Smoke and Mirrors (audio story): Difference between revisions

The three companions accidentally wander into the [[menagerie]] and are confronted with a [[tiger]] which Adric runs from in the hope of buying time for Nyssa and Tegan to escape, but they are chased by a [[leopard]] and separated. Nyssa encounters a [[ghost]]ly [[Tremas Master|Master]] in a [[theatre]] and calls out for the Doctor before she is [[hypnosis|hypnotised]] to capture Tegan, whom she finds shortly after Adric is captured by the hypnotised fairground workers and performers. Having heard Nyssa's call, the Doctor goes after her, but Houdini hits him over the head and traps him inside of a [[crate]] at the [[pier]], having been told by the Master that the Doctor is untrustworthy and has been keeping important information about his life and death from him.

On the theatre's stage, Adric is seized by the Master, but he cannot see him. In the struggle, he sees a mirror propped up on the stage, and realises that the Master is visible in the mirror, and their reflections are struggling. It defies science, but there's little time to think about it, as he struggles to break free. Tegan intervenes, and sees the situation, and starts to throw a chair to break the mirror; Adric shouts at her to stop, not knowing what effect it may have on him. Instead, she throws the chair at the spotlight that is trained on the mirror, creating the reflections; it breaks, and the Master vanishes.

All is not saved, though. Enraged, the Master starts to use the Ovid sphere to release massive amounts of electricity through the fairground, setting things on fire and destroying buildings. Houdini catches up with the companions as they try to escape, but they are cut off. Suddenly the Doctor returns, and reveals that he picked Harry's pockets for his lockpicking kit, using that—and his Time Lord ability to bypass respiration—to escape the trap. He had suspected Harry was not himself all along. They make their way back to the fortune teller's booth, the Doctor explaining that the Master was never corporeally there at all; he seems to be still trapped in the collapsing dimension where they last saw him. Instead he was using the sphere to exert his will remotely, and even project himself. He locates the sphere, and is tempted to destroy it—just as promised—but instead, he makes contact with it to try to soothe it and end the energy discharge. It isn't enough, however, and Tegan joins the link, adding her own thoughts to bring the crisis to an end.

 

As the smoke clears, the fairground workers awaken from their trance, having no memory of the last twelve hours. Houdini convinces them they have been unwitting participants in an experimental new act, which seems to satisfy them. He again attempts to persuade the Doctor to let him see inside the TARDIS, but is gently rebuffed, and admits that it's better to make his future than to know it. As the Doctor and companions leave, Tegan again asks to be taken to Heathrow, but the Doctor tells her they must first make a stop: to return the sphere to the Ovids.