The Quintessence (audio story)

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The Quintessence was the story comprising the fourteenth release in The Third Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle and featured Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor and Katy Manning as Jo Jones.

Publisher's summary[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Doctor and Jo Jones arrive at 'Always', a Victorian manor house perched impossibly on the distant storm-world of Nethara Reach.

Greeted by the peculiar Pepperdines, a couple frantic with worry about their ailing daughter, they discover terrible secrets hiding within the panelled walls and gruesome oil paintings.

Secrets that will bring the Doctor face to face with one of his most ancient and implacable enemies, and put his relationship with Jo to the ultimate test.

Plot[[edit] | [edit source]]

Part one[[edit] | [edit source]]

Jo finds herself outside of Always, a large manor house, with the young Emmeline Pepperdine, who claims that they are old friends and leads her to the house. Emmeline advises Jo to ignore the feeling that they are being followed and to instead count the house's crenellations and windows and their footsteps until they are inside. There, Emmeline leads Jo to a room and tells her to find her, saying "X4 G9 47 6D 52". Jo wakes up in the TARDIS and tells the Doctor about her dream and the numbers, which he discovers are the coordinates of the uninhabited Nethara Reach which is beset by an electrical storm which has lasted 10,000 years. Despite this, they find Always and are given refuge by Emmeline's parents, Arthur and Lucy, the latter of whom asks the Doctor to examine her once she awakens.

Whilst Arthur takes Lucy to one side to discuss Emmeline's strict treatment plan, the Doctor informs Jo that the tea they have been served has been synthesised, that the books in the library are mostly manuals on engineering despite their covers identifying them as works of literature and that the various bleak landscapes hung on the walls are familiar, but not of Nethara Reach. Jo remembers seeing Cliff in her dream and getting the feeling that something was coming, a thought which is interrupted when Arthur and Lucy return and inform them that they think it best that Emmeline is not disturbed. This prompts Jo to get Lucy away from her husband by asking for directions to the bathroom and trying to get answers from her about her past and her life in Always, where Lucy claims that she and her family are watched over by angels.

Jo meets Emmeline in her bedroom, where the young girl is attached to medical machinery, and is surprised to find that she knows her name, that she has seen plastic flowers and that she has been lonely since Cliff's death. Downstairs, the Doctor determines from Arthur's muted reaction to learning that Jo is not his wife that the Pepperdines are not Victorians as they appear to be and questions him on the year, which Arthur is unable to give. When Lucy returns, Arthur orders her not to answer the Doctor's questions, but apologises for his behaviour when an alarm sounds and proceeds to join his wife in a séance with the angels using a scrying mirror. They are answered by a Cyberman, who tells them that the Cybermen have heard their prayers.

Part two[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Doctor identifies himself to the Cyberman, who tells Arthur and Lucy that he is their enemy and must be destroyed. The couple find themselves unable to comply, however, and the Doctor smashes the mirror, which he recognises as a tau wave communications device, with a candlestick to end the communication. Arthur admits that Always is a drop pod from the Mephibosheth colony ship, ejected when the colony ship's fuel cells began decaying and disguised as a house to keep the Pepperdines sane on the barren world. Emmeline fell ill with a disease that Arthur suspects he and Lucy must have carried from the Mephibosheth and they heard the voice of the Cybermen telling them how to treat her and survive on Nethara Reach. The Doctor also learns that Arthur has been cannibalising the ship on the Cybermen's orders to remotely convert Emmeline.

Emmeline tells Jo that she knows things that she should not despite not leaving her room and that this ability has increased since the family were contacted by the angels. The angels have been building a bridge and will soon come for her to take her to their castle, she claims, which is depicted in a painting in her room which also contains several white shapes which seem to be getting closer. Lucy arrives and gives her a respirator to regulate her breathing, shortly after which the Doctor and Arthur visit and, upon learning that the Cybermen are on their way, takes Jo and Arthur down to the drawing room where Arthur admits that Emmeline has latent psychic abilities which caused those aboard the Mephibosheth to turn against the family. The paintings are disguised phasic panelling which the Cybermen use to enter the house from Mondas, shoot Lucy and take her and Emmeline back with them, obeying Emmeline's order not to kill the others.

Part three[[edit] | [edit source]]

Arthur ignores the Doctor's warnings and heads through the gateway after Emmeline, whom the Doctor accepts might still be alive when Jo points out the pointlessness in targeting her otherwise. He and Jo follow in the TARDIS, don hazmat suits and make their way down to the former Mondasian city via a facility pumping fumes into the atmosphere. On one of the streets, Jo is bitten by a Cybermat which the Doctor destroys and the Cybermen pursue the two of them with the aim of processing them.

The Cybermen are shot and killed by the partially-converted Arthur using a homemade energy weapon. He then leads the Doctor and Jo down a ladder to a laboratory, which was once a surgery, where he reveals that the two of them have arrived six years later than intended. In the intervening years, he has been looking for Emmeline and Lucy without success. He administers a cure when Jo collapses because of the Cybermat's bite and presents them with a captive Cyberman which he has been attempting to deconvert with the aim of restoring Emmeline once he finds her. He locks the Doctor and Jo in with the Cyberman, which says that they will become like the Cybermen.

Part four[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Cyberman collapses and Arthur brings it, the Doctor and Jo out, explaining that he has removed the Cyberman's inhibitor chip and that it short-circuited thanks to a conflict between its programming and emotions. Using a neurochemical dampener, the Doctor separates the Cyberman's neurons from its hardware and it remembers who it is; he is Drexel Morrison, a man who willingly offered himself and his family for conversion to survive. Arthur tortures him to try to find out where Emmeline and Lucy were taken until Jo convinces him that that is not what they would have wanted, but the Cybermen detect Drexel's distress and attack, killing Drexel because of him being considered non-viable. The Doctor, Jo and Arthur flee, using a plasma cutter against the Cybermen, and the Doctor pockets a scanner which the Cybermen use to detect unconverted flesh.

Arthur leads the Doctor and Jo through a service hatch into a series of tunnels which they follow to the caves. There, the Doctor works on the scanner with his sonic screwdriver and uses a lock of Lucy's hair from Arthur's locket to lock onto Lucy, but it detects multiple readings which indicate that she has been stripped for parts rather than converted. Arthur is unwilling to give up on Emmeline, however, and Jo provides the Doctor with a handkerchief that Emmeline gave her. The scanner gets a single reading at the centre of a cyber-factory and the Doctor, Jo and Arthur go in search of her, gaining access thanks to the cyber-arm Arthur replaced his own with. At the core, they are welcomed by the Cybermen and find that Emmeline has "ascended" into a Cyber-Planner so that her abilities can be used to guide the Cybermen. She reveals that she was the one who called out to the Cybermen from Nethara Reach and orders the Doctor, Jo and Arthur to comply; when they resist, the Cybermen fire.

Part five[[edit] | [edit source]]

Jo dreams of having breakfast with Emmeline outside of Always, which is on Earth rather than Nethara Reach, and has only vague memories of something bad happening and somebody that she loves being in danger. They play with Houdini, Emmeline's dog, and go for a picnic by the stream where Jo falls asleep and dreams of Mondas. She is uncertain about what reality is and Emmeline assures her that Always is real, but Jo feels that she is forgetting something important and detects a rotting smell. She paints the surface of Mondas instead of Always, for which Emmeline admonishes her. Jo thinks that she sees a man at the bottom of the garden and hears Houdini barking down there, but Emmeline insists that it is her imagination.

When Jo looks in the mirror after Emmeline brushes her hair, she sees the face of a Cyberman instead of her own and rushes after Houdini, who she finds dead and being eaten by Cybermats. She remembers what they are and begins to hear the storms of Nethara Reach, after which she feels something inside her head and hears Emmeline's song with the voice of a Cyberman. The Doctor arrives, explains that her memories are behind a firewall and are now breaking down the program they are in and barricades the two of them in Emmeline's room. They have been stunned by the Cybermen and plugged into the Quintessence, a repository which supports the consciousness of the Cybermen, to have their minds probed for information. The Cyber-Planner declares that, as Jo has rejected the simulation, their bodies will be liquified.

Part six[[edit] | [edit source]]

The Doctor and Jo's connection with the Quintessence is broken and they finds themselves restrained and apart on Mondas. Arthur gets the Doctor out of the interface chamber, explaining that he had been deemed incompatible for conversion because of his cyber-arm, and claims to know where Jo will be being taken. On the way, however, the Doctor realises that Arthur is keeping something from him and gets him to admit that he was taken to Emmeline prior to his failed conversion. She survives as a face floating in a machine and he wishes to kill her with an electromagnetic pulse. Jo is taken to Emmeline before being reconnected to the Quintessence and asked to surrender the Doctor in return for a life without death, but she refuses despite Emmeline's promise to bring back Cliff when the Cybermen gain the power of time travel.

The Cybermen locate the Doctor and Arthur, who are being attacked by Cybermats, and take them to Command where Emmeline explains that she had a vision of the rise of Mondas. She has mapped the timeline and drew Jo to Nethara Reach through her dream so that she could acquire the TARDIS and rewrite the future, uniting all of life in a deathless universe. Jo agrees with Emmeline, but the Doctor persuades her that an endless life without individuality would be pointless and she again refuses to help her. The injured Arthur tells the Doctor and Jo to run and activates the electromagnetic pulse, killing himself, Emmeline and the nearby Cybermen. The Doctor and Jo return to the TARDIS and talk about Emmeline, whom the Doctor believes needed Jo with her despite having become a Cyber-Planner.

Cast[[edit] | [edit source]]

Crew[[edit] | [edit source]]

Worldbuilding[[edit] | [edit source]]

Notes[[edit] | [edit source]]

Continuity[[edit] | [edit source]]

Cover gallery[[edit] | [edit source]]

  • Textless cover

    Textless cover

  • Alternate cover

    Alternate cover

  • SoundCloud trailer cover

    SoundCloud trailer cover

External links[[edit] | [edit source]]

v • e
The Third Doctor Adventures
Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3
Volume 4
Volume 5
Volume 6
Volume 7
Volume 8
Volume 9
Volume 10
The Return
of Jo Jones
Volume 12
Volume 13
Volume 14
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