The Headless Ones (audio story)

When a distress call from an unknown source threatens to rip the TARDIS from the vortex, the Doctor and Peri arrive in nineteenth-century Africa hoping to find the cause of the disturbance. Instead, they meet a British expedition searching for a long lost tribe: the B'lemyae... better known to the locals as the Headless Ones.

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

As the TARDIS flies past hundreds of wrecked spacecraft, the Doctor and Peri hear a deafening signal. The Doctor tries to trace the source, but it fights for control of the TARDIS and the central column begins to crack, the first sign of the TARDIS being ripped apart. He shuts the ship down and they find themselves in a rainforest; before they can reactivate the ship, they will have to deactivate the nearby signal which they can detect with a tracking device. They smell smoke.

The Doctor and Peri arrive at a camp and find a caged lion and a newspaper article covering an attempted assassination of Queen Victoria. They are caught and taken to Erpingham, to whom they pretend to be in search of a lost people; as a result, they are sent to speak with Amanda Latimer, the leader of the expedition. She shows them a copy of Mappa Mundi containing illustrations of the B'lemyae, whom she believes could be a missing link in human evolution, and argues with Erpingham to allow the Doctor and Peri to join them.

The B'lemyae are hungry. Growing weak, they debate whether to take another human.

Whilst some stay at the camp to take animals back to the port for Erpingham's "grand experience", the Doctor and Peri embark on the mission with Amanda, Erpingham, Brooks and four of Erpingham's men along the route taken by Amanda's father. They travel for several days, over the course of which the Doctor takes readings with his tracking device, until they are found and forcibly taken by natives to Siyanda, their tribal chief who was taught English by Amanda's father. Peri introduces herself as Queen of the Krontep and has an audience with her.

Siyanda initially wants to kill the explorers due to her fear of the supposedly evil B'lemyae, but Peri is able to convince her that the Doctor will be able to help. After a celebratory feast, Peri and Siyanda are incapacitated by poisoned blow darts and kidnapped by the B'lemyae. They awake in a cave the next day and meet the last of the B'lemyae, Kaylin and Erser, who feed and water them; they claim that they have always lived on Earth, but Peri infers from the story of their goddess that they arrived here in escape pods.

The search for Peri and Siyanda begins with the natives heading north and west, Erpingham and his men heading south and the Doctor and Amanda heading east. The Doctor tells Amanda about the signal that he has to shut down and activates the tracking device, but it explodes and they fall through the ground and into an escape pod of augmented diamond. He deduces that the pod is emitting a distress signal, boosted by the remains of the other escape pods, to the spacecraft graveyard where the TARDIS picked it up; he links with the pod, which is telepathic, and learns that the B'lemyae left their planet after being enslaved.

Kaylin and Erser hear "the Calling" and head towards it, although the Doctor manages to stop the signal just before they arrive. They take the Doctor and Amanda to the cave, where Siyanda agrees to try to make peace between her tribe and the B'lemyae. Returning to the village, Erpingham, who has convinced the tribe that Siyanda has betrayed them to the B'lemyae, has most of the B'lemyae killed and the survivors imprisoned to be taken back to Britain. The Doctor, Peri, Amanda and Siyanda are to be executed.

The Doctor bargains for the lives of him and his friends with the diamonds from the destroyed escape pods. He leads Erpingham there and learns that he plans on assassinating Queen Victoria, something that his organisation has already tried and failed to do, using the natives at the jubilee celebration; by using the natives, he hopes to further Britain's conquest of Africa.

Peri knocks out the guard with a bowl, allowing her and Amanda to free Siyanda and convince the Elders to help them. They subdue Erpingham's men and surround Erpingham, who takes Kaylin hostage and escapes, after which the captives are taken back to the camp and the group search for and find him at a waterfall. Amanda takes Siyanda's bow and, when he refuses to let Kaylin go, she fires a warning shot which causes Erpingham and Kaylin to fall over the edge. With Erpingham holding onto him, Kaylin sacrifices himself to keep Peri from being dragged down with them.

The Doctor returns to the village in the auto-repaired and rebooted TARDIS and Peri tells him that the weeping Erser wants to stay with Siyanda's people. Taking the diamond containing the B'lemyae's archive to be delivered to a library, the Doctor and Peri say goodbye to Siyanda and Amanda and depart.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

The expedition set out from Portsmouth and landed at Port-Gentil on the West African coast.
Peri spots orchids and parrot plants. She determines that they are in, if not Kew Gardens, the African rainforest.
Amanda is an anthropologist belonging to St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford.
Erpingham showed Amanda how to better her aim and win the women's archery competition at Erpingham Hall, the first thing she ever one.
Amanda has a supply of ginger nuts.
Amanda writes that the Doctor and Peri's clothes would turn heads on Regent Street.
Amanda brews tea.
The Mappa Mundi is a map in Hereford Cathedral, dating back to 1300. It is centred around Jerusalem.
The B'lemyae were also known as anthropophagi (being Latin for "cannibals") and the akephaloi (Ancient Greek for "headless ones").
The Reverend Latimer was a missionary who searched for the B'lemyae and kept a journal. He married and became vicar of the village on the Erpingham estate. Erpingham's father held parties in Erpingham Hall, which was how Amanda met Erpingham. He always told Amanda that her impetuousity would be her undoing. Once her mother and father died suddenly, the Erpinghams took Amanda in.
Brooks is Erpingham's long-serving estate manager.
Peri says that Erpingham does not seem like P. T. Barnum.
Erpingham mentions Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. The Doctor played poker with Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley and Sitting Bull. Oakley won.
Erpingham plans for his show to include re-enactments of the Battle of Blood River and the Siege of Rorke's Drift.
Erpingham is the 3rd Baronet of Ayrsham.
Chelmsford was in command at the Battle of Isandlwana, which the British lost.

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

to be added

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Doctor has to use a crank handle to open the TARDIS doors. (TV: Death to the Daleks)
The Doctor and Peri read an article in the newspaper from February 1895 reporting on an attempt on Queen Victoria's life and that the perpetrators are still on the run from the law. (AUDIO: The Trial of George Litefoot)
Peri introduces herself to Siyanda as "Perpugilliam of the Brown". (TV: Mindwarp)

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

Official The Headless Ones page at bigfinish.com