Queen of the Mechonoids (audio story)
Queen of the Mechonoids, or Queen of the Mechanoids, was the fourth and final story of the audio anthology The Diary of River Song: Series Eight. It was written by Jonathan Morris and featured Alex Kingston as River Song, Jane Slavin as Anya Kingdom and Joe Sims as Mark Seven.
Publisher's summary
Space Security agents Anya Kingdom and Mark Seven answer a distress call – and find River Song, ruling a city of Mechonoids.
But another shock awaits beneath this planet's icy surface. The Mechonoids have been upgraded and are about to be unleashed upon the galaxy!
Plot
Returning to Earth with a month of leave, Anya is prepared to relax and hike the Great Lakes whilst Mark Seven returns to the SSS, but they receive a distress call from River on the ice planet Gelidius and are bound by law to investigate. They find a half-buried spaceship and follow the distress call to an apparently brand new city on stilts where, at Anya's request, a Mechonoid takes them to their leader: River, who has been fed and waited upon by the Mechonoids as the city's sole resident since she crash-landed on the planet thirty-one days prior. Anya and Mark take her to their ship to return to Earth, but they find that the mercury core is missing and go to collect the one from River's ship. There is a hole in the bottom of the ship, however, which the three of them fall down into an artificially-created tunnel.
River, Anya and Mark cross a narrow ice bridge which shatters when they are pursued by an ice octopus and find underground chambers built by the Mechonoids. As an android, Mark is able to switch off the security system which only targets organics and the trio reach a factory of Gold Mechonoids frozen by a glacier. Nearby is a temple with a diamond-encrusted Mechonoid which River reactivates with her gun's power pack; inside of it is Counsellor Annam Henic, a treasonous member of the Earth Council who crashed on Gelidius during the war with the Krayt, during which he passed on information to the enemy. He was given medical attention by the Mechonoids and placed inside one as his legs had been crushed and his organs damaged.
Despite learning that he has been in suspended animation for 16,000 years, Henic reactivates the Gold Mechonoids to begin a war against Earth to get his revenge. River holds Henic hostage to keep them back and throws her gun with its power pack set to overload, giving her, Anya and Mark the opportunity to find a way back to the city. On the way, Anya forces River to admit that she came to the planet deliberately to hunt Henic down and that she was the one who made the tunnel, after which she sent out the distress call to get help getting past the ice octopus and the security system. She also had the Mechonoids remove the mercury core from Anya and Mark's ship to ensure that they helped.
to be completed
Cast
- River Song - Alex Kingston
- Anya Kingdom - Jane Slavin
- Mark Seven - Joe Sims
- Annam Henic - Derek Griffiths
- The Mechonoids - Nicholas Briggs
Worldbuilding
- Gelidius is an ice planet.
- The Interplanetary Convention for the Preservation of Life dictates that distress calls must be investigated without delay.
Notes
- This story marks the Mechonoids' first appearance in a Big Finish audio drama since The Juggernauts in 2005.
- This story features Anya Kingdom and Mark Seven and helps reintroduce them for 2021's Dalek Universe series.
- As was the case in other audio stories, the name of the robots is pronounced quite clearly as "Mechonoids", despite the title and marketing using the "Mechonoid" spelling.
Continuity
- The Mechonoids were sent out to prepare worlds ready for colonisation 1,650 years ago. (TV: The Chase)
External links
- Official Queen of the Mechonoids page at bigfinish.com
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