This Sleep of Death (audio story)

This Sleep of Death
Main character(s):	Kate, Osgood
Featuring:	Josh, Sam
Main enemy:	Static
Main setting:	Abbey Marston, 2010s
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Jonathan Morris
Director:	Ken Bentley
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Howard Carter
Sound:	Howard Carter
Cover by:	Tom Webster
Release details
Number of parts:	1
Part of:	Incursions
Release date:	30 April 2019
Format:	1 Episode on 1 CD (1st of 3 stories)
Production code:	BFPUNS08
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-78575-973-4
UNIT: The New Series
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Next →	Tempest

This Sleep of Death was the first story in the audio anthology Incursions, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Jonathan Morris and featured Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart and Ingrid Oliver as Petronella Osgood, James Joyce as Josh Carter and Warren Brown as Sam Bishop.

Publisher's summary

Abbey Marston. UNIT's dark secret. A place where the laws of space and time, life and death, can be suspended. Where remembering the departed has consequences... When UNIT faces a threat from a dead man, Kate has no choice but to return to Abbey Marston once more, to disturb the sleep of death. But the Static are waiting...

Plot

Having stolen a vial of Silurian plague, Sergeant Warren Calder threatens to jump from a height in order to get Kate's attention. He reveals that the vial is elsewhere and jumps off of the roof before detonating the improvised explosive device that he is wearing. Kate, Osgood and Josh worry about the whereabouts of the plague and, when Osgood mentions that Warren was the only one to know of its location, Kate calls for a helicopter to Abbey Marston.

There, Kate gives Osgood and Josh hazmats and takes them to a stone circle in a bunker, explaining that UNIT ensured that the area could not support life due to the nature of the threat; something buried deep beneath the stone circle can resurrect the dead and it is her plan to bring back Calder. They look through photographs of Calder and the telephone rings. Josh answers it and hears Calder screaming. Time stops and the trio leave the bunker and see Calder emerge from the mist, unsure of what is happening and not remembering anything after detonating his bomb.

Kate sends Osgood and Josh out of the room whilst she interrogates the cuffed Calder. After he chants the names of several of his deceased colleagues, Kate has Osgood give him a truth serum, but he knocks her out and ties her up on an altar. He plans on exchanging his mind with hers. Meanwhile, Kate and Josh watch Calder's colleagues emerge from the mist and Private Meghan Coates tells them that they have been brought back from the dead thanks to Abbey Marston before; Calder resurrected them after they were killed by aliens in order to find out what happened to them, after which he sent them back.

Having realised that the resurrected soldiers are a distraction, Kate and Josh try to get back into the bunker but find that Calder has locked them out. Inside, Calder tells Osgood that he had only two or three months left to live and devised this plan in order to steal another's body. However, it is actually the Static who move into Osgood's body, after which Calder is surplus to requirements; the possessed Osgood lets Kate and Josh in and tells them that she knocked Calder out with anaesthetic after learning that the vial is in Topbridge. The soldiers outside disappear and Josh places Calder back into the mist. He disappears and time resumes.

Osgood forces Josh into the stone circle whilst Kate calls Sam for an emergency response team and learns that, in truth, the Silurian plague was never stolen. Kate realises that Osgood is possessed and, over the intercom, demands that she releases Josh. Osgood shows him photographs and names of everybody who died in a fifty-mile radius over the last ten years and forces Josh to bring them back from the dead, allowing the Static to come through with them, by threatening Kate. Kate orders Josh to comply.

Jeff is unable to fly any closer to Abbey Marston due to the mist, so Sam orders him to land ten miles away in Topbridge. The two of them encounter the resurrected, namely a businesswoman who died in a car crash, and realise that the Static are coming through. The resurrected go into houses and take the young and healthy to Abbey Marston. Sam and Jeff requisition a vehicle to follow them.

Kate releases sleeping gas which triggers Osgood's asthma and causes her to collapse. Josh manages to escape his bonds and opens the door for Kate, who plans to remove the Static from Osgood's head and place it back into Calder. She brings Calder back and tells him that the Static have been using him, convincing him to take the Static with him into death. The transfer takes place and Osgood is restored. She suggests blowing up the stone circle with carbon monoxide and one of Calder's explosives, a plan that Kate agrees is a good idea. There is not enough wire, so Osgood sets the explosives to detonate when the landline is called; when she, Kate and Josh resurrect the Brigadier, the phone rings and the circle is destroyed.

The resurrected disappear and time resumes. When Sam and Jeff arrive, Kate has them summon the emergency response team and evacuate the healthy people that the resurrected kidnapped. Everybody is given medicine and the phenomena is explained away as hallucinations caused by fumes released by exploratory fracking. Although the stone circle is destroyed, the technology beneath remains. Kate hopes that this is the end for the Static.

Cast

• Kate Stewart - Jemma Redgrave
• Osgood - Ingrid Oliver
• Captain Josh Carter - James Joyce
• Sergeant Warren Calder - Andrew French
• Meghan - Ajjaz Awad
• Lieutenant Sam Bishop - Warren Brown
• Jeff - Hywel Morgan
• Businesswoman - Alexandra Mathie

Worldbuilding

• Calder wears an IED.
• Calder worked in bomb disposal.
• The Silurian plague is usually in top-security storage. A sample was transported to the UNIT Lab so that the microbiology team could work on an antidote.
• Kate, Osgood and Josh wear hazmat suits.
• Category Omega is a designation for threats to all of humanity.
• 1980 was about thirty years ago. Josh tells Meghan that 1999 was "twenty-odd years ago".
• Josh sarcastically asks if they need a ouija board.
• Osgood and Josh's mobile phones ring.
• Private Meghan Coates, Private Cameron O'Brien, Corporal Kieran Doyle, Corporal Iris Hancock and Sergeant Meena Fernandez worked for UNIT around the 1980s.
• Osgood has asthma, astigmatism and other health issues that she would rather not share.
• Among the names that Josh reads are Maisie Rawlings, Maxine Battista, Dexter Dalby, Lauren Dunlop, Leanne Mills, Lily-May Hyong, Hannah Cartwright, Jonathan Squires, Manisha Kavanaugh, Fenella Slater, Lorena Wells, Amy Stubbs, Mika Strickland, Ariana Myers, Fran Kay, Alicia Wicks, Catherine Lovell, Rhys Howells, Raymond Thornton, Lucy Wyatt, Olivia Tally, Neil Hardy, Estelle Beor, Brenda Cartwright, Ethan Bird, Saul Hodgson, Sam Colley, Brett Grimes, Collette Hodgson, Carrie Shaw, Matt Hickman, Joe Todd, Ursula Fletcher, Humphrey Potts Margaret Bull, Hayden Cassidy and Denise Vickers.
• According to Kate, the Brigadier's personal motto was "When in doubt, blow it up." This was also Emergency Protocol 1 at UNIT.
• Sam passes Topbridge College.
• Josh likes coffee.
• Meghan had a two-year-old daughter.

Notes

• This Sleep of Death was recorded at WiseBuddah in November 2018.

Continuity

• The Sixth Doctor previously encountered the Static. (AUDIO: Static)
• Osgood had worked with Calder for a day clearing up after the "Sontaran Incident". (AUDIO: The Sontaran Project)

External links

• Official This Sleep of Death page at bigfinish.com