The Calendar Man (audio story)
The Calendar Man was the first story of The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written AK Benedict, performed by Jacob Dudman and featured the Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond.
Publisher's summary
Answering a cry for help, the Doctor and Amy arrive on a misty colony world – but nobody thinks anything is wrong. Nobody, except for one young woman, hiding in shadows and scribbling in her notebook.
Soon, Amy is on the trail of missing colonists, while the Doctor strides into the fog in search of a fairy-tale.
But time is running out, and the Calendar Man is flicking through the pages of their lives...
Plot
The Doctor and Amy return to the TARDIS after surviving an attack from a giant cephalopod and receive a message from a young woman. She asks for help as she is the only one in her colony noticing people going missing and, as a ticking from the message continues to reverberate around the console room, the Doctor and Amy agree to help.
Arriving in an unfinished and unseasonably foggy city on Ryklan, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to follow the now-imperceptible ticking. He and Amy meet Erla Farah and use the psychic paper to pose as agents of the Far Council and learn that Olivia Pamiec has been claiming that people's relatives have died. They continue to follow the signal to a hospital where the receptionist, Gloria, has not yet noticed that the clock behind her is moving far too fast.
The Doctor and Amy find mist covering a bedbound patient, Marcus Haddon, who asks them to apologise to a woman for him before hitting his flesh and passing away. The mist clears, revealing that his face and torso are charred and his chest is flattened; when Amy touches him, he crumbles away and a nurse sweeps his remains away. The Doctor and Amy protest but only they and Olivia, sat with a notebook, can remember that somebody was in the bed. She tells them that somebody has died every day for the past month and that they have to find the source of the fog. The ever-present ticking has faded with Marcus's death and the Doctor continues to follow it as it fades, telling Amy to go with Olivia.
Amy and Olivia go to the marketplace where Olivia tells Martina about her brother's death but, after a moment, Martina and everybody else believe that she is and has always been an only child. Olivia then takes Amy to the officers' quarters and shows her that all evidence of First Officer Alan Sigraff has been erased. They collect all of the officers' logbooks from their cabins, learning that Sigraff led a mutiny against the innocent Captain Edith Medina, and find Marcus's confession that he stole money from Martina's safe.
The Doctor follows the ticking into the marshlands and encounters an invisible entity which claims to know what is written upon his hearts. He meets with Amy and Olivia and, upon learning that the logbooks contain confessions and mentions of the mutiny, decides that they will visit Captain Medina in prison. During the conversation, he realises that the people are being killed by the Calendar Man, a figure from Time Lord mythology who decides if people have lived well and, if not, writes them out of history and into his book. Should he convict an innocent person, he will die.
The Doctor goes to confront the Calendar Man, a tall, thin man who emerges from the mist with his book and asks him to submit to his judgement to save the humans. He agrees in return for everybody's memories being returned should the Calendar Man be unable to convict him; the Calendar Man looks into the Doctor's past and, eventually, the Doctor pleads guilty but refuses to write his true name in the book. Olivia signs her name in the Doctor's place and the Doctor tells him to kill Olivia and thus end his own life or to sign the book himself and live on in myth and memory. He chooses the latter and turns to ash.
With the Calendar Man dead, everybody's memories return and Amy realises that Olivia is Sigraff's daughter. Olivia says that her place is here for now, but that she would one day like to join the Doctor on his adventures. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS with Amy and locks the Calendar Man's book away in a cabinet at the back of the library. Faintly, he can still hear the sound of fluttering pages and ticking.
Cast
- The Narrator / The Doctor - Jacob Dudman
- Olivia - Eleanor Crooks
Worldbuilding
- The Doctor suggests they have tea and read newspapers.
- Marcus Haddon made cakes in the catering facility but wanted to be a librarian.
- Martina sells bread and cake.
- The Doctor eats a cheese and pickle sandwich.
- The Doctor jokes that he left his glockenspiel at home.
- Alan Sigraff was proud and rarely talked unless it was in his own best interests to do so. Olivia stopped using his surname after he left her and began using her mother's.
- When the Calendar Man judges the Doctor's first incarnation, the Doctor sees everything from orange skies to lost friends and enemies.
Notes
- The Calendar Man was the last story in The Eleventh Doctor Chronicles to be recorded. It was recorded on 2 May 2018.
Continuity
- The Calendar Man mentions that the Doctor is in his last incarnation. (TV: The Time of the Doctor)
External links
- Official The Calendar Man page at bigfinish.com
