Love and War (audio story)
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Love and War was the first story in Big Finish Productions' Novel Adaptations range. It was adapted by Jacqueline Rayner from the novel of the same name by Paul Cornell and featured Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, Sophie Aldred as Ace and Lisa Bowerman as Bernice Summerfield.
It was created to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the novel's release.
Publisher's summary
On a planet called Heaven, all hell is breaking loose.
Heaven is a cemetery for both humans and Draconians — a final place of rest for those lost during wartime. The Doctor arrives on a trivial mission — to find a book, or so he says — and Ace, wandering around Joycetown, becomes involved with a charismatic Traveller called Jan.
But the Doctor is strenuously opposed to the romance. What is he trying to prevent? Is he planning some more deadly game connected with the coffins revered by the mysterious Church of Vacuum and the unusual Arch that marks the location of a secret building below ground?
Archaeologist Bernice Summerfield thinks so. Her destiny is inextricably linked with that of the Doctor, but even she may not be able to save Ace from the Time Lord's plans.
This time, has the Doctor gone too far?
Plot
to be added
Cast
- The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
- Ace - Sophie Aldred
- Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
- Jan Rydd - James Redmond
- Máire Mab Finn - Riona O'Connor
- Roisa McIlnery - Aysha Kala
- Christopher - Ela Gaworzewska
- Brother Phaedrus - Bernard Holley
- Audrey McShane - Maggie Ollerenshaw
- Clive Aubrey - Christopher Allen
- Julian Milton - James Unsworth
- Piers Gavenal - Scott Handcock
- Death - Charlie Hayes
- Eros - Peter Sheward
Uncredited Cast
- Weather forecaster - Paul Cornell
Worldbuilding
- Ace attends the funeral of her friend Julian Milton in Perivale in 1993.
- The Doctor and Ace both refer to Little Jackie Paper from the song "Puff, the Magic Dragon".
- Heaven is located in the space between the Earth and Draconian Empires.
- Given that the Church of Vacuum believe that the universe is an accident and everything is meaningless, Ace compares them to the Goth subculture of her own time.
- Benny refers to the Isley Brothers. The Doctor claims that their best song was "This Old Heart of Mine".
- Ace's mother named her after Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz, as that was her maternal grandmother's favourite film.
- Benny mentions the Rosetta Stone.
- Ace refers to the Hoothi as the "giant mushroom monster".
- The Doctor mentions Jimi Hendrix.
- Ace was unaware that Julian was gay. However, he came out to her mother.
Notes
- This adaptation was the first audio drama to feature the Doctor, Ace and Bernice Summerfield since The Dark Flame in March 2003. In the interim, the Doctor and Bernice appeared together in The Final Amendment, Benny's Story (featuring the Eighth Doctor) and Bernice Summerfield and the Criminal Code.
- The prelude to the story, originally printed in Doctor Who Magazine 192, was recorded and released on the bonus disc and as a free podcast.
- Benny's costume on the CD cover is the same here as was depicted on the original novel's cover.
- The CD comes with a reversible cover: one side is styled as a Doctor Who release with no number, and the other as part of the Big Finish Bernice Summerfield series, again with no number.
- After AUDIO: The Burning Prince, this is the second Big Finish audio drama released in as many months to feature a pyrokinetic character, namely Jan Rydd.
- Big Finish ran a poll on Facebook where fans could vote on the best Big Finish Doctor Who audio of 2012, which this audio drama won. It was subsequently put on sale at half price for 48 hours.
- This audio drama was recorded on 28 and 29 January 2012 at the Moat Studios.
- This is the first Big Finish audio drama to adapt a Doctor Who novel in which the Doctor has not been removed (see AUDIO: Birthright and Just War). It also marks the first time that one of the DWM preludes has been dramatised.
- This was the first Big Finish adaptation of a Virgin New Adventures novel since Dragon's Wrath in 2000.
Deviations from the original novel
- The relationship between Ace and Jan is less developed than in the original novel.
- The scenes of the Doctor encountering the military are excised.
- The Doctor uses a sonic screwdriver, whereas this was absent in the original novel. It was destroyed in TV: The Visitation, but reappeared in PROSE: The Pit.
- The character Paul Magrs was omitted.
Continuity
- Several months before the Seventh Doctor and Ace's arrival on Heaven, the Travellers, including Jan Rydd, Máire Mab Finn, Roisa McIlnery and Christopher were able to look into their future using Puterspace and learned that three-quarters would soon die. Death referred to the time travellers as Time's Champion and his steward respectively. At the same time, Clive Aubrey believed that he saw a new planet in the sky while drunk. (AUDIO: Prelude Love and War)
- Ace refers to the Daleks' use of time travel. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
- Máire tells Ace that she was once a Dalek Killer. (COMIC: Abslom Daak... Dalek Killer) She uses a Dalek gunstick as a weapon. (TV: The Daleks)
- Although this is Bernice Summerfield's first encounter with the Doctor from her perspective, the same is not true of him. The Sixth Doctor and his companion Evelyn Smythe had met Benny and Irving Braxiatel on a dig conducted by Irving's collection. The Sixth Doctor remained completely ignorant of the fact that Benny would later travel with him. (AUDIO: The 100 Days of the Doctor) It can be assumed the archaeologist did not reveal this information to him to avoid disrupting the Web of Time. For the same reason, the Doctor does not reveal to Benny that he has previously met her future self.
- Benny tells the Doctor that her father Isaac Summerfield, an admiral in the Spacefleet of the Earth Empire, disappeared during a battle with the Daleks and was assumed to have been killed. She would later discover that his ship, the Tisiphone, had fallen through a time rift and was transported, along with its surviving crew, to Earth space in November 1963. The Doctor, Benny, Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej met him in the village of Little Caldwell, England in 1983. (PROSE: Return of the Living Dad)
- Whilst in Puterspace, the Doctor experiences his worst memory, namely his third incarnation spending ten years dying in the TARDIS while travelling through the Time Vortex, and refers to his former companion Sarah Jane Smith, (TV: Planet of the Spiders) while Ace meets an illusory version of her mother Audrey McShane. This is Ace's third encounter with her (in some form or another) since she began her travels with the Doctor. She previously met her as a baby in Maiden's Point in 1943 (TV: The Curse of Fenric) and as a toddler in London on 8 May 1945. (AUDIO: Casualties of War)
- Audrey refers to Ace's younger brother Liam McShane. Several years earlier in her personal timeline, Ace was reunited with Liam in San Antonio on Ibiza on 14 May 1997. (AUDIO: The Rapture)
- Ace mentions her maternal grandmother Kathleen Dudman, whom she likewise met in Maiden's Point in 1943. (TV: The Curse of Fenric) That was the first time that Ace met her grandmother as she died in 1973, when Ace was only three years old. (AUDIO: Night Thoughts)
- Ace refers to being transported to Iceworld in the far future by a time storm. (TV: Dragonfire)
- The Doctor mentions that he has a model train set somewhere in the TARDIS. (PROSE: Model Train Set, Vampire Science, Genocide) The Fifth Doctor claimed that he had wanted to drive a steam train as a boy. (TV: Black Orchid)
- The Doctor tells Benny that he is what the monsters have nightmares about. The Tenth Doctor would later tell the young Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson the same thing in 1727. (TV: The Girl in the Fireplace)
- The Doctor refers to his former companion Dodo Chaplet, (TV: The Massacre) who he claims reminded him of his granddaughter Susan Foreman. (TV: An Unearthly Child) Ace has never heard of her, only knowing the word dodo "as in the the expression 'dead as a...'" Dodos are, in fact, a well known extinct bird. The Doctor had found examples of surviving Dodos on two occasions, one time before this adventure, one time after. (COMIC: The Didus Expedition, PROSE: The Last Dodo)
- The Doctor initiates telepathic contact with Benny. (TV: The Three Doctors et al.)
- After leaving the TARDIS, Ace joined the the Earth Empire's Spacefleet. She fought the Daleks as well as other aggressive species. Three years later, combat-hardened and cynical, she resumed travelling in the TARDIS with the Doctor and Benny. (PROSE: Deceit)
- Benny would visit Heaven once again in the aftermath of the invasion of the Braxiatel Collection by the Daleks and the Fifth Axis in the early 27th century. (AUDIO: Death and the Daleks)
- While in the Land of Fiction library, Ace would later find a fictionalised version of these events in the form of a novel entitled Love and War. (PROSE: Conundrum)
- An alternative version of the Doctor was able to save the Travellers. (PROSE: So Vile a Sin)
External links
- Official Love and War page at bigfinish.com
- DisContinuity for Love and War at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide
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