Frostfire (audio story): Difference between revisions

{{Infobox Story

|image= Cc101 frostfire big.jpg

|range           = The Companion Chronicles

|series in range = Series 1 (CC)

|number= 1.1

|doctor = First Doctor

|companions = [[Vicki Pallister|Vicki]], [[Steven Taylor|Steven]]

|enemy= [[The Cinder]]

|setting= {{il|[[Carthage]], [[BC#2nd millennium B.C.|1164 BC]]|[[London]], [[February]] [[1814]]}}

|writer= [[Marc Platt]]

|director= [[Mark J Thompson]]

|music= [[Lawrence Oakley]]

|sound= [[Lawrence Oakley]] and [[Robert Dunlop]]

|cover= [[Simon Holub]]

|publisher= Big Finish Productions

|release date= [[January (releases)|January]] [[2007 (releases)|2007]]

|format= 2 episodes on 1 CD

|production code= BFPDWCC01

|isbn= ISBN 978-1-84435-263-0

|next= Fear of the Daleks (audio story)

|producer = [[Sharon Gosling]]}}{{you may|Frostfire|n1=the being}}

'''''Frostfire''''' was the first story of the [[Series 1 (CC)|first series]] in ''[[The Companion Chronicles]]'' audio range. It was produced by [[Big Finish Productions]]. It was written by [[Marc Platt]] and featured [[Vicki Pallister]].

Lady Cressida has a secret. She keeps it deep in the cisterns below the [[Temple of Astarte]] with only one flame for warmth. And it must never get out.

In the past, the Doctor, Steven and Vicki go around the Fair. The Doctor is attracted to a poster advertising the presence of a [[dragon]], and is very disappointed when it turns out to be just a [[circus]] [[fire-eater]]. At that moment, the three strangers are addressed by an [[Italian]] charlatan, [[Ippolito Valzacchi]], offering himself as a guide. The three of them turned him down, but he insists, to the point of taking out a sword and threatening Steven. The fight that it could ensue is avoided thanks to the intervention of [[Sir Joseph Mallard]], a gentleman, and his wife [[Georgiana]], who send Valzacchi away and then offer to guide them in his stead. The Doctor accepts. It comes out that Sir Joseph is Deputy Warden of the [[Royal Mint]].

The group comes at the end of the Fair, where a tend stands, property of a sea captain, showing the wonders he allegedly collected on his travels. They go in to see. Most of the stuff is just fake, or rubbish. The captain then goes on to show his greatest treasure, something he acquired in [[Medina]], in [[Tunis]].

In the past, the Doctor understands that the "frostfire", as he calls it, sucks heat out of people and things to sustain itself. Vicki tells the others that Georgiana was talking with Valzacchi and he promised to take her somewhere, as if he had some sort of power over her - or something has it over him, the Doctor adds, alluding to the stolen egg Georgiana was so obsessed with. They need to find Valzacchi, and Sir Joseph suggests he could be at the Cocoa Tree Club, of which both him and Valzacchi are members. The Doctor decides that he and Steven should go and find him with Sir Joseph, while Vicki (to her dislike) will stay with Jane Austen until their return.  

In the past, Vicki, Miss Austen and Jim run away from Lady Georgiana, and finally reach St. Cuthbert. Vicki apologises to her companion for what's happening, but Miss Austen says she is enjoying it after years of quiet life in Hampshire. Jim tries to open the door with a crowbar; when it's done, Vicki sends him to fetch the Doctor. The two women enter the frozen church, with numerous people dead, frozen on the spot. Valzacchi shows up, ice sheating on his face, moving and talks more like a puppet than a man, while he urges with his sword the two women to a staircase leading to the church's tower. On the room at the top, the egg lays, with a shadow moving inside it. Valzacchi says it doesn't want to kill them, just wants to know about the world he is to be born. Vicki feels a urge of disgust and hatred for that thing, and wishes it dead.

In the past, Vicki picks up a candlestick and tries to hit the egg, but she is forbidden to do so by a wave of cold heat. Just at that moment, the Doctor arrives with Steven and Sir Joseph; Valzacchi tries to stop them, but as Steven moves to stop him, the creature leaves him and his body shatters like glass. The Doctor examines the egg, and seems to talk with it, although Vicki and the others can't hear any words.

Vicki's present interlocutor says the Doctor was cold, "no fire in his [[Binary vascular system|hearts]]". Vicki retorts it is not so, and when he says that because of him they are both homeless, she states that for her part it was her own choice. However, she also admits her feeling of loneliness and her difficulty to adapt to their new home, where nobody had her same cultural attitudes. The Trojans, she said, were scared of her, and wanted to cast her away on a rock; however, [[Troilus]] stood by her, and they eventually settled down in Carthage, while [[Aeneas]] went on his voyage. Still, she feels alone, and her interlocutor is the only one to remember the Doctor aside for her. It then retorts that the Doctor had no right to deny the unborn Phoenix the right to come to the world, to which Vicki replies that, if it had happened, the bird would have devoured all heating on Earth.

In the past, the Doctor invites the chicken to come out of the egg, and when it fails to do so, says that it can't: there is no heat enough for it to come out. Sir Joseph insists they destroy it, but the Doctor refuses to kill such an amazing creature, and also rejects Steven's proposal to take it somewhere else. Suddenly, Lady Georgiana, possessed by the Phoenix, comes in and takes the egg; when Sir Joseph tries to hold her, to make her remember, she grabs him and vanishes, taking him with her. Vicki remembers that he works at the Royal Mint, and the Doctor understands that the Phoenix aims at the furnace where the English coins are forged: a perfect hatchery for the egg to open. As his Deputy Warden, Sir Joseph must have the key.

As the dawn breaks, the three travellers, Miss Austen and Jim reach the Mint, where the Mallard pair, possessed by the Phoenix, has already opened the furnace. The Doctor orders Georgiana to give him the egg, and offers the Phoenix the chance to find it another place to live, as the last one of its species; otherwise, he will stop it. Georgiana refuses, and throws the egg into the furnace, before fainting in her husband's arms. The Phoenix chick comes out of the egg, and the Doctor and Steven fail to stop the bellows from blowing on the fire; however, Miss Austen takes the crowbar from Jim and jams it in the wheel of the bellows. Vicki and Jim slam the door of the furnace as the fire dies, and the Phoenix with it. However, a tiny spark of [[The Cinder|cinder]] gets into Vicki's eyes, seemingly causing no damage.

And that spark of cinder is Vicki's interlocutor, all that remains of the Phoenix, enough to start again the cycle of rebirth of the bird. One day that Vicki was crying about her loneliness, the Phoenix came back to life; she then decided to keep it in an [[oil lamp]], giving it just enough fire to keep it alive so that it could keep her company, and remember with her the time she spent with the Doctor. Enraged and hungry, the Phoenix burns the scroll on which the story is written to feed itself and begin again the circle, but the fire lasts too little.

In the past, the Phoenix's death signals the end of the frost. Sir Joseph takes his wife home, Miss Austen invites the Doctor and the others to her house, and the three travellers had to employ the help of three bargers to retrieve the TARDIS, as it was floating along the river.

== References ==

* Vicki notes that [[St Paul's Cathedral]] is still standing in the [[25th century]], after the [[22nd century Dalek invasion|Dalek invasion]] in the [[22nd century]] and [[World War IV|four World Wars]].

* This story is set after [[The Time Meddler (TV story)|''The Time Meddler'']].

* [[River Song]] and the [[Eleventh Doctor]] would later ice skate on the frozen [[River Thames]] at around the same time during "the last of the great frost fairs". ([[TV]]: ''[[A Good Man Goes to War]]'')