Friend of the Family (audio story)
Friend of the Family was a full cast audio story released on 12 January 2023 by Big Finish Productions. It comprised the eleventh series of The Diary of River Song. It was written by Tim Foley and featured Alex Kingston as River Song.
Spread over four "episodes", it saw River investigating a multi-decade mystery surrounding the Mortimer family.
Publisher's summary
River Song decides to investigate a temporal anomaly after a Luna University expedition makes some odd discoveries in an old Earth house - pages of her own diary with an inscrutable riddle written across them.
However, her investigation goes badly wrong when she is transported back into the past of the house and gets trapped within its grounds.
The house is the home of the Mortimers and with a limited ability to travel back and forth in time across eighty years and multiple generations she finds herself witnessing key moments in their family history.
If she wants to escape, the words in her diary are not the only riddle she has to solve. But not everyone in the house will survive what's coming. And not everyone is on her side.
Plot
The Rules of the House (1)
The day before the Luna University semester ends and the Doctor is due to take her to the Shores of Glib, River travels to the Mortimer house on Earth with a prototype echo gun. Although she has disabled her holographic assistant, Hugo, he has secretly added a projector to her vortex manipulator and accompanies her. She finds what she came for: a bundle of pages torn from her diary in the future which, in what appears to be her handwriting, tells her to "learn the rules of the house, find the key to the door, save the bird from the nest, draw the isle on the shore".
River uses the echo gun on her diary, scanning the timelines and inadvertently transporting herself back to 2014 where she finds that her vortex manipulator will not move her forward in time, possibly due to Hugo's interference. She meets Harry Mortimer and Vinay Siddiqui, a couple who mistake her for the cook and explain that they have come to renovate the house before selling it; looking around, she sees a photograph of herself with Harry's grandmother in the 1980s and wonders if Hugo arrived in that decade. She is able to use the vortex manipulator to move back in time, but instead arrives in December 1936, where she is mistaken by Lady Maddie Mortimer for her new lady's maid.
River next travels forwards in time to June 1988 and scares Thomas Mortimer by appearing out of thin air. The cook knows her name and takes her to Mary Mortimer, Harry's grandmother, who explains that River has a long history with the family and that she must come to understand the family legacy. In her bedroom, River is able to reactivate an earlier cache of Hugo and learns that a barrier is keeping her from travelling further back than 1936 or beyond 2014. Deciding that she has to solve the first part of the riddle and learn the rules of the house, she allows Hugo to explore in incognito mode whilst she goes to sleep.
In the morning, Hugo explains that an invisible holographic shield charged with temporal particles is around the area, preventing himself and River from leaving. She fires a temporal shot at the field with Hugo's holographic vortex manipulator and sees Maddie and her husband, Henry, for a few moments before Thomas invites her to join Maddie and Carla Alcazar, his girlfriend, for lunch. River learns that Mary's elderly mother is Maddie and speaks with her, but she becomes distressed when she mentions Henry. Afterwards, River learns from Mary that Maddie mysteriously vanished in 1936 and returned only a few months ago.
To keep track, River draws up a timeline from 1936 to 2014 on a page from her diary and notes the periods that she knows she will visit. She heads back to 1936 to play the role of Maddie's maid and Hugo is attacked by the cook, who looks exactly as she did in 1988 and is able to see him despite him being incognito. The cook tells him not to struggle.
The Key to the Door (2)
After the party, River manages to get Hugo back online, but he is suffering amnesia and triggers another hop, taking them both to September 1962 and making them realise that the years they have visited have been at twenty-six year intervals. River senses an unusual energy signature behind a locked door through which Hugo cannot pass and she assumes her sonic device will be unable to open. To get around this, she returns to 1936 with the intention to enter the room and leap forwards in time, but her vortex manipulator fails and Henry avoids telling her whose room it is when he sees her. Hugo is unable to enter the locked room despite the lack of an energy signature within.
In the morning, Maddie introduces River to her children, George and Mary, has her wrap an empty box for Henry's Christmas present and makes her read her palm; when River does so, she tells her that she will go elsewhere without her children for a long time. In 1988, River finds that the locked room is still locked and Mary tells her that it has likely been painted over or that the door is fake. River asks Maddie about it, but she starts crying and Mary sends River to wait for her in the library.
to be completed
The Bird from the Nest (3)
to be added
The Isle on the Shore (4)
to be added
Cast
- River Song - Alex Kingston
- Hugo - Mark Elstob
- Maddie Mortimer - Lillie Flynn
- Henry Mortimer - Joseph Capp
- Mary Mortimer - Jemima Rooper
- George Mortimer - Matt Addis
- Older Henry Mortimer - Tim Bentinck
- Older Mary Mortimer - Isla Blair
- Older Maddie Mortimer - Wendy Craig
- Thomas Mortimer - James Camp
- Carla Alcazar - Vineeta Rishi
- Harry Mortimer - Jack Holden
- Vinay Siddiqui - Ronak Patani
- Cook - Phyllida Nash
References
- River mentions Professor Pearson.
- Galactic Heritage restored the Mortimers' house.
- The echo gun is made from taranium alloy.
- The pages of River's diary were soaked in the gravity wells at the end of time.
- River says that 2014 is a "dull year".
- River is mistaken for a cook and a lady's maid.
- Nicole was a lady's maid. She came from Paris.
- River's vortex manipulator has a Kontron crystal.
- Hugo can enter incognito mode, making him invisible to all but River.
- Mary receives a letter from Remy.
- Carla and Thomas ate duck eggs in the Philippines.
- Hugo says that he likes quiche.
- River's diary has some marginalia.
- Mr Finnemore is Henry's valet-cum-butler. He is an ex-soldier and terrified of women.
- A week ago, River was running around castles with Eleanor of Aquitaine, whom she says likes to get undressed. To have this adventure, she submitted an untruthful leave request to the University.
- Mrs Cameron is the temporary caretaker in 1936.
- River mentions Ziggy.
- Maddie tells River that George died in a skiing accident in Switzerland.
- Carla says that her mother hates all men aside from Carla's brother.
Notes
- Although previous releases had already used the 2022 Doctor Who logo, this was the final Big Finish release to use the 2018 variant introduced during the Jodie Whittaker era.
- The storytelling style of Friend of the Family was inspired by This Is Us, which David Richardson asked Tim Foley to watch, as well as The Forsyte Saga and the ninth series of John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme, which Foley spoke with John Dorney about. Professor Pearson's name came from the family in This Is Us. (BFX: The Rules of the House)
Continuity
to be added
External links
- Official Friend of the Family page at bigfinish.com
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