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Power Play (audio story)

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Power Play was the fifth story release in the third series of The Lost Stories, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was adapted by Gary Hopkins, from his original script, and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, Nicola Bryant as Peri Brown and Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield.

Publisher's summary

It's been many years since Victoria Waterfield travelled through time and space fighting monsters and dictators. Now she's back on Earth fighting for the future of the planet. But are her environmental campaigns so far removed from those former adventures in the vortex?

As trucks carrying nuclear waste start to vanish into the air, her friends are kidnapped by a dangerous alien police force and a nuclear power plant runs dangerously close to meltdown...Victoria spies a familiar blue box.

The Doctor. After all this time, the Doctor has come back.

And now...Victoria Waterfield is going to kill him...

Plot

Part one

Victoria and David follow a waste truck which disappears into thin air and head back to Marion Tudor's demonstration outside of Matthew Dysart's nuclear power planet in the English countryside to tell her what they have seen. On the way, Victoria spots the TARDIS and gets David to stop the Jeep so that she can investigate, hoping to be reunited with the Second Doctor and Jamie after several decades. She bangs on the door, but Leiss and Weska of the Pleyarec police capture the two of them with a stasis net and imprison them, believing David to be the Doctor.

The Doctor and Peri wake up on the floor of the control room and deduce that they must have been knocked out by an external attack by the Pleyarec, whom the Doctor believed he had managed to escape after a tumultuous journey trying to avoid them. They find the unattended Jeep outside and meet Marion, who is looking for Victoria and David and invites the two of them for tea at the protestors' camp. There, she and Sean explain that they are protesting Dysart's use of a transuranic element at the plant. When an earthquake hits, the Doctor declares that the plant is going into meltdown.

Part two

The earthquake subsides as the Doctor, Peri, Marion and Sean begin to drive away, so Marion tries to arrange a meeting with Dysart to discuss the incident and succeeds only in getting one with his assistant, Dominic, who tells her and Peri that nothing went wrong at the plant. Marion leaves and Dominic gives Peri a tour so that she can provide an objective report to placate the protestors, apparently taking a liking to her upon learning that she is a recently-arrived traveller. When she tries to leave, Dominic stuns her.

The Doctor and Sean investigate the disappearing waste trucks and are almost hit by one when it appears out of nowhere, after which they go to the TARDIS to examine mud splattered by the vehicle and find Ediacara biota, an example of prehistoric life. Returning to the camp, the Doctor is reunited with Victoria, who has been released under hypnosis to identify the Doctor since Leiss learnt that David was human, and promises to talk to her later given that she does not recognise him. He breaks into the plant in search of Peri and finds that the waste trucks are controlled remotely.

Dominic captures the Doctor.

to be completed

Part three

to be added

Part four

to be added

Cast

Crew

Worldbuilding

  • Peri is opposed to nuclear power and brings up Three Mile Island.
  • According to the Pleyarec Dominion's galactic classification system, the Sol System is in Sector 12. The Pleyarec police officers Collector Leiss and Constable Weska refer to the Doctor as "the Destroyer of Worlds."
  • Steve and Angela are protestors.
  • Sean mentions Blue Peter.
  • The Doctor discovers a living specimen of Ediacara biota, a life form which lived during the Cambrian era, approximately 500,000,000 years earlier.
  • Marion refers to the Pleyarec as "Godzilla's grandkids."
  • Peri compares Leiss to Officer Dibble from Top Cat.
  • Dominic has created a time corridor linking his office in the nuclear power plant to Earth in circa 500,000,000 BC.
  • The Doctor describes the Terrible Zodin as "a devastating diva of dissimulation, the queen of corruption and chicanery."

Notes

  • This is the first time that Deborah Watling has reprised her role as Victoria for Big Finish Productions outside of The Companion Chronicles.
  • This is an adaptation of a script for an unproduced TV story called Meltdown. (BFX: Power Play)
  • This story was recorded on 20 and 21 April 2011 at The Moat Studios.
  • This story was originally released on CD and download.

Continuity

External links