The Ravencliff Witch (audio story)
The Ravencliff Witch was the second story of the eleventh series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by David Llewellyn and featured Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and Nerys Hughes as Margaret Hopwood.
Publisher's summary
The TARDIS lands in Ravencliff, a small town on the English coast that stands in the shade of a newly built power station. And that just happens to be haunted.
Every now and then a spectral figure is glimpsed on the beach - the Ravencliff witch. And every time she appears, it's the prelude to disaster.
The Doctor has to solve the mystery of her appearances if he wants to prevent a catastrophe. But he won’t have to do it alone – as he has the help of Margaret Hopwood, a renowned sculptor destined to play a big part in his life.
Plot
Part one
At Ravencliff Power Station, Vic Harris records himself as he goes to deal with a minor leakage. He replays the tape when he hears a strange noise and, when he sees a light and starts hearing whispers, he goes to investigate and sees something impossible. He screams.
The TARDIS' instruments give no indication of where it has landed or what the environment is like, so the Doctor exits and finds that he is near a coast on Earth. He goes to a nearby house but hurries back to the TARDIS when he hears it start to dematerialise, keeping it from leaving him behind.
On the beach, lighthouse keeper Silas Keynes and his dog, Buster, find a family of dead dolphins. Margaret Hopwood, who is looking for driftwood for a new sculpture, sees them and notes that sea life has been washing up dead since the power station opened. She heads home and finds Silas' daughter Amanda waiting for her and again refuses to sell her house to Gordon Miles and leave Ravencliff despite the increased offer.
Dr Celia Banks and John Fairweather inform Miles of Vic Harris' disappearance and present his tape, but Miles is loath to contact the police despite Michael Harper from security vanishing earlier that month. In both cases, shadows have been etched into the walls. Later, Miles has Amanda look over the quarterly reports despite the fact her working day was coming to an end and her colleague, Mavis Barnes, is killed by the same entity that killed Harris.
The Doctor meets Margaret and learns of the power station, the beached dolphins and the Ravencliff witch, whom she saw two days before learning of her father's death at Passchendaele. They investigate a light in the water by boat and the Doctor discovers, using his sonic screwdriver, that there is a void in spacetime below them. A whirlpool forms and the boat capsizes.
Part two
The Doctor sends out an SOS with his screwdriver and gets the attention of Silas, who comes to his and Margaret's rescue and takes them to the lighthouse. Amanda arrives and tells them that Mavis somehow vanished in a dead end corridor and left her silhouette on the paintwork, a sign of a blast of radiation. The Doctor believes that Mavis's death, the whirlpool and the witch, whom Amanda saw before her mother's death when she was a girl, are connected.
As Amanda does not believe that Miles will listen to anybody, she goes to see Fairweather in the morning whilst the Doctor, pretending to work for the government, sees Banks. Miles discovers the ruse after a call with Sir Graham, however, and has the Doctor escorted out. After speaking with Fairweather, Amanda goes with him in search of Banks, but the witch kills Fairweather.
Margaret and Silas research the witch and find that sightings date back to 906 AD, when a Brother Edwin saw a shooting star land in the sea nearby. Since then, she has appeared shortly before people die. The house is surrounded by animals. The Doctor and Banks, who came to find out what he knew about the attacks given that he hinted to her that he knew about the shadows, see the animals heading to the house. Margaret and Silas are trapped inside with foxes.
Part three
Amplifying the sonic screwdriver using a concrete sound mirror, the Doctor gets rid of the animals. He believes that novium, the station's power source, is responsible for the creatures' behaviour, but Banks disagrees and explains that MoD divers found about 40kg of it at the site of the underwater void. Margaret connects the novium to the shooting star in 906 AD.
Whilst Margaret and Silas go to the lighthouse in the hopes of being safer from the witch, the Doctor and Banks get into the desalination plant using the sonic screwdriver and head to the reactor via the coolant tunnels to acquire some of the novium. Protected by a displacement field generator, the Doctor takes some novium and determines that the shards once formed a timeship called an Eon Cube.
Amanda tells Miles that Fairweather was killed and that she saw the witch, but he is paranoid and does not believe her. She refuses to take Miles down to see Fairweather's shadow due to her fear of the witch and passes out. When Tony informs Miles that the Doctor and Banks have been in the station, he orders the coolant tunnels to be flushed out. The Doctor and Banks try to escape, but Miles has had the service hatches bolted and the Doctor does not have the time to unscrew each and every screw.
The witch appears to Margaret and Silas and they flee, but she attacks Silas and he falls from the lighthouse. Although she cannot fully make it out, Margaret is able to tell that the witch is whispering about the power station.
Part four
Amanda saves the Doctor and Banks and they return to the lighthouse where they learn from Margaret of Silas's death. The Doctor recalibrates the lighthouse's radio to receive transtemporal signals and, using it, the witch warns them that nowhere on Earth is safe from the power station's imminent explosion; the Eon Cube's dimensional drive contains a singularity, which will be unleashed if the novium fragments decay.
Determining that the only way to stop the disaster is to reassemble the cube and send it back whence it came, the Doctor, Margaret, Banks and Amanda head to the station. The Doctor and Banks collect the eleven fragments and they recombine, but they find that there is a hole for an activation key which they must find to prevent the Eon Cube from destroying itself. Margaret realises that she found the key on the beach and used it in a sculpture she made shortly after World War II. The key, being connected to the decaying shards of novium, was what attracted the animals to the house. Whilst the Doctor and Margaret recover it, Banks goes to Miles' office for the key codes for the reactor.
Banks finds the key codes and Miles draws a gun on her, having been driven mad by paranoia and the witch. The witch appears, causing the frightened Miles to fall into the reactor before he can kill Banks. The Doctor returns with Margaret in the TARDIS and shuts down the reactor and assembles the Eon Cube, which summons the remaining fuel rods. Banks inserts the key and is sent back in time to the cube's arrival on Earth, becoming the Ravencliff witch whilst the Doctor, Margaret and Amanda get to safety in the TARDIS. The Doctor says his farewells and departs, telling them to remain vigilant and to watch the shores. Amanda decides that she will take over from her father as lighthouse keeper.
Cast
- The Doctor - Tom Baker
- Margaret Hopwood - Nerys Hughes
- Amanda Keynes - Deli Segal
- Celia Banks - Lucy Pickles
- Gordon Miles - Richard Earl
- Silas Keynes - Trevor Cooper
- John Fairweather / Shipping Forecast Announcer (uncredited) - Nicholas Briggs
Worldbuilding
- The Doctor considers going to the Moon of Celebrasis IX or the Palazzo Medici during the reign of Cosimo I.
- Upon arriving on Earth, the Doctor smells 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, a smattering of argon and a pinch of carbon dioxide.
- Buster is a dog. He is named after Buster Crabbe and not Buster Keaton.
- Michael Harper worked in security.
- The power station uses novium.
- There was a Dominican monastery in Ravencliff in the 10th century.
- The Doctor compares the witch to a banshee.
- Margaret mentions Medusa, Grendel's mother and Kali.
- Miles offers to take Amanda to a new bistro in Folkestone.
- Miles forgets Mavis Barnes's name.
- Margaret cannot swim.
- Amanda has two sugars in her tea.
- The Doctor speaks Dog, but never mastered the language of bloodhounds.
- The staff of the power station have to sign the Official Secrets Act.
- Silas's uncle was lighthouse keeper before him.
- Silas' wife is deceased. Her sister lived in Ashford and, on her way to visit her, she died in a car crash on Canterbury Road.
- When an atom bomb explodes, it leaves the shadows of those blasted to atoms etched into stonework.
- Ravencliff is in Kent.
- Celia Banks is the chief science officer.
- John Fairweather is a director.
- The Doctor offers Banks a jelly baby.
- Miles calls Sir Graham.
- Miles has Tony escort the Doctor from the power station. He later informs Miles that the Doctor and Banks have been in the reactor.
- Margaret's grandmother was a spiritualist and only became more of one following the death of Margaret's father.
- In 1483, the witch appeared just before the Aguila, a Spanish vessel, was wrecked in a storm and all those aboard died.
- In 1939, the witch was seen shortly before a German U-boat was sunk off the coast of Ravencliff. Margaret remembers this.
- Novium is a primordial actinide.
- Margaret's mother was fond of a poem.
- Silas would rather Amanda get a job in Folkestone or Hastings.
- Banks asks if she is on Candid Camera, a TV series where practical jokes are played on people.
- Cardovians come from Cardovia, a planet near the outer edges of Hoag's Object. They were banished to the extremities of time by the Time Lords for using their Eon Cubes recklessly.
- Silas gets Margaret a hot chocolate and Rich Tea biscuits.
- Miles talks to Charles over the phone.
Notes
- This story was recorded on 30 June and 5 July 2017 at Audio Sorcery.
Continuity
One of Margaret's sculptures eventually went on display at the Braxiatel Collection. (TV: City of Death)
Cover gallery
Textless cover
Alternate cover
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External links
- Official The Ravencliff Witch page at bigfinish.com
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