Winter of the Demon (audio story)
Winter of the Demon was the third story in the audio anthology In the Bleak Midwinter, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Roy Gill and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, India Fisher as Charlotte Pollard and Jaye Griffiths as Lady Audacity Montague.
Publisher's summary[[edit] | edit source]
The TARDIS brings the travellers to Victorian Edinburgh. Industrialist Donald Shaw plans to transform the city with electric light, but people are dying, found horribly burned...
What ancient power has Shaw summoned? Can the Doctor prevent the Winter of the Demon?
Plot[[edit] | edit source]
The TARDIS materialises in Princes Street Gardens in Edinburgh in the 19th century and the Doctor, Charley and Audacity learn from a newspaper of a series of inexplicable deaths for which the season has been named the Winter of the Demon. The Doctor visits the mortuary and disagrees with Joe Coghill's death being put down to electrocution rather than intense heat, believing that he might have disturbed something in the tunnels beneath Calton Hill where he was installing cabling and found an ancient coin.
Deciding to investigate Coghill's employer, Charley and Audacity go to an Edinburgh Power Corporation party with Captain Archie McClellan of the Scots Guard. Audacity meets Maggie MacKenzie, an archaeologist, and Charley manages to charm Sir Donald Shaw into allowing her and her friends to stay at the party despite them not having been invited. When the Doctor arrives at the party, he questions Sir Donald about the Edinburgh Power Corporation's connection to each of the deaths and decides to investigate Maggie's dig at Cramond where other Roman coins have been found.
The next day, Charley and Archie look into the Monument Power Station, which runs despite not seeming to receive any consignments of coal or wood, and are kicked out upon being discovered by Sir Donald. Meanwhile, the Doctor and Audacity meet with Maggie in Cramond and are shown a lioness-shaped grave guardian dating back to the Roman Empire. The lioness previously held a golden crown which Sir Donald, who funds the dig, has confiscated and Maggie shows her sketches of it to the Doctor, to whom the lioness seems familiar. The crown has two engravings, with one in Latin warning that its wearer will become the body of Sol Invictus, the unconquerable sun.
The second engraving is in hieroglyphs which the translation circuit does not decipher. Maggie's rubbing of the hieroglyphs is inexplicably pulled towards her fireplace and singed, but the flame triggers a partial translation which shows the Doctor a glimpse of something old before the lioness comes to life and searches for the crown. The Doctor has Audacity pull a Christmas cracker and puts on the gold paper crown from inside to distract the lioness, but it kills Maggie for being responsible for the crown's removal and jumps after the paper crown when the Doctor throws it into the sea. Being made of molten rock, the lioness solidifies and, the Doctor remembers, will one day be unearthed and placed in the National Museum of Scotland.
Charley and Archie join the Doctor and Audacity and the four of them go to the TARDIS where the telepathic circuits complete and translate Maggie's rubbing, indicating that the crown will turn Sir Donald into a fire demon when he tries to use it at his power station to light up Edinburgh. They deduce that Sir Donald will have to use the time ball on Calton Hill to determine the moment of the winter solstice, when fusion will be at its most powerful, and that iron, which the lioness's claws were made of, could be used to counter Sir Donald. The Doctor sends Charley and Archie to prepare a cannonball at the armoury whilst he and Audacity alter the time ball to delay Sir Donald's incarnation.
The Doctor alters the timing mechanism with his sonic screwdriver and Audacity allows herself to be caught by Sir Donald to buy him time, giving her the opportunity to confront him about sacrificing seven people as part of his ritual and warn him that putting on the crown will destroy the planet. Sir Donald does not believe it, even when the Doctor joins them and points out that Calton Hill is a volcanic plug, and is taken over by the demon when he puts on the crown. Charley and Archie are caught by Private Darrow and they fail to convince him to help them fire a cannon at the observatory to kill the demon, but it fires anyway thanks to the Doctor reconnecting the cannon to the observatory clock.
Charley kisses Archie, who declines the Doctor's offer of a trip in the TARDIS, and gets the Doctor to take him back to his parents for Christmas. The Doctor and Audacity agree to spending Christmas with the McClellans and Audacity asks if they have any more crackers aboard.
Cast[[edit] | edit source]
- The Doctor - Paul McGann
- Charley Pollard - India Fisher
- Lady Audacity Montague - Jaye Griffiths
- Sir Donald Shaw / Demon - David Robb
- Captain Archie McClellan - John Scougall
- Maggie MacKenzie / Lioness - Lucy Goldie
Worldbuilding[[edit] | edit source]
- Joe Coghill was the seventh victim. He was a labourer at the Cowgate and was installing cabling in a tunnel beneath Calton Hill when he died.
- The Doctor describes Joseph Bell as a man with a forensic mind.
- Donald Shaw belongs to the Edinburgh Power Corporation.
- Shaw mentions Saturnalia.
- Cramond is a coastal village where Maggie has been working.
- Alan and Thomas work with Maggie.
- Charley and Archie travel in a hansom cab.
- The Cramond Lioness will one day be dredged up from the harbour and placed in the National Museum of Scotland. The Doctor and Romana saw it there in 1999.
- Romana always liked cats.
- Audacity has read alchemy as well as astronomy and knows about sympathetic magic.
- Archie's aunt Flora believed that an iron horseshoe could keep demons out.
- Archie is afraid of being court martialled.
- Archie wants to be a painter.
- The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to unlock a box and alter the timing mechanism at the observatory.
- Private Darrow wears a kilt.
- The Doctor fetches oven gloves and tongs from the TARDIS kitchen.
- Archie's family live on Lower Granton Terrace.
Notes[[edit] | edit source]
to be added
Continuity[[edit] | edit source]
- The Doctor has a Christmas cracker left over from the Christmas party at 107 Baker Street in Twenty-Four Doors in December [+]Loading...["Twenty-Four Doors in December (audio story)"].
- The TARDIS took the Doctor, Charley and Audacity to Christmas 1947 in The Empty Man [+]Loading...["The Empty Man (audio story)"] because it was trying to get them to 1880s Edinburgh to stop Sir Donald.
- Audacity has "lost [her] appetite" for observing heavenly bodies after the events of The Devouring [+]Loading...["The Devouring (audio story)"].
External links[[edit] | edit source]
- Official Winter of the Demon page at bigfinish.com
