No Place Like Home (audio story)

No Place Like Home was a 2003 Big Finish audio drama, featuring the Fifth Doctor and new companion Erimem. Originally included in Doctor Who Magazine #326, it was later offered free to the public on the Big Finish Podcast 24th August 2011.

Publisher's summary

Whilst showing his latest companion, Erimem, around her new home, the Doctor discovers that the TARDIS seems remarkably keen to be as unhelpful as possible. Almost as if it wants rid of its occupants...

Cast

References

Shayde first appeared in the Fifth Doctor comic strip, The Tides of Time. He later developed a more complicated relationship with the Doctor in the Eighth Doctor comic stories, beginning with The Final Chapter.

Notes

This is the only audio drama to feature Shayde.
This is the only story in which Erimem appears but Peri Brown does not.

Continuity

Shayde's warning to the Doctor is a direct homage to the Time Lord's warning to the Fourth Doctor in DW: Genesis of the Daleks. Again, the Time Lords "foresee a time" when a race will conquer the universe — only this time, it is the Rovies.
As in DW: Time and the Rani and, later, DW: The Christmas Invasion, the TARDIS wardrobe features the outfits of several earlier incarnations. In particular, Erimem encounters the Fourth Doctor's scarf and hat (DW:Robot et.al.), the Second Doctor's furry overcoat (DW: The Abominable Snowmen, DW: The Five Doctors) and the Third Doctor's ruffled shirts and smoking jackets (DW: Spearhead from Space, et. al). Of the three, the Fifth Doctor seems fondest of the scarf — which he describes as "useful" but cumbersome as he tended to trip over it. The furry coat is described as being made of polyester rather than animal skin, and as having come from the planet Thraxis. He expresses positive embarrassment at her discovery of the kind of clothes he wore in his third life.
A number of companions' clothes are also discovered in the wardrobe, including a dress worn by both Victoria Waterfield and Sarah Jane Smith (DW: Pyramids of Mars), a kilt worn by Jamie McCrimmon and one set of Leela's skins, which the Doctor says Peri once considered wearing.
The TARDIS is said to have the ability to automatically reconfigure its internal arrangement of rooms, leaving the Doctor temporarily unaware of where the rooms had been moved. This was previously touched upon in DW: Castrovalva, and later in DW: The Eleventh Hour and IDW: Tesseract.
Shayde is again seen here as an agent of the Time Lords, working both for them and, to an extent, with the Doctor. He is described as having the ability to remove his dome-like "head" and absorb things into himself. He is given a male voice, a gender assignment not entirely clear in the comics, especially after he merged with Fey Truscott-Sade to become the more feminine combined being, Feyde.
Similar to a conversation between the Second Doctor and Victoria in DW: The Tomb of the Cybermen, the Fifth Doctor speaks to Erimem about his memories of his family. He says that he does not, in fact, think of his family very much at all, save for occasional thoughts of Susan.
The Fifth Doctor expresses a disdain of cats, which was a running gag in his adventures with Erimem, at least until her cat's death. (BFA: Nekromanteia)
The Doctor claims that he delivered the Terracota Army to the first Emperor of China, Qin Chi Huangdi, during his third incarnation. His previous incarnation had encountered the Emperor towards the end of his life in 210 BC. Since his companions, Jamie McCrimmon and Victoria Waterfield, discovered the Terracota Army on that occasion, this would seem to indicate that the Doctor delivered them at an earlier point in the Emperor's personal timeline. (BFA: The Emperor of Eternity)

Timeline

No Place Like Home occurs after BFA: The Church and the Crown
No Place Like Home occurs before BFA: Nekromanteia

External links