Suburban Hell (audio story)
Suburban Hell was the fifth story in the fourth series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Alan Barnes and featured Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and Louise Jameson as Leela.
Publisher's summary
Somewhere in a suburb of North London, there's a crisis. More than a crisis, a positive disaster. Belinda and Ralph are expecting four for supper, and there's no Marie Rose sauce for the Prawns Marie Rose. All in all, the evening couldn't possibly get any worse...
Until the doorbell rings, bringing the Doctor and Leela to the dinner party. They've got a crisis, too – temporal ruckage has sent the TARDIS to another time zone entirely. Meaning they might have to endure a whole evening in Belinda's company.
But the Doctor and Leela aren't the only uninvited guests tonight. There's a strange fog falling, out in the road. And in that fog: savage blue-skinned monsters, with dinner party plans of their own. Because it's not Prawns Marie Rose on their menu – it's people!
Plot
Part one
Ralph arrives home only to be berated by his wife Belinda in preparation for their guests to arrive for the dinner party. Soon the Doctor and Leela arrive and are invited inside by mistake. The TARDIS has apparently relocated itself due to an "temporal ruckage", or as Leela claims, a "wrinkle in time" that caused it to slip to another place and they have come to investigate the house in search of equipment that may be causing the problem as she explains to Belinda. Leela talks with Belinda who reveals she had been expecting someone else when they are interrupted by the ringing of the doorbell as Belinda's friend Thelma arrives. Meanwhile the Doctor and Ralph are in the garage when he discovers an interesting painting of some astronomical constellations. Belinda entertains her guests when Leela notices a fog descending outside. They answer a telephone call and hear a panic on the other end which Belinda dismisses but worries Leela. The Doctor intrudes having just finished his tracker device and discovers that they have arrived in the wrong time, they thought they had landed in the 1970s when actually they had arrived in the 2010s. After some arguing they are interrupted by a car crash outside.
Pete and Penny end up in a crash but when the Doctor comes to investigate he notices that the car that seems to belong to the original real estate agent Mike who had been invited and they supposedly collided with was broken into from the outside. The Doctor investigates another house and finds strange blue creatures who prepare to attack him. The other guests suddenly hear strange noises and Leela, Thelma, Pete, Penny, Belinda and Ralph take refuge in Ralph and Belinda's house and attempt to call the police but find they cannot reach them and worse yet, start to hear their own voices coming through the telephone...
Part two
The Doctor finds Thelma in a house forty years ago and comments about her looking the same, likely because of her using glamour. He deduces that the fog is part of the "wrinkle in time" and that when he tried returning to the house he must have passed through the "wrinkle" and ended up in the past, in the 1970s, which must've been why the TARDIS couldn't land them properly originally. Meanwhile the occupants of Ralph and Belinda's house prepare for the worst. They learn that the intruders are after a "vessel", which Leela suspects to be the TARDIS, and they decide to split up and try Thelma's phone and call the police. The Doctor deduces the reason for the presence of the blue beings, their connection to the painting and the imprints of witches, and asks Thelma to take care of the child that is making the strange noises, but when she answers that she will name the child Belinda the Doctor begins to worry. In the present, Leela and the surviving guests make their way upstairs and prepare to shatter a mirror when they are contacted by the Doctor thanks to a spell cast by Thelma in 1977 with the Doctor. He explains that baby Belinda had the imprint of a witch and that the Manasarans were going to fill baby Belinda with the essence of an alien monster before she was, or from the Doctor's perspective, about to be saved by himself and Thelma, and the Doctor reveals he suspects the painting is what attracted Belinda back to the house so that the blue Acolytes (the beings from earlier) could finish the job. He tells Leela she has to protect Belinda at all costs.
The Acolytes seemingly manage to begin the ceremony to finish filling their chosen vessel, Belinda, with the alien essence but the Doctor manages to get Thelma and Belinda away by distracting them. The Acolytes break into the room Leela and the others are hiding in and explains to them what happened back in 1977. Just then Ralph manages to save the Doctor in the past, having got there after the car crash. He and the Doctor then discover that the Doctor miscalibrated his machine and discovers that all the events that have and are happening are really because of the machine, and by extension himself. In the present the Acolytes attempt to finish their mission to fill Belinda with the alien essence and succeed while the Doctor in the past with Ralph attempts to destroy his device in hopes it will reset the timeline seeing as it was the cause of all the problems. It succeeds just as Leela is about to be killed by an Acolyte and when Leela reawakens she finds that all has been restored to a different timeline, the original, in which Ralph is married to Penny and Belinda, when a confused Leela asks the Doctor, who has just arrived with Ralph, jokes about now being single. The other guests do not seem to remember the previous events and the Doctor explains to a confused and bewildered Ralph that there is nothing to worry about as his memory of the altered timeline will slowly fade as the new one takes hold.
Cast
- The Doctor - Tom Baker
- Leela - Louise Jameson
- Thelma - Annette Badland
- Belinda - Katy Wix
- Penny / Acolyte - Alix Dunmore
- Ralph / Second Acolyte - Raymond Coulthard
- Pete / Priest - David Ricardo-Pearce
References
- Ralph is wearing a leopard skin shirt.
- Belinda claims that Pete has thighs like Usain Bolt.
- Belinda and Ralph were married in 2004.
- Ralph thinks the collar shirt makes him look like Starsky and Hutch.
- The Doctor comments that "Sheffield Steel" is still strong.
Notes
- This story was recorded on 8 October 2013 at Audio Sorcery.
- This story was originally released on CD and download.
Continuity
- Leela notes that the Doctor's TARDIS is a Type 40. (TV: The Deadly Assassin, The Pirate Planet, State of Decay)
- Leela once again refers to the police as "blue guards". (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang; AUDIO: The Renaissance Man, Energy of the Daleks, The Foe from the Future, The Hourglass Killers)
- The Doctor refers to the disappearance of the crew of the Mary Celeste in 1872. During his first incarnation, he and his companions Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki Pallister were indirectly responsible for their disappearance. (TV: The Chase)
- The Monosaron Acolytes use a Glamour to disguise themselves. (PROSE: The Glamour Chase; AUDIO: Damaged Goods)
- Leela tells Belinda and Penny that she knows about heartbreak. (AUDIO: Death Match)
- Thelma claims to be a "Witchfinder General". The Doctor, in his thirteenth incarnation would identify herself as Witchfinder General to King James I in the 17th century. (TV: The Witchfinders)
External links
- Official Suburban Hell page at bigfinish.com
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