The Last
On the planet Bortresoye, a global nuclear war has laid waste to the surface and the planet’s entire population is wiped out. The Doctor, Charley and C’rizz arrive here, driven thorugh the interzone by the Kro’Ka, who delays the Time Lord briefly to haunt him with memories of fallen companions. They seek shelter in a bombed-out building, but it collapses underneath and on top of them, leaving Charley paralyzed from the neck down and the Doctor buried under the rubble. C’rizz goes to get help, but can find only a strangely circumspect being who calls himself Requiem. The Doctor and Charley are found by a survey team and brought to a well-protected underground bunker where the planet’s only survivors are barely managing to stay alive – and earthquake damage to their bunker is slowly whittling down even that population. The ruler of one of Bortresoye’s warring nations, the Lady Excelsior, terrifies her two surviving cabinet ministers with her ability to remain blissfully deluded about the outcome of the war, and her insistence on consorting with a mysterious man named Landscar.
written by Gary Hopkins
directed by Gary Russell
music by David DarlingtonCast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Stephen Perring (The Kro’Ka), Carolyn Jones (Excelsior), Ian Brooker (Minister Voss), Robert Hines (Minister Tralfinial), Richard Derrington (Landscar), Tom Eastwood (Requiem), Jane Hills (Nurse), John Dorney (Make-Up Assistant)
Notes: Kro’Ka tortures the Doctor with visions of two of his fallen comrades. Katarina, a slave girl who joined the first Doctor in the 1965 TV story The Myth Makers, died trying to save the Doctor and Steven in her second story, The Daleks’ Masterplan. Adric was the young mathematical genius who stowed away on the TARDIS when the fourth Doctor, Romana and K-9 visited his home planet of Alzarius in Full Circle, and, after seeing the Doctor through his regeneration, died in an attempt to avert a Cybermen strike on Earth in Earthshock. They are two of the only three companions to have died in the original television series (the third, Sara Kingdom, joined and left the series within the 12 episodes of The Daleks’ Masterplan). Roz Forrester, a companion from the New Adventures novels, also met an untimely end in the book “So Vile A Sin”, but was not mentioned here.
Timeline: between Faith Stealer and Caerdroia
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green