Queen of the Mechonoids (audio story)

Queen of the Mechonoids
Main character(s):	River
Featuring:	Anya, Mark
Main enemy:	Annam Henic
Main setting:	Gelidius, 41st century
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Jonathan Morris
Director:	Ken Bentley
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Howard Carter
Sound:	Howard Carter
Cover by:	Tom Webster
Release details
Number of parts:	1
Release number:	8.4
Part of:	The Diary of River Song: Series Eight
Release date:	27 January 2021
Format:	1 CD Download 4th of 4 stories
Production code:	BFPDWRIVER08
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-83868-288-0 (physical); ISBN 978-1-83868-289-7 (digital)
The Diary of River Song
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Queen of the Mechonoids, or Queen of the Mechanoids, was the fourth and final story of the audio anthology The Diary of River Song: Series Eight. It was written by Jonathan Morris and featured Alex Kingston as River Song, Jane Slavin as Anya Kingdom and Joe Sims as Mark Seven.

Publisher's summary

Space Security agents Anya Kingdom and Mark Seven answer a distress call – and find River Song, ruling a city of Mechonoids.

But another shock awaits beneath this planet's icy surface. The Mechonoids have been upgraded and are about to be unleashed upon the galaxy!

Plot

Returning to Earth with a month of leave, Anya is prepared to relax and hike the Great Lakes whilst Mark Seven returns to the SSS, but they receive a distress call from River on the ice planet Gelidius and are bound by law to investigate. They find a half-buried spaceship and follow the distress call to an apparently brand new city on stilts where, at Anya's request, a Mechonoid takes them to their leader: River, who has been fed and waited upon by the Mechonoids as the city's sole resident since she crash-landed on the planet thirty-one days prior. Anya and Mark take her to their ship to return to Earth, but they find that the mercury core is missing and go to collect the one from River's ship. There is a hole in the bottom of the ship, however, which the three of them fall down into an artificially-created tunnel.

River, Anya and Mark cross a narrow ice bridge which shatters when they are pursued by an ice octopus and find underground chambers built by the Mechonoids. As an android, Mark is able to switch off the security system which only targets organics and the trio reach a factory of Gold Mechonoids frozen by a glacier. Nearby is a temple with a diamond-encrusted Mechonoid which River reactivates with her gun's power pack; inside of it is Counsellor Annam Henic, a treasonous member of the Earth Council who crashed on Gelidius during the war with the Krayt, during which he passed on information to the enemy. He was given medical attention by the Mechonoids and placed inside one as his legs had been crushed and his organs damaged.

Despite learning that he has been in suspended animation for 16,000 years, Henic reactivates the Gold Mechonoids to begin a war against Earth to get his revenge. River holds Henic hostage to keep them back and throws her gun with its power pack set to overload, giving her, Anya and Mark the opportunity to find a way back to the city. On the way, Anya forces River to admit that she came to the planet deliberately to hunt Henic down and that she was the one who made the tunnel, after which she sent out the distress call to get help getting past the ice octopus and the security system. She also had the City Mechonoids remove the mercury core from Anya and Mark's ship to ensure that they helped. Once they reach the city, River has the City Mechonoids gather at the concourse to defend against the Gold Mechonoids.

Whilst River remains with the City Mechonoids and is shocked to find that the Gold Mechonoids are capable of flight, Anya and Mark head to the vault to retrieve the mercury core and find the upper floors of the city swarming with Gold Mechonoids. The Gold Mechonoids are victorious in the battle thanks to their upgrades and the city shakes as Henic prepares to launch the spaceship around which the city was built. Mark destroys Henic's radio control to stop the Gold Mechonoids and the ice sheet beneath the city cracks as the ship's warp engines power up, leading Henic to seal himself within his Mechonoid casing to prevent River taking him back to Earth to come to justice. Unable to move him, they leave Henic to die.

River, Anya and Mark leave in the SSS ship just as the Mechonoid city collapses into the ice and is destroyed by the launching ship. Although she is no longer able to claim the bounty for Henic, River joins Anya and Mark in heading to SSS headquarters to inform the authorities of what happened to him and intends on using her experience in her lectures. Unbeknownst to the three of them, however, Henic is alive and unharmed thanks to an elevator, albeit entombed for the foreseeable future, and orders a Gold Mechonoid to start digging.

Cast

• River Song - Alex Kingston
• Anya Kingdom - Jane Slavin
• Mark Seven - Joe Sims
• Annam Henic - Derek Griffiths
• The Mechonoids - Nicholas Briggs

Worldbuilding

• Gelidius is an ice planet.
• The Interplanetary Convention for the Preservation of Life dictates that distress calls must be investigated without delay.

Notes

• This story marks the Mechonoids' first appearance in a Big Finish audio drama since The Juggernauts in 2005.
• This story features Anya Kingdom and Mark Seven and helps reintroduce them for 2021's Dalek Universe series.
• As was the case in other audio stories, the name of the robots is pronounced quite clearly as "Mechonoids", despite the title and marketing using the "Mechonoid" spelling.

Continuity

• The Mechonoids were sent out to prepare worlds ready for colonisation 1,650 years ago. (TV: The Chase)

External links

• Official Queen of the Mechonoids page at bigfinish.com