The Conquest of Far (audio story)

The Conquest of Far
Doctor:	Third Doctor
Companion(s):	Jo
Main enemy:	Dalek Commander
Main setting:	Far, Olysius
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Nicholas Briggs
Director:	Nicholas Briggs
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Jamie Robertson
Sound:	David Nagel
Release details
Number of parts:	4
Release number:	3.1
Part of:	The Third Doctor Adventures: Volume Three
Release date:	17 August 2017
Format:	2 CDs Download 1st of 2 stories
Production code:	BFPDW3RD03
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-78575-752-5
The Third Doctor Adventures
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The Conquest of Far was the first story in the audio anthology The Third Doctor Adventures: Volume Three, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Nicholas Briggs and featured Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor and Katy Manning as Jo Grant.

It features the Daleks in their first appearance in The Third Doctor Adventures. The story picks up immediately after the end of Planet of the Daleks, emulating the 1970s style of Doctor Who storytelling that may have been expected had the Third Doctor's battle against the Daleks, beginning in Frontier in Space, ran for even more episodes.

Publisher's summary

Earth Alliance, the future... Fleet commanders receive their orders from the President of Earth. Operation Far is "go". As soon as the planets are suitably aligned, the attack will go ahead.

The Doctor and Jo arrive on the planet Far. The Doctor wants to attend the grand opening of one of the human race's greatest achievements. A huge Hyper Gateway built to make travel around Earth's great empire more convenient, bringing relief to many starving outer colonies.

But they land in the wrong time period, long after the Gateway has been in service, and the Daleks have conquered Far! It's the middle of a war and a deadly game is underway. When everyone has an agenda, betrayal can happen at any time, from any side. The endgame is approaching and maybe this time no one will survive.

Plot

Part one

Jo asks the Doctor to return her to 20th century Earth, but the TARDIS instead materialises near the planet Far. She agrees to a quick visit as the Doctor once assisted the Farians in building a hyper-spatial gateway to help alleviate starvation in the outer colonies, only for them to find the area around the gateway deserted and the buildings boarded up or demolished. As they look for a gatekeeper, they spot a patrol of Daleks and attempt to get back to the TARDIS, but the ground in an alleyway gives way and the Doctor falls down a sewer pipe.

Jo is taken to safety by Delralis, a rebel, despite her hesitation to leave the Doctor, and attempts to convince him that the Doctor helped build the gateway and that the pair have just fought the Daleks on Spiridon. Delralis explains that the Daleks conquered the Farians, who recevied no help from the Earth Alliance, two years ago and that he does not want the planet to be liberated as it harbours a secret, one which he decides to keep from her in case she is a spy. At her insistence, he takes her back to the surface.

The Doctor is herded by a group of mutated Farians to an area containing hundreds of Dalek saucers which they have been forced to fuel, a task which is killing them because of the radiation. Jickster, the least mutated, helps him get to one of the saucer's flight decks when Daleks approach and they take flight, only for the Doctor to realise that the hatches have been closed and that they cannot escape. As the Daleks fire at them, the Doctor crashes the saucer through the roof doors and heads for the gateway. Jo and Delralis watch as a Dalek weapon locks on to the saucer and fires.

Part two

The Doctor activates the gateway with a targeted low-level energy pulse and flies the saucer through before it can be destroyed. Without time to set hyper-coordinates, the saucer arrives in an area of space full of the debris of a Dalek fleet destroyed by the Earth Alliance, something that Jickster discovers he somehow knows about. The Earth Alliance battlecruiser Olysius crewed by the human Admiral Kennet and the Thruskan Admiral Naltrox fires at them even after the Doctor sends a transmission calling for aid, which Naltrox believes could be a deception. Utilising his inexplicable talent with Dalek controls, Jickster attempts to avoid the fire and manages to get in touch with them.

Back underground, Jo insists that Delralis uses a transmitter to ask for help from the Earth Alliance, but he instead asks her to keep put whilst he contacts his cell leader; in truth, he is permitted a brief visit with Ela, a prisoner of the Daleks. Jo, in his absence, attempts to get the transmitter working and is held at gunpoint by Aslarn, Delralis's actual cell leader who has not seen him in months. Delralis had been tasked with getting in touch with the Earth Alliance and claimed to have informed them of the army of a million Daleks hidden in stasis on Far, ready to be activated whenever the Alliance attempts to retake the planet. The Daleks also have a secret weapon, but Aslarn is shot and killed by Delralis before he can tell Jo more. Delralis gives Jo up to the Daleks.

Jo is attached to a monitoring array and interrogated by Far's Dalek Commander for information on her and the Doctor's mission, but also to serve as bait alongside the TARDIS to draw the Doctor back. The Doctor, meanwhile, wakes up on the Olysius thanks to Jickster having remembered that he was admiral of the Farian Defence Fleet before he was captured and thus in possession of codes which caused Kennet and Naltrox to stop their attack. The Olysius is heading with a fleet to Far to take control of the gateway and Jickster warns him of the Dalek army and the Daleks' secret weapon: a robotising transmitter dish with the power to enslave the Earth Alliance fleet as Robomen.

Part three

In her cell, Jo communicates with Ela through the grating and learns that she was forced to design the Daleks' secret weapon as they would otherwise have killed her husband, Delralis. Ela is taken away before she can reveal more, which seems to devastate Delralis when he visits Jo's cell and claims that he has betrayed everyone for nothing. He says that he now intends to use his transmitter to beam out a message to alert the Doctor to the hidden army and the secret weapon, but Jo insists that the Doctor will only listen if she is the one relaying the message and gets him to help her escape. Upon doing so, he tells her about the dish and the Robomen, including the high-functioning Robomen who do not realise that they have been robotised. They reach the transmitter and find that Ela has been released, which Delralis reveals was his reward for getting Jo to inadvertently reveal how to get the Doctor back to Far; the Daleks have used a recording of Jo as a message.

The Doctor is locked inside the Olysius's sick bay with Jickster to prevent them from returning to Far and potentially ruining the Earth Alliance's plans, but he believes that the dish must be disabled discreetly and adapts a Medi-Robot to access the ship's computer. After convincing Jickster to join him, he gets the Medi-Robot to take them to the Dalek saucer and to incapacitate their pursuer by claiming that he is having a cardiac arrest and requires a shock. However, they are forced to surrender when Naltrox reveals that he has removed the saucer's mass energy coverter and are, despite Kennet's misgivings, to be executed by being ejected from the ship. Thanks to the message supposedly broadcast by Jo, alerting him to the hidden army and secret weapon, the Doctor and Jickster are released to help sabotage the dish. The Doctor enters the hyper-conduit to the gateway, unaware that the Daleks await their arrival.

Part four

Ela is horrified to learn that Delralis murdered Aslarn for her and Jo gets Ela to lead the way to the dish, which the Dalek Commander orders to be activated along with the frozen army as the Earth Alliance fleet approaches, via the tunnels. The Doctor's saucer exits the gateway at hyperspeed to avoid being affected by the dish and crashes into the tunnels, scaring away the mutants advancing upon Jo, Delralis and Ela and prompting the Dalek Commander to despatch a squad to capture the survivors. Ela recognises Jickster as an admiral who went missing and the combined group splits into two: the Doctor, Jo, Delralis and Ela head to the dish whilst Jickster and the Thruskans go to destroy the awakening Dalek army with explosives.

Ela attempts to sabotage the dish's power as the Daleks prepare to use it on the Earth Alliance fleet, but the Daleks override the power controls and lock the relay, so Ela instead suggests destroying the dish using Delralis's explosives. This will, however, destroy the entire complex. The Doctor instead orders the Thruskans to abandon their plan to destroy the activated Dalek army and redirects the dish to affect the Dalek army, which is overloaded by the robotising beam thanks to them having already been bred to obey Dalek orders. Overstimulated, they trigger their self-destruct systems. The Dalek Commander proceeds to activate his secret high-functioning Roboman: Delralis. As he shuts down the controls, Naltrox shoots him and the Doctor discovers his true nature using his sonic screwdriver.

The Doctor realises that the group are being observed by the Daleks given that they knew of Delralis's location and speaks directly to them through a security camera, demanding they give up given their defeat. The Dalek Commander refuses despite the threat of the Earth Alliance fleet. Jickster informs the Doctor that he intends to help rebuild Far once the fighting is over and Naltrox agrees to recover the TARDIS, allowing the Doctor and Jo to depart following the Daleks' defeat. Before they leave for Earth, Jo expresses her condolences to Ela and says goodbye.

Cast

• The Doctor - Tim Treloar
• Jo Grant - Katy Manning
• Delralis / Naltrox / Thruskan Special Ops - George Watkins
• Jickster / Kennet - John Banks
• Elaquon - Amy Newton
• Daleks / Aslarn / Earth President / Medi-Robot / Troopers - Nicholas Briggs

Worldbuilding

• Kennet and Naltrox are admirals. Naltrox belongs to the Thruskan Space Service.
• The Doctor has visited Far before. The planet was named by Earth Empire pioneers because it was far from everything else.
• Jo's uncle has visited World War II death camps.
• The Doctor notes the Daleks on far are of a more advanced design than those on Spiridon.
• The Earth Alliance Earth Alliance Fleet with Thruskan allies is contacted by the President of Earth.
• The Daleks conquered Far two years ago. An army of about a million Daleks are held in stasis there.
• Jickster commanded the Farian Defense Fleet.
• The Daleks have images of several different Doctors that they have made contact with, but Jo states that none of these Doctors are hers.
• Jo is placed in a monitoring array and interrogated by the Dalek Commander.
• Naltrox and Kennet review eye witness statements and records of "the Doctor" fighting across the Dalek Wars.
• In time of war, the penalty for stealing a ship is death.
• The Doctor attempts to trick the Daleks by piloting his saucer in an erratic pattern to resemble a "hyper echo."
• Dalek saucers have a mass-energy converter in their main drive, and their fuel causes mutagenic radiation, which affects the Farians.
• The Daleks have a secret "robotising weapon" which is a massive transmitter to generate an energy field to convert whole fleets into Robomen.
• The Doctor turns the robotising weapon on the Dalek army, which overloads their nervous systems and positronic brains.
• There are "higher functioning Robomen" that appear human and don't even know they're Robomen, with a strong magnetic field around their brains.

Notes

• The Daleks question Jo by showing her images of Doctors they have encountered; they are aware of multiple incarnations but not the Third Doctor, referencing how his only two encounters with the Daleks at this point in his current incarnation either occurred in an erased alternate timeline as in Day of the Daleks, or ended with the complete destruction of all Daleks present as in Planet of the Daleks.
• As this story is written to follow on from Frontier in Space and Planet of the Daleks, it is implied that the Dalek war being fought is, or is in some way related to, the Second Dalek War, although the story avoids any explicit confirmation of this and keeps the exact nature of the conflict vague. However, discerning differences include:
  • The war involves the Earth Alliance and not the Earth Empire, as it did in the 26th century, with the Alliance implied to come after the Empire.
  • The President is a man and not Dora, who held office in 2540.
  • Naltrox refers to the general "Dalek Wars," which covers a range of conflicts.
  • The Doctor states his knowledge of "this period of history" is a bit hazy.
• The BBC Past Doctor Adventures novel Catastrophea also takes place right after Planet of the Daleks.

Continuity

• The Third Doctor and Jo have just left Spiridon, which Farians don't know of. (TV: Planet of the Daleks)
• The Doctor and Jo briefly discuss her uncle, who got her the job at UNIT. (AUDIO: A Quiet Night In)
• Jo is aware of the Doctor's ability to change his face, (TV: The Three Doctors) having witnessed an aborted regeneration for herself. (PROSE: The Touch of the Nurazh)
• The Daleks have been using Robomen for longer than the Dalek War. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)
• The Doctor isn't aware that he's been "making a name for himself." (TV: A Good Man Goes to War)
• The Doctor maintains faith in the fundamental goodness of the universe, and that the Daleks must be defeated. (COMIC: The Only Good Dalek)

External links

• Official The Conquest of Far page at bigfinish.com