A Stain of Red in the Sand (audio story)
A Stain of Red in the Sand was a 2010 Big Finish audio short story, read by David Troughton and featuring the Second Doctor and Zoe Heriot. It was notable for its highly challenging, Doctor-lite point-of-view, which left it open to many different interpretations.
Summary
Indigo lives in a world without hope, on a council estate so gloomy its residents can only manage to call it, "The Slab". On the 13th floor of The Slab lives a sculptor named Roger, a man she'd think of as her boyfriend, were he not so obsessed with his art. She returns to his flat time and time again, despite his inattentiveness, to peer out his kitchen window, and into another reality, where a man named the Doctor is fighting the Caretakers on a sandy world with two suns. These insectoid creatures have been crossing into Indigo's world and unplesantly populating The Slab.
Roger's latest creation is a girl far too innocent for his own world. Her name is Zoe, and by using the medium of "memory meat" to sculpt her, he believes he can save her. On the night he completes it, and finally allows himself to rest, the sculpture disappears. When Roger and Indigo look out the kitchen window in the morning, they see a blood stain in the sand. Roger declares that he has saved Zoe and that the Doctor has won in his struggle against the Caretakers. This seems confirmed by the fact that the Caretakers no longer inhabit The Slab. Indigo notes that the kitchen window has been left slightly ajar for her to follow, before settling down contentedly with Roger to look out the window all day onto that other world.
Characters
References
- Jamie is never mentioned in this story.
- The narrator calls Roger and Indigo "Human", in comparison with the Caretakers.
- The Caretakrs are described as insectoid, but basically humanoid, which means they're not the same Caretakers who roamed the halls of Paradise Towers.
Notes
Like Blink, this is a Doctor-lite story, strictly told from one character's limited point of view. However, telling the story through Indigo's eyes is a much more oblique affair than telling Blink through Sally Sparrow's eyes. Sally was actively working with the Doctor to solve a problem. Indigo, by contrast, is only a somewhat uninformed spectator of Roger's artistic endeavors, and never speaks to the Doctor, who is ostensibly very far away from her at all times. Indigo doesn't understand the purpose of Roger's art, nor does she know that much about the Doctor.
As a result, many things about the play go unexplained. We don't know how the "memory meat" actually works. We don't understand how the Doctor defeated the Caretakers, nor how, precisely, the Caretakers came to Indigo's world. We don't really know whose blood is supposed to have created the titular stain in the sand. The very narrow perspective means that, in a way exceptional for most Doctor Who stories, just about every detail of the plot is open to multiple lines of interpretation.
A couple of possibilities, but by no means the "correct" ones, are:
- It can be read literally. That is, Roger's kitchen window is a portal to another world, on which the Doctor was doing battle with the Caretakers, but they were bleeding through to The Slab. The "memory meat" was a literal piece of technology that allowed Roger to pull Zoe away from the Caretakers, but only in the nick of time. The blood in the sand is hers, flowing from an injury she sustained right before she was whisked into Roger's world by the memory meat. (Or, alternately, it's hers from a wound she sustained when jumping out of Roger's 13th floor window.) Once she returns to the Doctor's side, via the kitchen window, they were able to defeat the Caretakers. Thought of like this, the story has a fair bit of commonality with Planet of the Dead, were it told by one of the UNIT soldiers observing that story's wormhole.
- It could be read metaphorically. The kitchen window might in fact be a television on which Doctor Who was endlessly playing. Roger could be an obsessed fan, living in a dreary council flat, whose life was brightened by watching the television programme. He ignored his girlfriend, and even his need for sleep, to finish his fan art of Zoe. The Caretakers were metaphors for those things which prevent the artist from finishing his work. Once it was completed, he could sleep, let it go, and return to Indigo's side, both of them enjoying Doctor Who as simply an uplifting and enjoyable programme.
Continuity
to be added
Timeline
Because Zoe and the Doctor are barely present in the story — and neither has dialogue — it's extremely difficult to reasonably assess when this story might have occurred. It could be set between any two serials featuring Zoe, except for the two separated by a cliffhanger: The Dominators and The Mind Robber. There's also the potential that it could be set during The Krotons, as the world Indigo sees through Roger's kitchen window has two suns, like the Gond world.
Furthermore, the entire play could be read as metafiction set in the real world, with Roger's kitchen window really being just a television on which the couple are watching the programme, Doctor Who.
External links
to be added
