The Rise of the New Humans (audio story)

The Rise of the New Humans
Doctor:	Third Doctor
Companion(s):	Jo
Featuring:	The Monk
Main enemy:	Harriet
Main setting:	England, 1970s
Key crew
Publisher:	Big Finish Productions
Writer:	Guy Adams
Director:	Nicholas Briggs
Producer:	David Richardson
Music:	Jamie Robertson
Sound:	Benji Clifford
Release details
Release number:	4.1
Part of:	The Third Doctor Adventures: Volume Four
Release date:	21 March 2018
Production code:	BFPDW3RD04
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-78703-501-0 (physical); ISBN 978-1-78703-502-7 (digital)
The Third Doctor Adventures
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The Rise of the New Humans was the first story in the audio anthology The Third Doctor Adventures: Volume Four, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Guy Adams and featured Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor, Katy Manning as Jo Grant and Rufus Hound as the Monk.

Publisher's summary

When a man dies after falling from the top floor of a multi-storey car park, the Doctor and Jo wonder why it should be of interest to UNIT. Then they see the protuberances on the man's back... As he fell, he tried to grow wings.

Looking into the man's past leads the Doctor and Jo to a remote private hospital where the staff aren't as helpful as they could be, and the Chief Administrator is unavailable to meet with them.

Breaking into some restricted wards, the Doctor notes the presence of alien and futuristic technology. The whole thing bears the unmistakable hallmarks of one of his own people's interference, one of his old foes. Except not perhaps the one he might have imagined.

The Monk is back. And this time his meddling may have gone too far.

Plot

Part one

The Doctor and Jo are sent by the Brigadier to a hospital morgue to inspect the body of Michael Carey, who died after jumping from the top of a ten-storey car park only to briefly come back to life whilst on the slab. He has a new layer of skin not unlike armour and underdeveloped wings, both of which the Doctor believes his body must have grown during his fall in an attempt to save him, similar to how someone recently drowned in the River Thames with underdeveloped gills. Both of the deceased had been patients of the private Allingham Clinic and the Doctor and Jo head there in Bessie to investigate, but Bessie gets stuck in the moors and they are forced to complete the journey on foot in the rain. On the way, a glowing woman in distress is caught by orderlies, the chief of whom, Mr Rogers, the Doctor convinces to take him and Jo to the clinic by claiming to be writing a report for the Ministry of Health.

At the Allingham Clinic, the Doctor and Jo meet chief surgeon Dr Kurdi, who is not forthcoming with information nor willing to give them a room for the night until she gets a telephone call from the Chief Administrator. The pair sneak around the building after dinner and find 22nd century Baranium Medical Industries equipment maintaining a patient who would otherwise be dead. The patient cries out that his insides are on fire and the chief orderly catches the Doctor and Jo with him, informing them that the Chief Administrator is on his way. The Doctor assumes that the Chief Administrator must be the Master because of the future technology and the clinic's antiques. He is surprised when it is the Monk who arrives.

Part two

The Monk gives the Doctor and Jo a tour of the clinic, which he has built using money stolen from bank vaults lacking an heir, and explains that he has been saving human lives with anachronistic technology and funding research. Before he can elaborate, the glowing woman, Harriet, escapes again and he has Mr Rogers detain the Doctor and Jo, who discuss the morality of the Monk's actions. Jo initially believes that the Monk's actions are altruistic, but the Doctor warns her of the dangers of using future technology to save people whose deaths might be important to the timeline. The pair escape using the sonic screwdriver whilst the Monk sends the irritated Dr Kurdi back to her laboratory, promising to send the Doctor to her shortly to assist.

The Doctor admits to Jo that they are going to have to call in the Brigadier to close the clinic down and that he is interested in finding the Monk's TARDIS given that it is more advanced than his own. Harriet takes Jo hostage with a scalpel to get them to help her escape and the Doctor attempts a Venusian nerve pinch on her, but she is unharmed and proceeds to perform the move on him instead before dragging Jo away. The two women are attacked and knocked out by a force which Jo has been sensing and the Monk has Dr Kurdi see to Jo's wounds. Dr Kurdi's project, she explains, is to allow the human body to adapt to survive threats such as drowning and falling by becoming what the Monk calls "new humans". Whilst Harriet has been a success and requires drugs to keep her from getting away, Charlie Francis remains a quadriplegic and the Doctor is to help perfect the process in order to save Jo, whom the Monk has infected with the fatal Crimalian disease.

Part three

Despite Jo telling the Doctor to do what is right and let her die, he joins Dr Kurdi and tells her how invulnerability would only cause the collapse of human society; Earth's overpopulation would lead to ghettos and humans no longer fearing death would lead to stagnation and apathy reminiscent of the Time Lords. He is also appalled to learn that Michael was experimented upon without his consent and without a psychological examination which might have avoided his suicide. He soon stabilises Dr Kurdi's work and creates a counter-agent to reverse it, after which he cures Jo with a serum created using her blood. Mr Rogers and the orderly Timpson, meanwhile, fall ill and release all the patients.

Dr Kurdi reports the Doctor's actions to the Monk, who is impressed with him and reveals that he intends to sell the serum to the highest bidder and use the counter-agent to ensure that it is not duplicated by rivals. When the group learn that the orderlies have released the patients, Harriet informs Dr Kurdi that she has sought to make herself less special by "infecting" the other patients and orderlies to make them like her, a process she then subjects Dr Kurdi to. The patients cause powerful winds inside the building and the Doctor, Jo and the Monk hide from the new humans in the operating theatre, but they pursue them. There, Jo tries and fails to infect the Doctor before he can give her the counter-agent and the Doctor deduces that the experiment has a psychic component. Jo picks up a hammer and tells the two Time Lords that they need to die.

Part four

Jo is hit by an invisible force as she attacks the Doctor and the Monk. Recognising it as the force that Jo has been sensing, the Doctor has it administer the counter-agent and undo the serum to disconnect her from the new humans' hive mind and restore her to a regular human. They give the invisible force a pen and paper to communicate and learn that it is Charlie Francis, who has overcome his quadriplegia by psychically projecting his mind and interact with the physical world as wind. With the threat of Francis's ire, the Monk reluctantly joins the Doctor and Jo in trying to stop the new humans and takes them to his TARDIS, disguised as a cupboard, whilst Francis distracts the new humans and proceeds to psychically-propel his body in its wheelchair.

Francis moves his body into the TARDIS where his mind connects with the scanner thanks to the ship's telepathy, allowing him to communicate more easily with Jo and tell her that his current state is exhausting. As the Doctor creates an airborne version of the counter-agent to release into the air supply, UNIT arrives at the Allingham Clinic, having been called by Dr Kurdi so that the soldiers and their weaponry might be used by the new humans. The now-infected Captain Wilde stops the Doctor from releasing the counter-agent and the Monk defects to the side of the new humans, after which Harriet orders the soldiers to fire at the Doctor and Jo. Francis stops the bullets at the cost of his life, the strain being more than he could bear, and the counter-agent is released.

The Monk slips away in his TARDIS, only to find that its temporal buffers have failed because of the Doctor's meddling, and the new humans are returned to normal. Captain Wilde has Bessie brought to the clinic and UNIT arrests Dr Kurdi and the rest of the staff, but Harriet remains free as the Doctor considers her to have been a victim. She admits, however, that she will miss the feeling of power and the Doctor assures her that she is nothing more nor anything less than human.

Cast

• The Doctor - Tim Treloar
• Jo Grant - Katy Manning
• The Monk - Rufus Hound
• Dr Kurdi - Mina Anwar 
• Chief Orderly / Wilde / Jumper - Joe Sims
• Harriet / Woman / Radio Technician - Clare Corbett
• Francis / Morgue Attendant / Patient / Orderly - Silas Hawkins

Worldbuilding

• The car park is on Welbeck Street.
• Jo is able to read inside Bessie without getting nauseous thanks to the inertial dampeners.
• Allingham House dates back to 1811. Jo likens it to Dracula's castle.
• The people of Ordinata got tired of visitors getting lost and began hiring locals as signposts as they were able to show words on their foreheads thanks to a luminscent subcutaneous layer.
• The clinic has an original painting by Gainsborough.
• The Doctor claims that Time Lords have naturally luxuriant hair due to their regular exposure to temporal particles. Jo is unsure about whether he is joking.
• The Monk refers to the Doctor and the Master's rivalry as "a grudge", and mocks the latter as clad "in a suit smelling of Ogron."
• The Doctor at first believed the Master was involved before the Monk showed himself.
• The Monk saves a women using enhanced cybernetic lungs designed in 2415.
• The Monk and the Doctor discuss regeneration.
• The Doctor tries a Venusian nerve pinch on Harriet.
• The Monk gives Jo water which he claims contains an analgesic for her pain. It actually contains Crimalian disease from the Crima system.
• The Monk's TARDIS is disguised as a 19th century armoire. It has multiple kitchens, a home theatre system and comfortable chairs and sofas.
• The Doctor sabotages the Monk's TARDIS's temporal buffers.

Notes

• Following The Conquest of Far ^[+]Loading...["The Conquest of Far (audio story)"], Katy Manning asked Nicholas Briggs if the Doctor and Jo could spend more time together in future rather than being apart. For this reason, the two characters spend most of The Rise of the New Humans together. (BFX: The Third Doctor Adventures: Volume Four)

Continuity

• The Monk is delighted to see the Doctor again. (AUDIO: The Blame Game)
• When talking with the Third Doctor about his former companions, the Monk mentions "grumpy space pilots", a reference to the First Doctor companion Steven Taylor, (TV: The Time Meddler) and "brassy birds from Blackpool", a reference to Lucie Miller, a future companion of the Eighth Doctor. (AUDIO: The Resurrection of Mars)
• Upon meeting the Monk, Jo asks if he's the Master or another of the Doctor's incarnations, referencing the incident with Omega. (TV: The Three Doctors)
• The Doctor notes that human society would collapse if death were eradicated. (TV: Torchwood: Miracle Day)
• The Doctor mentions Lavaworms (AUDIO: The Transcendence of Ephros) and Drashigs. (TV: Carnival of Monsters)
• Missy would later develop a super-cure for the flu, but with the side effect of turning the patients into zombie-like creatures and spreading the 'cure' (PROSE: Pain Management)
• Charlie uses the Monk's TARDIS's telepathic circuits to communicate to Jo and the TARDIS. (TV: Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, The Doctor's Wife et al)

External links

• Official The Rise of the New Humans page at bigfinish.com