Death-Dealer, also known as The Death-Dealer, was an audio story read by Louise Jameson and featuring Leela and the Fourth Doctor produced by Big Finish Productions. It is by far the shortest of the stories on the anthology release Short Trips: Volume 1 and recounts the time when Leela unwittingly paid to be killed.
Summary
On an arid market world, not dissimilar to a middle-eastern bazaar on Earth, the Doctor treats Leela to a day of shopping.
Plot
Leela struggles to understand the fundamentals of commerce during a shopping trip on a market world with the Doctor. Then, she spots a weapon that appeals to her. Paying the merchant, Jason, she examines her new toy. Soon, however, she is slain by Jason's knife. The Doctor discovers her dead body and demands answers. A local policeman explains that no laws have been transgressed; Leela has bought a legal death experience. Soon, she springs back to life. Jason explains that the knife's edge contained not only a fast acting poison, but also restorative microscopic robots. Whole again, Leela returns to the TARDIS with the Doctor, musing on the newfound appreciation she has for life now that she has died. The Doctor, having come back from the dead himself, can appreciate her point.
Characters
References
- Leela has no concept of money. The unit of currency on the unnamed world is the credit.
- The Doctor wonders if the market world sells jelly babies.
- The world is populated by many different species, including humans.
- At least one inhabitant of the world is a red-skinned "lizard-man" named Jason. Neither the name of his species or his home world is ever given.
- Leela threatens Jason with a janis thorn to his throat.
- The "microscopic healer robots" which restore Leela to life are not actually called nanogenes, but they work in exactly the same way.
- The Doctor hints that Leela's return from death has some commonality with regeneration.
Notes
- Though advertised on the Big Finish website, the CD jacket, and elsewhere as Death-Dealer, Louise Jameson clearly calls the story The Death-Dealer when she begins her reading.
- The story employs a limited third person perspective, focused mostly on Leela, except for the period of time she is dead.
Continuity
- Leela had previously explored the experience of her own death in TV: The Face of Evil and would later re-examine it AUDIO: The Catalyst, Empathy Games and The Time Vampire.