The Foe from the Future (audio story)
The Foe from the Future was originally submitted as the possible conclusion to season 14. When writer Robert Banks Stewart was called away from Doctor Who by Verity Lambert to guide the writing of a troubled soap opera at Thames Television, however, the story lapsed and script editor Robert Holmes instead wrote The Talons of Weng-Chiang as the season-ender. (DOC: The Foe from the Future)
About 40 years later, Big Finish Productions resurrected the original script idea and adapted it to audio. It was then released as a six-part adventure starring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson. As a sort of in-joke to the relationship between Foe and Talons, Big Finish adapter John Dorney explicitly set it immediately prior to the events of Talons.
Publisher's summary
The Grange is haunted, so they say. This stately home in the depths of Devon has been the site of many an apparition. And now people are turning up dead. The ghosts are wild in the forest. But the Doctor doesn’t believe in ghosts.
The TARDIS follows a twist in the vortex to the village of Staffham in 1977 and discovers something is very wrong with time. But spectral highwaymen and cavaliers are the least of the Doctor’s worries.
For the Grange is owned by the sinister Jalnik, and Jalnik has a scheme two thousand years in the making. Only the Doctor and Leela stand between him and the destruction of history itself. It’s the biggest adventure of their lives – but do they have the time?
Plot
to be added
Cast
- Fourth Doctor - Tom Baker
- Leela - Louise Jameson
- Jalnik - Paul Freeman
- Charlotte - Louise Brealey
- Butler - John Green
- Instructor Shibac - Blake Ritson
- Constable Burrows - Mark Goldthorp
- Father Harpin - Philip Pope
- Supreme Councillor Geflo - Jaimi Barbakoff
- Historiographer Osin - Dan Starkey
- Councillor Kostal - Camilla Power
References
- Charlotte mentions the Hammer Horror films, Monty Python and the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz.
- The Doctor attempts to teach Leela about poetry by introducing her to Hamlet.
- Father Harpin compares the sound of the TARDIS materialising to "an elephant in a shed." He initially believes that the Doctor and Leela are spirits and attempts to exorcise them.
- Fragmentary historical records available in the year 4000 erroneously state that the television presenter Bruce Forsyth was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1977. Charlotte jokingly asks the Doctor if they thought that the President of the United States was the American film star Gene Kelly.
- The vintage Ford Cortina which Charlotte steals from Instructor Shibac's driving class has the registration number BFP 189S.
- Charlotte plans to introduce Shibac to the music of David Bowie.
Notes
- Dan Starkey (Historiographer Osin) previously played numerous Sontarans in the revived series, namely Commander Skorr and Lieutenant Skree in TV: The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky, Commander Jask in TV: The End of Time and Commander Strax in TV: A Good Man Goes to War.
- Camilla Power (Councillor Kostal) previously played Pearl in TV: From Out of the Rain.
- Mark Goldthorp (Constable Burrows) previously played Androvax in TV: Prisoner of the Judoon and TV: The Vault of Secrets.
- Blake Ritson (Inspector Shibac) would later play Hurmzid in AUDIO: Gods and Monsters.
- Jaimi Barbakoff (Supreme Councillor Geflo) would later play Lt. Dervish in AUDIO: The Shadow Heart.
- This is the first Lost Story to adapt a script which was originally to have been made during the 1970s.
- This audio drama was recorded on 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 September 2011.
Continuity
- The Doctor tells Leela that William Shakespeare is the greatest poet in the English language "with [his] assistance." (PROSE: The Empire of Glass, PROSE: The Stranger, The Writer, His Wife and the Mixed Metaphor, TV: City of Death) However, the Fifth Doctor later described him as a "hack" to his companions Peri Brown and Erimem. (AUDIO: The Kingmaker) By the time of his tenth incarnation, his opinion of Shakespeare's work had considerably improved as he spoke of it in glowing terms to his companion Martha Jones. (TV: The Shakespeare Code)
- Leela once again refers to members of the Metropolitan Police Service as "blue guards." (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang, AUDIO: Energy of the Daleks)
- After hearing his voice over the intercom in his house, Leela states that Jalnik "speaks through the air like Xoanon." (TV: The Face of Evil)
- The Doctor tells Charlotte that he has previously visited the year 4000 and he believes that history has been altered. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)
External links
- Official The Foe from the Future page at bigfinish.com
- DisContinuity for The Foe from the Future at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide
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