Death-Dealer (audio story)
Death-Dealer, also known as The Death-Dealer, was a 2010 Big Finish audio vignette read by Louise Jameson and featuring Leela and the Fourth Doctor. It is by far the shortest of the stories on Short Trips: Volume 1, and recounts the time when Leela unwittingly paid to be killed.
Summary
On an arid market world, not dissimilar to a middle-eastern bazaar on Earth, the Doctor treats Leela to a day of shopping. She struggles to understand the fundamentals of commerce, but then spots a weapon that appeals to her. Paying the merchant, Jason, she examines her new toy. Soon, however, she is slain by Jason's knife. The Doctor discovers her dead body and demands answers. A local policeman explains that no laws have been transgressed; Leela has bought a legal death experience. Soon, she springs back to life. Jason explains that the knife's edge contained not only a fast acting poison, but also restorative microscopic robots. Whole again, Leela returns to the TARDIS with the Doctor, musing on the newfound appreciation she has for life, now that she has died. The Doctor, having come back from the dead himself, can appreciate her point.
Characters
- Fourth Doctor
- Leela
- Jason
- A "lizard-man" who is the titular death-dealer
- A policeman
References
- Leela has no concept of money. The unit of currency on the unnamed world is the credit.
- The Doctor wonders if the market world sells jelly babies.
- The world is populated by many different species, including humans.
- At least one inhabitant of the world is a red-skinned "lizard-man" named Jason. Neither the name of his species or his home world is ever given.
- Leela threatens Jason with a janis thorn to his throat.
- The "microscopic healer robots" which restore Leela to life are not actually called nanogenes, but they work in exactly the same way.
- The Doctor hints that Leela's return from death has some commonality with regeneration.
Notes
- Though advertised on the Big Finish website, the CD jacket, and elsewhere as Death-Dealer, Louise Jameson clearly calls the story The Death-Dealer when she begins her reading.
- The story employs a limited third person perspective, focused mostly on Leela, except for the period of time she is dead.
Continuity
- The experience of her own death is a subject often explored by Leela. It's a major part of the character right from her introduction in DW: The Face of Evil. However, it's a particularly strong theme of the trilogy of Companion Chronicle stories that begin with The Catalyst, all of which deal with Leela's actual death. This vignette could easily be integrated within that trilogy as a bit of foreshadowing.
Timeline
There are no definitive clues within the story as to when it might be set. However, because Leela has no concept of money at all, it would seem logical to place this story before The Sunmakers. Her liberal use of janis thorns might also suggest an early placement for this story, but Leela never definitively relinquished the thorns. Thus, this story can only safely be said to occur sometime between The Face of Evil and The Sunmakers
