Archipelago (audio story)

River Song has one last request. If the Doctor undertakes a dangerous journey with her on the planet Fortuna, she’ll never bother him again. But this is no ordinary voyage.

As the storms batter their tiny vessel, the travellers are confronted with some brutal home truths. There is a captain in search of a husband. There is a ship in need of a light. And there are lovers lost in the maelstrom who will always be islands apart...

Plot

River summons the TARDIS to the planet Fortuna, which is beset by time storms preventing the Doctor from leaving, and requests the Doctor's help in return for leaving him alone in the future. She introduces him to Captain Thaddeus Grey, who is launching an expedition by skimmer to the research station where his husband Dr Harvey Grey was working on temporal experiments before the storms. The Doctor declines to join them, believing that Harvey is likely dead, but River assures him that she knows that Harvey is alive and reminds him that he cannot leave Fortuna by TARDIS. He joins them in the skimmer with his Gladstone bag and informs River that, according to the TARDIS's readings, the journey will take months due to the time storms and temporary time which will cause the time they spend inside of it to "unhappen". To protect them from being caught in its temporality, the Doctor brings the TARDIS's lamp.

to be completed

Cast

Worldbuilding

The Doctor compares River to a thesaurus.
Harvey enjoys cocoa.
The Doctor has a dimensionally-transcendental Gladstone bag.

Notes

Archipelago was recorded in March 2023.

Continuity

The Doctor uses his old Gladstone bag, a staple of First Doctor stories in TV Comic, first seen in COMIC: Shark Bait ^[+]Loading...["Shark Bait (TVC comic story)"]. River knows that it was a gift from John and Gillian.
During a temporal shift River remembers dying on the streets on New York. (TV: Day of the Moon ^[+]Loading...["Day of the Moon (TV story)"])
The Doctor mentions Gruach giving him the Eye (AUDIO: The Curse of Lady Macbeth ^[+]Loading...["The Curse of Lady Macbeth (audio story)"]) and a lady in Yorkshire giving him Chipsticks. (AUDIO: Auld Lang Syne ^[+]Loading...["Auld Lang Syne (audio story)"])
The Doctor reads the stories of River's adventures in New York (TV: The Angels Take Manhattan ^[+]Loading...["The Angels Take Manhattan (TV story)"]), facing the Daleks (TV: The Big Bang ^[+]Loading...["The Big Bang (TV story)"]), the Silents (TV: The Impossible Astronaut ^[+]Loading...["The Impossible Astronaut (TV story)"]/Day of the Moon ^[+]Loading...["Day of the Moon (TV story)"]), and a dance on the Byzantium with the Angels (TV: The Time of Angels ^[+]Loading...["The Time of Angels (TV story)"] / Flesh and Stone ^[+]Loading...["Flesh and Stone (TV story)","Flesh and Stone"])

Cover gallery

Textless cover
Alternate cover

External links

Official Archipelago page at bigfinish.com