The Hidden Realm (audio story)

The Hidden Realm
Doctor:	Third Doctor
Companion(s):	Jo
Main enemy:	Zim
Main setting:	Bramfield New Town, 1970s
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	David Llewellyn
Director:	Nicholas Briggs
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Nigel Fairs
Sound:	Nigel Fairs
Release details
Number of parts:	4
Release number:	2.2
Part of:	The Third Doctor Adventures: Volume 2
Release date:	3 November 2016
Format:	2 CDs Download 2nd of 2 stories
Production code:	BFPDW3RD02
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-78575-750-1 (physical) ISBN 978-1-78575-751-8 (digital)
The Third Doctor Adventures
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The Hidden Realm was the second and final story in the audio anthology The Third Doctor Adventures: Volume 2, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by David Llewellyn and featured Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor and Katy Manning as Jo Grant.

Publisher's summary

The Doctor and Jo journey to Bramfield New Town when the husband of Jo's cousin vanishes mysteriously. As magpies circle overhead, the Doctor discovers a terrifying alien plot...

Plot

Part one

Whilst walking his dog, Laddie, Peter Andrews is surrounded by magpies and disappears, shortly after which he receives a transfer of £100,000 from an account in Buenos Aires registered to a Hugo Martinez. His wife, Steph, tells Jo, her cousin, about the disappearance and the Doctor drives her to Bramfield New Town in Bessie to investigate, detecting several anomalies in the area with his quantum field manipulator on the way. Steph returns to her job at St Martin's Primary after being questioned by DCI Finch and DS Joseph of Scotland Yard, who are staying at Miss Barnett's bed and breakfast, Sunny Glade, and have to share a room because of the Doctor and Jo making a booking.

The Doctor and Jo visit Steph before looking into the anomalies, which are strongest at the town's outskirts, and meet DS Joseph when they check in with Miss Barnett. When the quantum field manipulator detects a spike a mile away, the Doctor and Jo hurry to Bramfield Abbey, to which DCI Finch has returned after misplacing his notebook there, and DS Joseph follows upon learning that Jo is Steph's cousin. The Doctor informs Jo during the drive that Peter is only the latest of several people who have disappeared in Bramfield in the past five decades and that, in most of the previous cases, those who disappeared eventually returned, albeit with amnesia. One such person was Arthur Kemp, who went on to transform Bramfield into a new town.

At the abbey, DCI Finch gets in radio contact with DS Joseph as he is surrounded by magpies and disappears, transported elsewhere. The Doctor and Jo arrive soon after, by which point the anomaly has faded, and are similarly surrounded by magpies before a portal opens and starts to pull them in. As DS Joseph continues to the abbey on foot, Jo's grip loosens and the Doctor tells her to hold on.

Part two

The Doctor and Jo direct DS Joseph to use the quantum field manipulator to close the portal and the Doctor's examination of one of the now-inert magpies reveals that it is mechanical. On the other side of the portal, Gruppenführer Hans Vogel is placed into DCI Finch's body by Overseer Zim and tasked with neutralising the forces posing a threat to Zim's operations, after which Vogel will be moved into a younger body. Whilst Jo speaks with Steph, who tells her about a pupil who was frightened to go home because he believed his parents were with Peter and had been replaced, the Doctor and DS Joseph check for Finch in Sunny Glade, where they discuss the payment made to Peter by Martinez, a diamond smuggler who disappeared as Interpol closed in on him.

Miss Barnett overhears the Doctor telling DS Joseph about the six locations, which she calls "witchings", from which people tend to go missing around Bramfield and marks them on a map, each equidistant from the six-sided bandstand in Bedford Square. The Doctor goes to Bedford Square with her, discussing Arthur Kemp's disappearance on the way, and sends Jo and DS Joseph back to Bramfield Abbey with the quantum field manipulator. Upon arriving at the bandstand, the Doctor radios Jo to compare her readings with those of his sonic screwdrivers and finds that the quantum field is active. Meanwhile, Vogel takes Steph to Gillswood, one of the other witchings, and where she finds Peter, only for him to reveal that he is actually Martinez. Steph screams as the magpies surround her.

Part three

Jo and DS Joseph head to Gillswood to investigate the quantum field and are surprised to find Vogel, who pretends to be DCI Finch and claims that Peter has been found and taken to Bramfield Infirmary. The Doctor, meanwhile, follows a trans-spatial induction cable connected to the bandstand through a manhole to an underground canal and takes Miss Barnett with him, telling her that he believes that the people of Bramsfield are being transformed by Acridians, who use a base 7 number system. In truth, he has deduced that Miss Barnett is likely an accomplice to the Acridians given her unique position in Bramfield's community, a belief which she confirms after they pass through a door into extra-dimensional space beyond the quantum field.

Miss Barnett introduces the Doctor to Zim, who has been transferring the minds of clients into younger bodies to make them effectively immortal. Whilst his usual clients pay in gold, Miss Barnett has been helping him kidnap people since she walked through a portal to his dimension as a child, a job which became easier after Zim placed a Russian aristocrat in Arthur Kemp's body and had him build the new town. Zim sends Miss Barnett to distract the others whilst he harvests the Doctor's mind, adding its energy to that he has already built up using the mindthresher and allowing him to sell his body. An injured Vogel returns to him after being caught out by a suspicious DS Joseph, who caught him out by asking about the name of a missing girl and caused him to crash his car, and demands to be put into the Doctor's body.

With the quantum field manipulator having been inadvertently broken in the car crash, Jo and DS Joseph go looking for the Doctor in Bramfield and attempt to get in contact with him over the radio. They flee from the bandstand upon realising that the townspeople are looking at them and magpies surrounding them, however. Meanwhile, Zim opens the mindthresher and scans the Doctor's brain, confirming that the Doctor is gone. He informs Vogel that they may begin the procedure.

Part four

Jo and DS Joseph return to Sunny Glade to find the Doctor, only to be told by Miss Barnett that he went to the Bramfield Stone and that Peter has been found and taken to the hospital. When Hugo and Silvia, pretending to be Peter and Steph, visit, Jo realises from their unusual behaviour that the Andrewses have been replaced and that Miss Barnett is an accomplice. She and DS Joseph leave and are radioed by the Doctor, but Jo determines that he too is an impostor when he fails to correct her suggestion that Mr Campbell build a new quantum field manipulator. Nonetheless, they meet with him at Bramfield Abbey where the impostor identifies himself as Vogel and fights with the Doctor's mind when Jo manages to get through to him. Before Vogel regains control, the Doctor tells Jo and DS Joseph that Zim's realm will cease to exist if they can shut down its storage facility and return the captured minds.

Following the Doctor's instructions, Jo and DS Joseph allow Vogel to take them as prisoners to Zim to have their minds harvested and their bodies given to future clients. The Doctor, fearing a metacrisis, takes back control to rescue DCI Finch and employs his help to save Jo and DS Joseph from the mindthreshers before he causes the realm to collapse. Hugo and Silvia stop Jo and the two policemen from leaving until the Doctor shuts down the core and everybody's minds are restored, after which Jo, Peter, Steph and DS Joseph escape through a portal. DCI Finch knocks Zim unconscious and gets the Doctor out through a portal, remaining behind in the Doctor's stead to lock the portal and ensure that Zim does not escape and begin his operations again. The quantum field collapses in on itself. DS Joseph remains in Bramfield to deal with the cleanup and the Doctor and Jo depart, leaving Miss Barnett to regret her wasted years. On the way, Jo tests that the Doctor really is him.

Cast

• The Doctor - Tim Treloar
• Jo Grant - Katy Manning
• Stephanie Andrews - Clare Buckfield
• Peter Andrews - Robert Whitelock
• Miss Barnett - Sandra Voe
• DCI Finch - Richard Earl
• DS Joseph - Alex Lanipekun
• Overseer Zim - George Asprey

Crew

• Cover Art - Tom Webster
• Director - Nicholas Briggs
• Executive Producer - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
• Music and Sound Design - Nigel Fairs
• Producer - David Richardson
• Script Editor - John Dorney
• Writer - David Llewellyn

Worldbuilding

Technology

• The Doctor scans the Bramfield using a quantum field manipulator.
• The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver as a locator.
• The Doctor finds a trans-spatial induction cable.
• Zim has a machine called a mindthresher.
• The Doctor, prepared to sacrifice himself, tells DCI Finch to tell Jo to take care of his car Bessie.

Individuals

• Laddie is a dog.
• Stephanie Andrews is a school teacher at St Martin's Primary while her husband Peter is a town planner.
• Tommy and Jessica are two of Steph's students.
• Arthur Kemp was a government inspector from London who disappeared whilst fishing.
• When Hans Vogel inhabits DCI Finch's body, he puts it at 45-50 years old and from the teeth deduces Finch is a smoker and from the stains indicate he is a coffee-drinker.
• The name of the girl in the car who went missing that DCI Finch is supposed to remember is Sarah Whitfield.
• The Doctor tells Jo they better not keep the Brigadier waiting.

Places

• The account that Stephanie and Peter receive money from is registered in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• People have been disappearing from 3 Giant's Hill, Knucker's Pond, Bramfield Abbey, Gillswood, the Yeoman's Tree and the Bramfield Stone.
• Bedford Square is between Warboys and Barretts.

Songs

• Many of the characters recite the nursery rhyme One for Sorrow.

Television

• DS Joseph mentions Tomorrow's World.

Aliens

• Overseer Zim is an Acridian.

Notes

• During her time with UNIT, Liz Shaw created an archive of mysterious events in Britain over the last fifty years.
• Vogel, possessing the Doctor and capturing Jo and DS Joseph, jokes that it's almost like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".

Continuity

• Zim knows the Doctor is a Time Lord and is able to regenerate. (TV: The Tenth Planet, The War Games et al.)
• When the Doctor tries to fight Vogel for control of his mind, the Doctor says "Oh, my giddy aunt" and "Chesterfield" and Jo comments that they are not something her Doctor would say and must therefore be from one of his other lives. The Second Doctor often used the phrase "Oh, my giddy aunt". (TV: The Krotons et al) The First Doctor sometimes mistakenly called his companion Ian Chesterton by the name "Chesterfield". (TV: Planet of Giants )
• The Doctor continually reiterates that a human and a Time Lord cannot share a mind as it leads to disastrous consequences and what the Doctor dubs a "meta-crisis". Some of the disaster is observed in the Doctor-Donna when Donna absorbs the meta-crisis Doctor's DNA and becomes part Time lord. (TV: Journey's End)
• The Doctor releases the imprisoned minds, even though some no longer have bodies to return to, in order to end their suffering. (TV: The Bells of Saint John)

External links

• Official The Hidden Realm page at bigfinish.com