The Institute of Forgotten Souls (audio story)
The Institute of Forgotten Souls was the third story in the audio anthology The Doctor and Carnacki, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Jonathan Barnes and featured Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor and Dan Starkey as Thomas Carnacki.
Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]
In the heart of England in 1936 there lies a home for wounded men. It is a strange, shadowed place, full of secrets.
Terrible beasts prowl the grounds, as if guarding something dreadful. Inmates are disappearing, picked off one by one, while a singular resident - a certain, now retired ghost finder - bravely staves off the darkness.
Yet tonight is the night when it's all going to end. For tonight is the night when the Doctor comes to call...
Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]
Part one[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Doctor exits the TARDIS without checking the scanner as part of his new endeavour to be more carefree and learns from Sergeant Price that he is in an establishment called the Institute in England, 1936. Joyce Harrison, originally the matron but now the sole employee, assumes that the Doctor has come to deal with strange phenomena that has been happening at the Institute, which she explains is a facility for "invalided" soldiers of World War I such as the perpetually agitated Price. When the howling figures who have been haunting the Institute arrive, resembling a cross between a wolf and tiger, Price runs to Carnacki's room and joins him in his protective circle, soon followed by the Doctor and Joyce.
The Doctor locks the door with his sonic screwdriver, but the creatures get in and kill Joyce when obeys and unseen voice and stays outside of the circle. He remains angry with Carnacki and Price for several hours due to them holding him back from saving her and eventually asks them for an explanation, coming to the conclusion that the creatures are targeting people deliberately. When Price explains that he arrived at the Institute after being shot at the Battle of the Somme and Carnacki explains that he was stabbed at Ypres, the Doctor realises that time in the Institute is elastic, something Carnacki had deduced some months ago. The Doctor is forced to admit that he knows that Carnacki should be dead and Joyce's body is reanimated by a servant of somebody the Doctor knows.
Part two[[edit] | [edit source]]
The being reanimating Joyce's body identifies herself as the Actuary and is soon taken away by her master in a white light familiar to the Doctor, leaving Joyce's body behind. The Doctor pulls Price out of a hypnotic state, persuades him and Carnacki to leave the circle and eventually manages to find the Institute's exit. There, they are caught between the creatures and the Actuary, once again in Joyce's body, who seems to turn the creatures and Price into statues and confirms that they were never real. Upon seeing that the Institute and its grounds are floating in space, the Doctor realises that the Actuary is a servant of the White Guardian and she speaks privately with the Doctor in Carnacki's absence after sending the latter away with a wave of her hand.
The Doctor returns to Carnacki and takes him into the TARDIS, which flies away under the White Guardian's control. During the journey, the Doctor explains to Carnacki that the Actuary saved his life to assist her side against the Black Guardian and placed him in a thought-form of the Institute to keep his survival a secret from the White Guardian, only for him to be harassed by creatures created by time and for the White Guardian to discover the ploy anyway. The Doctor leaves Carnacki, who de-ages back to the age he was in 1918, in Ypres and returns to him that night to save his life by taking him to a planet in the Epsicilian system which resembles Victorian London. There, he continues to solve mysteries and relays them to a group of people including Price, a possible distant relation of Sergeant Price. As he finishes one story, he hears howling and remarks that the chase might not yet be over.
Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
- Carnacki - Dan Starkey
- Sergeant Winston Price - Alan Cox
- Joyce Harrison - Rebecca Crinnion
- Club Member / Fur-Beasts - Ewan Thomson
Uncredited cast[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Actuary - Rebecca Crinnion (BFX: The Institute of Forgotten Souls)
Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Winston Price remembers the deaths of Captain Snell and Johnny Slater.
- The Actuary represents the White Guardian.
- Carnacki is 59 in 1936, but was meant to die in the trenches in April 1918, in Ypres.
- The Doctor thinks the real Institute might be in Berkshire. Where he finds Carnacki, however, is merely a thought-form.
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
to be added
Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Carnacki uses his "trusty electric pentacle". This invention previously appeared in AUDIO: The House [+]Loading...["The House (audio story)"].
- Carnacki says the Doctor is "look[ing] a little greyer", indicating that this story takes place closer to the end of the Seventh Doctor's life, as depicted in AUDIO: Dark Universe [+]Loading...["Dark Universe (audio story)"], The Last Day [+]Loading...["The Last Day (audio story)"], and TV: Doctor Who [+]Loading...["Doctor Who (TV story)"].
- He has stopped looking at the scanner before leaving the TARDIS. In TV: Doctor Who [+]Loading...["Doctor Who (TV story)"], this will see him killed, as he walks out into a rain of gunfire in San Francisco, 1999.
- The Doctor says he considered if he might be inside a splinter of the Land of Fiction. This realm first appeared in TV: The Mind Robber [+]Loading...["The Mind Robber (TV story)"].
External links[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Official The Institute of Forgotten Souls page at bigfinish.com
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