Sympathy for the Devil (audio story)
Sympathy for the Devil was the second Doctor Who Unbound audio story produced by Big Finish Productions. It featured David Warner as the Unbound Doctor with Nicholas Courtney as the retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
This story was set post-The War Games, though in an alternate universe where the Doctor was exiled to Earth in 1997 instead of the 1970s. The universe of this story and its sequel, Masters of War, crossed over with the "mainstream" Doctor Who universe in the later release The Unbound Universe.
Publisher's summary
What if...the Doctor had not been UNIT's scientific advisor?
1997... and a lone exile arrives on Earth, years later than planned.
On the eve of the Handover, an advanced Chinese stealth bomber crashes in the hills above Hong Kong. The discredited United Nations Intelligence Taskforce has just 24 hours to steal the technology, rescue the passenger and flee to international waters.
Down by the harbour, there's big trouble in Little England — a bar owned by an old soldier who simply wants to forget the past. But an ancient evil is stirring in a place of peace.
The Doctor finds a world on the brink of terror. A world that has lived without him for years. A world that is frighteningly like our own...
Plot
After being put on trial by the Time Lords, the Doctor was exiled to Earth. He was meant to arrive in England in the 1970s but instead, he finds himself in 1997 Hong Kong, on the night of the handover to communist control.
Finding his old friend, the Brigadier, he discovers the dark turn Earth has taken as a result of his absence since 1968. Without the Doctor's expertise to deal with the many extra-normal attacks over the decades, the U.N.I.T. project had failed, and the Brigadier had been discharged due to failing to stop various disasters. As the two talk, an invisible plane crashes into the nearby mountain.
The Doctor and the Brigadier approach the mountain, looking for Ling, one of Alistair's employees. Ling and Adam discover that the crashed plane belongs to the communists. They rescue the pilot, but he is heavily wounded. The Brigadier and the Doctor then arrive, and the Doctor attends to the pilot's wounds.
U.N.I.T. then arrive, much to the Brigadier's chagrin, led by Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood. Brimmicombe-Wood seals off the area and takes the pilot in for questioning. A local Buddhist monastery is used as U.N.I.T. field headquarters.
Adam is still trying to the find the other passenger but is killed by the mysterious Ke Le...
Brimmicombe-Wood interrogates the Doctor and the Brigadier, and chastises the Brigadier for his failures, criticising him for failing to stop the Probe 7 disaster, and the plastic purges, amongst other invasions.
In the monastery, the Brigadier visits the abbot, who tells him about the "soul jar" of which the monks have chanted, non-stop for 150 years. Meanwhile, the Doctor translates the pilot's speech, saying that Ke Le told him to crash the plane, and threatened to kill him. Ke Le was the head of the Ke Le Division, a Chinese group of ex-convicts who go on government suicide missions, and are presumably mind-controlled. After the pilot mentions something that could "steal souls", the Brigadier tells the Doctor about the soul jar with Ling recalling the passenger "changing". With this information, the Doctor works out that Ke Le is a Renegade Time Lord, narrowing it down to three that he is familiar with.
Adam's body is taken back to the monastery, as the soldiers assume he is Ke Le. The Master hands himself in. Upon entering the monastery, the Master threatens the abbot and makes him turn over the soul jar. The Master reveals the soul jar actually contains a mind-control parasite. When the Doctor arrives, the Master greets his old friend before killing the abbot while he has his mind-controlled U.N.I.T. guards take the Doctor, the Brigadier and Brimmicombe Wood prisoner.
The Doctor is released by the Master, who tells him that his new plan has "noble intentions". He intends to rule the world to cause world peace. The Master reveals that he has been trapped on Earth for decades, and chastises the Doctor for never returning to Earth. The Master rants about how he has had to live through the wars, and the panics, and the shortages, while causing "minor diversions" to hopefully attract the Doctor's attention. He plans to use a Chinese military bomb testing to release the parasites to control the world. Striking a deal with his old friend, the Doctor offers him escape in his TARDIS, whose inhibitor the Master will override, if the Master agrees to let U.N.I.T. go free and aid in the destruction of the last parasite.
With the monks chanting to keep the parasite's powers at bay, the group makes for the harbour, with only minutes to spare before the handover. As the soldiers prepare to evacuate, the Master reneges on the deal and demands the keys to the Doctor's TARDIS. Having anticipated this, the Doctor tricks the Master into the Little England pub. With his foe occupied, the Doctor has the last parasite loaded aboard his ship, taking the Brigadier with him as he flies off to Mongolia to dispose of it. Having discovered the ruse, the Master runs out of the pub in time to see the TARDIS take off, shouting for the Doctor to come back. Arriving in Mongolia, the Doctor and the Brigadier quickly unload their cargo, placing the soul jar with the other parasites and quickly retreat back to the safety of the TARDIS.
In Hong Kong, as the soldiers prepare to leave, the Master begs Brimmicombe-Wood for passage back to England who refuses. As the clock strikes midnight, the evacuation boats turn back without the U.N.I.T. force. In Mongolia, the nuclear weapon drops, destroying the parasites.
Revealing that the destruction of the parasites will cause the Ke Le Divisions to go mad, something he didn't say earlier as he'd planned to be off-planet, the Master identifies a decloaking helicopter as belonging to the divisions. As the pilots go mad and begin opening fire into the group, Brimmicombe-Wood frantically tries to report this to U.N.I.T. command while the Master laughs.
With the shockwave of the bomb's detonation having disabled the TARDIS' inhibitor, the ship lands on another world in another time. Eager to resume his travels, the Doctor invites the Brigadier to be his new companion who accepts a new lease on retirement. As they explore though, the Doctor quickly realises that he needs to find new footwear. His current shoes don't fit him at all.
Cast
- The Doctor - David Warner
- Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Nicholas Courtney
- Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood - David Tennant
- The Master - Sam Kisgart
- Ling/Girl in Street/Pub Customer - Liz Sutherland
- The Abbot - Trevor Littledale
- Marcus/Private Jacobs - Mark Wright
- Captain Zerdin - Peter Griffiths
- Adam - Stuart Piper
- Bouncer/Chinese Pilot/Monk/Tannoy Voice/Bomb Control - Jonathan Clements
- Newsreader - Gary Russell
- Pub Customer - John Ainsworth
Uncredited cast
- The Master - Jonathan Clements [1]
References
The Doctor
- The Doctor says he can speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Manchu, Mongolian and Hokkien.
- To the Chinese, he is known as Hu: the Tiger, for his courage; Hu: the Fox, for his cunning: and Xue.
- He knew Chairman Mao when he was a librarian.
- The Time Lords have blocked off the Doctor's knowledge of how to repair the Unbound Doctor's TARDIS.
History
- The Boxer Rebellion is said to have been the result of the mind parasites.
- Hong Kong is being handed over to the Chinese.
- The Unbound Doctor witnessed the British taking Hong Kong.
Alternate timeline
- The Brigadier ordered the saturation bombing of Surrey.
- The Mars Probe 7 affair ended with a "line of mile-wide craters across America".
- Stahlman Gas is a hot stock market option.
- The battle against the Silurians has resulted in a hole in the middle of London, which has turned into a lake because UNIT sent a suicide mission back into the past with nuclear warheads to end the threat.
The Master
- The Master briefly worked as a United Nations advisor before defecting to China.
- Separated from his own TARDIS for twenty years, the Master has been trying to attract the Doctor's attention.
- The Master, badly injured after the plane crash, regenerates. He steals clothes from Adam after killing him.
Notes
- Clements has stated TV: The Mind of Evil is "the critical moment" in the alternate timeline[1] The Master defected to China after the (alternate) events of that story, the Mind parasites are the same creatures used in the Keller Machine, and the Master's alias of "Ke Le" is a Chinese version of his "Emil Keller" one.
- The dying Master regenerating into the "Kisgart incarnation" was intended to be the one protrayed by Roger Delgado.[1]
- This story has the first regeneration in audio.
- This story marks the first appearance of the mind parasites from the television story The Mind of Evil in an audio drama.
- The original idea was drastically different: "My first idea was to do something that capitalised on the world over-run with Silurians and dinosaurs, with no plastics available; a kind of post-holocaust situation. I had this idea for an opening sequence inspired by Aliens, with a UNIT squad decimated by shrieking raptors, and a group of medics dragging a mortally wounded Brigadier to safety while an officer screams: "Somebody get me a doctor!" And then you hear the TARDIS materialising, and the theme music kicks in." [1]
- Ling being mistaken for a Hong Kong local, despite being from Slough, is loosely based on a real incident Clements saw. The real girls were from Colchester, but Clements thought Slough sounded funnier.[1]
- This audio drama was recorded on 24 March 2003.
- Allusions are made to an alternate Invasion of the Dinosaurs, this time run by the Silurians. UNIT prevented it from ever happening by sending Mike Yates on a suicide mission with nuclear warheads to kill the Silurians before they ever woke up, but there's now a crater in the middle of London, where a lake has formed.
- The Auton invasion in Terror of the Autons was stopped, but with UNIT disgraced. The Daily Mail ran a headline of "Barmy Brig in Fake Flower Fiasco."
Continuity
- The Master, upon entering what he thinks is the Doctor's TARDIS, mutters "a new TARDIS ... at last", referring to when he possessed Tremas, and muttered "a new body ... at last". (TV: The Keeper of Traken)
- Adam mentions watching Professor X. (PROSE: No Future)
- In N-Space, the Seventh Doctor would also visit Hong Kong at the time of the Handover of the island to Chinese rule and was reunited with his former travelling companion, Sarah Jane Smith. (PROSE: Bullet Time)
- The Doctor convinces the Brigadier of his identity by recalling their fight against the Robot Yeti. (TV: The Web of Fear)
External links
- Official Sympathy for the Devil page at bigfinish.com
- Sympathy for the Devil at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- DisContinuity for Sympathy for the Devil at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide
Footnotes
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