The Enchantress of Numbers (audio story)

The Enchantress of Numbers
Doctor:	Fourth Doctor
Companion(s):	Ann
Featuring:	Ada
Main enemy:	Finlar contagion, anti-virus force
Main setting:	Newstead Abbey, 1852
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writers:	Simon Barnard, Paul Morris
Director:	Nicholas Briggs
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Jamie Robertson
Sound:	Jamie Robertson
Cover by:	Anthony Lamb
Release details
Number of parts:	2
Release number:	8.3
Part of:	The Fourth Doctor Adventures: Series 8: Volume 1
Release date:	16 January 2019
Format:	1 CD Download
Production code:	BFPTOMCD060
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-78703-294-1
The Fourth Doctor Adventures
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The Enchantress of Numbers was the third story in the eighth series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Simon Barnard and Paul Morris and featured Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and Jane Slavin as Ann Kelso.

Publisher's summary

The TARDIS lands in the grounds of Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire, in 1850. Mistaken for a medic and his maid, the Doctor and Ann are brought to meet Ada Lovelace - the mother of computing and daughter of Lord Byron - who has recently fallen ill.

But the travellers are not here by chance. Something odd is happening on Earth, and they’ve determined that this place is the centre of it.

Strange figures are walking the land. Strange figures wearing bird-like masks. What do they want with Ada? And how will it change the future of humanity?

Plot

Part one

The Doctor pilots the TARDIS from 1852 London to Nottinghamshire in the same year, materialising in Newstead Abbey's hedge maze and leaving K9 inside to charge. They attempt to follow a plague doctor and meet Hettie, a maid who denies having seen anybody and is called away by housekeeper Hobhouse, who mistakes the Doctor for a physician and invites him and Ann into the abbey. Colonel Wildman shows them to the unwell Ada Lovelace, for whom the Doctor prescribes rest and Ann fetches a cold compress from the scullery. Whilst Ann is escorted there by Hobhouse and sees Hettie washing Ada's muddy nightgown, the Doctor is given a tour of the grounds by Wildman.

to be completed

Part two

to be added

Cast

• The Doctor - Tom Baker
• Ann Kelso - Jane Slavin
• Ada Lovelace - Finty Williams
• Colonel Wildman - Andrew Havill
• Hettie / Lady Cleverley - Eve Webster
• Mr Hobhouse - Barnaby Edwards
• Edvard Scheutz / Lord Byron / Harry - Glen McCready

Worldbuilding

• Among elements "stolen" from history by the anti-virus are Charles Wheatstone, Wheatstones' residence at 168 Bleak Lane, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and Albemarle Street, off Piccadilly, and the whole of Bloomsbury.
• Edvard Scheutz is Charles Babbage's biggest rival. Since Babbage's retirement, Scheutz has been working on his calculation engine, which he feels is an improvement upon Babbage's analytical engine.
• Scheutz has been acquiring Lovelace's private notebooks, stolen and sold to him by Hettie. The Doctor identifies recent pages' apparent "doodles" as Block Transfer Computations.
• The anti-virus software, manifesting as plague doctors, were sent as a temporal expeditionary force from the year 7073, during the time of the Block Transfer Wars.
• The Industrial Revolution took place recently, while the Computer Age is still "decades" away.

Notes

• Many of the minor characters are named for characters in Lord Byron's poetry. (BFX: The Enchantress of Numbers)

Continuity

• The Doctor would meet Ada again at an earlier point in her timeline in his thirteenth incarnation, but Ada's memories of that encounter were wiped. (TV: Spyfall)

Cover gallery

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  Textless cover

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  Alternate cover

External links

• Official The Enchantress of Numbers page at bigfinish.com