Winter of the Demon (audio story)
Winter of the Demon was the third story in the audio anthology In the Bleak Midwinter, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Roy Gill and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, India Fisher as Charlotte Pollard and Jaye Griffiths as Lady Audacity Montague.
Publisher's summary
The TARDIS brings the travellers to Victorian Edinburgh. Industrialist Donald Shaw plans to transform the city with electric light, but people are dying, found horribly burned...
What ancient power has Shaw summoned? Can the Doctor prevent the Winter of the Demon?
Plot
The TARDIS materialises in Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh in the 19th century and the Doctor, Charley and Audacity learn from a newspaper of a series of inexplicable deaths for which the season has been named the Winter of the Demon. The Doctor visits the mortuary and disagrees with Joe Coghill's death being put down to electrocution rather than intense heat, believing that he might have disturbed something in the tunnels beneath Calton Hill where he was installing cabling and found an ancient coin.
Deciding to investigate Coghill's employer, Charley and Audacity go to an Edinburgh Power Corporation party with Captain Archie McClellan of the Scots Guard. Audacity meets Maggie MacKenzie, an archaeologist, and Charley manages to charm Sir Donald Shaw into allowing her and her friends to stay at the party despite them not having been invited. When the Doctor arrives at the party, he questions Sir Donald about the Edinburgh Power Corporation's connection to each of the deaths and decides to investigate Maggie's dig at Cramond where other Roman coins have been found.
The next day, Charley and Archie look into the power station, which runs despite not seeming to receive any consignments of coal or wood, and are kicked out upon being discovered by Sir Donald. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Audacity meet with Maggie in Cramond and are shown a lioness-shaped grave guardian dating back to the Roman Empire. The lioness previously held a golden crown which Sir Donald, who funds the dig, has confiscated and Maggie shows her sketches of it to the Doctor, to whom the lioness seems familiar. The crown has two engravings, with one in Latin warning that its wearer will become the body of Sol Invictus, the unconquerable sun.
The second engraving is in hieroglyphs which the translation circuit does not decipher. Maggie's rubbing of the hieroglyphs is inexplicably pulled towards her fireplace and singed, but the flame triggers a partial translation which shows the Doctor a glimpse of something old before the lioness comes to life and searches for the crown.
to be completed
Cast
- The Doctor - Paul McGann
- Charlotte Pollard - India Fisher
- Audacity Montague - Jaye Griffiths
- Sir Donald Shaw - David Robb
- Captain Archie McClellan - John Scougall
- Maggie MacKenzie / Lioness - Lucy Goldie
Worldbuilding
- Joe Coghill was the seventh victim. He was a labourer at the Cowgate and was installing cabling in a tunnel beneath Calton Hill when he died.
- The Doctor describes Joseph Bell as a man with a forensic mind.
- Donald Shaw belongs to the Edinburgh Power Corporation.
- Shaw mentions Saturnalia.
- Cramond is a coastal village where Maggie has been working.
- Alan and Thomas work with Maggie.
- The Doctor mentions that he and Romana had seen the Lioness in the National Museum and that she always liked cats.
Notes
to be added
Continuity
- The Doctor mentions that the TARDIS lends a hand in translation. (TV: The Masque of Mandragora [+]Loading...["The Masque of Mandragora (TV story)"])
- The Cloister Bell tolls. (TV: Logopolis [+]Loading...["Logopolis (TV story)"])
External links
- Official Winter of the Demon page at bigfinish.com
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