The Shadow Heart (audio story)
The Shadow Heart was the one hundred and sixty-seventh story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Jonathan Morris and featured Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor and introduced Chase Masterson as Vienna Salvatori.
It was the third story in a 2012 multi-Doctor trilogy, beginning with the Fifth Doctor and ending with the Seventh Doctor.
Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]
One empire has fallen and another has taken its place. The race known as the Wrath are expanding into new territory. Only the Earth Empire stands in their way.
It's been fifty years since the Doctor last visited this sector of space. And one man in particular has been awaiting his return. As the mistakes of his past come back to haunt him, and with a price on his head and bounty hunters on his tail, the Doctor is heading for a last reckoning.
The pieces are finally coming together. Somewhere deep within the Shadow Heart.
Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]
Part one[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Doctor materialises the TARDIS in Starbaff's on Temperance VII in search of snailers Talbar and Horval and collapses from a laser blast injury in front of them. Reasoning that he must be wealthy, they take him in their transit pod and heal him with a medibot. He tells them that he needs their help in tracking down assassin Vienna Salvatori, who has received a call from an informant about the TARDIS's appearance and murdered Starbaff after asking about the Doctor's whereabouts.
At the Spotel Alendra, the Doctor learns about how Talbar and Horval use the Stellar Ammonite Hercules to collect galdrium and how the Wrath invade planets they deem unjust and take captives to their homeworld, the Shadow Heart. Vienna floods the motel room with sleeping gas, leading the Doctor to send Talbar and Horval away for their own safety and to surrender to her hovercopter's grappling arm. He falls unconscious and wakes up strapped to a table and subject to a memory sifter which Vienna uses to confirm his identity.
Vienna receives the coordinates of her employer, Kylo Sorsha, and the Doctor shows her a memory of him meeting her in the future, but refuses to elaborate upon it. She awaits the Wrath Justice Fleet to sell them Kylo's location and Talbar and Horval manage to rescue the Doctor whilst she is gone, having slipped him a tracking bug which he was actually aware of. When the Justice Fleet arrive, they declare jurisdiction over the planet and attack, demanding delivery of the Doctor. He returns to Starbaff's and is confronted by Vienna. A gun is fired.
Part two[[edit] | [edit source]]
The masked Jandor stuns Vienna to save the Doctor and they leave in the TARDIS to escape the Wrath, materialising inside Hercules. After Jandor collects Talbar and Horval, the Doctor puts an invisibility bubble around Hercules and they find themselves having to race away from a battle between the Wrath and the Earth Empire. Vienna detects Hercules entering warp and informs the Wrath of the group's destination, but she refuses to tell the Wrath of Kylo's location until they agree to her infiltrating his base to neutralise his defences.
Having been hit during the battle, Hercules goes on a collision course with the marsh moon of Magros V and the Doctor uses the TARDIS's vortex drive to slow him down. The group are captured by monkey bats to be sacrificed to their tree god and the Doctor has Jandor fire his gun into the air to signal for help, but the Wrath arrive, followed by the HMS Trafalgar. Captain Webster defeats the Wrath and Lt Dervish has the Doctor, Jandor, Talbar and Horval brought to him.
The Doctor reveals that he has met Webster and Dervish in the future, explaining how he knew that they would be there to rescue them and giving Webster the coordinates of Thagros so that they can have said meeting. He then departs in the TARDIS to hand himself over, asking Jondar to stay aboard the Trafalgar and not to reveal his identity to the earlier Doctor until the right moment, a request which surprises him. On Thagros, Kylo threatens to kill Vienna unless she gives up the Doctor's location, but before he can do so Princess Aliona informs him that the TARDIS is materialising.
Part three[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Doctor, earlier in his timeline, is positively identified by the Wrath thanks to his future self allowing the memory sifter to identify himself to Vienna and flees from them, arriving in Kylo's castle on Thagros fifty years after their last meeting. Vienna takes him to Kylo, who dismisses her and Aliona and explains how the Wrath destroyed the Drashani Empire because of the Doctor's reprogramming. They have since been searching for the Doctor and Kylo. As they talk, Vienna lowers and destroys the castle's defences and contacts the Wrath Justice Fleet to capture the two of them.
The Doctor runs to the TARDIS and Kylo sends Aliona, whom the Doctor has deduced is a clone, to an escape capsule. Vienna tries to stop the Doctor and shoots him, but he manages to get away and she heads to her ship, finding a later Doctor aboard who left her earlier self at Starbaff's five minutes ago. The ship is pulled to safety in Hercules's slipstream by Talbar and Horval, following an even later Doctor's instructions, and Vienna is taken prisoner once Hercules arrives at HMS Trafalgar. There, the Doctor meets Webster, who has also been acting as the future Doctor instructed.
Learning that he will be saved by Webster on Magros V and that he will tell Jandor to keep his identity secret, the Doctor devises a plan for the group to reach the Wrath homeworld without being detected. Vienna escapes to the Wrath fleet in Hercules and Webster prepares for battle, refusing to hand the Doctor over to the Wrath Leader when he calls. However, the Doctor leaves in the TARDIS and travels to the Wrath fleet to hand himself over.
Part four[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Wrath Leader imprisons the Doctor with Kylo, who is mourning the death of the last Aliona clone in the destruction of her escape pod, and Vienna to await judgment on the Shadow Heart, ends the assault on HMS Trafalgar and has Hercules released into space. The three prisoners are taken to the Imperial Engine, the leader of the Wrath Empire, and find that those taken by the Wrath have had their minds enslaved to help the engine resolve the contradictions in the morality programmed into it by the Doctor. The true reason that it wanted the Doctor and Kylo is to finally solve this, which the Doctor agrees to so long as those enslaved are given back their free will.
The Doctor lowers the Shadow Heart's defences to allow Talbar and Horval to arrive in Hercules and Kylo throws fireballs to destroy the Wrath guards, after which he threatens the Doctor into reprogramming the Imperial Engine to serve him as has been his plan the whole time. After Kylo threatens Vienna, the Doctor connects him to the Imperial Engine and stops his hearts when he summons the Wrath to kill him and Vienna. This stops the tracking bug and serves as a signal to Talbar and Horval to call the HMS Trafalgar to fire upon the Imperial Fortress. Before Kylo can attack the ship, the Doctor awakens and tells Jandor to unmask; Jandor is actually the Aliona clone, saved from the pod by the Doctor after he left the HMS Trafalgar.
Kylo is angered to learn that the Doctor told Aliona that she was a clone and has used her to put him in the position of having to choose between killing her and sacrificing himself. He chooses the latter and tells Webster to fire upon the fortress, but he allows the Doctor and Vienna time to escape in the TARDIS. Kylo and the Wrath are destroyed with the Shadow Heart. The Doctor hands Vienna over to Webster, alerts Talbar and Horval to the fact that the Shadow Heart's galdrium which they intend to collect and sell will now be worthless and learns that Aliona intends to broker peace with the Earth Empire with whatever life she has left. He wishes her luck, although he does not believe that she needs it.
Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
- Tenebris - James Wilby
- Vienna Salvatori - Chase Masterson
- Talbar - Eve Karpf
- Horval - Alex Mallinson
- Captain Webster / Starbaff / Wrath Emperor - John Banks
- Lt Dervish - Jaimi Barbakoff
- Aliona - Kirsty Besterman
Crew[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Cover Art - Alex Mallinson
- Director - Ken Bentley
- Executive Producers - Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery
- Music and Sound Design - Wilfredo Acosta
- Producer - David Richardson
- Script Editor - John Dorney
- Writer - Jonathan Morris
Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Frostil shandy, bachelor's nitrate and Temperance sunrise are drinks.
- Talbar negotiates with Mr Grushaw over galdrium.
- Mr Grushaw likes bloodnuts.
- Ludo Joyce is starting a gastrodome.
- Mr Grushaw resembles seaweed and has venom glands.
- Horval believes the TARDIS resembles a Gadarel confession booth.
- Vienna hails a taxi pod.
- Starbaff's is on Grip Street.
- Talbar uses a medibot to graft the Doctor's wound.
- Talbar and Horval stay at the Spotel Alendra on Outer Fifth Street.
- Talbar sarcastically asks the Doctor if he was expecting the Palladium Rosa.
- Talbar tells Horval that he will be as "snug as a Snortis on Vortis".
- Hercules is a Stellar Ammonite.
- Covi is a drink which can be served blue or green.
- The Wrath War was fought approximately fifty years earlier, shortly after the Sixth Doctor's departure from Cawdor. As he programmed them to uphold the rule of law no matter what, the Wrath Justice Fleet attacked and invaded any planet which they considered unjust. It is rumoured that they have abducted thousands of people and transported them to the Wrath homeworld which is known as the Shadow Heart.
- Vienna flies a hovercopter with a grappling arm.
- According to the bounty hunter Vienna Salvatori, the Doctor is the "most wanted man in the twelve constellations."
- Earlier in his personal timeline, the Doctor met a future version of Vienna on the planet Thagros.
- Horval describes the Magros swamp as smelling like "an Ogron's armpit."
- The Wrath have offered a substantial reward for the capture of Kylo Sorsha.
- Kylo's palace on Thagros is an exact replica of the Sorshan Royal Palace, which was destroyed by Princess Aliona eighty years earlier.
- The Doctor comments that his voice sounds nothing like that of his sixth incarnation.
- The Earth Empire war galleon Trafalgar is the flagship of the Seventeenth Earth Fleet.
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- When the Doctor wakes up after temporarily stopping his hearts, he states that he was merely "pining for the fjords", a reference to the "Dead Parrot" sketch by British comedy act Monty Python.
- Even before the release of this story, a series featuring the character of Vienna Salvatori, appropriately titled Vienna, was announced, and started with The Memory Box in February 2013.
- This audio drama was recorded on 16 and 17 May 2012 at The Moat Studios.
Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Talbar refers to Vortis. (TV: The Web Planet)
- It has been 80 years since the Fifth Doctor visited Sharnax (AUDIO: The Burning Prince) and 50 years since the Sixth Doctor visited Cawdor. (AUDIO: The Acheron Pulse) Both planets were located in the Drashani Empire, which has since fallen to the Wrath. Vienna uses a memory sifter to ascertain his identity.
- The Doctor tells Talbar and Horval that he survived the crash-landing of another ship during his fifth incarnation. (AUDIO: The Burning Prince)
- Kylo tells Aliona that the Doctor has changed his face once again since they last met. (TV: Time and the Rani; AUDIO: The Brink of Death)
- Kylo used the traces of Aliona's DNA contained in the royal carcanet, which was given to him by the Sixth Doctor fifty years earlier, to clone her 54 times. (AUDIO: The Acheron Pulse)
- Vienna refers to the Earth Empire's corrective institutions. (TV: Frontier in Space)
- The Doctor claims that he can survive in the vacuum of space for a brief period of time. (TV: Nightmare of Eden, TV: Four to Doomsday, AUDIO: The Death Collectors, TV: The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe)
- The Doctor refers to Aliona's cousin the late Empress Cheni. (AUDIO: The Acheron Pulse)
External links[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Official The Shadow Heart page at bigfinish.com
- DisContinuity for The Shadow Heart at Tetrapyriarbus - The DisContinuity Guide
