The Lure of the Nomad (audio story)
The Lure of the Nomad was the two hundred and thirty-eighth story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Matthew Elliott and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor.
Publisher's summary
For thousands of years, it has drifted through space, unimpeded, forgotten, seemingly lifeless. Now, finally, it has been discovered.
Responding to a distress call from the mysterious hulk, the Doctor and his companion, space pilot Mathew Sharpe, walk into a desperate situation. The multi-tentacled semibionic Makara were tasked with renovating the abandoned craft, but now they’ve begun murdering their employers.
The Doctor soon realises that the Makara have been programmed to kill, but by whom, and for what reason? Finding out the truth will mean uncovering a secret that threatens the entire Universe.
Plot
Part one
The Doctor and his companion Mathew Sharpe are in the TARDIS, having just finished an episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The Doctor decides to return Mathew to his time, 2715, but a distress call instead leads them to land on a long-abandoned ship in the year 3115. Mathew’s device is not picking up any life signs, not even their own.
TV presenter Esther Brak is interviewing Eric Drazen, a property owner who has bought up the ship to convert it into a hotel, when they come across a dead body. Willoway, the interior designer hired by Drazen, contacts him with a design request, but Drazen is distracted and he tells her to take a break, and to inform the Makara - multi-tentacled semibionic creatures charged with repairing the ship - to take one too. Drazen identifies the body as self-proclaimed “protest artist” Varian. They take Varian’s mask off and Drazen recognises him as Hugo Salt, an old university acquaintance who Drazen has never thought highly of. Esther wants to leave, but Drazen instructs her to return to her quarters.
While he and the Doctor are climbing a ladder in hopes of reaching the top of the ship, Mathew wanders off early to investigate a strange noise. The Doctor notices that he is missing, but also decides to look around a different floor, due to hearing a musical piece called “The March of the Myriad”. Esther runs up to him, and the Doctor asks if the music disturbed her - apparently not, given that she couldn’t hear it. The Doctor immediately identifies her as a journalist but she believes him to be a spy, working with Varian. Her camera orbs knock him unconscious.
Mathew, meanwhile, locates the origin of the sound but finds nothing save two Makara. He asks them about the distress call and reassures them that he means them no harm, but they are not quite so forthcoming and begin strangling him…
Part two
Mathew is rescued by Drazen, who shoots the Makara from his hiding spot just around the corner. Esther calls Drazen about a “thing” she has left in “a safe place”, and he decides to go and find the Doctor, with Mathew in tow. Mathew explains how the Doctor rescued him from his spaceship, which was going to crash into the planet Ormelia due to an electromagnetic whirlwind.
The Doctor wakes up in Willoway’s room, recognising her as a Geist. She tells him about her work as the decorator of the ship and he tells her in return that he is the Doctor - apparently, she already knows of him, though she knows him as a “prettier” man. Willoway contacts Drazen and the four of them discuss the Makara’s attack on Mathew. The Doctor mentions hearing the March of the Myriad earlier - he explains to Willoway that the Myriad were a military race that played the March as they attacked planets, but that they haven’t been seen in this part of the universe for nearly 2000 years. The Doctor thinks the ship might be called the Nomad.
En route to Willoway’s room, Drazen and Mathew run into Esther, who, like Drazen and Willoway, has no idea about the distress signal that the TARDIS picked up. Mathew’s device still isn’t picking up any life signs. Soon, they find themselves face to face with four Makara, who assure them that they wish no harm and have not been ordered to kill anyone, but that someone has programmed their exoskeletons for murder. The Makara tear apart Esther’s camera orbs, but Drazen shoots them dead and he and Mathew escape.
A different group of Makara enter Willoway’s room and while she is able to draw them away from the Doctor, they compromise her bodysuit, guaranteeing her death. She encourages the Doctor to flee, which he does, soon running into Drazen and Mathew - and a whole host of Makara besides…
Part three
Drazen says that there are fewer Makara in one direction and the others follow him, but Mathew trips over a bag and hurts his ankle. The Doctor searches through the bag - which Drazen reckons belonged to Varian - and finds a photonic simulation generator, using it to project a hologram of a wall to hide the three of them. They make their way back to Willoway’s studio and not long after, Esther arrives and demands to be let in, since she is being pursued by some Makara. Mathew and the Doctor open the door for her, despite Drazen’s protestations. The Doctor searches through Willoway’s things and finds an artron crystal, apparently recovered by Makara the day before. The Makara outside begin laser cutting through the door, but the Doctor is able to use the crystal and a pair of tuning forks to make a fracture in time and space, which they all escape through.
They find themselves in an art deco-inspired room that the Doctor explains is still the Nomad, only inside a time bubble generated by the crystal. The crew of the Nomad had lived inside the time bubble while travelling to their destination. Artron crystals are only found on Gallifrey and one other world - the planet Mirel. This is how the Doctor knew they were on the Nomad: it was the ship that the people of Mirel used to travel to Erebus, where they were murdered by the Myriad Army. The four of them make their way to the piano where the March of the Myriad is coming from and find that it is being played by a woman named Juniper Hartigan, who had flown a shuttle to the Nomad during the Myriad massacre of the people on Erebus and sealed herself onboard. She has been waiting on the ship for several years, from her point of view - which equates to almost two thousand years in real time. Suddenly, the Doctor hears the time-space fracture breaking up and they all manage to jump back through it before it breaks up entirely.
They end up back outside the time bubble, but the Makara are nowhere to be seen and the crystal has been smashed to pieces. They decide to look around the ship and discover that they are in the Basilisk system. According to a holographic tour guide, they were in the time bubble for the equivalent of seventy-two years, meaning that it is now 3187, and that the ship was named “Drazen’s Folly” due to his apparent “disappearance” following the murder of Willoway. The Doctor decides to drop Juniper, Drazen and Esther off on the nearest inhabited world - but then a thought occurs to him. If Juniper flew to the Nomad on a shuttle, where is it now? Suddenly, out of nowhere, Mathew shoots Esther dead, with the gun he took from Drazen earlier. He finally reveals his true self: he is the Myriad.
Part four
Juniper asks him about this - after all, she thought she was the Myriad, and Mathew reassures her that they both are, as the Myriad is the universe that will exist after the end of this one. The Doctor is shocked to realise that “Mathew” has been manipulating events from the moment they met - indeed, he deliberately flew into the whirlwind over Ormelia so that the Doctor would come to “rescue” him. Mathew’s “life sign detection device” was in fact used to hack into the exoskeletons of the Makara and block all communications on the Nomad. The distress call was also a fake engineered by Mathew. “Juniper” reveals that the Myriad had come to this universe in the first place to rescue her: the real Juniper Hartigan had touched a Myriad artefact that converted her into a Myriad. One of the colonists, Schumer, discovered this and so locked her up inside the time bubble. Mathew instructs the Doctor to take them to the planet Cloco in the TARDIS as it is the Myriad’s base of operations - if he refuses, Mathew will kill Drazen. They begin to make their way there.
On the way, Mathew and Juniper reveal that their aim is to reunite with the rest of the Myriad - their species emits a large amount of mesotonic radiation, which has the power to end the entire universe if enough of it is brought together, thus bringing the Myriad into existence prematurely. Arriving at the TARDIS, the Doctor points out how Mathew and Juniper’s voices seem to have changed, and they realise that the Myriad Army has arrived. The two of them run out to communicate with the Army, opening the docking bay doors so they can dock with the Nomad, and Drazen asks the Doctor if he can trap the Army in the time bubble. Drazen distracts Mathew while the Doctor takes his hacking device, and the Doctor uses it to activate the exoskeletons of some nearby Makara. The Doctor makes it back inside the TARDIS but realises that Drazen is not with him. Drazen calls him, and tells him that he is going to activate the engines and fly the Nomad into the sun. The Doctor tries to fly to the engine room and pick him up but the time fracture means he is unable to. Mathew and Juniper run to the engine room and kill Drazen before radioing the Doctor to ask for help, but he refuses. The Myriad also radio the Doctor to tell him that they are standing down - for now.
Cast
- The Doctor - Colin Baker
- Mathew Sharpe - George Sear
- Eric Drazen - Matthew Holness
- Esther Brak / Soberin / Recording - Susie Riddell
- Juniper Hartigan - Anna Barry
- Willoway - Ruth Sillers
- Captain Schumer / Multiple Makaras / Holo-Guide - Jonathan Christie
- Varian / Multiple Makaras - Dan March
Crew
- Cover Art - Lee Johnson
- Producer & Director - John Ainsworth
- Executive Producers - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
- Music and Sound Design - Steve Foxon
- Script Editor - Alan Barnes
- Writer - Matthew J Elliott
- Senior Producer - David Richardson
Worldbuilding
- The Doctor and Mathew arrive on the Nomad in 3115, 400 years after Mathew's time.
- The Doctor has faced the Gyst before.
- The Makara require body-suits.
- The Doctor mentions Mount Callisto.
- An artronic crystal can generate a time bubble where time moves at a different rate and the bubble's internal dimensions are distorted.
- If a time bubble splinters or shatters, anyone inside the bubble would be scattered in time.
- The Myriad Army played "The March of the Myriad" as they attacked planets nearly 2000 years ago.
- "The Myriad" claims to be the next universe after this one, where the entire universe is a hive intelligence.
- The Doctor, Mathew, and Drazen are sent 72 years in the future (3187), where their past actions have become part of established history.
Notes
- Recording of the story took place on 8 and 14 November 2017 at the Moat Studios.
- In addition to the last cover to use the Sixth Doctor sidebar, this story was the last to use the sidebar cover layout completely, which was introduced in AUDIO: Renaissance of the Daleks.
Continuity
- The Doctor mentions Skaro, the Daleks, (TV: The Daleks, etc.) carrot juice, (TV: Terror of the Vervoids, etc.) Terileptils, (TV: The Visitation) and Harry Sullivan (TV: Robot, etc.)
- He mislaid his Stattenheim remote control several centuries ago. (TV: The Mark of the Rani, The Two Doctors)
- He exclaims "by the beard of Rassilon" (PROSE: Burning Heart) and uses the expression "safe as houses." (AUDIO: Singularity, Caerdroia)
- The Doctor checks the radiation meter (TV: The Daleks) and the fault locator (TV: The Edge of Destruction)
- Mathew mentions Quarks. (TV: The Dominators, etc.)
- Drazen mentions he could've got Ogrons instead of Gyst for half the price. (TV: Day of the Daleks)
- The Doctor calls out for Peri as he regains consciousness. (TV: Planet of Fire)
External links
- Official The Lure of the Nomad page at bigfinish.com
