The Auton Infinity (audio story)

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The Auton Infinity, also marketed as Forty: Volume 2, released on 7 September 2022[1] by Big Finish Productions, was an audio story written by Tim Foley and featured Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, Janet Fielding as Tegan Jovanka, Mark Strickson as Turlough and Jon Culshaw as Kamelion, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and The Tremas Master. It also concluded the Fifth Doctor's "jumping time tracks" narrative.

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

Snowdonia. UNIT is running a training exercise with the Brigadier in attendance. Except it isn’t long before things start to go badly wrong. The fake aliens primed to attack the troops might not be so fake after all, and a temporal disturbance attracts the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough into the fray.

Old enemies are on the scene with a deadly plan - but they might be the least of the Doctor's worries.

Because he's recently been sent backwards and forwards through his own lifetime...and he’s finally going to find out why.

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

Part one[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are buffeted around the TARDIS control room for hours after leaving Frontios and eventually materialise in Snowdonia. They wander into a UNIT training exercise and are taken by Sergeant Wharry to the retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, who explains that the exercise involves an invasion during a peace conference. The soldiers tasked with roleplaying as aliens deviate from the route, however, and the Doctor's diversiform intensifiser detects temporal energy.

Borrowing Wharry's car, the Doctor, Turlough and Captain Mears go to investigate whilst Tegan remains behind with the Brigadier to keep an eye on things, but a jamming signal is emitted from the opposite direction and Mears decides that it needs to be dealt with first to ensure that UNIT are able to communicate. A plastic alien mask latches onto Mears' face and the Doctor zaps it off with his intensifiser, deducing that the Nestene Consciousness is responsible and going to warn the Brigadier. He notices a circus tent and enters with Turlough and Mears, after which they are greeted by gas and a hologram of the Master.

Part two[[edit] | [edit source]]

The gas is a harmless gas from Tersurus and the Doctor uses the Master's console to stop the broadcast of the signal, which actually originates from a distant source. He informs the Brigadier and Veronica Holmes from the Ministry of Defence of the threat of the Nestenes and the Master and learns that Tegan and Wharry have left, confronting the Auton Prodigal and the soldiers being controlled by the masks. After taking the two humans to an abandoned manor, Prodigal shoots Turlough and captures the TARDIS, which she intends to destroy to build a bridge for the Master in return for a keystone.

The Doctor sends out a pulse which severs the link between the soldiers and their masks, sending the masks scuttling away. Corporal Palmer sees to the wounded, but Dodson dies despite Mears having ordered non-lethal force. The Doctor, the Brigadier, Mears and Veronica find that Prodigal has replaced the TARDIS interior with raw vortex energy through which she has sent Tegan and Turlough. She tells them that the Master is behind a sort of mask and, after the Brigadier shoots Mears due to his first initial paired with his surname is an anagram of "Master", the Doctor realises that the Brigadier is actually the Master. He unmasks himself.

Part three[[edit] | [edit source]]

The temporally dislocated Doctor wakes up on a stone spaceship with the Brigadier, who explains that he was kidnapped on his way to a UNIT exercise in Snowdonia, and escapes by picking the lock. He breaks out Tegan and Turlough, who tell him and the Brigadier about Snowdonia, and informs his three companions of his dislocation before they split up. Turlough and the Brigadier spy on the Master and Prodigal and, when they leave, they access a map which points them to the keystone, which resembles a coffin.

The Doctor and Tegan find an altar to a pool of molten plastic which rises and forms a wall, attempting to communicate with them through stick figures and telepathy. The plastic explains how an Old One decayed and hid in a fold in time before it was scattered across space, some of its pieces finding one another and becoming Nestenes. Some parts mourned for their original form, however, and Tegan deduces that Prodigal is one such part. The Doctor feels the Nestene in his mind and realises that he is not really the Doctor; he has been leaping around his timeline to enter the body of an Auton and be part of the Consciousness.

Part four[[edit] | [edit source]]

Turlough and the Brigadier find the real Doctor in the keystone and disconnect him, stopping the ship, which the Auton Doctor realises is a vortex driller. The Master stole the ship and saved Prodigal from the Valley of the Lost near the Death Zone where she had been Time Scooped, a process which had severed her link with the Consciousness and which meant that she now wishes to form a new collective. She has been promised the Doctor, whose mind will be able to lead her to the First Consciousness.

The Doctor wakes up with Turlough and the Brigadier and goes with them to the crux where all of the bridges meet, chased by the plastic masks. He identifies the bridge to take them back to Snowdonia, but the Master places the Auton Doctor into the keystone and they run before the drilling commences. As the Auton Doctor has a plastic brain rather than that of a Time Lord, it is unstable and Prodigal has Tegan help her try to steady the ship. The Auton Doctor realises that the primitive technology is pulling on his timeline and is causing him to slip through time once more.

Part five[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Auton Doctor finds himself as a psychic projection in the TARDIS with Kamelion, who tells him that the interior has been disconnected from the exterior by the snapping of the bridge between Snowdonia and the driller, which has left the exterior as an empty police box. The driller is now being dragged towards the source of the mysterious signal, which Kamelion decrypts and finds is a Nestene signal in the rings of Saturn in the 36th century.

The Doctor, Turlough and the Brigadier, having arrived in Snowdonia, are joined by Veronica and Wharry and drive to the Master's TARDIS. There, the Doctor traces the origins of the mysterious signal and materialises aboard the driller when it emerges from the Time Vortex thanks to Tegan, the Master and Prodigal, the latter of whom is losing her form due to her being completely cut off from her Autons. The First Consciousness has latched onto the ship and is making a psychic connection with it, an action which the Doctor believes will remain in the Nestenes' race memory and which will allow it to become all-powerful.

Part six[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Doctor is contacted by his Auton self via radio and initiate Contact. Now aware that the Consciousness is gaining a foothold because of the Auton Doctor's body being in the keystone, the Doctor confiscates a vial of anti-plastic from the Master and hands it to Wharry to be used against the Consciousness-controlled Autons. The Brigadier goes with the Master to collect more whilst Turlough looks after Prodigal, Veronica and Wharry go to disconnect the keystone and the Doctor and Tegan contact the Auton Doctor and Kamelion from the Master's TARDIS. The Doctors decide to create a Time Scoop with three points of anti-time at 9th century Earth, 25th century Telos Minor and 36th century Saturn.

Wearing Tegan's face to hold on to something good, Prodigal dies after using the last of herself to cause discord amongst the Autons. The ship starts to fall towards Saturn's surface and the Master, having entered the crux to escape from the Brigadier, slips through a bridge as the keystone is disconnected. The Doctor connects all three temporal points using the Master's TARDIS, making his past self jump across time, and the First Consciousness sinks back into its fold in time. Kamelion drifts the driller to safety and the Doctor nudges the Auton Doctor into their future before he fades away; the Auton Doctor finds himself with Peri on Androzani Minor.

The Doctor returns everybody to Earth in the Master's TARDIS, which dematerialises of its own accord afterwards. He returns to his own with Turlough and Tegan, who is upset by the deaths she has witnessed, and the ship is immediately caught in a time corridor.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Uncredited cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Crew[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • Charles Crichton is a Colonel and now holds the "Greyhound One" call sign.
  • Prodigal can sense that Tegan and Turlough have travelled in time. She uses her chest as storage.
  • The Master acquired petrol gas from Tersurus, which is harmless.
  • The Master explains that he delivered Edward as a baby and convinced his parents to name him "Edward" just for the "Ted with the tech" joke, because T. MEARS is an anagram of MASTER. He considers this "attention to detail."
  • The Doctor reflects on his temporal displacement and refers to being taken out of "temporality," thanking Tegan for being an anchor for him every time he slips.
  • The Master disguises himself as the Brigadier.
  • The Doctor states that the Master "isn't the most sensible of strategists."
  • The Fourth Doctor once took the Brigadier to Jupiter.
  • The Doctor refers to the early days of Time Lord society.
  • The Master isn't sure if Prodigal and Remembrance are one entity. Remembrance can communicate via pictorials.
  • The First Consciousness is an Old One that exists in a fold in time. The Doctor traps it again using a Time Scoop.
  • The Master refers to the Prydonian Chapter and Prydonius.
  • The vortex driller is constructed from Time Lord technology and resembles a castle with drills for turrets that tunnels through the time vortex. It has mineralic circuitry that resembles rocks and responds to thoughts.
  • Compared to a TARDIS, the Master states a driller can allow for a "leap" across the universe.
  • The Doctor states "Brave heart, Turlough."
  • The Doctor refers to the Matrix.

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • This story was announced along with the announcement, story and cast details, and cover of Forty: Volume 1, on 2 November 2021, referred to as Forty: Volume 2.[2] It was mentioned again as simply Forty: Volume 2 in the release announcement of Forty: Volume 1 on 4 January 2022.[3]
  • The story was recorded remotely on 6-8 April 2021.[4]
  • Details for this story, finally including its title, The Auton Infinity, and its cast were revealed on 8 April 2022.[5]
  • The cover was revealed on 8 July 2022.[6]
  • The trailer was uploaded to the story's Big Finish page and promoted on their Twitter account on 18 July 2022.[7]
  • Tim Foley detailed several production details about this story on his blog on 11 September 2024.[8]
    • David Richardson asked him to write this story "before [he'd] even written a four parter", "on the basis of a couple of one-hour stories". He stated that "neither of which are still out yet".
      • This would mean he was working on The Auton Infinity, and had at least submitted working or final drafts of the two unnamed stories, before he'd written The Gulf.
    • This story wasn't originally intended to be for the Fifth Doctor, nor for "any kind of birthday celebration", but instead, he was originally asked to write "[his[ take on" Yellow Fever and How to Cure It, featuring the Sixth Doctor and Peri. He was asked to "avoid Singapore", hence the setting of Snowdonia.
      • According to his recollection, the Doctor and Peri would encounter a "'dummy invasion', much like THE AUTON INFINITY", with "the Autons looking for a cure for some plague". There would be a "'reality machine' that turned the cardboard cut-outs in the model village into real monsters", and he was "pretty sure [he] killed off the Doctor".
    • His in-person meeting with "the Forty gang" - Matt Fitton, John Dorney, and Sarah Grochala - was the last thing he did before the COVID Lockdown.
    • Finally being able to use the Ainley Master "defined THAT cliffhanger", and that it'd "be important for the actor’s sake that we limit the number of scenes the Brig and Master shared together". The Master "was originally intended to be a surprise", but "‘giving the game away about the Master’s return’ was probably more true to the 80s than [they] could’ve hoped for".
    • The usage "of old monsters from the 60s and 70s, instead of villains from the 80s" was "completely intentional", as per fan
    • The Five Doctors connection wasn't in the original pitch: Prodigal's Vortex Driller "was always a stolen Time Lord ship, but [Foley] had no idea how they'd got it", just that all was needed to know was that the Master stole it from them. He then remembered the cut scene of Terrance Dick's original script of the Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith facing Autons in the Death Zone and thought "How narked would those dummies be if they were dragged all that way and it didn’t even happen?"
    • All television companions were wanted across the Forty series. David Richardson and John Dorney "had to really push" for Peri's appearance at the end, which "is set right before" The Caves of Androzani. He believes"it was picked up in a different recording session by Scott Handcock".
    • Many have asked him "if the Auton Doctor still lingers", for as to why the Fifth Doctor only remembers his television companions during his regeneration, since they're the sole ones he met from the perspective of the Fifth Doctor who experiences Forty. He answers: "gosh that’s a clever idea. Smiles enigmatically."
  • The Doctor wonders if the TARDIS has arrived in Tibet or Wales. The Abominable Snowmen was a story set in Tibet, but with location filming taking pace in Wales.
  • This story explores the origins of the Nestene Consciousness and the Autons.
  • This is one of the rare six-part stories for the Fifth Doctor.
  • Veronica refers to a female Prime Minister, and the Brigadier has met the Fifth Doctor, placing this story somewhere between 1983 and 1991.
  • Prodigal being transferred to the Death Zone refers to the original plans for Autons to appear in The Five Doctors before they were replaced.

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

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

  • Textless cover

    Textless cover

  • Alternate cover

    Alternate cover

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

Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]

  1. ↑ A Corker of a Fifth Doctor Anniversary Special!
  2. ↑ Celebrating Forty years of the Fifth Doctor
  3. ↑ The Fifth Doctor is Forty today!
  4. ↑ 'Backstage' tab of the official Forty 2 page at bigfinish.com.
  5. ↑ The Fifth Doctor Faces The Auton Infinity
  6. ↑ https://x.com/bigfinish/status/1545324746325344256
  7. ↑ https://x.com/bigfinish/status/1549031234000498689
  8. ↑ The Listening Post - Dive Inside The Auton Infinity
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Auton stories
For the purposes of this list, an "Auton story" is one in which one living, authentic Auton plays a part within the confines of the story, outside of flashbacks to previous stories and cliffhangers that lead into the following story. For this reason, stories such as Love & Monsters are absent due to the Autons' only contribution being references to past Auton stories.
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