The Vanishing Point (audio story)
The Vanishing Point was the third story in the audio anthology Conspiracy of Raven, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Mark Wright and Nicholas Briggs and featured Michael Troughton as the Second Doctor, Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon, Wendy Padbury as Zoe Heriot and Emma Noakes as Raven.
Publisher's summary
Following the threads of a conspiracy twisting throughout all of time and space, the Doctor and his companions head to the Vanishing Point - a mythical place, said to exist somewhere between science and magic. But it is a journey from which they may never return.
Plot
Part one
The time tracks enter gridlock and Raven loses power on Station X45/0. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe experience pain when they look at the scratch in reality where a Kipper was, but the Doctor is more resistant at touches it, making it disappear. The Kipper, he reasons, was powerless as it was stuck between two timelines by his refusal to do as Raven ordered. The two timelines fade away and the trio leave in the TARDIS, but the controls stop working after the Doctor boosts the ship's power to escape something's pull.
Avoiding the Kippers, Raven hears laughter and enters the station's secure unit where Celestin is attached to apparatus the purpose of which she does not know. She finds a Time Ring in Celestin's case, which she surmises he was given by the High Council, and offers to take him with her to escape. However, Celestin says that he must stay and she leaves without him.
The Doctor heads to the TARDIS library in frustration when he fails to bypass the TARDIS's controls and Jamie and Zoe follow him. Once they find the stolen book he was looking for, they head back to the control room where they see Raven in the Time Vortex trying to break in through the doors to escape the Kippers. The Doctor lets her in and jumpstarts the TARDIS with her Time Ring whilst Jamie and Zoe look through the book and read about the Vanishing Point; as Zoe reads it, tendrils grow out of it and grab her.
Part two
Made of energy, the tendrils cannot be removed from Zoe and they tell her about the Vanishing Point, a mythical observatory founded by the Morai. She receives the coordinates and feeds them into the TARDIS despite Raven's objections, but she and the TARDIS are both apparently killed before being revived by localised time energy. The ship materialises at the Vanishing Point with the help of the Morai Overseer Ananke and Aither, who believe that they could help with the strange resonances they have detected using their chronometric monitoring array, but Jamie disappears before the landing.
The Doctor explains to Ananke that he believes the Kippers to have been seeded throughout time and to be related to the destabilisation of time. Whilst being shown the Vanishing Point's representation of the universe by Aither, Zoe sees Jamie, who is caught between dimensional planes, and informs the Doctor as he heads back to the TARDIS. There, Aither uses one of his tendrils to connect the ship to the Vanishing Point so that Ananke can find out what the Doctor and Jamie's missions have been for, but he is attacked by a Kipper after the Doctor returns to Ananke. Jamie reappears long enough to destroy the Kipper, allowing Zoe to hurry to the Doctor once the dying Aither asks her to leave him.
The TARDIS's trail across time shows numerous minor changes to history for a particular purpose. The Kippers follow Zoe, but they fear Ananke, who confirms that they have been seeded across time to rewrite eternity. They fly into the representation of the universe and cause a planet to repeatedly duplicate itself, a planet which the Doctor recognises as Skaro.
Cast
- The Doctor - Michael Troughton
- Jamie - Frazer Hines
- Zoe - Wendy Padbury
- Raven - Emma Noakes
- Ananke - Jacqueline King
- Aither - Callum Pardoe
- Celestin / Morai Novice - Nicholas Briggs
Crew
to be added
Worldbuilding
- Aither's job involves being connected to the chronometric monitoring array.
- Celestin has a Time Ring.
- Jamie mentions Ben, Polly and Victoria.
Notes
- The Vanishing Point was recorded at the Soundhouse in March 2024.
Continuity
to be added
External links
- Official The Vanishing Point page at bigfinish.com
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