Scenes From Her Life (audio story)

It introduced Emma Cunniffe as Caleera, another Time Lord villain and one with incredibly psychic powers. It also featured the brief return of the Eleven in flashback and Caleera's first mention of her "love", the identity of whom would not be revealed until The Crucible of Souls.

Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

Investigating the appearance of the Voord on Earth, the Doctor, Liv and Helen follow a trail which takes them to the other side of the universe. There they discover a mysterious and almost deserted gothic city lost in space and time, in which the grotesque inhabitants are conducting a vile and inhumane experiment. The Doctor and his companions must hurry to save the lives of those in danger before the experiment is a success and the unimaginable consequences become all too real.

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

Locked up together, a husband shares his rations with his wife when their jailer, Swordfish, arrives to take the wife for his master's experiments. As nobody has yet returned from the experiments, the husband asks to take his wife's place and Swordfish accepts. Swordfish takes him to Lord Stormblood and Lady Sepulchra, who are enjoying wine with dinner, and he is subjected to the experiment which strips his flesh from his bones, killing him. The Lord and Lady are displeased, having wanted his atoms to be dispersed.

In a classroom, Caleera is taught about temporal mechanics by an Educator and is admonished by her for daydreaming and wasting her potential. Caleera's frustrations causes things in the room to crash around and smash glass.

The Doctor, Liv and Helen are in the TARDIS, looking at what little is left of the Voord homeworld. The Doctor detects chronon energy and attempts to trace it to its source.

Swordfish informs Lord Stormblood that a girl has been reinstalled into a machine. Lord Stormblood and Lady Sepulchra discuss how they need to expand the girl's mind so that she does not need the machine.

The Doctor finds that his way to the source through the Time Vortex has been blocked by an antique TARDIS, so damaged by the time winds that it has lost its outer shell. The Doctor's TARDIS beeps, warning him that it is on a collision course with the antique.

Caleera meets with a senior Time Lord, who informs her that she is potentially the Time Lord Academy's most powerful telepath. Although she is excited by this, he tells her that she will have to take suppressants to quell her powers and that someone will soon arrive to begin the process of treatment. Caleera is horrified, seeing her powers as an intrinsic part of her.

The Doctor again seems to see something out of the corner of his eye at the console and the Cloister Bell rings. He manages to materialise the TARDIS within the antique, which is heard by Lady Sepulchra, and Lord Stormblood has Swordfish take over so that they can go to meet their visitors. The Doctor observes that the antique looks other than it should and that the people within would be affected by the time winds. He asks Liv and Helen to wait at the TARDIS, which they agree to do, although Liv then tells Helen that they should wait only three minutes before following.

The Doctor is welcomed by Lord Stormblood and Lady Sepulchra, who cannot remember a time that they had not lived within the antique TARDIS and are unaware of who the Voord are. He agrees to join them for dinner and, aside, they agree that having a doctor around could be quite useful.

Liv and Helen leave the TARDIS, hearing a girl in pain, head off in search of her.

Caleera is told that her readings now show her as normal, indicating that treatment had successfully suppressed her psychic powers and that she can return to her classes. She is upset that she is no longer special.

The girl inside the machine screams and is told unsympathetically by Swordfish that her pain is temporary and will pass. Liv and Helen see what is going on and, once Swordfish has left, try to save the girl, surmising that the machine was built around her. The girl wakes and asks what Liv and Helen are doing there.

Lord Stormblood and Lady Sepulchra take the Doctor to the console room, which they call the Grand Dining Room, and eat food cubes from a broken-down food machine. The Doctor asks about their pasts and they both remember an orange sky, making the Doctor wonder if they are from Gallifrey.

The girl tells Liv and Helen that she is in a neural amplifier and cannot safely be removed. Liv leaves Helen with the girl and goes looking for the Doctor for help.

Caleera meets with the Chief Archivist who, despite her test scores, assigns her to become an assistant to a junior archivist for "a regeneration or two" due to her latent psychic powers. Although greatly disappointed, she agrees.

Liv wanders the corridors of the antique TARDIS and comes across the prison cells, learning of Swordfish and his masters from the wife whose husband was taken away. She tells her that the keys for the cells are carried by Swordfish and Liv goes off to get them.

The Doctor asks Lord Stormblood and Lady Sepulchra how they do not know of the Voord when the flight log says that their TARDIS was at the Voord homeworld when it was destroyed and tells them that he thinks they are insane Time Lords. Whilst he believes that they are incapable of obliterating planets, he believes that they must know who did it. They agree to help him if he gives assistance to their "infirmed relative below".

The girl - Caleera - uses her psychic powers to touch Helen's mind and relates to her history of being oppressed by men and kept from her true potential. Meanwhile, the Doctor explains that he is not a medical doctor when Liv arrives, introduced by the Doctor as a med-tech. Lord Stormblood and Lady Sepulchra are pleased.

Caleera visits the Eleven, who knows who she is and had wanted to meet her.

Lord Stormblood and Lady Sepulchra lead the Doctor and Liv to Caleera, who is bonding with Helen over their respective careers in the archives and the National Museum and telling her to fight for her future. On the way, Liv tells the Doctor about the prisoners that she had encountered. Upon arriving, the Doctor calls the machine an abomination and Lord Stormblood explains that Caleera is not yet strong enough to leave it. He calls for Swordfish, who brings up the wife to be destroyed by Caleera's powers. However, Liv saves her and takes Swordfish's keys, running away with the wife. The Doctor and Helen determine that it was Caleera's power that destroyed the Voord homeworld.

On the day that the Eleven escaped the Capitol prison facility, Caleera materialises the antique TARDIS and convinces the Chief Archivist to evacuate with her in it as he was on unfriendly terms with the Eleven.

The Doctor looks at Caleera's readings and recognises her as a Time Lord. She tells him that Lord Stormblood and Lady Sepulchra were trying to turn her into a weapon and that destroying the Voord homeworld was a test. The Doctor says that developing her powers without needing the machine is an easy process and that trapping her was unnecessary. Caleera says that she could use her powers to destroy the machine.

Liv frees the prisoners, who subdue Lord Stormblood, Lady Sepulchra and Swordfish, with Liv promising to let them go if they stop the experiments. However, they tell her that the experiments were not theirs and that they were only helping Caleera.

Caleera tortures the Educator, the Chief Archivist and the Psychosurgeon and uses hypnotic suggestion make them help her, although she knows that their sanity will be badly damaged by the time winds. She says that her love has promised her that her work will be of great benefit to all.

The Doctor says that, theoretically, Caleera could escape the machine by turning the safety protocols off and running the amplifier at maximum. However, Caleera's cells would be damaged and she would only have the briefest of opportunities to heal herself. Helen and Caleera convince him to do it. Liv, Lord Stormblood, Lady Sepulchra and Swordfish return to the machine room, the door to which has been locked. Liv shouts that they have made a mistake, but he does not hear.

The Doctor is successful and Caleera breaks free, using her powers to destroy the door and let the others in. Liv tells the Doctor that they have been tricked and, after Lord Stormblood, Lady Sepulchra and Swordfish ask to be freed, Caleera removes a wall and sends them into the Time Vortex. Caleera says that she and her love will be watching the Doctor, who will soon die, and teleports away. The antique TARDIS begins falling apart and the Doctor, Liv and Helen flee to the Doctor's TARDIS, which he hopes to use to "fling" the other half of the antique TARDIS - containing the prison - into real space. He warns Liv and Helen that it will be a bumpy ride.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

Swordfish uses a gauntlet.
Lord Stormblood and Lady Sepulchra have spotted dick for dessert.
The Doctor detects chronon energy.
The Doctor says that the Cloister Bell is always "just that little bit too late to be of any real use".
The Doctor worries that he might cause a time ram.
Liv says that the antique TARDIS could do with an electrician.
Helen says that the neural amplifier looks like "Heath Robinson's worst nightmare".
TARDISes have flight logs.
Caleera is a telepath.
Lady Sepulchra hands out protective goggles.

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

This story was recorded at the Moat Studios.

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Voord homeworld has been destroyed. (AUDIO: Beachhead)
The Doctor says that he is not a medical doctor. The Second Doctor previously told Polly Wright that he took a medical degree in 1888 (TV: The Moonbase) and the First Doctor mentioned having studied medicine for two years in his youth before specialising in science instead. (AUDIO: Farewell, Great Macedon)
The One worked in the archives. (AUDIO: The Eleven)
Padrac told the Doctor that his Chief Archivist had gone missing. (AUDIO: The Eleven)
Liv mentions her visit to Gallifrey. (AUDIO: The Eleven)

External links[[edit] | [edit source]]

Official Scenes From Her Life page at bigfinish.com