The Enchantress of Numbers (audio story)

The Enchantress of Numbers
Doctor:	Fourth Doctor
Companion(s):	Ann
Featuring:	Ada Lovelace
Main enemy:	Finlar contagion, anti-virus force
Main setting:	Newstead Abbey, 1852
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writers:	Simon Barnard, Paul Morris
Director:	Nicholas Briggs
Music:	Jamie Robertson
Sound:	Jamie Robertson
Cover by:	Anthony Lamb
Release details
Release number:	8.3
Release date:	16 January 2019
Format:	2 parts, 1 CD
Production code:	BFPTOMCD060
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-78703-294-1
Fourth Doctor Adventures
← Previous	Planet of the Drashigs
Next →	The False Guardian

The Enchantress of Numbers was the third story in the eighth series of the Fourth Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions.

Publisher's summary

The TARDIS lands in the grounds of Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire, in 1850. Mistaken for a medic and his maid, the Doctor and Ann are brought to meet Ada Lovelace - the mother of computing and daughter of Lord Byron - who has recently fallen ill.

But the travellers are not here by chance. Something odd is happening on Earth, and they’ve determined that this place is the centre of it.

Strange figures are walking the land. Strange figures wearing bird-like masks. What do they want with Ada? And how will it change the future of humanity?

Plot

Part one

to be added

Part two

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor - Tom Baker
• Ann Kelso - Jane Slavin
• Ada Lovelace - Finty Williams
• Colonel Wildman - Andrew Havill
• Hettie / Lady Cleverley - Eve Webster
• Mr Hobhouse - Barnaby Edwards
• Edvard Scheutz / Lord Byron / Harry - Glen McCready

References

• Among elements "stolen" from history by the anti-virus are Charles Wheatstone, Wheatstones' residence at 168 Bleak Lane, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and Albemarle Street, off Piccadilly, and the whole of Bloomsbury.
• Edvard Scheutz is Charles Babbage's biggest rival. Since Babbage's retirement, Scheutz has been working on his calculation engine, which he feels is an improvement upon Babbage's analytical engine.
• Scheutz has been acquiring Lovelace's private notebooks, stolen and sold to him by Hettie. The Doctor identifies recent pages' apparent "doodles" as Block Transfer Computations.
• The anti-virus software, manifesting as plague doctors, were sent as a temporal expeditionary force from the year 7073, during the time of the Block Transfer Wars.
• The Industrial Revolution took place recently, while the Computer Age is still "decades" away.

Notes

• Many of the minor characters are named for characters in Lord Byron's poetry. (BFX: The Enchantress of Numbers)
• The Doctor would met Ada again in his Thirteenth incarnation (TV:Spyfall)

Continuity

to be added

External links

• Official The Enchantress of Numbers page at bigfinish.com