Face of the Apocalypse (audio story)

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Face of the Apocalypse was the second story in the audio anthology Star-Crossed, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Lizzie Hopley and featured Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor and Alex Kingston as River Song.

Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

After locking onto an unusual algorithm, the TARDIS lands in a hi-security Intergalactic Bank where the computerised system only recognises one face - River Song. The Doctor discovers River dismantling the main computer and immediately suspects her of something dodgy…

But a case of stolen identity becomes far more serious as River's face starts to appear throughout history and the Bank vaults start filling up with Temporal Prisoners. Is River the victim of a sting or a bored computer nerd? One thing's for certain, the 'glitch' is no longer a glitch and is on its way to destroying all of spacetime, starting with Prisoner Number One.

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

The TARDIS detects that Lukito Bank is repeating the number 1.619 and the Doctor uses it as a PIN, unwittingly accessing the entirety of the bank's accounts. He accepts the offer of a visual representation when he realises that the number is almost the golden ratio and finds that the image is that of River's face. Trapped in a cell after being Time Scooped, River learns from a voice, which chooses the name "Abel" from the name of the alarm system company, that her face is programmed into the systems and gets out by showing her face to a security camera. She runs into the Doctor, who explains how he came to be at the bank and takes her and one of the system's motherboards, and he takes her to the Louvre where it becomes clear that everyone's perceptions of beauty have been affected by the bank system's glitch; the Mona Lisa and all other paintings now depict River.

On the TARDIS's screen, Abel shows images from River throughout her adventures and confirms that he has been following her throughout history. He Time Scoops people across history to the bank to be detained as criminals, but the Doctor traps him in a loop in the TARDIS and disables the Time Scoop. The Doctor and River visit the cells and deduce that people are being arrested in chronological order given that one of the prisoners is Spore, one of the universe's earliest beings and the equivalent of Adam in the Keesper Cluster. They take him back to the cluster, only to find an anachronistic warzone from which the TARDIS is unable to escape due to its confusion over multiple time paths. The Doctor eventually manages to get around it and they arrive at Spore and his mate Keetree's farm.

Keetree is unhappy with Spore and the Doctor and River try to head back in time with him to fix things, but the TARDIS will not depart and River states that they will have to give Spore and Keetree marriage counselling. The counselling does not go well and River learns from Abel that he is part of the Matchmaker's program which downloaded itself onto her vortex manipulator and that he believes that he is in love with her. He creates a temporal matrix by connecting all of the places that she has visited to tear through the universe, but River convinces him to download himself back into her vortex manipulator and shows him the destruction he is causing. After River tells Keetree that every picture that Spore draws in the Chronicle of Keesper is based on her face, the couple reconcile and Spore destroys the vortex manipulator.

Part of Abel remains in the TARDIS and attempts to take the Doctor away inside it. The TARDIS switches off in the Time Vortex, however, and the Doctor defeats Abel by getting him to try and create a second temporal matrix using the adventures that he has had with his previous faces and that he will have with his future ones, a calculation which is too difficult for him to make. The timeline is restored, although the Chronicle of Keesper has been blanked and may never return. The Doctor returns to the farm and leaves with River so that Spore and Keetree can pass on their stories to the pilot of a crashing spaceship just as legend dictates, albeit leaving the two time travellers out at the Doctor's request, whilst he and River return the other prisoners captured by Abel.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • Face of the Apocalypse was recorded in March 2023.

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

Cover gallery[[edit] | [edit source]]

External links[[edit] | [edit source]]