The Song of Megaptera (audio story)

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The Song of Megaptera was the seventh story in the first series of The Lost Stories, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was adapted by Pat Mills, from his original script, and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and Nicola Bryant as Peri Brown.

Publisher's summary

Deep space in the distant future, and Captain Greeg and his crew are hunting mile-long Space Whales on a vast harvesting ship. By pure accident, they also capture the TARDIS.

The Doctor and Peri must use all their wits to survive. But what is the creature running loose in the ship's bowels? And can the Doctor save Megaptera before its song is extinguished forever?

Plot

Part one

Answering a distress call, the TARDIS materialises in deep space and the Doctor and Peri see a whale-like Galeen which seems to have come to answer the call. However, they find that the distress call is a trick emitted by a factory ship which uses a tractor beam to capture the Galeen. The Doctor manages to free the Galeen by breaking the beam, causing the TARDIS to be captured despite reversing the temporal motors and subjected to the production line intended to process Galeens.

At long last, the Doctor is able to dematerialise the TARDIS and rematerialise at the end of the termination bay, leaving Peri inside whilst he goes to examine the damage. He is taken to Captain Greeg by security guards and claims to be an inspector with the Wild Interstellar Life Federation come to inspect the methods by which SS Orcus kills Galeens. Peri escapes the security guards when they find her outside the TARDIS and falls down a pipe where she finds Manus's fungus-covered body and is attacked as Chief Engineer Volan listens over the radio.

The ship detects the Galeen once more as, despite appearing healthy, it has not used its time core to deep dive through time and escape the area. Captain Greeg orders the ship to fire, but the computer, infected with a virus by the Doctor, refuses to do so as it now wishes to protect the Galeens. Angry, Captain Greeg shoots the Doctor and tells him that he is extinct.

Part two

Peri fruitlessly tries to use Manus's gun on her fungoid attacker, a Touthon, before spraying it in the eyes with a spray can. Leaving the hatch with a scratched arm, she is taken to the medbay by the security guards and diagnosed by the Auto-Doc with fungal contamination. The Doctor, returning to consciousness after being stunned by Captain Greeg to be dumped on a desert planet, visits her whilst Stennar removes his virus from the computer and uses his sonic lance to cure her through selective cell modification, regenerating her.

Volan explains that Touthons are whale-hunters which were once used to track Galeens and drives out the one aboard, a Caller, by filling the pipes with scalding steam. Before it can be killed, Stennar points out that company policy dictates that it be kept alive so that its DNA might be exploited for profit and Captain Greeg instead has it imprisoned. The Doctor, detained with Peri, deduces that the Galeen is unable to dive because of the TARDIS's interference with its signals, meaning that it is their fault that the Galeen was captured in the first place.

to be completed

Part three

to be added

Part four

to be added

Cast

Worldbuilding

Notes

Interior CD art illustrating events in the story.
  • This story was initially written for a Fourth Doctor story, then was reworked as a Fifth Doctor story, starring Tegan Jovanka and introducing Vislor Turlough, written by Pat Mills and John Wagner. It was replaced with Mawdryn Undead. The introduction of Turlough was added at a late stage and he was to have been one of the travellers within the space whale.[1] The final version was written under the name of Song of the Space Whale for Season 22.
  • Much of the reprogrammed Ship's Computer language takes cues from leetspeak. A written dialect of English popularised in the computer gaming and hacking communities. The Computer's suggested strategy of a "zerg rush", adopted by Captain Greeg, originated in the real-time strategy video game, Starcraft.
  • This audio drama was recorded on 23 and 24 September 2009 at the Moat Studios.
  • This story is set between Revelation of the Daleks and The Trial of a Time Lord.

Continuity

External links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ A Brief History Of Time (Travel): Mawdryn Undead
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The Lost Stories
First Doctor
Second Doctor
Third Doctor
Fourth Doctor
Fifth Doctor
Sixth Doctor
Seventh Doctor
Sara Kingdom
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