Basilisk (audio story)
Basilisk was the first story in the audio anthology Planet Doom, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Robert Whitelock and featured Eric Roberts as the Master and Chase Masterson as Vienna Salvatori.
Publisher's summary
Vienna finds herself prisoner on a warship. Private contractors working with the military's scientific division want her to help them resurrect the Master. Why? Because they need a guide into the bowels of a nameless planet...and the Master is their man.
Plot
A team led by Raptor 1 reach the summit of a ziggurat on a forgotten planet and, receiving Phillips's orders over a communicator, start to hack into a set of impenetrable blast doors. They trigger something, however, and metallic tubes rise out of the ground and kill them. Phi;lips goes on to capture Vienna from her and Passion's spacecraft and bring her aboard the Cerberus, fitting her with a Voltaic smart bracelet and promising her a fortune to assist Rubidium in bringing back the Master. Despite her warnings, Phillips is insistent that the company needs him to complete their contract and Chaoxiang uses her emotions as an attraction charge to reach into the Time Vortex and find the Master.
The Master emerges from a portal and Phillips has him contained and cuffed with a smart bracelet, offering him a solar system if he offers his expertise. Amused to learn that Vienna will be acting as his handler, the Master agrees. Phi;lips introduces them to the Raptor team at Gateway Erida and explains that the mission, codenamed Basilisk, is to retrieve a quantity of endohedral fullerenes from beneath the planet's surface via the ziggurat. Vienna privately agrees with the Master that the mission is a ruse to acquire something more valuable than endohedral fullerenes and that they will have to work together to get free of the smart bracelets. She tries to get information on them from Chaoxiang, but he says that the only way she could get free would be to cut off her arm.
Hypnotising Lawrence, the Master learns that Phillips is after something dangerous, that he intends to kill him and Vienna once it has been recovered and how to get access to the CPU in the Hub to shut down the station's power. Vienna has him punch her so that she can distract Raptor 7 by going to the medical bay with her and gets access to the Hub once the power goes down, blagging when she is caught by Peterson, a junior weapons tech. She learns that Rubidium are after an energy-leeching biogenic entity on which UNIT kept a file now corrupted. When she regroups with the Master, he claims that he does not know what this could be and that he has an escape plan.
The following day, the team leave Gateway Erida on the mission, but the ship crashes into the intended planet with minimal damage and Phillips accuses the Master and Vienna of being responsible. They climb the ziggurat, finding the original Raptor team's remains, and the Master confirms that he knows how to open the blast doors but refuses to, taunting Phillips with the fact that he will not activate the smart bracelet. Phillips loses credibility of the team and the Master takes control, after which Vienna reveals that she hacked into the smart bracelets whilst at the Hub and that the Master's will kill him if she dies. Beneath the surface, Axos senses the approach of the Master.
Cast
- The Master - Eric Roberts
- Vienna Salvatori - Chase Masterson
- Phillips / Raptor 8 - Nigel Whitmey
- Mike Chaoxiang / Raptor 6 - Dan Li
- Raptor 5 / Peterson - Teri Ann Bobb-Baxter
- Raptor 1 / Raptor 7 / Hub Computer - Beverly Longhurst
- Axos - Barnaby Kay
Worldbuilding
- Phillips is chief security officer of Rubidium.
- A Voltaic smart bracelet can kill somebody using 10,000 volts of current.
- Gateway Eridus is a military geostationary orbital.
- Proxima has the death penalty.
- Mike Chaoxiang is chief science officer.
- Phillips has read records on the Master, noting his particular impact on late 20th century Earth.
- Endohedral fullerenes rarely occur in nature. They can be found in meteors and at the site of lightning strikes.
- The Master uses a vectoral collider to break into the blast doors.
Notes
to be added
Continuity
to be added
External links
- Official Basilisk page at bigfinish.com
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