The Dead Star (audio story)
The Dead Star was the fourth release in The Audio Novels. It was written by Kate Orman and featured the Second Doctor, Ben Jackson and Polly Wright.
Publisher's summary
It's 1968, and the Earth has one month to live.
The Doctor, Ben, and Polly race to escape a frightening lifeless London. But as the city folds in on itself, it is a warning of a far greater danger. Someone has misused terrifyingly advanced technology to make Earth the target of a primordial black hole - a tiny, invisible world-killer. Struggling to avert the catastrophe, the Doctor must send his companions on dangerous undercover missions.
Can the Doctor and his friends prevent the planet Earth from being erased from space and time?
Plot
Part one
The TARDIS is caught in a time corridor and lands on Carnaby Street in 1968 instead of Ben and Polly's home time of 1966. The newly-regenerated Doctor and his companions find that the city is deserted and the world is at a 90 degree angle, allowing them to walk on the walls of the empty shops. At the end of the row of shops, they are able to step onto the ground and see that various other laws of physics have broken down, leading the Doctor to the conclusion that they are in a singularity created by the TARDIS entering the corridor and that they will not be able to leave safely until they know the Vortex constants.
Ben and Polly notice that there is no Sun despite there being light and that the city resembles a child's playset or a dream landscape, with office buildings sliced down the middle and Big Ben on its side and the size of a mountain. They also feel like they are being watched by something in the sky. The trio take shelter when Big Ben moves towards them and then find themselves in another world which the Doctor explains is another bubble which has taken the place of the previous bubble. He suggests that they split up to find the pathological bubble in which nothing makes sense and which will allow him to determine the singularity's structure constants.
The second bubble pops like the first and the TARDIS, sitting in Fitzroy Square where Ben and Polly first entered it, is apparently lost, but the Doctor believes that it was a copy and leads his companions into the London Underground where they find the pathological bubble. The trio hear a roar and experience a suspension of the laws of physics. The Doctor manages to get Ben and Polly out after getting the measurements he needs by bouncing a rubber ball and they go to find the real TARDIS, the Doctor now knowing how to leave and calculating the stability of the bubbles using an abacus. The bubble begins to fall apart as they reach Carnaby Street, but they manage to get into the ship and dematerialise.
Reasoning that the time corridor was likely created by scientists out of their depth and that the Earth could be in danger, the Doctor pilots the TARDIS down the corridor to confront them and they arrive at the London College of Natural Sciences in August 1968. There, the Doctor gets Polly a job as lecturer Dr Anne Fields' secretary and Ben a job at the Chicxulub Club, a club which Dr Fields, aspires to join. Polly learns from Dr Fields that she believes there to be a tenth planet in the solar system which is heading towards Earth, but Professor Christoffel of the Chicxulub Club does not accept her findings. The Doctor eavesdrops on Polly and Dr Fields at lunch before introducing himself and asking to have a look at Dr Fields' calculations.
The Doctor deduces that the approaching planet is actually a black hole and he and Polly are attacked by a shape-changing robot after leaving the university. They are saved by Ben, who is driving a limousine for Professor Gerro Scapinelli and smashes into the robot before picking them both up. He drops Scapinelli off at the university and she gives Polly a glass tube filled with a blue liquid, the taste of which the Doctor recognises but cannot identify, to use in an emergency. The trio are surprised by Scapinelli's lack of a reaction to the robot and decide to go to the ecology department's offices whilst its members are all at a Chicxulub Club meeting.
to be completed
Part two
to be added
Part three
to be added
Part four
to be added
Part five
to be added
Part six
to be added
Characters
- Second Doctor
- Ben Jackson
- Polly Wright
- Dr Anne Fields
- Professor Scapinelli
- Professor Christoffel
- Felicity Christoffel
- Cargill Sou
- Sister Diphylleia
- Tolman
- Novak
to be completed
Crew
- Cover Art - Claudia Gironi
- Executive Producers - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
- Music and Sound Design - Steve Foxon
- Producer - David Richardson
- Script Editor - Roland Moore
- Writer - Kate Orman
Worldbuilding
- Ben is looking forward to eating an English breakfast with tea and fish and chips.
- The TARDIS food machine does not make a decent pie and mash in Ben's opinion.
- The Doctor bounces a rubber ball.
- Polly wears a watch.
- Cygnus XI is the closest known black hole to Earth, located 6000 light-years away.
- The Astronauticus robot was manufactured on 8 April 2064.
- The Doctor uses a tuning fork he mistakenly acquired after a chat with Clara Schumann in the 19th century.
- The Chicxulub Club are named after the Chicxulub Crater in Mexico.
- Auden White House is a Chicxulub Club base located outside of London.
- The black hole Ra-atouieUnsure of this spelling, I couldn't find an actual Egyptian goddess with this name is located in the Kuiper Belt and is named after and Egyptian sun goddess.
- Those aboard the Montoo station are international ("From Venezuela to Sudan") and interplanetary.
- Sister Diphylleia is a geochemical prospector from Titan.
- Tolman is a palaeontologist from Lunar.
- Scaponelli is from the Uranian Moon Titania.
- The Doctor and Scaponelli's discussion of the physics of the black hole includes reference to Fourier transforms and Zipf's law.
- Sagittarius A* is the name of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.
Notes
- The cover originally featured the 2018 logo, which had been used on Big Finish releases since July 2018. It was updated to feature the 2022 logo before its release.
- The story ends without an explanation for exactly what Ra-atouie is. In narration, the Doctor does think up several hypotheses though. These include:
- A probe from another universe.
- A lifeform which thrives in extreme gravity.
- A huge computer program written at the planck level on the event horizon.
- A tool or gateway.
Continuity
- While living on Earth in 1968, Polly tries (and fails) to track down Dodo Chaplet. The two had previously met in TV: The War Machines.
- The TARDIS materialises in Fitzroy Square in 2017, the same location where Ben and Polly had first boarded the TARDIS back in 1966 in TV: The War Machines.
External links
- Official The Dead Star page at bigfinish.com
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