The Dreams of Avarice (audio story)

The Dreams of Avarice
Doctor:	Fourth Doctor
Companion(s):	Probert
Featuring:	Thana
Main enemy:	The Nine
Main setting:	Sandak Minor, Luxuriana, the Clocksmith's TARDIS, the Nine's mind
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Guy Adams
Director:	Ken Bentley
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Jamie Robertson
Sound:	Jamie Robertson, Benji Clifford
Cover by:	Ryan Aplin
Release details
Number of parts:	4
Release number:	11.3
Part of:	The Nine
Release date:	21 June 2022
Format:	2 CDs Download
Production code:	BFPTOMCD082
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-83868-063-3
The Fourth Doctor Adventures
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The Dreams of Avarice was the third story of the eleventh series of The Fourth Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Guy Adams and featured Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and John Heffernan as the Nine.

Publisher's summary

The Nine isn't your average robber. A ferociously intelligent and murderous kleptomaniac Time Lord with regenerative dissonance, he's a far more dangerous adversary than most security details are used to. So it's useful that the Doctor is on hand to stop him.

This time more than ever - as the Nine is about to pull off the greatest heist of his criminal career. Though could the consequences be far worse than the crime?

Plot

Part one

The Doctor is arrested by Detective Inspector Alan Probert in a high-security research centre on Sandak Minor and admits to trying to steal an experimental compound mass reducer before somebody else did. As the Doctor is interrogated, the Nine and his drones break into the facility and steal the device, taking it and several others to his TARDIS where his companion Thana is reading.

The police station is attacked by a Class-14 Attack Robot, stolen by the Nine from the Tsar of Opek. Probert and Boyd are cornered, but the Doctor saves them by blocking its gun barrel with a cricket ball, triggering a safety feature which shuts it down to prevent a backfire. One of the Nine's drones brings him the last object required to initiate his plan and he approaches the Doctor wearing a personal force field to find out what has happened to his Attack Robot.

After the Nine returns to his TARDIS, the Doctor has Probert lead him to the evidence room where his own TARDIS has been moved from the research centre's roof. The Doctor discovers that the Nine has stolen his dimensional control and, without it, his TARDIS is no longer dimensionally transcendental.

Part two

The Doctor questions one of the Nine's drones, who has the memories of thief Danny Ellis, and learn that the Nine is heading to Glimmer on Luxuriana. The drone tethers the Doctor's TARDIS to the Nine's, allowing the Doctor and Probert to follow the artron trail and warn Mayor Polska. They confront the Nine and Thana at the Luxuriana Metropolitan Art Gallery and watch as the Nine steals the building using the compound mass reducer and dimensional control.

The Nine places the shrunken gallery in his vault and has trouble deciding what he wants to steal next. Unable to make a choice, he routes his machine through his TARDIS and uses it on Luxuriana to take all of its remaining treasures in one go. Thana believes that it is impossible, but the Nine succeeds and soon holds the entire planet in his hands.

Part three

Inside a fabricated reality field which keeps Luxuriana safe, the Doctor wonders what will happen to the God Crystal which passes the planet every hundred years or so and, with his TARDIS having followed the Nine's, asks Polska for access to scientific instruments. He creates a dimensional bridge and uses rocket boots to get himself and Probert out of the fabricated reality and into the Nine's TARDIS, where they are chased by the last of the Pikas and hide in a cupboard.

The Nine decides to steal the God Crystal just as he did Luxuriana, but he is affected by its soporific effects and has trouble with his machine. He causes the God Crystal to grow and has Thana put out the fire when one of the power linkages combusts. She tells him to stop as the TARDIS is being torn apart and the Cloister Bell tolls, but he refuses to give up even when the ship is pulled towards the God Crystal.

Part four

The Doctor and Probert inexplicably find themselves in gothic catacombs with the Nine's treasures and drive his Morris Minor, encountering copies of the Nine dressed as Chancellery Guards. The Doctor realises that they are inside the Nine's mind and that the Crystal God is having a soporific effect upon them. He and Probert meet Thana and the Nine's drones and steal the treasures to attract the Nine's attention.

When the Nine arrives with his previous selves, the Doctor tries to get him to wake up from the Crystal God's influence. He shocks him awake by having the drones destroy the car with the treasures inside, breaking the connection between the Nine's mind and the Crystal God. Thana and the drones save the Doctor and Probert from the Pika and join them in recovering Luxuriana; the Doctor heads to the control room, where he convinces the Nine to help him restore the planet to return the Crystal God to its orbit.

Thana uses the Nine's machine to shrink the vault containing his collection and steal it before asking the Doctor, who has had the drones return his dimensional control, for a lift. Probert arrests the Nine, but the Nine still desperately wants the Crystal God and points a concealed gun at the Doctor. As the Nine sets his TARDIS to take him to wherever the Crystal God comes from, the Doctor has a drone fly himself, Probert and Thana to safety in his own TARDIS.

Cast

• The Doctor - Tom Baker
• The Nine - John Heffernan
• Detective Inspector Alan Probert - Richard Dixon
• Drones / Aide / Sergeant - Mark Elstob
• Thana / Mayor of Glimmer - Ronni Ancona

Worldbuilding

• The Nine steals a black light adaptor, anti-gravity field and a coffee vending machine in addition to the compound mass reducer.
• The Doctor last encountered the Nine on Broxton, a planet known for its singing trees such as the whistling rhododendron. The soil is full of alarm pellets which call security waspoids.
• The Nine took a Class-14 Attack Robot belonging to the Tsar of Opek.
• The Nine stole a personal force field from the Sultan of Polaxi after killing him in his bed.
• The Doctor is glad that the Nine did not steal his Time Vector Generator.
• The people on Luxuriana have rocket boots.
• Thana mentions Mardi Gras.
• God Crystal Night is a party held every hundred years or so when a giant crystal appears in the sky.
• Polska drinks herbal tea.
• The Nine mentions Beatrix Potter and Thripsted.
• The Nine has a gold-plated Morris Minor, a Davidoff-Morini Stradivarius violin, a wedding gown made of living silk, an autograph page of Jack Kirby's original pencils from Issue 49 of Fantastic Four and a Constable painting.
• The Nine had a nanny droid.
• The Six shoots Thana with a staser.

Notes

• This story was recorded on 24 and 31 January 2017 at Audio Sorcery.
• Nicholas Briggs is incorrectly credited as director on the Big Finish website page for this story.
• Benji Clifford handled all the scenes with the Nine's other voices because Jamie Robertson used different editing software to Clifford and could not make the voices sound consistent with their previous appearances in the Doom Coalition series. (BFX: The Dreams of Avarice)

Continuity

• The Fourth Doctor says that he has "more" than nine incarnations. He previously revisited a number of old faces during a mind battle with Morbius. (TV: The Brain of Morbius) He's also met the Tenth Doctor, (AUDIO: Out of Time) was once kidnapped alongside ten other incarnations (COMIC: Endgame) and, although he cannot remember, once joined up with "all thirteen" Doctors to save Gallifrey on the last day of the Last Great Time War. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)
• The Nine and the One talk about CIA plots regarding displacing planets in space. (TV: The Mysterious Planet, The Ultimate Foe; PROSE: The Eight Doctors)

Cover gallery

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  Textless cover

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  Alternate cover

External links

• Official The Dreams of Avarice page at bigfinish.com