The Lumiat (audio story)
The Lumiat was the first story in the audio anthology Missy: Series Two, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Lisa McMullin and featured Michelle Gomez as Missy.
Publisher's summary
Missy is glorying in the chaos, hoping that a certain someone might turn up.
What she doesn’t expect is an entirely different do-gooder spoiling her plans and teaching her life lessons.
Because, whoever she is, the Lumiat knows far more about Missy than anyone should...
Plot
Missy watches over a battlefield with Bertram, a boy she took from the battlefield to be her 'companion'. She reveals to him that she started the battle by using an atmospheric temperance field to make a group of people having a picnic fight each other. A mysterious woman turns up and reverses the effect, saving the people and helping them afterwards. Missy confronts her and assumes her to be the Doctor despite her telling Missy that she is not the Doctor. She disappears.
Missy takes Bertram into her TARDIS after threatening to kill him if he doesn't accompany her as her companion. She takes him to the Black Archive and steals a number of artifacts, then tells him to look through a file on the Doctor to find any information on the 'incarnation' they have just encountered, however the security system forces them to leave before he can do this and Missy has a better idea of how to find this 'Doctor'.
Missy takes Bertram to the Infinity Prairies and releases a box-full of flesh eating rats near tourists. They take shelter in a nearby pub, however a rat has made it's way up Bertram's trousers. The mysterious woman turns up with a Cybercat that kills this rat and releases more that kill the rest of the rats. She disappears again.
Missy decides to 'explode something' in order to get the 'Doctor's' attention. Missy decides to blow up a meteorite, with the fragments being able to destroy a nearby ship. The mysterious woman turns up on the ship and announces that she has prevented the fragments from destroying the ship. Missy arrives on the ship in her TARDIS. Two members of the crew on deck question who all the new arrivals are and Missy kills them.
The mysterious woman tells Missy she is the Lumiat, a future 'nice' incarnation of Missy, comparing herself to the Valeyard. She tells a story of a day Missy has lost all her regenerations and uses an Elysian field, a device that breaks the body of a Time Lord down into its component atoms and allows the reprogramming of their personality while destroying their body. This sparked a regeneration in Missy, despite her being at the end of her current regeneration cycle, and gave her a new cycle.
The Lumiat comes into Missy's TARDIS with her and Bertram. After Missy and the Lumiat went on a series of adventures together, Missy kills Bertram out of boredom. The Lumiat holds an ashes scattering for Bertram, with Missy getting some of him up her nose. They discuss the Master TARDIS and how it isn't working, with Missy expressing a desire to find the Doctor so he can help. The Lumiat suggests a plan of following random distress calls to find the Doctor.
They land in a village being attacked by vikings in 800AD-ish. The Lumiat convinces Missy to stop the invasion however it turns out the Vikings are hostile aliens. They are defeated when the Lumiat hypnotizes the leader.
The pair arrive on a planet and encounter an endangered Uridian bear cub that has become separated from its mother. Missy names it 'Bear-tram'. They embark on a voyage to find its mother.
They rest and Missy questions where the Lumiat came from again. An Elysium Field can't create something that wasn't there before, only eliminate what was, so Missy wonders how the Lumiat really came from her. The Lumiat insists it was always there, this angers Missy so she decides to kill Beartram however the mother shows up angry. Beartram is holding onto the Lumiat's leg so Missy uses her Bazooka to scare them off, rather than kill them, surprising the Lumiat.
The TARDIS arrives on another planet that has a kingdom on the brink of civil war. The planet consists of a rich North and a poor South. Missy asks why the Lumiat doesn't know all this information and the Lumiat explains she can't remember as most of what Missy was was lost, she only knows about the other stuff and says she 'looked it up'. Missy further explains the politics of the planet: the North won't help the South until they agree to a more democratic system of government, however the South resists this. Both sides were poised to fire missiles at each other until a Siren Gull egg was laid directly on the border between two countries. This egg is extremely valuable as the bird is endangered assumed extinct, however Missy had shot the bird. The egg takes 17 years to hatch and if cracked prematurely, evaporates. The two sides declared a truce to protect the egg.
Missy and the Lumiat enter a room containing diplomats from either side and Missy tells them she has scrambled the egg. The diplomats begin to threaten a war between their sides. The Lumiat tells them she hasn't really done anything to the egg and threatens Missy with a TCE, telling her to give back the egg. Missy realizes the Lumiat can't kill her since that would be suicide, however the Lumiat explains that the Elysium field would fix this paradox. The Lumiat shoots and misses. Missy throws the egg at the Lumiat and she catches it. Missy shoots the Lumiat with a blaster; she falls over and the egg smashes.
Missy uses her vortex manipulator to get her and the Lumiat out of the room. The Lumiat starts to regenerate. The Lumiat tells Missy that she was dying without a chance of regenerating in the future, dying 'poetically', and used the Elysium field to kick-start another cycle of regenerations. The Lumiat taunts Missy about always wanting to impress the Doctor. Missy taunts the Lumiat back by telling her she will likely not be good in her next life. Missy is still skeptical of the Lumiat's origins and tells her she is a mistake, saying that she will never create the Lumiat in her future as she would rather die than become good.
Missy lands on a planet and chucks the Lumiat out. The Lumiat is still regenerating. Missy leaves in her TARDIS, voices taunting her in her head, and decides to go to Earth as the Doctor 'always turns up there sooner or later'.
A group of strangers find the Lumiat regenerating and she finally begins the full regeneration. The story cuts off before the new incarnation is revealed.
Cast
- Missy - Michelle Gomez
- The Lumiat - Gina McKee
- Bertram / Manilaius - Matthew Jacobs-Morgan
- Keeza / Captain Rosecco / Han - Eve Webster
- Radolf / Lieutenant Grappa / Feyza - John Banks
References
- Missy has altered the atmospheric temperance field to make visitors to the Sunken Desert believe they're on a battlefield.
- The Lumiat uses a paradigm nebuliser to reverse what Missy did to the visitors.
- Missy wields a bazooka.
- Missy unleashes flesh-eating rats in the Infinity Prairies, which the Lumiat deals with using a pride of Cybercats. One of them is apparently named Tibbles.
- Missy has covered only herself in rat repellent during this scheme.
- The Lumiat explains that Missy, at the end of her life, used an Elysian field for cryogenetic extraction, giving herself a new regeneration cycle and allowing for the creation of an incarnation who is a distillation of all that was good in the Master.
Notes
- Missy quotes a line from the song "My Boy Lollipop" by Millie.
- On 27 September 2020, as a bonus for an unofficial Doctor Who: Lockdown!-style tweetalong of the Series 10 finale, fan Matthew Rose released an unlicensed audio epilogue to The Doctor Falls, depicting Missy's final moments. It was designed to lead into The Lumiat, and featured the apparent beginning of Missy's regeneration into the Lumiat. Lisa McMullin, who had been made aware of the minisode's existence before its unveiling,[1] warmly complimented it a short time after release.[2] The same tweetalong incidentally also produced a prologue to the TV two-parter, also featuring Missy.
Continuity
- Missy and Bertram visit the Black Archive to find information about the Doctor. (TV: Enemy of the Bane, The Day of the Doctor, The Zygon Inversion)
- She decides to take the following items from the Archive:
- A Sontaran blaster (TV: The Two Doctors, The Sontaran Stratagem, The Day of the Doctor)
- A Dalek Tommy Gun (TV: Evolution of the Daleks, The Day of the Doctor)
- Head of a Cyberman (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
- A Mire battle helmet (TV: The Girl Who Died, The Zygon Inversion)
- A pair of red stilettos (TV: The Time of Angels, The Day of the Doctor)
- TOMTIT, which Missy fondly calls "old friend" (TV: The Time Monster)
- The Lumiat asks Missy to call her a Time Lady, and calls herself old-fashioned; Missy says she might "steal that". She would later give this same line when introducing herself to the Twelfth Doctor. (TV: Dark Water)
- The Lumiat lists some of the Master's "accomplishments", which Missy regards as the "embarrassing bits":
- The Nestene Consciousness invasion of Earth (TV: Terror of the Autons)
- The "Attempt to Instigate World War III and Hold the Entire Galaxy to Ransom" (TV: The Mind of Evil)
- The "Eye of Harmony debacle" (TV: Doctor Who)
- The Lumiat compares herself to the Valeyard. (TV: The Ultimate Foe)
- The Lumiat refers to Missy's "poetic" death, at a time when she finally despaired at who she had become, and decided she wanted to be good. (TV: The Doctor Falls) She explains how she survived. (TV: Spyfall)
- Missy has built a Master TARDIS. (AUDIO: The Broken Clock, The Belly of the Beast)
- After forcing the Lumiat to regenerate, Missy explains that she thinks it's unlikely her next incarnation will share this desire to be good, (TV: Spyfall) as they are rarely the same person twice. (AUDIO: Day of the Master)
External links
- Official The Lumiat page at bigfinish.com
Footnotes
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