Dominion (audio story)

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Dominion was a full cast audio story released on 23 October 2012 by Big Finish Productions as part of the UNIT audio series. It featured Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, Beth Chalmers as Raine Creevy, Tracey Childs as Dr. Elizabeth Klein, Sophie Aldred as Ace and introduced Alex Macqueen as the Reborn Master.

This story is the debut story for another incarnation of the Master, played by MacQueen, who masquerades (and is credited) as "the Other Doctor", a supposed future incarnation, and for the first 3 parts of the story he is "the Doctor" of the story, filling the role that the Doctor would normally fill in a story of this style. It was the first time Big Finish had invented a unique incarnation of the Master, as opposed to reusing an incarnation from the television series.

According to Nicholas Briggs on the behind the scenes CD, this story was much about doing another UNIT series featuring the Doctor, unlike the previous series which barely mentioned him. At four 60 minute parts, this is the single longest story to feature the Seventh Doctor, having a running time of four hours, double the length of most stories featuring him.

Publisher's summary

The universe stands on the brink of a dimensional crisis — and the Doctor and Raine are pulled into the very epicentre of it.

Meanwhile, on Earth, UNIT scientific advisor Dr Elizabeth Klein and an incarnation of the Doctor she's never encountered before are tested to the limit by a series of bizarre, alien invasions.

At the heart of it all is a terrible secret, almost as old as the Time Lords themselves. Reality is beginning to unravel and two Doctors, Klein, Raine and all of UNIT must use all their strength and guile to prevent the whole of creation being torn apart.

Plot

Part one

Dr Elizabeth Klein, UNIT's scientific advisor, makes a recording in which she says that she is being stalked, in real life and in her dreams, by the Doctor, whom she calls the "Umbrella Man". Whilst she can go months or even years without seeing him, he always returns.

The Doctor and Raine Creevy are about to drink tea in the TARDIS when they receive a distress call from another dimension, which the Doctor says never happens. They receive a message from Ace, who they believed was on Gallifrey, in which she tries to pass on a message from the Time Lords before she seemingly loses signal. The distress call drags the TARDIS off-course and through the dimensional divide.

In a tent in the middle of London, Dr Klein analyses a twelve-foot carbuncle of living stone and informs Colonel Lafayette that it is buried too deep to be removed. She takes a sliver of the stone and analyses it further at the laboratory, but she is interrupted by the materialisation of a TARDIS. The Reborn Master steps out and identifies himself as the Doctor.

The Doctor and Raine arrive in another dimension and watch another TARDIS materialise. The Other Doctor emerges and tells them that he is currently helping UNIT in Nevada and warns the Doctor not to help the Tolians before departing, leaving the Doctor and Raine to examine a strange, fleshy rock with a pulse which the Doctor speculates is drawing energy out of this world. They meet Arunzell and other the Tolians, who inform them that they sent the distress call to keep the planet from withering away. Raine reminds the Doctor that the Other Doctor told him not to trust them, but he is dismissive.

Sylvie Wilson wakes up her husband, Sergeant Pete Wilson, who arrives late at UNIT and is sent by Lafayette to guard the carbuncle in London with Private Phillips and Private Maynard. The Other Doctor tells Lafayette that he has come for a spare Naridian pulse lobe from the store cupboard, but Lafayette agrees to give one to him only in return for assisting Klein with the carbuncle, which is growing. The Other Doctor identifies it as a sort of power vampire, which is seemingly confirmed when Wilson tells them that power shortages have been reported across the city; he claims that he could shrink it down using a Naridian pulse lobe.

The Doctor uses a Naridian pulse lobe to shrink the rock down to the snooker ball-sized energy node, a relic of the legendary Dimensioneers, that it originally was. The Tolians do not receive their energy back, however, and they continue to die. The Doctor returns to the TARDIS and locates a hidden room with a node activator which could save the Tolians.

Klein confronts the Other Doctor about haunting her as the Umbrella Man after visiting her once at UNIT, which he admits is strange behaviour but says that he cannot remember doing it. He shrinks down the carbuncle, but Phillips reports that the people at Manix Insurance on floor 27 of the Excalibur Building have begun to act strangely and Lafayette has it evacuated. The Other Doctor pockets the node before Klein forces him to hand it over for her to inspect, after which she takes him to investigate the Excalibur Building. She stops an ambulance and looks over a patient, finding her eyes completely white and her mind eroded.

Wilson and Maynard head to floor 27 in gas masks to find Phillips after he too is seemingly affected. Lafayette orders them to return to the foyer to regroup, but Wilson refuses and Maynard is mentally attacked by a creature, causing him to forget how to shoot. Wilson finds Phillips, who has forgotten how to walk and keeps repeating his name. The Other Doctor bursts in and tells Wilson and Phillips to leave, Maynard having thrown himself down the stairs to get away, whilst he gets a look at the creatures, which he names mind leeches. He hypnotises five soldiers to protect their minds, allowing them to shoot and kill them.

The Doctor activates the node to restore energy to the planet and the Tolians. Arunzell kidnaps Raine and threatens to have her thrown from a height unless he increases the energy. He gives in but, when he refuses to open the door any wider, Raine is thrown. She survives, however, and lands in the interdimensional corridor created by the node into which the Doctor has also jumped. He says that creatures will, as a result of the node, abandon their dying dimensions, resulting in total dimensional chaos.

Whilst Lafayette goes to brief the Ministry of Defence and give news interviews, the Other Doctor scans the area and finds that the mind leeches came from another dimension. Klein believes that the leeches must be connected to the node, but will not allow the Other Doctor to remove it from her sight and demands that they study it together. Suddenly, Wilson alerts them to what seem to be the giant head of a child flying over London.

Part two

With the Skyhead flying over Camden Lock, Lafayette orders Wilson to transport Klein and the Other Doctor from the Excalibur Building to NW1 and tells the Other Doctor, who says that analysing the node is more important, that the TARDIS has been moved to a secure facility and that he needs him to deal with the situation. Before heading to the roof to leave by helicopter, the Other Doctor and Klein tell Wilson that Maynard is in hospital and Phillips will likely live the rest of his life in a vegatative state.

The Doctor realises that the node is feeding on his and Raine's energy and that, as they cannot return to the Tolian dimension, they will have to move forwards through the interdimensional corridor. Raine tires and asks the Doctor if he and Ace used to get into similar situations; he says that they were often worse. They see Ace, projected to them with the help of the Time Lords, and she tries to give them a warning, mentioning Tersurus and the Dimensioneers before disappearing. The Doctor and Raine use the same mental power to open a door before the corridor collapses.

Liz Morrison reports on the Skyhead and goes live to John Starr beneath it in Camden Lock. Starr says that it is unlikely to be a hoax and is as close to a formal alien visitation that the world has seen.

According to Wilson, about twenty flying heads have appeared around the planet, making Klein suspect that an invasion is imminent. The Other Doctor tries to persuade Lafayette not to attempt to communicate with the Skyhead, but he does not listen. The Skyhead tells him that their home is dying and that they need a new one, killing Lafayette with a gust of wind from its mouth when he said that Earth could not be their new home. The Other Doctor has the helicopter flown close to the Skyhead to talk to it, but it blows the helicopter into the canal.

Major Wyland-Jones takes over from Lafayette and has UNIT open fire on the Skyhead, killing it and covering the streets in blood. The Other Doctor pulls Klein from the water, asking if she still has the node in her pocket, and Wilson washed up on the other side. Wyland-Jones gives the briefest of comments to Starr on Lafayette's death and is introduced to the Other Doctor and Klein, telling them that he had been preparing to replace Lafayette for several weeks due to his incompetence. Wilson informs them that the Skyheads around the world are now heading to London.

The Other Doctor tells Klein that he needs to analyse the node, but Wilson informs them that the Other Doctor needs to brief people in Ukraine on hypnosis over the telephone and that Klein has to go to Schwartzwald to deal with another alien incursion. Klein decides to take the node with her. The Other Doctor looks at the Skyhead's remains and confirms that it came from another dimension, but demands that Wyland-Jones return Klein and the TARDIS to him so that he can analyse the node. He refuses.

Arriving on a volcanic planet, the Doctor and Raine flee from a Lava Spider and hide inside a cave where they find another interdimensional door. They follow other spiders through an interdimensional door.

On the way to Germany, Wilson talks to Sylvie, who is coming to the end of her pregnancy and worries about him. Klein cuts the call short and asks Wilson to get a call through to UNIT's surveillance people. They arrive in Baden-Württemberg and meet UNIT contact Hauptmann Jonas Beyer, who tells them about the attacking Lava Spiders and supplies Klein with a tissue sample for her to test. As they drive to a lab, the car is attacked by a Lava Spider and they crash.

The Other Doctor and Wyland-Jones take the remains of the Skyhead out of London to a hangar, reasoning that the other Skyheads will follow it. When the Skyheads arrive, three of them blow the hangar away due to a suspicion of the enclosed space. The Other Doctor assures them that the death of their friend was a mistake.

Klein, Wilson and Maynard awake tied up in webs, finding Beyer dead. The spiders inject lava into the webs to cook them, but the Other Doctor arrives astride a Skyhead and has it blow the spiders and some of the webs away. Klein, Wilson and Maynard climb aboard the Skyheads and go to investigate a shimmer in the forest which the Other Doctor believes could be a door to another dimension. The Skyheads blow the spiders back through the door towards the Doctor and Raine.

Part three

Klein notices two people through the doorway and the Other Doctor, recognising the Doctor, goes in on his Skyhead and saves them. He is surprised that the Doctor and Raine recognise him, learning that they have met him already in his personal future, and with the Doctor's help is able to persuade Klein to hand over the node to close the doorway. Back in London, Klein shows the node to Wyland-Jones and admits that, like him, she does not trust either of the Doctors.

Wilson confines the two Doctors and Raine to a laboratory on Wyland-Jones's orders. The Other Doctor deduces that the Doctor caused the dimensional instability by using the node activator and attempting to distribute energy equally and, after the Doctor relays his story with Klein, says that the instability makes it all the more important that Klein does not learn of her past. Were she to be reminded of her life as a Nazi in another life, her reinvented life could be undone in her mind. It is for this reason that the Doctor has been keeping an eye on her.

Two separate alien incursions are occurring on Earth: one in Las Vegas and another in Tokyo. Colonel Hank Tennison informs Wyland-Jones of a series of cubes firing energy beams and self-destructing. Klein and Tennison both tell Wyland-Jones that they need the help of the Doctor; he agrees and sends Klein to brief both of them whilst he gets in contact with General Nakatomi. She checks with Wilson to see if they have heard from surveillance yet, which they have not, and leads both of the Doctors away, permitting Raine to join them but giving her a stern warning.

to be completed

Part four

to be added

Cast

Uncredited

References

Culture

Individuals

Technology

UNIT

Notes

Covers

This story was released across 4 CDs each with its own cover. Each cover featured one of the four main characters of this story; the Seventh Doctor, Elizabeth Klein, Raine Creevy and the Master.

The TARDIS the Master uses as depicted on the cover for the first part is that of the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctor's, one of the rare instances where Big Finish was, at that time, allowed to incorporate elements from the post-2005 version of the show. This tied into the fakeout that Macqueen was a future Doctor.

  • Part one

    Part one

  • Part two

    Part two

  • Part three

    Part three

  • Part four

    Part four

Continuity

External links

v • e
The Seventh Doctor Adventures
Single releases
The Seventh Doctor:
The New Adventures
Volume One
Silver and Ice
Sullivan and Cross - AWOL
Far From Home
v • e
Reborn Master stories
Audio
Dark Eyes
Main Range
see a full list of appearances here
v • e
Big Finish UNIT spin-off audio series
UNIT
Doctor Who
special
Brave New World
Seabird One
Visitants
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