The Hollows of Time (audio story)
The Hollows of Time was the fourth story in the first series of The Lost Stories, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was adapted by Christopher H. Bidmead, from his original script, and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and Nicola Bryant as Peri Brown.
This story was originally intended to be the fifth story of the original Season 23, but was cancelled along with other planned stories when Doctor Who went on a production hiatus.
Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Doctor and Peri have been on holiday, visiting old friend Reverend Foxwell in the sleepy English village of Hollowdean. But why are their memories so hazy?
Piecing together events they recall a mysterious chauffeur, who is not what he seems, and Foxwell's experiments that could alter the nature of reality. Huge sand creatures have been sighted on the dunes, and many of the locals are devoted to a leader known as "Professor Stream".
But who is Stream? And what lies within the Hollows of Time?
The Doctor will discover that not every question has a definitive answer...
Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]
Part one[[edit] | [edit source]]
In the TARDIS, the Doctor and Peri realise that neither of them can remember their recent trip to 1980s England to meet Reverend Foxwell. They cast their minds back to when they took a bus and a train to Hollowdean and met somebody, although the Doctor cannot remember his name or exactly who he was.
The Doctor and Peri are given a lift to a fancy dress competition at the church by a man in steel spectacles and see a portrait on the clock tower of the All-Flowing Professor Stream, a man whom the Doctor believes he recognises. Peri befriends the young boy Simon whilst the Doctor learns from Jane that Stream is a philanthropist who made money selling electronics in the 1970s. Although the Doctor starts to remember him by reputation, his head goes "fuzzy" and he finds himself speaking with Stream.
Stream claims that he worked with Foxwell at Bletchley Park and became spiritual after being paralysed in a car accident. He now leads the Streamers, a group of fans of his philosophy. When the Doctor's dizzy spell ends, Jane tells him that Stream has left and he goes to find Peri. He purchases a glowing shell that Simon shows them from Mrs Streeter's stall, as well as a lead-lined tea caddy to insulate it, and confesses to Peri that they have come here because the TARDIS sensed gravitational anomalies around Hollowdean.
The Doctor believes that the shell is a scale from a reptilian creature who inspired the sand creature costume that Simon is wearing and takes his mask, losing his coat in a rosebush in the process, to present both objects to Foxwell in his workshop. Foxwell has no explanation and Peri find Simon spying on the Streamers after Mrs Streeter confirms that he encountered a creature, leaving the Doctor and Foxwell to discuss the latter's work on combining human intelligence with encasements improved with information from the chauffeur in steel spectacles. Suspicious of this and the fact that it is funded by Stream, the Doctor tells him to stop his work.
Simon is brought back to the Doctor by Peri and explains that the scale was all that was left when he returned to the site of a dead reptilian creature, a creature which the Doctor deduces was a Tractator. The Doctor decides to collect equipment from the TARDIS and gets a lift with Jane, who claims to be going in the same direction despite having no way of knowing where the TARDIS is and whom the Doctor realises is the victim of the chauffeur's mind control, as is Foxwell. Meanwhile, Foxwell apparently loses the scale, which moves by itself through gravity waves, and Peri and Simon go to the beach to find another.
Through Jane, whose place he proceeds to take, the chauffeur seizes control of the TARDIS and fuses it with his car, itself a space-time vehicle. He drives the car through a starfield and demands to know the location of the Gravis so that the Tractators can increase in power, but they struggle for control and the chauffeur slips out, returning to Jane. The Doctor breaks the congruence between the car and the TARDIS, which is now in the chauffeur's possession and which he uses to track the Gravis to Kolkokron. With the Doctor no longer of use, the chauffeur activates a remote destruction device which damages the car.
Part two[[edit] | [edit source]]
Sucked into a sand tunnel beneath the dunes by a dead Tractator, Peri and Simon follow it into the cellar of Stream's house, which is full of decaying Tractator corpses. They take a concealed lift into a garage where they are reunited with the Doctor, who managed to retain the car's geospatial coherence by making a rope out of a travelling rug and then used a reality reset switch to help him return to Hollowdean. The Doctor gets out before it dematerialises and goes with Peri and Simon, whom Mrs Streeter soon takes home, to stop Foxwell's work from being sabotaged by the chauffeur to create a quantum gravity engine. The experiments have been accelerated and are taking place in the church hall.
Foxwell starts up the quantum gravity engine and he, the Doctor, Peri and Simon, who arrives in his pyjamas, are trapped in a circle made of encasements with living Tractors inside. Stream, arriving in the TARDIS with the chauffeur, joins them in the circle despite the Doctor telling him not to and then invites the chauffeur into the circle at the Doctor's request; Peri discovers that the chauffeur is a robot when she pulls off his glasses and Stream reveals that he has been under his control. Able to exit the gravity bubble thanks to the TARDIS, Stream leaves the chauffeur to watch his captives and dematerialises. The Doctor deduces that the one empty encasement is intended for the Gravis, but Foxwell decides to take its place in the hopes of allowing the group to escape.
The TARDIS deposits the Gravis in the encasement and leaves Stream and Jane behind. Stream has Jane connect to the engine to allow him to leave, killing her in the process. The engine reaches its peak and the Doctor gets the Gravis to create a time corridor for the two of them, but Peri follows rather than remain behind as Foxwell believes that his parting words indicate sacrifice. In fact, this was not the case. The Doctor and Peri are taken back in time, invisible due to them being observers, and then collect Foxwell and Simon from the engine, leaving behind Foxwell's AI turtle to keep the force wall down. The Doctor accesses a computer and finds that there are no records of Stream being at Bletchley despite Foxwell's memories and his own.
The group return to the time corridor and arrive in a real space-time event where Peri and Simon are present, so the Doctor sends the present versions back into the corridor to prevent the two pairs running into one another. Peri and Simon find themselves back in the circle with the turtle's batteries dead, the force wall closing in on them and the Tractators all free thanks to further time corridors, one of which leads them inside the Doctor's time rotor. They see Stream piloting the ship and then return through the corridor, reuniting with the Doctor and taking him there to slow Stream down whilst the Gravis, whom the Doctor has been negotiating with, works to stop him. Using objects from inside the time corridor, the group manage to slow down the TARDIS and then use the corridor itself to get outside of the circle.
Stream uses the TARDIS as a kingpin to increase the power of the engine with the aim of turning the universe to nothingness in which he will "be the circle", becoming all of space and time. The Gravis arrives and calls the Tractators together, pulling Stream's body apart using gravity and apparently destroying him, although the Doctor is uncertain that he is gone.
The Doctor and Peri think about what happened after Stream's defeat; the Streamers were free to think for themselves, Mrs Streeter was determined to keep Foxwell out of trouble and Simon wants to be a scientist, although he was unable to join them in the TARDIS on account of his school schedule. The Doctor realises that Stream being able to fly the TARDIS is significant, but still cannot remember things properly.
Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Doctor – Colin Baker
- Peri – Nicola Bryant
- Professor Stream - David Garfield
- Reverend Foxwell - Trevor Littledale
- Mrs Streeter / Simon - Susan Sheridan
- Steel Specs - Hywel John
- Jane - Victoria Finney
Crew[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Cover Art - Alex Mallinson
- Director - John Ainsworth
- Executive Producers - Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery
- Music and Sound Design - Nigel Fairs
- Producer & Script Editor - David Richardson
- Writer - Christopher H Bidmead
Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Foxwell worked with Alan Turing at Bletchley Park in the 1940s.
- Jane tells the Doctor that Stream made money from electronics in the 1970s.
- The Doctor quotes his "friend Wittgenstein".
- When Reverend Foxwell inquires as to whether he used to have a "a metal dog", the Doctor says it was a long time ago in "another life".
- Turing worked with Tommy Flowers.
- The computer under Hollowdean runs Microsoft Windows.
- Foxwell asks Peri to carry his wave-guide actuator.
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- The Hollows of Time was an unproduced serial written by Christopher H. Bidmead intended to feature the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown. It was cancelled to make way for The Trial of a Time Lord.
- This story marks the first appearance of the Tractators in an audio story. After being introduced in Frontios twenty-six years earlier, the species appeared in Happy Deathday and Life After Queth.
- In the original version of the script, Professor Stream would have been revealed to be the Tremas Master in disguise ("Stream" being an anagram for "Master"), a plot device previously used in The Keeper of Traken, Castrovalva, Time-Flight and The King's Demons. While this was changed (due to Big Finish lacking the rights to use the Master at the time of this story's production) David Garfield portrayed Stream with a voice similar to Anthony Ainley's. In-narrative, this is further explained as the Doctor and Peri suffering from slight amnesia after this adventure, creating the possibility that Stream is the Master and they just don't remember it. Additionally, this story is included in Big Finish's "The Master" collection"[1] and was included by Big Finish in sales of stories featuring the Master in 2019 and 2021, which implies the producers consider Stream to be the Master in disguise.
- This audio drama was recorded on 30 and 31 March 2009 at the Moat Studios.
Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]
- After Peri accuses him of deliberately deceiving her, the Doctor tells her that Time Lords do not do such things. However, his next incarnation would later deceive and manipulate his companion Ace and others on numerous occasions in furtherance of his schemes. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, et al.)
- The Doctor notes that his previous encounter with the Tractators occurred aeons from the 20th century, which is consistent with the fact that TV: Frontios took place on the planet of the same name at an unknown time in the far future.
- The Doctor is initially unable to remember the name of his vintage car, Bessie, which he used mostly in his third incarnation. (TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians, et al.) The Fourth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors used the car on one occasion each. (TV: Robot, TV: Battlefield, PROSE: The Dying Days)
- The Doctor first paraphrases and then quotes "My kingdom for a horse", which appears in Act V, Scene IV of William Shakespeare's Richard III. During his fifth incarnation, he, Peri and their former travelling companion Erimem had met both a time travelling Shakespeare and the eponymous King of England in 1483 and 1485. (AUDIO: The Kingmaker) Later, in his tenth incarnation, the Doctor would meet Shakespeare again. (TV: The Shakespeare Code)
- The Doctor took a battery from Reverend Foxwell's laboratory. (AUDIO: The Macros)
- Upon meeting an older version of Peri in Los Angeles in 2009 who had no memory of their travels together beyond their first encounter on Lanzarote in May 1984, (TV: Planet of Fire) the Doctor mentions the Tractators in an attempt to jog her memory. (AUDIO: Peri and the Piscon Paradox)
- The Doctor mentions that Alan Turing was working with Foxwell in the 40s breaking codes. During his eighth incarnation, he would later have an adventure with Turing. (PROSE: The Turing Test)
- The Doctor tells Peri that after "that business on Frontios", he found the Gravis his new home. (PROSE: Life After Queth)
Footnotes[[edit] | [edit source]]
External links[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Official The Hollows of Time page at bigfinish.com
- The Hollows of Time at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
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