Blood of the Time Lords (audio story)
Blood of the Time Lords was the first story of the eleventh series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Timothy X Atack and featured Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and James Dreyfus as the Master.
Publisher's summary
The book known as The Dischord Grimoire is an incredibly powerful tome, believed capable of altering the true passage of time itself. And the Doctor has it in the TARDIS.
Wanting to look into this mysterious opus further, he decides to take it to an old friend in The Recusary – a monastery-like retreat on a moon of Gallifrey.
But he's chosen an inauspicious time to arrive. Something else is visiting the Recusary. And this something hasn't brought a book with it...but death.
Plot
Part one
The Doctor walks around the TARDIS reciting poetry and, three miles from the console room, comes across a miscellaneous room and finds the Dischord Grimoire, a book supposedly capable of altering the true passage of time. He takes it to the smallest moon of Gallifrey for a second opinion as he is concerned about keeping objects of immense power on board and is led to the Recusary by Honourable Haku.
In the Shriving Chambers, the Master, disguised as a Cohort, chokes Honourable Ailgen and kills her with a device. Ansillon dictates a testament for the High Council, Keeper and Chief Librarian Elanora informing them of her sudden disappearance and resulting panic given that she is the third to vanish. He is interrupted by Elanora and told of the materialisation of an unauthorised TARDIS, which he tells her to investigate and move.
A fire breaks out in the library and the Doctor and Haku find themselves running in circles trying to flee. They run into Elanora and the Doctor knocks over the shelves like dominoes to dampen the flames, after which the Cohorts are able to put out what flames remain with buckets of water. Ansillon is forced to arrest the Doctor for abduction, murder and arson and send him to Gallifrey, but Haku suggests exposing him to the time winds in the meditation chambers to ensure that he tells the truth. Meanwhile, Elanora has the Cohorts deal with the damage caused to the books and the library.
The Doctor is escorted to the precipice by Cohorts and confesses that he is completely responsible for what has happened; he admits to starting the fire and killing the missing people by rewinding their timelines, all with the aim of destroying the cosmos.
Part two
The Doctor claims that he believes that sentient life is a failure due to the constant conflict in the universe and that the slate must be wiped clean. Ansillon orders everybody to leave and for the Doctor to be locked inside with two Cohorts whilst the Codal Office is contacted to deal with him. The Doctor has one of the Cohorts stand on the precipice and asks her whether she committed the murders, hoping that she would admit to it in the time winds; she does not.
Elanora has a Cohort carry a ledger for her and investigates a sound which the Cohort says could be the Mandelbrot, a mythological monster. She is surprised to find Eminent Sedanya and Honourable Loric engaged in research given their advanced age and climbs high in search of a pamphlet for Sedanya, but she cannot find it and sees that the two residents have vanished. In Loric's room, Sedanya tells him not to worry about the books they have been withdrawing being discovered as those that she withdraws are confidential due to her being close to death. If they are successful, however, the two of them will survive.
Ansillon summons Haku regarding a letter he has received from Castellan Spandrell, denying the Doctor's story of the President's assassination and the opening of the Eye of Harmony. Ansillon wonders if there has been a misunderstanding given how honest he knows the Doctor is, but Haku points out that the seals are sound and the order of business correct. The Doctor shouts for Ansillon and has Haku stand on the precipice and admit to the murders using a temporal extractor, seemingly proving that an extra-sensory pantropic field has been put in place.
One of the Cohorts takes several books to Loric, including one which he did not request, and reveals that he is the Master. He uses the extractor to kill Loric and take all of his knowledge. Meanwhile, Elanora reports to Ansillon that the ladder she was climbing was infinite, which should not be the case. The Doctor goes with her to investigate and realises that it could be a way of distracting a great many people. They look elsewhere and accidentally go through a revolving bookcase and find a room of forbidden texts guarded by the Mandelbrot.
Part three
The Doctor and Elanora are saved from the hidden room by Haku, who revolves the bookcase and, when asked, shows them to Loric's quarters. They find that Loric was killed by a temporal weapon moments ago and that his books have all disappeared, but the Doctor is arrested by Cohorts and taken to partake in the Codal Office's inquest before they can investigate further. Codal Thark questions Ansillon about the Doctor's character and the murders, a line of questioning which the Doctor interrupts to tell them that Loric has also been killed.
Elanora asks the Master, once again disguised as a Cohort, to present the tally of partial items recovered from the fire. When she becomes suspicious of him and asks why he mentioned the Mandelbrot earlier, he knocks her out with a book. She heads to Sedanya's rooms upon regaining consciousness.
On the stand, the Doctor has Sedanya confirm that all of the dead, bar Loric, were talented temporal engineers and that postulates that the fire was set to disguise what books were stolen from the Esoterica. He states that somebody is trying to build a Parenthesis Clock to alter history outside of a temporal bubble and, to defend himself, mentions how he has saved Gallifrey on at least two occasions. Thark, however, says that there are no such records and denies his claim that somebody has entered the Matrix to erase them.
Elanora interrupts the inquest with the missing books, all of which concern unlikely branches of time travel and reality manipulation and were found in a hidden compartment belonging to Ansillon. Before Ansillon is executed by dispersal chamber, he asks the Doctor to find the truth. The Doctor and Elanora join Haku in his chambers and, picking up on Haku having mentioned gibbons despite later saying that he had never visited Earth and his being absent from the inquest, the Doctor asks him who he really is. Haku reveals that he is the Master and has been using a hormonal regulator to disguise himself; with the Parenthesis Clock almost complete, he will be able to erase the Time Lords and become God.
Part four
Sedanya stops the Master from killing the Doctor and absorbing his knowledge as the wealth of his experiences could overload the device. She deactivates the perception field, revealing that they are inside the Master's TARDIS, and restrains the Doctor and Elanora before the Master turns on her and absorbs her. He creates a feedback loop to the console and leaves his captives to die in the imminent collapse. Thark opens the TARDIS and, upon learning that the Master has gone to the Parenthesis Clock, goes to join him and the Doctor and Elanora escape by burning their ropes on the wall where Sedanya was killed.
The Doctor and Elanora enter the hidden sanctum once again and simply walk through the Mandelbrot, which the Doctor realises is a mental projection of the Master's which he is no longer concentrating on. They also determine that the Master has built the Parenthesis Clock in the library due to its proximity to the Matrix, increasing the power of the device. The sanctum itself is located within the Matrix and the Master uses this to appear to them and reminds him of how they erased their names from history with a half-dismantled TARDIS and a link to the Matrix; this is what gave the Master the idea to create a Parenthesis Clock. He disappears, yanked to the completed clock by Thark, whom he shoots several times before throwing from a height.
The Doctor plans to distract the Master whilst Elanora messes with the levers to stop the clock, but the Master sees what they are doing and shoots Elanora before going to the containment chamber. With all of her regenerations used up during her career at the Celestial Intervention Agency, she dies, but not before telling the Doctor that the symbols on the clock face are the same as those in the Dischord Grimoire. The clock is failing and the Doctor follows the instructions in the Grimoire, a manual for the clock, to stop the impending disaster.
Having used the Parenthesis Clock to revive all that died and with the Master having fallen as the clock collapsed, the Doctor returns to the TARDIS and invites Elanor to join him, but she refuses. Ansillon bids him farewell and Ailgen chastises him for bringing her back to life as he dematerialises.
Cast
- The Doctor - Tom Baker
- The Master - James Dreyfus
- Elanora - Emma Noakes
- Ansillon - Adrian Lukis
- Eminent Sedanya - Annette Badland
- Codal Thark - Susan Kyd
- Cohort 1 / Honourable Ailgen - Jane Slavin
- Cohort 2 / Honourable Loric - Christopher Naylor
Worldbuilding
- The Doctor quotes Jabberwocky.
- In the miscellaneous room, the Doctor finds an etching by Michelangelo and the Dead Sea Scrolls, which he means to return at some point.
- Ansillon is Provost of the Recusary.
- Ansillon needs four copies of the testament: one for the High Council, one for the Keeper of the Matrix, one for Elanora and one for himself.
- Ansillon has had several identities, including: the solitary guardian of the Caves of Perdition; Ku'an Impe, Watchman of the Dark; Uba Danth, High Priest of the Riven Temple of the Splice.
- Honourable Ailgen was a temporal engineer.
- Elanora has not piloted a TARDIS since she was 403.
- The Cohorts wear blank wooden face masks.
- Councillor Mantron was found in possession of his own parallel dimension.
- Ansillon mentions Hendric the Improbable.
- Elanora finds a fragment of Wider Manifestations of the Mirror Universe as Discovered Through Fault Lines in Folded Space.
- Fall from the precipice is impossible thanks to Rassilon's Belt.
- Elanora finds a copy of History of Molecular Engineering.
- The Mandelbrot is a fairy story; it is said to be a blood-drinking humanoid bat creature with parchment wings, twenty eyes and breath like the fluttering of pages in a book.
- Honourable Moriel is a cryptozoologist.
- Chancellor Blaine wrote several failed theses.
- Portius was a librarian whom Sedanya and Loric remember fondly.
- Ansillon believes that Haku was the former Secretary to the Council for 14,000 years.
- Elanora comes across the works of Gerailus, Gerantian, Gool and Grandax.
- The Doctor mentions Wensleydale cheese.
- Sedanya worked at the Prydonian Academy for several centuries. She taught the Doctor.
- Loric designed every time capsule from the Mark 52 to the Mark 55, which was a classic.
- The secret room contains the seven volumes of The Morbius Strategems and The Canticles of Stocca, the latter of which concern mind control.
- The Doctor attended Robespierre's trial.
- Eminent Yorvic, Eminent Pae and Honourable Laimstrom have been killed.
- The Doctor has a yo-yo with the face of Worzel Gummidge on it. He bought it from Blackpool Winter Gardens.
- The Master uses a hormonal regulator to make himself appear older.
- The Doctor speculates that the Master is currently in his second or third regeneration.
- The Master's TARDIS is a Type 60.
- Thark has a Space-Time Visualiser.
- Elanora used to work for the Celestial Intervention Agency. She used up all her regenerations in the service.
- Gibbons are only native to Earth.
- The Recusary has grown extensively over the moon.
- In their youth, the Doctor and the Master removed their birth names from time, all but them two forgetting them.
Notes
- This story was recorded on 8 and 16 May 2017 at Audio Sorcery, several years before Big Finish severed ties with James Dreyfus due to controversial remarks Dreyfus had made on Twitter regarding trans rights.
- As a result of the aforementioned controversy, a composite of George Pravda as Spandrell and Anthony Ainley as the Tremas Master was used to provide the likeness of Dreyfus' Master on the cover artwork of Solo, the anthology which Blood of the Time Lords was part of.[1]
- The Doctor says Ansillon has gone by many names and originally knew the Doctor when he lived as a hermit on a mountain, and Ansillon notes that he's familiar with the circumstances of the Doctor's previous regeneration, implying he is K'anpo Rimpoche. Ansillon also identifies himself as having been the guardian of the Caves of Perdition.
Continuity
- The Doctor calls out to Sarah Jane Smith (TV: The Hand of Fear) and mentions saving Gallifrey mere hours ago, (TV: The Deadly Assassin) noting it's not the first time he saved it. (TV: The Three Doctors)
- He remembers his last time in front of a Codal Office inquiry brought about regeneration and exile. (TV: The War Games)
- The death of a Time Lord is meant to be preceded by confessions in which they make their peace. (TV: The Witch's Familiar, Hell Bent)
Cover gallery
Textless cover
Alternate cover
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Footnotes
External links
- Official Blood of the Time Lords page at bigfinish.com
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