The Red House (audio story)
The Red House was the second story in the audio anthology The Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Alan Barnes and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, India Fisher as Charlotte Pollard and Michael Jayston as The Valeyard.
Publisher's summary
The Doctor and Charlotte Pollard arrive on a world that is populated by werewolves.
Plot
Upon landing on unnamed planet in the 31st century, the Doctor and Charley notice they arrived near a village at the slopes of a hill, on whose top there is a big red house. They hear the sound of a curfew bell, although it is clearly dawn, and see some werewolves on wheels coming in their direction. Guessing they do not have friendly intentions, the two of them run away in a nearby forest.
As they run, Charley convinces the Doctor to give her her coat, so she can try and drive away their pursuers; she just makes a few steps, though, before falling into a pit trap and being captured by the werewolves. The Doctor is instead saved by Lina, a young werewolf, who mistakes him for one of "them" and brings him to their leader, Ugo. Charley is brought to the Red House, sedated and given to the "care" of Doctor Pain, aka Doctor Paignton, a scientist.
Ugo and his group turn against the Doctor as he presents himself: they think it is their "Doctor Pain". Ugo decides to prove whether the Doctor is one of them by having Lina expose herself to daylight. The contact with the light makes Lina transform into an ominid, bestial creature, thus revealing to the Doctor he is in the presence of lycanthropy in reverse (not men turning into wolves, but wolves turning into men). The ominid Lina scratches the Doctor, proving he is not a werewolf, but before Ugo and the others can injure him, the whole party is surprised by the arrival of the Sergeant and her guards (she used a piece of the Doctor's coat to pick up his scent). Ugo has his whole group transform and prepares to fight, but the Doctor manages to avoid a slaughter by redirecting daylight with his fob watch against the Sergeant. This temporarily blinds her and the guards, and allows the group time to escape.
At the Red House, Charley is mistaken by Paignton for a werewolf and submitted to her "cure": a psychic machine whose purpose is to eliminate the cells causing the transformation from wolf into man. The experiment is interrupted by the intervention of the Valeyard, who freezes Paignton in time. Posing as a Time Lord, the Valeyard tells Charley the story of the colony (at about the same time Ugo tells the Doctor). The planet was originally inhabited by a wolf-like population; when the humans arrived, they exterminated them, but before that some of them were bitten and developed lycanthropy. They were abandoned on an island (where everyone is now), and by the time the humans came back to check, they had effectively become a new wolf-like species. The government wanted to exterminate them, but Paignton proposed instead to try and cure them. The Valeyard tells Charley she has to stop the Doctor from aiding Ugo's group in a revolt (which he is currently doing); if she fails, the government will destroy the island and the Doctor will be guilty of genocide.
The werewolves take their enemies by surprise by sending one of them, Arin, to pretend he is surrendering; as he distracts them, they attack the house and manage to overpower the Constable. The Doctor sneaks into the house from another entry with Lina, and find Charley, who informs him of what the "Time Lord" say and leads them to Paignton's laboratory. To their surprise, they discover the room empty: the Valeyard has taken away Paignton's machine. Paignton, released by the time freeze, informs them that the Constable activated a protocol from mainland, telling them to blow the island with a nuclear missile. She insists for the Doctor to take away at least Arin and Lina in the TARDIS, so to grant their species a hope of survival.
The Doctor, Charley, Lina and Arin reach the TARDIS, but by the time they are about to open the door the missile explodes - into the sea. The Doctor guesses that the "Time Lord" has time-frozen the missile in mid-air, letting the planet rotate so that, when it fell, it wouldn't blow the island. When Arin and Lina ask what they should do now, the Doctor doesn't give a straight answer, but suggests them they may use the walls of the prefabricated houses to build boats and reach the mainland.
Cast
- The Doctor - Colin Baker
- Charlotte Pollard - India Fisher
- The Valeyard - Michael Jayston
- Sergeant - Ashley McGuire
- Dr Paignton / Constable - Andrée Bernard
- Ugo - Rory Keenan
- Lina - Jessie Buckley
- Arin / Dennis - Kieran Hodgson
Worldbuilding
- Charley describes herself as an "Edwardian adventuress", but notes that she is technically a "Georgian adventuress" as her monarch was King George V. She sees the Georgian era as associated more with Jane Austen.
- The Doctor's pocket-watch was given to him by Beau Brummell, the "king of the dandies".
- Charley is intricately bound to the Web of Time.
- The Valeyard claims that humans are second best in the universe at exterminating.
Notes
- This story was recorded at The Moat Studios.
Continuity
- Charley says she has encountered fictional highwaymen and Marxist Daleks. (AUDIO: The Doomwood Curse, Brotherhood of the Daleks) She mentions the Jabberwocky and Vortisaurs, but this confuses the Doctor. This is because these events are in the future of his personal timeline. (AUDIO: Zagreus, Storm Warning)
- The Valeyard threatens to tell the Doctor of Charley's true identity; that she is more than just a random castaway in 500,002 but a companion of the Eighth Doctor (AUDIO: The Girl Who Never Was, The Condemned); it is unclear if this means that he now remembers the truth about Charley from this point in his life, or if the Valeyard still has the Doctor's memories of Mila- Charley having arranged for the Viyrans to alter the Sixth Doctor's memories of her when she leaves him (AUDIO: Blue Forgotten Planet)- and merely put the pieces together now based on his memories of her parting with the Eighth Doctor.
External links
- Official The Red House page at bigfinish.com
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