The Great White Hurricane (audio story)

Rival gangs turn streets into battlegrounds, and the Doctor and his friends are caught in the crossfire. They find themselves separated and lost in the cold.

As the hunt for a fugitive turns ever more desperate, a blizzard descends. The snow keeps falling. And soon it will prove as deadly as any weapon...

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Coming Storm (1)[[edit] | [edit source]]

Immediately following their previous adventure, the Doctor and his companions arrive in the TARDIS on Earth. Ian steps outside to see where they are and is shot. While Barbara and the Doctor attempt to tend to him, a gang member being pursued by police takes Susan hostage and flees. While Barbara takes Ian to the hospital (luckily his wound is a superficial one), the Doctor insists with a police officer that he goes after Susan; where he declines due to the force being busy, the Doctor then elects to go himself, and the policeman decides to imprison him. In a police carriage, the Doctor encounters another man who tells him that he is not only capable of helping the Doctor get out of prison, but is also the brother of the man who took Susan.

At the Presbyterian Hospital, Barbara meets Rosalita, a Puerto Rican woman who broke her leg while attempting to find food for her son, Joseph. She expresses concern for him, since she told him she wouldn't be away for longer than an hour. A nurse comes to ask Barbara for help with Ian, who is resisting instructions from the doctor attending to him. Meanwhile, Susan's kidnapper demands that she help him find food. When Susan resists, he reveals that he had no intention of hurting her and does not carry a weapon: his main interest is in staying out of jail.

Inside the prison house, the other prisoner introduces himself to the Doctor as Daniel Ellis, a former member of the Mad Boars who had joined to try to keep his brother Patrick out of trouble. He had been Patrick's primary caretaker since both of their parents died of cholera when Patrick was a few months old; the authorities and affluency did nothing to help Daniel even though he was only ten, forcing him to join the gang for support. While Daniel felt he eventually outgrew the gang and left, Patrick couldn't remember being without them and remained. Meanwhile, Patrick and Susan run from pursuers and hide under a fire escape after stealing some bread and bandages. Patrick has some prior wounds that reopen while running, so he suggests they go elsewhere to take cover and use the bandages.

Back at the hospital, Ian asks Barbara to help him leave to find Susan, but she tells him to rest to ease his concussion. Barbara tells Ian that they are in New York City, but they are not sure of the year. She goes to find out what year it is and to ask Ian's doctor how long he will need to recover. At a grocery store cellar, Susan uses windowlight to bandage Patrick's injury. He is concerned about infection, but Susan suggests simply using antibiotics (which Patrick never heard of). He tells her about his upbringing and expresses frustration with his brother Daniel who doesn't seem to care about him. She suggests going to him for help, but he is resistant. Looking out the window, she sees the first signs of snow. In prison, Daniel climbs the walls of the cell to try to get a look outside and also comments on the snow. He is surprised when the Doctor tells him that he has a habit of getting on the wrong side of the law despite his refinement, but the Doctor has a habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There is no bed available for Rosalita at the hospital, and she has been sitting without yet receiving treatment all this time. She and Barbara notice the snow outside, which worries Rosalita who has already injured herself from slipping. Barbara notices a newspaper left by one of the doctors and is upset when she notices the date: March 12, 1888. She runs to Ian to tell him that they need to leave immediately: they are in the beginnings of the Great White Hurricane.

The Frozen City (2)[[edit] | [edit source]]

Barbara insists that she and Ian immediately leave the hospital, to avoid being trapped inside the building and froze to death. On their way out, they meet Rosalita, whose leg is finally been bandaged; she too is leaving to get back to Joseph. Despite Ian feeling rather weak himself, the two teachers agree to help her get home. Meanwhile, Susan and Patrick (whom she heard having a nightmare, during which he talked about doing something by accident) are discovered by the owner of the cellar, and flee into the frozen streets; the Doctor and Daniel too, released by the police, wander towards Daniel's house, in the hope of finding Patrick there.

On their way to Rosalita's home, the woman tells Ian and Barbara her story. She was married to Henry, a worker at the docks in Queens, who drank and often hit her out of rage and spite; she went away from him when during one of his fits he started also beating Joseph. She went to see him at his work some time ago to tell him he would keep her son from him, unless he changed, but he insulted her. When they reach the house, Rosalita finds out that Henry went and took Joseph with him; Ian guesses he would be heading for the train (which Barbara knows is going to freeze due to the storm), and they all depart to catch him in time.

In their wanderings, Susan and Patrick come across some members of the Alley Dogs, the gang against which he and his fellow were figthing the other day, and flee from them down a trapdoor, one of the Wild Boars' (Patrick's gang) refuge; he mistakenly however leaves the trapdoor open, so they see them and trap them inside it, intending to kill them. Patrick and the Doctor too, as they prepared to go out again looking for them, are ambushed in Patrick's home by the leader of the Dogs, O'Connell, who is also looking for Patrick. It emerges that the Alley Dogs plan to kill Patrick out of revenge, since he himself killed a member of their group.

The Killer in the Snow (3)[[edit] | [edit source]]

Susan and Patrick manage to escape the gang members, due to the intervention of a policeman. Once they're alone, Patrick confesses he killed a member of the Dogs by mistake during the fight the previous day, but he didn't mean it. At Daniel's house, O'Connell is going to shoot him for his refusal to tell him the whereabouts of his brother, but the Doctor persuades instead Daniel to help him find him: if he dies, it won't help anyone, not even Patrick. They all venture outside, braving the wind and the snow, to find Patrick, who in the meantime Susan persuaded to help her get back to the TARDIS.

Rosalita, Ian and Barbara reach the train, whose passengers are stuck on an elevated bridge due to the ferries freezing. A man with a ladder offers to help them get down, but only if they pay him some money; Barbara wants to reprimand him, but Ian stops her: he knows that he will never be able to hold the ladder alone, and sooner or later he'll ask them for help. When he does, Ian forces him to renounce to his idea of charging people for his help. Together, Ian and the man hold the ladder as the passengers climb down, until a stronger blow of mind causes one of the telephone poles to crash down on them.

Susan and Patrick come to the Hudson River, whose surface is frozen; there are people walking on the ice towards the other side. They are reached by Daniel and the group of the Dogs with the Doctor, and to avoid them Patrick decides to try and cross the river. As soon as he moves his first steps, however, the ice begins to crack and give way.

River of Doom (4)[[edit] | [edit source]]

Susan and Patrick are blocked in the middle of the river, just as the other men; if they move, the blocks of ice would make them slip into the water. The Alley Dogs are about to go and leave Patrick to his destiny, but the Doctor stops them and with a rousing speech persuades the gang members to work together and help the people get out of the river, remembering them how the gangs were invented to protect "their people". The boys then begin to gather plancks of wood and use them to travel from one block of ice to another, thus giving people a way to reach the shore safely; they are even helped by the police, who has also arrived on the scene.

At the train track, Ian has survived the crash from the telephone pole, just as the other man, but Rosalita has finally found her son and husband. Joseph hit his head and he is badly wounded, and she insists to bring him to a doctor. Henry tries to stop her, but she retorts by telling him how much she is fed up of his violent behaviour, and how she went away to protect their son. Henry apologises and promises to try and be better. They both leave to find a doctor, while Ian and Barbara elect to come back to the TARDIS in the hope that the Doctor and Susan are already back there.

O'Connell finally reaches Patrick and grabs him, but he is persuaded by his pleas that he was an accident and decides not to kill him. When Susan and Patrick are back on shore, Patrick walks to a policeman and asks to be arrested, in order to pay for his crime. Daniel goes with him, and also O'Donnell, who just decided to witness in his favour so that he gets release. The Doctor and Susan are free to go back to the TARDIS. They are preceded by Ian and Barbara, who saw an old man unconscious in the snow, and for a moment fear he is the Doctor - but is only an unfortunate victim of the storm. When the Doctor arrives with Susan suffering of hypothermia, they all board the ship and leave.

As Ian and Susan are now both recovered, the two teachers confide in her pupil that they sometimes find it painful to travel with them, since it puts them in front of the horrors of history. Susan asks whether they'd like to leave, but before Barbara can answer, the Doctor comes into the console room, yelling excitedly that he has found a way to bring Ian and Barbara home.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

The man with the ladder is from a work crew based on Mulberry Street.
Ian is taken to the Presbyterian Hospital.
The Great White Hurricane was one of the most devastating blizzards in US history. Barbara, being a history teacher, sees the date of March 12, 1888 in a newspaper and immediately recognises that the blizzard is coming.