The Horror of Hy-Brasil (audio story)
The Horror of Hy-Brasil was the thirty-first Subscriber Short Trips audio story. It featured the Second Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe and was available to subscribers of Big Finish's main Doctor Who range whose subscription included Shadow Planet / World Apart.
Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]
The Doctor and Zoe prepare an ‘un-birthday’ surprise for Jamie, when the TARDIS materialises. Instead of landing in Scotland, the TARDIS lands on the Isle of Hy-Brasil off the coast of Ireland in 1748. Jamie is lured outside by the Will-o'-the-Wisp then the entire Isle of Hy-Brasil vanishes. The TARDIS fault locator goes berserk as the TARDIS is dragged through space and time.
When the TARDIS settles, the scanner reveals an expansive room with many computers and metallic walls ornately etched with Celtic designs. The Doctor postulates that the island is really a ship or scientific outpost that has been moved slightly out of phase with normal space-time. The Doctor and Zoe soon find Jamie frozen like a statue. Zoe attempts to free Jamie utilising one of the computers, the Doctor tries to stop her but is too late. As Jamie regains mobility and their timelines synchronise – the TARDIS crew is stranded in a different timeline than the TARDIS.
Two Fomorians, who dismay Jamie with their claim that they are Balor and his daughter Eithne from Celtic mythology, greet the Doctor. Balor asks for the Doctor’s help. The Doctor takes in his captor, noting Balor is blind but he sees using an electronic eye. Balor explains that the Fomorians are dying, sterilised by his own experiments with chronon energy – he came to Earth seeking a cure. The Doctor agrees to help and then instructs his companions to go with Eithne and keep their eyes and ears open while he aids Balor.
Eithne takes Jamie and Zoe on a tour of Hy-Brasil, a floating city-sized aquatic research centre disguised as an island. Jamie and Zoe learn that the rest of the Fomorians are dead and that Eithne is a Botanist.
The Doctor aids Balor, while probing him about his chronon energy experiments.
On the way to Eithne’s lab, they come upon a corridor labelled Subsection C; Zoe takes a few steps into the corridor before being stopped by Eithne…Eithne explains that Subsection C is unsafe due to flooding.
Balor scans the Doctor with a gamma-ray imager and is very excited to learn the Doctor has two hearts.
In Eithne’s lab, Eithne describes her work with the hybridization of heather. Zoe doubles back to Subsection C as Jamie encourages Eithne to explain more to him. She tells him she had been tending her heather when Jamie mistook her for the Will-o'-the-Wisp.
Balor is excited by the Doctor’s dual cardiovascular system because it presents a solution to the creation of his chimera.
Zoe stumbles upon Balor’s failed Fomorian-Human Hybrids. The Fomorians in Hy-Brasil are not dead; Balor used them in his experiments.
The Doctor, realising the aim of Balor’s experiments, escapes by temporarily blinding him with a burst of gamma radiation.
One of the Fomorian-Human Hybrids begs Zoe to kill it as Jamie and Eithne rejoin her. The Doctor rushes in and appeals to Eithne’s sense of injustice. However, before Eithne may aid them, Balor is upon them. He unshields his electronic eye focusing a beam of chronon energy on the Fomorian-Human Hybrid devolving the creature into a raw primordial soup.
Balor attempts to hybridise the Doctor and Eithne into a chimera. Jamie frees himself and rescues the Doctor as Eithne is liquefied into atoms by chronon energy. When Eithne’s reconstituted remains emerge, she attacks Balor, stunning him, as the Doctor and Jamie free Zoe. Eithne initiates the Hy-Brasil self-destruct and releases the TARDIS. Balor regains his footing, turning his eye on Eithne. She grabs Balor and liquefies as the TARDIS crew enters the TARDIS.
The explosion of Hy-Brasil sends the TARDIS crashing onto the Irish mainland.
Jamie looks at the scanner, which is filled with a field of heather. The Doctor reassures Jamie by telling him that the Fomorians live on through Eithne’s hybridization of heather. The TARDIS dematerialises from the field of heather.
Characters[[edit] | [edit source]]
Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]
to be added
Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]
- This story is set between The Mind Robber and The Invasion.[source needed]
Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]
- Jamie refers to the Doctor dematerialising the TARDIS to escape a volcanic explosion occurring on Dulkis. (TV: The Dominators)
- The Doctor moved a dusty backgammon board to open a plant incubator. During his first incarnation, the Doctor played backgammon with Kublai Khan. (TV: Marco Polo)
- The Fomorians reappear. (PROSE: Eve of the Fomorians)
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