Lost (audio story)

Things are getting worse across the country as Abby identifies a series of disappearances. Graham O'Brien, Ryan Sinclair, the Khan family, the Chandras… But people aren’t just disappearing – they’re being forgotten. And, side note, what on earth has happened to Queen Victoria?!

Plot

As the robot hologram attempts to teleport to Cleo and Jordan in the hotel, Jordan convinces his sister to run and forget about Rani, which she reluctantly does. They narrowly escape onto the street, but Cleo is convinced that she needs to go back and help Rani alone. However, as she does, the siblings are shocked by what they see: the hotel has completely disappeared. Cleo decides to talk to Abby and Shawna.

From home, Cleo frantically recounts her story to her friends, but every time she mentions the Doctor or the TARDIS, the other two immediately forget hearing it and get increasingly sceptical at her far-fetched claims. With even Abby disbelieving, she Googles the word "TARDIS" but finds nothing, continuing to forget the Doctor even when seeing the name written on Cleo's hand. Cleo asks them to focus on the missing people and Abby goes to look them up but distracts herself with thoughts about her mother's ill health and Craig's lack of support for her. Regardless, she finds some news clips about potential people trafficking in Sheffield, London, and Cardiff. Shawna adds that Sonya and Najia Khan have now disappeared, while Abby reveals that she has got in touch with a friend of Ryan Sinclair called Tanya on Twitter and asks Shawna to meet her. Cleo tries to turn the topic back to the Doctor, but Abby and Shawna respond with the Question: "doctor who?"

Cleo chats to Jordan and he tries to convince her not to get further involved with the mysterious events before she gets hurt. She decides to keep searching for answers, however, believing it might answer why their father disappeared. Cleo suddenly refuses to rule out alien interference.

Shawna sits down at a coffee shop with her nana, explaining that she dropped in before meeting up with Tanya for The Blue Box Files. Her nana begins to talk about her presumptions of Cleo and Abby, describing them as "the one who was a boy" and the one with "a fella in Scotland", while claiming that she is wasting her time trying to win over Abby even if she is bi, as she is taken and lives over 300 miles away. She tries to hook Shawna up with a co-worker called Megan who is "fully lesbian", but Shawna simply explains that she wants Abby to be with someone who sees her for who she is. Her nana replies that she just wants Shawna to be happy.

Cleo starts doing some research for the podcast from a different coffee shop and phones Abby about it. She explains how, upon further investigation, Rani's parents, Haresh and Gita Chandra have also gone missing and wonders if the one thing that connects all the disappearance is the TARDIS. Abby gets inspired and decides to look into it, calling her a genius.

Later, Cleo sprints through the streets of London to get to work, but stops outside the Queen Victoria Theatre in confusion. Inside, she asks her boss, Jill, about why the sign outside suddenly reads the "Lost Queen Theatre". Jill sees no issue with it, and when Cleo begs to differ, she reacts in sarcastic surprise that Cleo has solved the mystery of the lost queen.

From a park in Glasgow, Abby and Craig gets some coffees as Abby's phone rings. She picks it up to hear Shawna explaining that she has met Tanya and she claims to have never met Ryan. Additionally, her Twitter feed is empty and the news reports of Ryan and Graham's disappearances have also vanished.

Cleo corners Jill and asks who the Lost Queen is, with Jill presuming she just never went to school. Regardless, she grudgingly explains that after the Great English Succession Crisis, the rightful queen disappeared because so many people wanted her dead and to this day, no-one knows who she was. Knowing that she should be talking about Queen Victoria, Cleo runs out and enters St James's Park.

She starts a group call with Abby and Shawna and tries to explain what has happened, discussing how the Victoria line and Victoria station on the London Underground have been suddenly renamed the "Southern line" and "Belgravia station" instead, and the park statue of Victoria has become an empty throne. Abby and Shawna agree that it is strange... because they have never heard of Queen Victoria. Cleo despairs as her friends are beginning to forget too and they begin to worry about how it could happen. Even Shawna begins to wonder about how all the strange events they have investigated are possible and believes that something big is happening to them. The three friends promise to never forget each other.

Cleo returns to work to find herself put on measures and asked to remove a woman without a ticket - a woman that happens to be her estranged mother, Monica. Outside, they talk exasperatedly as Monica claims that she could not contact her any other way, even calling her by her deadname, Jayden. Monica promises that she does not want trouble and that her stroke scare was simply a migraine, instead focusing on Jordan's whereabouts because she cannot find him. She adds that his phone is off and he has seemingly disappeared - for all intents and purposes, Jordan is gone.

Cast

Cleo Proctor - Charlie Craggs
Abby McPhail - Lois Chimimba
Shawna Thompson - Holly Quin-Ankrah
Rani Chandra - Anjli Mohindra
Jordan Proctor - Jacob Hawley
Nana Thompson - Clare Perkins
Monica Proctor - Sarah Thom
Jill - Natasha Hodgson
The Ravulox - Juno Dawson
Additional Voices - Pip Gladwin, Alasdair Beckett-King and Natasha Hodgson

Crew

Written by Juno Dawson
Produced and Directed by Ella Watts
Executive Producer: James Robinson
Sound Engineer: Paul Clark
Studio Assistant: Jacob Tombling
Sound Design: David Thomas
Additional Sound Design: Arlie Adlington
Original Composition: David Devereux
Production Co-ordinators: Sarah Sharpe and Sarah Nicholls
Recorded at Sonica Studios, Clapham

A BBC Studios Production for BBC Sounds

References

Sonya Khan and her mother are missing.
Haresh and Gita Chandra have gone missing.

Notes

Queen Victoria has been forgotten and is known as "The Lost Queen"; the statue of her in London is "just an empty throne".

Continuity

Shawna mentions giant spiders in Sheffield, (TV: Arachnids in the UK) Yeti in London, (TV: The Web of Fear) and radioactive maggots in a Welsh mine. (TV: The Green Death)

External links

Official Lost page on the Doctor Who website