The Rings of Ikiria (audio story)
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The Rings of Ikiria was the fifty-sixth release in the Companion Chronicles audio range. It was the twelfth story of season 6. It was written by Richard Dinnick and featured Mike Yates.
Publisher's summary
UNIT is accustomed to dealing with visitors from space, but nothing has prepared them for Ikiria, an alien artist bearing gifts. Could Ikiria’s designs be something more than aesthetic?
As the Brigadier turns against him, Mike Yates goes on the run. Can he save the world? Or will he just learn an important lesson in betrayal?
Plot
to be added
Cast
- Captain Mike Yates - Richard Franklin
- Ikiria / Corporal Jean Mercer / Mrs Oliver - Felicity Duncan
References
- Mike states that he felt that he belonged when he was a member of UNIT. It was a great sign of comfort and security to him. Furthermore, he claims that he trusted Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart more than any man that he had ever met.
- During his early days with UNIT, Mike rented a one bedroom flat in Clapham. He had few personal belongings, including several records and a record player.
- In his childhood, Mike attended prep school before being sent to public school and joining the British Army.
- The Doctor tells the Brigadier that he deciphered the Rosetta Stone. Mike claims that the former looked at the latter "as if he were a particularly stupid child."
- Over the course of several nights, five large circles had appeared on a farm belonging to the Oliver family on Sark, one of the Channel Islands. The Doctor, who refers to them as pictograms, believes them to be letters of an alien language, specifically that of a transdimensional race known as the Etherians. He determines that, based on the pre-existing pattern, another pictogram will appear that very night. This prediction proved accurate. The six pictograms spell out the Etherian word "Ikiria," which means "craft." Immediately after he translates the word, there is a blinding flash of light caused by the descent of a ship. A woman of approximately seven or eight feet tall emerges from the ship. Her limbs had several joints and she wore make up reminiscent of that worn by a Japanese Geisha. Her name is Ikiria. She manipulates form to create objects of beauty, leading the Brigadier to describe her as an artist. She decided to make contact on Sark, a remote island, rather than in London in order to avoid causing panic among the general public.
- After Ikiria's arrival, the Brigadier returns to London to meet with his superiors. After Mike is rendered unconscious aboard Ikiria's vessel after refusing to accept one of her rings as a gift, he voices his concerns to the Brigadier, who dismisses them as nothing more than a paranoid fantasy. Shortly thereafter, the Doctor disappears. His Geiger counter is found near a cliff edge and Mike is concerned that he may have fallen off. He sends Private Campbell to find him, whose disfigured corpse is discovered near a field of wheat in which the image of his face has been created. The Brigadier is furious at this state of affairs following his return to Sark. He suggests that UNIT is not for Mike and has him reassigned to his previous regiment. As he departs Sark in a helicopter, he sees that the face of the Doctor has likewise been sculpted in wheat.
- Mike determines that the rings which Ikiria has distributed among the UNIT forces are controlling them and that she plans to gain control of the Home Office officials who are on their way to Sark and, through them, the British government. He believes that this is the first phase of her plot for world domination.
- After forcing the pilot to fly him to the northern part of Sark, Mike discovers that Ikiria has gotten to Corporal Mercer. After both of the Brigadier's shots have missed him, Mike determines that he is not under Ikiria's control but was merely pretending to be. He therefore fakes his own death, as the Doctor had done. After Ikiria had given the Brigadier the ring, he had the Doctor examine it, who was able to uncover its true purpose. He subsequently fought a psychic battle with Ikiria, which he almost lost. A by-product of this was the appearance of his face in the wheat.
- On his trip back to London, the Brigadier had warned the Home Office not to send anyone to Sark in any circumstances. However, he returned to Sark in order to trick both Ikiria and the brainwashed UNIT troops into thinking that he was under her control. He wore gloves to hide the fact that he was not wearing a ring.
- Using Etherian matter conversion technology, Ikiria turns the four UNIT soldiers guarding her ship into mechanised, metallic beings.
- Ikiria assumes Corporal Mercer's form in an attempt to prevent Mike from using the Doctor's sonic screwdriver on the etheric crystal so as to reverse the polarity of the psionic converter. However, her efforts prove unsuccessful. This causes Ikiria's ship and everything aboard it, herself included, to fold in on itself and disappear. In reality, Mercer never actually existed. She was a psychic projection created by Ikiria, based on various people whom Mike had known and with whom he had served during his life.
Notes
- This audio drama was recorded on 21 March 2012.
Continuity
- Corporal Jean Mercer asks Mike if there are "more freaky lizards hell bent on wiping out mankind." He believes that she had been his driver during the Silurian clean-up but, in reality, she was a psychic projection created by Ikiria using his memories as a reference. (TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians)
- Judging by Mike Yates' strong faith in the Doctor and the Brigadier, the lack of Liz Shaw and the Big Finish cover, this story is set between TV: The Green Death and The Time Warrior rather than between Inferno and Terror of the Autons.
External links
- Official The Rings of Ikiria page at bigfinish.com
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