Adric, Nyssa, Tegan and Marjorie manage to escape before the building is completely destroyed. Outside of the club, Marjorie's father now recognises her and agrees to help excavate the TARDIS, which deactivated itself to avoid triggering the Red Queen's ship, from the ruins. In the meantime, the Doctor suggests an extended stay in London, but Nyssa and Tegan feel that they have spent more than enough time in the 19th century.
Cast
- The Doctor - Peter Davison
- Adric - Matthew Waterhouse
- Nyssa - Sarah Sutton
- Tegan - Janet Fielding
- George Augustus - Clive Merrison
- Mr Peabody - Philip Jackson
- The Red Queen - Lorelei King
- Granville Wakefield / Cabby / Stonegood - Tim Bentinck
- Marjorie Stonegood / Computer - Alison Thea-Skot
- Edward / The Knave - Olly McCauley
Uncredited cast
- Club member 1 / Club member 2 - Tim Bentinck (BFX: The Contingency Club)
Crew
- Cover Art - Tom Webster
- Director - Barnaby Edwards
- Executive Producers - Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery
- Music and Sound Design - Andy Hardwick
- Producer - David Richardson
- Script Editor - Alan Barnes
- Writer - Phil Mulryne
Worldbuilding
- Tegan explains cassette players to Adric.
- Wakefield is a natural scientist.
- Augustus is a journalist.
- The portraits at the Whispering Gallery of Icaria Beta can talk.
- The Doctor reads The Pall Mall Gazette.
- The Doctor keeps Adric from drinking brandy.
- Tegan's cousins worked in blast mining in Australia.
- Tegan refers to Adric as "Pyjama Boy".
- Augustus invites Tegan to play Old Maid.
- Ludomania is another word for gambling addiction.
Notes
- This story was recorded on 13 and 14 June 2016 at the Moat Studios.
- This story was originally was released on CD and download.
Continuity
- Tegan refers to Adric's home planet Alzarius. (TV: Full Circle)
- The Doctor is still attempting to return Tegan to Heathrow Airport in 1981. (TV: Four to Doomsday, Kinda, The Visitation; AUDIO: Psychdrome, Iterations of I, The Star Men, Smoke and Mirrors)
- Tegan refers to the bubonic plague outbreak in England in 1666. (TV: The Visitation)
- Nyssa refers to Traken. (TV: The Keeper of Traken)
- The Doctor once again expresses a fondness for trains. (TV: Black Orchid)
- The Red Queen comments that the Doctor plays the fool but is extremely intelligent. Sharaz Jek later made a similar observation. (TV: The Caves of Androzani)
- The Doctor says that he "must dash". (TV: Time-Flight, The Five Doctors)
- The Red Queen says "You were expecting someone else?" (TV: The Caves of Androzani)
- The Doctor refers to perception filters. (TV: Everything Changes)
- The Doctor says he had a sonic screwdriver "until very recently". (TV: The Visitation)
- Nyssa is mistaken to have the surname O'Traken when she says her name is Nyssa of Traken. (AUDIO: Spare Parts)
External links
- Official The Contingency Club page at bigfinish.com
