Power Play (audio story)
- You may be looking for the comic story.
Power Play was the fifth story release in the third series of The Lost Stories, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was adapted by Gary Hopkins, from his original script, and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor, Nicola Bryant as Peri Brown and Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield.
Publisher's summary
It's been many years since Victoria Waterfield travelled through time and space fighting monsters and dictators. Now she's back on Earth fighting for the future of the planet. But are her environmental campaigns so far removed from those former adventures in the vortex?
As trucks carrying nuclear waste start to vanish into the air, her friends are kidnapped by a dangerous alien police force and a nuclear power plant runs dangerously close to meltdown...Victoria spies a familiar blue box.
The Doctor. After all this time, the Doctor has come back.
And now...Victoria Waterfield is going to kill him...
Plot
Part one
Victoria and David follow a waste truck which disappears into thin air and head back to Marion Tudor's demonstration outside of Matthew Dysart's nuclear power planet in the English countryside to tell her what they have seen. On the way, Victoria spots the TARDIS and gets David to stop the Jeep so that she can investigate, hoping to be reunited with the Second Doctor and Jamie after several decades. She bangs on the door, but Leiss and Weska of the Pleyarec police capture the two of them with a stasis net and imprison them, believing David to be the Doctor.
The Doctor and Peri wake up on the floor of the control room and deduce that they must have been knocked out by an external attack by the Pleyarec, whom the Doctor believed he had managed to escape after a tumultuous journey trying to avoid them. They find the unattended Jeep outside and meet Marion, who is looking for Victoria and David and invites the two of them for tea at the protestors' camp. There, she and Sean explain that they are protesting Dysart's use of a transuranic element at the plant. When an earthquake hits, the Doctor declares that the plant is going into meltdown.
Part two
The earthquake subsides as the Doctor, Peri, Marion and Sean begin to drive away, so Marion tries to arrange a meeting with Dysart to discuss the incident and succeeds only in getting one with his assistant, Dominic, who tells her and Peri that nothing went wrong at the plant. Marion leaves and Dominic gives Peri a tour so that she can provide an objective report to placate the protestors, apparently taking a liking to her upon learning that she is a recently-arrived traveller. When she tries to leave, Dominic stuns her.
The Doctor and Sean investigate the disappearing waste trucks and are almost hit by one when it appears out of nowhere, after which they go to the TARDIS to examine mud splattered by the vehicle and find Ediacara biota, an example of prehistoric life. Returning to the camp, the Doctor is reunited with Victoria, who has been released under hypnosis to identify the Doctor since Leiss learnt that David was human, and promises to talk to her later given that she does not recognise him.
After breaking into the plant in search of Peri, the Doctor finds that the waste trucks are controlled remotely and is caught by Dysart. Dysart threatens the Doctor with prosecution for trespass and tells him that Dominic is too busy to meet with him, but he is interrupted by a report of a woman breaking into the plant with a gun. The Doctor initially assumes that it is Marion, only to find himself held at gunpoint with Victoria, who declares her mission to find and destroy the Doctor.
Part three
Victoria is confused by the Doctor's new body and comes to her senses, going with him through a time corridor to an old battlecruiser which the Doctor suspects is owned by Dominic, who has evidently been manipulating Dysart. A hypnotised Peri offers them a tour of what she believes to be the power station, not realising that they are in a spaceship on prehistoric Earth because of a hallucinogen, and the Doctor sends Victoria with her whilst he confronts Dominic, actually named Dominicus. Dominicus reveals that he has been dumping nuclear waste in the distant past so that it is harmless by the time of the 21st century and claims that he is doing so for the good of humanity.
Concerned for Victoria, Marion and Sean trace her to the power station and are captured and imprisoned with David by the Pleyarec.
to be completed
Part four
to be added
Cast
- The Doctor - Colin Baker
- Peri Brown - Nicola Bryant
- Victoria Waterfield - Deborah Watling
- Matthew Dysart - David Warwick
- Dominic - Miles Jupp
- Leiss - Andrew Dickens
- Weska - Howard Gossington
- Marion Tudor - Victoria Alcock
- David - Greg Donaldson
- Sean - James Hayward
Crew
- Cover Art - Alex Mallinson
- Director - Ken Bentley
- Executive Producers - Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery
- Music and Sound Designer - Simon Robinson
- Producer - David Richardson
- Script Editor - John Dorney
- Writer - Gary Hopkins
Worldbuilding
- Peri is opposed to nuclear power and brings up Three Mile Island.
- According to the Pleyarec Dominion's galactic classification system, the Sol System is in Sector 12. The Pleyarec police officers Collector Leiss and Constable Weska refer to the Doctor as "the Destroyer of Worlds."
- Steve and Angela are protestors.
- Sean mentions Blue Peter.
- The Doctor discovers a living specimen of Ediacara biota, a life form which lived during the Cambrian era, approximately 500,000,000 years earlier.
- The Doctor mentions the Nuclear Safety Inspectorate.
- Marion refers to the Pleyarec as "Godzilla's grandkids."
- Peri compares Leiss to Officer Dibble from Top Cat.
- Dominic has created a time corridor linking his office in the nuclear power plant to Earth in circa 500,000,000 BC.
- The Doctor describes the Terrible Zodin as "a devastating diva of dissimulation, the queen of corruption and chicanery."
Notes
- This is the first time that Deborah Watling has reprised her role as Victoria for Big Finish Productions outside of The Companion Chronicles.
- This is an adaptation of a script for an unproduced TV story called Meltdown. (BFX: Power Play)
- This story was recorded on 20 and 21 April 2011 at The Moat Studios.
- This story was originally released on CD and download.
Continuity
- Victoria is called "Vic" by her friends and fellow protestors. She previously objected to Captain Hopper referring to her as such while on Telos in the 25th century. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen)
- Victoria refers to her former travelling companions, the Second Doctor and Jamie McCrimmon. (TV: The Evil of the Daleks to TV: Fury from the Deep)
- The Doctor mentions Queen Mary I. Later in his personal timeline, he and his companion Evelyn Smythe would meet the Queen in London in January 1555. (AUDIO: The Marian Conspiracy)
- Peri refers to the meltdown of the nuclear power planet in Chernobyl in the Ukraine on 26 April 1986, which rendered the entire area uninhabitable. (COMIC: Black Destiny) As the meltdown occurred after she began travelling with the Fifth Doctor on 8 May 1984, she seemingly learned about the incident during her travels in the TARDIS. (TV: Planet of Fire, AUDIO: The Reaping)
- Victoria is unaware that the Doctor is a Time Lord. (TV: The War Games) The Fifth Doctor once told his former companion Polly Wright that he tended not to refer to himself as a Time Lord during his first and second incarnations as he was on the run from his people. (AUDIO: The Five Companions)
- The Doctor reminds Victoria of their encounters with the Daleks, (TV: The Evil of the Daleks) the Robot Yeti (TV: The Abominable Snowmen) and the Cybermen. (TV: The Tomb of the Cybermen)
- Peri tells Victoria that she witnessed his regeneration into his sixth incarnation. (TV: The Caves of Androzani)
- The Doctor discovers that Dominic was hired to destroy Earth by the Terrible Zodin. (TV: The Five Doctors)
- Later in his personal timeline, the Doctor, by then in his seventh incarnation, visited a younger version of Victoria in the 20th century. He took her to London in February 1868, where she took care of her father Edward Waterfield's fortune and visited her aunt, Margaret Waterfield, before returning to her adopted time. (PROSE: Prelude Birthright)
External links
- Official Power Play page at bigfinish.com
- DisContinuity for Power Play at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide
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