The Stones of Venice (audio story)
The Stones of Venice was the eighteenth monthly Doctor Who audio story produced by Big Finish Productions. Written by Paul Magrs, this is his first contribution to audio-based Doctor Who, although not his first time writing for the Eighth Doctor. Magrs had previously written The Scarlet Empress and The Blue Angel (with Jeremy Hoad), two novels in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures range.
Publisher's summary
The Doctor and Charley decide to take a well-deserved break from the monotony of being chased, shot at and generally suffering anti-social behaviour at the hands of others.
And so they end up in Venice, well into Charley's future, as the great city prepares to sink beneath the water for the last time...
Which would be a momentous, if rather dispiriting, event to witness in itself. However, the machinations of a love-sick aristocrat, a proud art historian and a rabid High Priest of a really quite dodgy cult combine to make Venice's swansong a night to remember.
And then there's the rebellion by the web-footed amphibious underclass, the mystery of a disappearing corpse and the truth behind a curse going back further than curses usually do.
The Doctor and Charley are forced to wonder just what they have got themselves involved with this time...
Plot
to be added
Cast
- The Doctor - Paul McGann
- Charley Pollard - India Fisher
- Orsino - Michael Sheard
- Churchwell - Nick Scovell
- Pietro - Barnaby Edwards
- Ms Lavish / Estella - Elaine Ives-Cameron
- Vincenzo - Mark Gatiss
References
Culture
- The Doctor likens the cult worshiping Estella to Liza Minelli being the daughter of Judy Garland, in that the Duke's wife and Liza Minelli's mother were both "taken away" and deified by the populace.
The Doctor
- The Doctor says the TARDIS is his oldest friend in the world.
- The Doctor suspects that there is alien life form in Venice because of a painting with volcano and foxes which doesn't belong to Earth.
Notes
- This audio drama was recorded on 15 and 16 May 2000 at studios in Bristol. It was the first that Paul McGann recorded for Big Finish Productions.
- Russell Stone's score to this story was released on the CD Music from the Eighth Doctor Audio Adventures, alongside the other three initial Eighth Doctor audios.
- The story formed part of an Eighth Doctor series on BBC Radio 7 in 2005, alongside the stories Shada, Storm Warning, Sword of Orion, Invaders from Mars and The Chimes of Midnight, and has been repeated on multiple occassions since. This led to the commissioning of the original series The Eighth Doctor Adventures, debuting on the digital station in December 2006. Due to a limited timeslot, scenes were edited out of these versions; excluding Shada and The Chimes of Midnight, these were collated into The Eighth Doctor Collection in 2008 with an exclusive behind-the-scenes documentary and booklet. Minuet in Hell was excluded from broadcast due to its adult themes.
Continuity
- The First Doctor previously visited Venice in the company of Steven Taylor and Dodo Chaplet in 1609 (PROSE: The Empire of Glass) whereas the Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory Williams would later do so in 1580 (TV: The Vampires of Venice).
- The artwork in Churchwell's collection of the woman in the jar is most likely a reference to the Empress' predecessors in Paul Magrs' PROSE: The Scarlet Empress.
External links
- Official The Stones of Venice page at bigfinish.com
- The Stones of Venice at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- DisContinuity for The Stones of Venice at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide
- Transcript of The Stones of Venice at Chrissie's Transcripts Site
