Republica (audio story)
Republica was the first audio in BBV Productions' Audio Adventures in Time & Space anthology series, and the first of the subseries The Time Travellers. Written by Mark Gatiss, adapting his cancelled BBC Past Doctor Adventures novel Cromwell's Dust, it was set in an alternate timeline which Gatiss had seeded in his other Past Doctor Adventure, The Roundheads, tying Republica to the licensed DWU.
Unable to use the actual character of the Doctor or any of his companions, the story introduced extremely close analogues to the Seventh Doctor and Ace: "the Professor and Ace", whose space-time machine was never featured directly. Worries that they were still too close to their BBC counterparts would result in later installments in The Time Travellers giving the Professor's true name as the Dominie and Ace's as Alice.
In 2021, the story was novelised by Micah K. Spurling. This book served as the first entry in the Novelisations in Time & Space series, much as the original Republica had been the original Audio Adventure in Time & Space.
Publisher's summary
The Professor and Ace arrive in present-day London to find the city strangely changed. England is a republic, ruled by an elderly Lord Protector more interested in a mysterious comet than the long-suppressed forces of revolution fomenting in his kingdom.
As political factions vie for power, the travellers become embroiled in the plans of King Charles XIV who stands poised to reclaim the throne. Can they discover who is behind the drastic alteration of history or will the Puritan cause triumph throughout eternity?
Plot
On Ithaca, an alien dissident named Maxwell (see Notes) is disintegrated for his crimes against the state but is successfully reformed and smuggled offworld. Falling through a wormhole to Oliver Cromwell's time of death, he convinces the man to appoint General John Lambert as successor rather than Richard Cromwell.
When the Professor and Ace arrive in late 1990s London, they find the world changed: technology is advanced, Puritans walk the street, Catholicism is oppressed, and a British Republic rules under a hereditary Lord Protector, its Commonwealth still containing the colony of North America. Elsewhere, the latest Lord Protector, Josiah Lambert, is worried about an approaching comet and seeks the advice of his long-time seer, the Other; and a royalist spy wing under LeCompte seeks information to aid the Franco-Spanish invasion that will 'restore' King Charles XIV to his throne.
The Professor and Ace are drawn into the machinations of LeCompte's network and the threat of the British war rocket Behemoth. They discover that the Other and Le Compte are the same man, and that he is trying to manipulate the Lord Protector into firing Behemoth at the comet - which won't near Earth, and Behemoth will instead hit a nearby astrological conjunction. The Other/LeCompte is revealed to be an escaped Ithacan prisoner who has been chief seer to the Lord Protectors since Cromwell's time, all to steer Earth to reach a technological point where he can attack his homeworld in revenge. The Royalist revolt is merely a result of his boredom.
Learning this, and realising that the wormhole to LeCompte's world goes back in time, the Professor allows Behemoth to launch: thus it will kill LeCompte in the past before he escapes, and time will reset. Ace is horrified but told this timeline isn't meant to exist, and the regular timeline is restored.
In another time and place, Ace visits an alien temple. After a discussion with the computer cleric, she is shown the events of the Republic's fall. She is unsettled by the discovery of events neither she nor the Professor remember, and wonders if this is related to an unspecified "him".
Cast
- The Professor - Sylvester McCoy
- Ace - Sophie Aldred
- Le Compte - John Wadmore
- Devlin - Andrew Fettes
- Somerset - Bryonie Pritchard
- Lambert - Michael Wade
- Charles XIV - George Telfer
- Equerry - John Ainsworth
Crew
- Writer - Mark Gatiss
- Director - Bill Baggs
- Post-Production and Music - [[Alistair Lock]
References
- The Professor describes himself as about 950 years old.
Notes
- Mark Gatiss had pitched three BBC Past Doctor Adventures when in need of quick cash, including The Roundheads and Cromwell's Dust, hence The Roundheads also introducing the setting of Cromwell's Dust in passing. After only The Roundheads was produced, he kept the other two pitches in reserve, and ultimately adapted them into two BBV stories, with Cromwell's Dust becoming Republica.[1]
Footnotes
- ↑ Downtime: The Lost Years of Doctor Who Chapter 17 (Dylan Rees)
External links
- Official Republica page at bbvproductions.co.uk
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