The Last Day (audio story)
The Last Day was an audio story comprising the fourteenth and fifteenth releases of The Seventh Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Matt Fitton and Guy Adams and starred Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor.
Part One, containing the first six parts of the story, was released on 28 December 2023, and Part Two, containing the final six parts of the story, was released on 25 June 2024.
Publisher's summary
There is always injustice to fight. There is always a new danger for the universe. But what if the Doctor found a way to put things right, once and for all? Would it really be so terrible to take a stand? Would the end justify the means? And would his friends agree? The Seventh Doctor’s last day is coming...
Plot
Part one
On Ungar, Mel runs from the voice of a carnivorous hotel and is rescued by Ace in the TARDIS, neither of which she entirely recognises. The ship struggles to fly through the broken universe, which was caused by somebody taking complete control of it and which Ace believes could be responsible for Mel's memory problems. Mel remembers the Doctor and Ace explains that she is gathering people to save the universe since the Doctor is lost. She agrees to help and Ace leaves her in a desert where she soon meets Benny.
Hex wakes up from a dream about a giant frog and takes his and Sally's youngest children, Damo and Evie, to school on the way to the hospital where he works as a healthcare manager. He gets stuck at work and sees on the news that the World Administration are cutting rations and instituting new security measures which the President will later be giving a speech on. Whilst he is on the phone with Sally, Ace, whom he recognises from his dreams, uses psychic paper to pretend to be an inspector and gets him to help move her cases into the hospital.
Ace tells Hex that she used to travel with him and Sally, something he has no memory of, and gives him with a beeping device after the presidential address begins, telling him that it will change the way he sees things. Watching the speech, he recognises that Ace is almost identical to President McShane. Elsewhere, the Master is rescued from being buried alive by Ace, who stuns his superstitious attackers and demands his help in saving the universe.
Part two
Ace infiltrates Kane's relaxation room on Proamon and threatens him with a flamethrower, forcing him to watch how she captured Garundel to join in her mission to save the universe. Kane does not believe that she is capable of killing somebody in cold blood and is proven right when she refuses his order to kill his guards, but she claims that she would indeed kill if provoked.
Ace shows Kane how she and Garundel travelled to the Mother's Milk Benevolent Association's orphanage where the children, kept silent by negation fields, tied the two of them up to be questioned by Mother Finsey. She also met with Vienna in a restaurant, but Vienna refused to hear her out and was killed in an attack by the Dark Citizens, the reality-destroying enemy that Ace is trying to fight. Whilst Kane does not believe that the Dark Citizens can be defeated, the Master, who got Garundel and the Mother to join the cause, assures him that he can.
Kane joins the group to protect his way of life and Ace explains that the Dark Citizens are acting under the orders of the person that they need to defeat, somebody far more dangerous and feared than the Master, the Mother, Kane or Garundel. Inside the TARDIS, Ace presents this threat: the Doctor, who asks about the state of his universe.
Part three
On Gallifrey, the Doctor, as President of the High Council, visits the captive Krasi President, watches a religious war on Hemera which he decides not to put an end to and gets an update on the Thals, who are living in peace in the absence of the Daleks. He is contacted by President McShane, the version of Ace whom he deemed best-suited to hold the human race back from developing advanced technology per his plans to keep Earth safe, and he advises her not to worry about the other version of herself out there.
The Krasi President reflects on how she feared for her position when she destroyed an island on Krasi Major under the mistaken belief that the residents were making chemical weapons when, in truth, they were making fertiliser. The Doctor claims that he has no such concerns as he is able to continually rewrite history to ensure a good outcome and is not worried about the possibility of the Krasi coming for their President, explaining that they have already made an attempt and he had them wiped out of existence. Privately, he admits to the Dark Citizens that he doubts himself.
Returning to the planet of the Tuffleshrews, who cannot speak but whom he likes to talk to, the Doctor finds the corpse of the exiled Braxiatel and leaves him to be devoured by birds. He visits Hemera, now at peace thanks to his interference in the planet's history, and puts one of the orchids he admires so much in his buttonhole. He declines a Hemeran's offer of lemonade as he is always too busy, although he always has time for orchids.
Part four
Mel and Benny head across the dying planet, experiencing time shifts and avoiding Ogrons installed with cranial leashes which cause them pain until they complete their tasks, and enter a series of caves in search of a machine Ace asked them to recover. Having a data pad connected to the Matrix, Benny informs Mel that they are on the original Gallifrey and that the Celestial Intervention Agency buried the machine beneath the Panopticon due to its reality-warping powers being capable of preventing its own destruction through time shifts.
The pair of them fall into a pit of batsnakes whilst using a gravity grapple and damage their torches, so they use the light from Benny's data pad to keep the creatures back and light their way. They find the machine, the Quantum Possibility Engine, and decide to use it to warp reality and transport themselves to the surface with it. However, it vanishes as Hob arrives with one of his Ogron slaves. The vengeful Hob orders the Ogron to kill Mel and Benny, neither of whom know who he is despite his grandiose introduction.
Part five
Hex and Sally get Cassie to take Damo and Evie to school so they can talk about Ace, whom Sally believes is a figment of his imagination, and Lysandra, whose Global Security soldiers President McShane has replaced with an elite alien force. Afterwards, Hex joins Miss Peters in chaperoning Cassie's class's visit to the Government Hub and is concerned to learn that Cassie has a private audience with President McShane to discuss her ideas about energy. He refuses to allow her to go and attempts to call Sally, but a security guard destroys his phone and locks him up.
The Doctor observes the meeting with Cassie and tells President McShane that he is impressed by Cassie, whom he intends to use against Hex and Sally. President McShane then shows the imprisoned Hex Cassie drinking milkshakes on the other side of one-way glass and reveals that she has the same dreams that he does, elaborating on them in her office and reminding him of the Doctor. As the Doctor's voice tells him to relax, President McShane subjects him to a machine and he passes out.
Sally learns from Lysandra that they have been permanently reassigned to protecting the coast and joins her in flying Pegasus One to a secret security compound in Jersey. On the way, Sally asks Lysandra about gaps in her memory from their time together in the old days, but Lysandra brushes her concerns off for the moment. They are caught by a Sontaran and incapacitate him by hitting his probic vent, although neither can explain how they recognised the Sontarans nor how they know their weakness. They help their captive colleagues escape from the Sontarans and Lysandra demands an audience with their leader, Marshal Stenn. He kills her and threatens to do the same to Sally if she does not surrender.
Part six
Using a stasis lock, the Mother freezes a number of the Time Lords remaining on the barely-populated Gallifrey and she, Ace, the Master, Garundel and Kane, wearing a thermal buffer suit to protect himself, infiltrate the Capitol. The Master argues with Ace's plan to go to the Vault Archives and instead goes to the record room to collect his data extract, after which they break into the Vault Archives, only for the Master to lock everybody inside and join the Doctor in the observation room. The group find what Ace was looking for: a passage to the Dark Universe through which she forces the others to go before she follows.
The Doctor and President McShane use a reality diffuser and give Hex back the memories of his first few months of adventures in the TARDIS, up to when he was shot. When he becomes conscious, President McShane summons Cassie, whom she wants to join her and the Doctor in protecting Earth from the wider universe. Stenn informs her that he has Sally captive and she uses the reality diffuser to make Cassie believe that her parents are both traitors, giving her the choice of which of them is to be executed for their joint crimes.
Mel claims that Hob will be unable to find the Quantum Possibility Engine without her and Benny, but Hob shoots and kills Benny and demands that Mel hands it over. Elsewhere, the Doctor reminisces about those he has lost and how one can never give up on trying to hold the universe together. Whenever things seem to be as bad as they can possibly be, however, he assures the person to whom he is speaking that things can always get much worse.
Part seven
When the Quantum Possibility Engine reappears, Mel informs Hob that it is in an hour-long time loop which she claims she can deactivate for him, giving her the opportunity to escape with it an hour into the past when it vanishes again. She unwittingly activates its voice control, which uses the voice of the Doctor, and learns that the planet will soon collapse without its protection as it is running low on power without any temporal paradoxes. Meanwhile, Chris and Roz fly to the planet to meet Benny and don time-shielding suits to protect themselves.
Utilising the batsnakes against Hob and the Ogrons, Mel joins her past self and Benny to strengthen the Quantum Possibility Engine by saving Benny's life. However, her past self is killed by falling debris, after which Roz arrives and shoots Hob. The three of them reach the strengthened Quantum Possibility Engine and Roz informs Chris by radio that they are to travel to Earth to rendezvous with Ace, who told her when she enlisted her help that she would die in any and all timelines. Deeming it worth it to save the universe, Roz had agreed to help her save the universe.
Part eight
Sally is attempting to goad Commandant Klant when Chris and Roz arrive using a Time Ring and free her from the prison, explaining that they are working with "the right Ace" and are from the correct future. They use the Quantum Possibility Engine to restore the memories supplanted by the Krasi diffuser's field which they intend to get rid of, causing a paradox which the engine will feed on. Despite Chris and Roz's insistence, Sally leaves in the Pegasus to save Cassie from President McShane and Roz sends Chris to join her with the Time Ring to disable the Krasi diffuser when the Quantum Possibility Engine fails. Roz then kills Stenn.
President McShane reveals that she asked Cassie to choose between Hex and Sally to see what they would do and she does not actually intend to kill either of them. She intends to send them both away because of the threat they pose to the status quo and to her making use of Cassie, but she collapses thanks to the Quantum Possibility Engine damaging the Krasi diffuser. When she comes around, she starts receiving the real Ace's memories and acts uncharacteristically, making Hex choose to stay with her and work out where in Ace's timeline she diverged. Sally joins them and shoots President McShane even when Chris arrives and asks her not to; President McShane then regenerates.
Part nine
In the Dark Universe, Ace goes with the Mother to join Garundel in a bar and then fetches Kane, who is scouting the area and who believes that Ace chose her companions because she deems that deserving of the unpleasant journey. Whilst Kane examines the Mother's apparently faulty goggles and deduces that they are recalibrating to make sense of the new universe, Ace and Kane meet the person they have come to find: an alternative Doctor.
Ace explains to the group that the Doctor used the power of the Dark Citizens, the Time Lords of the Dark Universe, to take over his universe and that they need this universe's Doctor to help undo it. This alternative Doctor, however, has gone insane as the only resident of the Dark Universe. Garundel and the Mother are keen to hand him over to a Dark Citizen when she arrives, but Kane disagrees and tells her to take Garundel instead.
Kane accuses Ace of using him so that she can retain the moral high ground by not choosing to hand someone over to the Dark Citizen, but she insists that she is just saving the universe. The two of them go with the Mother and the alternative Doctor through a portal back to their universe, Kane going first and then the Mother. The alternative Doctor congratulates Ace on only having lost one member of the party, but she remarks to herself that she has only lost one so far.
Part ten
On Brillip, Benny and Mel use a shard of a mirror fragment in a chunk of Dalekanium to change the destination of the Dark Universe portal and are eventually joined by Ace, the alternative Doctor, the Mother and Kane. Benny, Ace and the alternative Doctor use a Time Ring and meet with Hex, Sally, Cassie and Chris whilst Kane returns to Proamon to raise an army and the Mother goes after the Master. Hex explains that President McShane began regenerating, but she has disappeared and they exploit the fact that Ace has the same palm print and retina to exit the area and busy the authorities before they can arrive and question the President's absence.
Cassie redirects power to Jersey for the Quantum Possibility Engine and Sally and the Doctor stay with her whilst Ace, Hex and Chris go looking for President McShane and the Krasi diffuser without success. With more power, the Quantum Possibility Engine informs Roz that the diffuser is on the roof and warns her of the arrival of a group of Sontaran spheres led by a Stenn from another reality shortly before they destroy the building. Everyone's memories are restored and UNIT sends out a message asking for the Doctor's help, giving the alternative one flashes of his other self's memories.
On the roof, Ace, the alternative Doctor, Hex, Sally, Chris, Cassie find that President McShane has taken Cassie's form for her new incarnation. President McShane calls for Stenn's help, but the Sontarans all vanish from the skies as reality is restored. Roz appears thanks to the Quantum Possibility Engine and President McShane fades away as she tries to contact Gallifrey. The alternative Doctor removes a shard of mirror from the diffuser and declares that she has a message for the Dark Doctor, whom he is coming after to thwart.
Part eleven
The Doctor and the Master are interrupted during a game of snap by an alert that an invasion force commanded by Kane and including Drahvins, Bane and Carrionites is attacking Gallifrey. The Dark Citizens offer to destroy the fleet and the Master advises him to do so, but the Doctor refuses as he knows that his friends are aboard and the Master privately speaks with the leader of the Dark Citizens. They obey the Doctor as part of a self-imposed rule to make ultimate power less boring.
Aboard Kane's ship, Mel hacks into the Matrix with the help of Cassie on Earth and enters it in a TARDIS with the alternative Doctor, Hex, Sally, Benny and Ace. Chris and Roz, meanwhile, remain on the ship with Kane and the Mother. The Matrix takes a form resembling the Victorian era and separates Hex and Sally from the rest of the group as they discuss putting their lives at risk given that they have children. The couple meet the exiled chancellor before he regenerates into a monstrous Dark Citizen and run from him and others like him, finding the rest of the group stuck trying to get through the closed Seventh Door.
Part twelve
The Master opens the Seventh Door and lets the alternative Doctor, Ace, Mel, Benny, Hex and Sally through to Gallifrey as he and Ace had planned, after which he lowers the transduction barrier so that Kane can storm the Capitol. The Dark Citizens offer to change time so that the Master never came to Gallifrey to open the door, but the Doctor refuses as it would mean the deaths of his friends. They then offer to assist Kane and return Xana to him, an attempt at manipulation which offends him and makes him more determined to thwart them. Intending on leaving Gallifrey, the Master awards himself a new regeneration cycle and prepares to steal a Type 90 TARDIS inside of which he finds the Mother. She finally gets her revenge by abandoning him on Skaro to be captured by the Daleks.
Mel realises that the Dark Citizens are feeding off of the lost potential of the Time Lords exiled to the Matrix and reformats it to cut them off, warning those inside to exit via the Seventh Door. Roz, knowing that she is dead in the true timeline, sacrifices herself by detonating a bomb to keep the Dark Citizens from feeding on her as an anachronism, causing them great pain. After a moment mourning her, Ace confronts the Doctor, who has realised that everything he has done was a mistake, and has Chris and the alternative Doctor bring him the mirror. The alternative Doctor commands the Dark Citizens to follow him back into the Dark Universe and Kane uses his touch to freeze the mirror.
Everybody is returned to where they belong and the Doctor and Ace discuss everything that has happened, with Ace promising to forgive the Doctor for his actions at the moment despite the timeline being restored. A waiter spills the Doctor's drink onto him, so he returns to the TARDIS to get changed and receives a message from Narvin for any incarnation of the Doctor; he informs the Doctor that the Master has been killed by the Daleks and requests, per a note the Master left in his biodata extract, that he go to retrieve his remains. The Doctor dematerialises the TARDIS and Ace hopes that she will have somebody there to stop her should she ever become as manipulative as him.
Cast
- The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
- Ace / President Ace - Sophie Aldred
- Mel Bush - Bonnie Langford
- Benny Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
- Hex Schofield - Philip Olivier
- Sally Morgan - Amy Pemberton
- Chris Cwej - Travis Oliver
- Roz Forrester - Yasmin Bannerman
- The Master - Geoffrey Beevers
- Kane - Edward Peel
- Mother - Richenda Carey
- Garundel - Stuart Milligan
- Lysandra Aristedes - Maggie O'Neill
- Marshal Stenn / Klant / Sontarans / Ogron 2 - Dan Starkey
- Hob - Wayne Forester
- Vienna - Chase Masterson
- Cassie Morgan-Schofield - Lizzie Annis
- Dark Citizen / Krasi President / Miss Peters / Time Lord 2 / Computer Voice - Lin Sagovsky
- Ogron 1 / Hemeran / Fabbi / Cleric / Guard / Time Lord - Alex Jordan
- Co-Ordinator - Seán Carlsen
- Screen Announcement / Recorded Announcement / Security / Soldier / Waiter / News Announcer - Antony Hoskins
Worldbuilding
- The sentient hotels on Ungar have started to eat their guests.
- Hex and Sally have children named Damien and Evie.
- Sally is a CO.
- Hex is a healthcare manager.
- During their travels with the Seventh Doctor, Sally and Lysandra battled the Sontarans.
- Ace has an entirely ceramic flamethrower.
- Ace asks for a Shirley Temple.
- Irving Braxiatel got President McShane through the Academy.
- The Krasi President destroyed an island off the southern coast of Armitrage on Krasi Major.
- Benny likes sharks.
- Lysandra works for Global Security.
- Miss Peters checks that Tristan has a sick bag.
- Miss Peters has spicy falafels.
- Kane wears a thermal buffer suit.
- Mel once had a green Ford Capri.
- Natalie lives next door to the Morgan-Schofields.
- General Bishop works at UNIT.
- The Doctor and the Master play snap.
- Lord President Mexia installed the Capitol Solarium and gifted it to the High Council.
Notes
- This story was recorded 11-12, 14, 17-19 July and 24 August 2023 at The Soundhouse.
- The video trailer for the first half of the story was not released until 22 April 2024.[1]
Continuity
- Ace mentions that she used to work for Kane, as depicted in TV: Dragonfire [+]Loading...["Dragonfire (TV story)"].
- Benny refers to Mel’s previous use of the Quantum Possibility Engine, as occurred in AUDIO: The Quantum Possibility Engine [+]Loading...["The Quantum Possibility Engine (audio story)"].
- Hex remembers his first encounter with the Seventh Doctor and Ace (AUDIO: The Harvest), as well as meeting Florence Nightingale (AUDIO: The Angel of Scutari) and falling in love (AUDIO: Signs and Wonders).
- Mel remarks on how two of her co-existing in the same space is catastrophic. (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors)
- Chris and Roz recall meeting Benny (AUDIO: Original Sin) and travelling with her and the Doctor.
- Sally remembers meeting the Doctor (AUDIO: House of Blue Fire), encountering Beowulf (AUDIO: Black and White) and encountering Fenric. (AUDIO: Gods and Monsters)
- Narvin asks the Doctor to collect The Master's remains from Skaro following his trial and execution. (TV: Doctor Who [+]Loading...["Doctor Who (TV story)"])
Cover gallery
Part One textless cover
Part One alternate cover
Part Two textless cover
Part Two alternate cover
External links
- Official The Last Day 1 page at bigfinish.com
- Official The Last Day 2 page at bigfinish.com
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