Left on 22nd century Earth to spend time with Susan and Alex, Lucie Miller is almost settling into a normal life of traveling around the world with Alex when the plague hits. A deadly disease wipes out entire countries around the world, though Alex and Susan are immune. Lucie contracts the illness and almost dies; the payoff for surviving is losing the use of her legs, and going blind in one eye. Just when things can’t get any worse, a Dalek invasion force arrives to retake Earth: the true source of the plague, the Daleks intend to finish the job that their first invasion of Earth never did. Alex becomes a leader in the resistance movement against the Daleks and plans a bold strike at the heart of the Daleks’ plan to remove Earth from the solar system. But after all this time, no one expects the Doctor to appear – and certainly no one expects him to appear aboard one of the Daleks’ own ships.
written by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Andy HardwickCast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Carole Ann Ford (Susan Campbell), Jake McGann (Alex Campbell), Niky Wardley (Tamsin Drew), Graeme Garden (The Monk), John Banks (Seb Andrews), Nicholas Briggs (Daleks)
Timeline: between Prisoner Of The Sun and To The Death
Notes: The TARDIS key has been seen to glow with the return of the Doctor’s timeship (Father’s Day, 2005). The Doctor notes that he eliminated the Dalek Time Controller “two lifetimes ago” (the 2009 audio story Patient Zero), so he’s understandably surprised to see it reappear here. The Doctor and Lucie nickname their communications device an “interociter,” referring to the psychedelically colorful triangular viewscreen used to contact the aliens in the movie This Island Earth (195?, though perhaps better known to modern audiences as the movie lampooned in 1997’s Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie.
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
Review: An interestingly off-format adventure even for the eighth Doctor, Lucie Miller almost seems like it’s going to be one of Big Finish’s Companion Chronicles – a story retold through the eyes of one of the Doctor’s companions, almost always without the participation of the actor who played the Doctor. Lucie recounts the events that have befallen her since last seeing the Time Lord, and more than half of the story has passed before that familiar wheezing, groaning, vworping sound – or, for that matter, Paul McGann’s voice – is heard. Appropriately titled, Lucie Miller is carried by Sheridan Smith and Carole Ann Ford, and there’s something terribly appealing about the hint that the Doctor’s granddaughter, great-grandson and a former companion have been having adventures of their own.
Written by Dalek spokesman Nicholas Briggs, the story starts to sound very familiar once the Daleks show up, with more than just a hint of Briggs’ Dalek Empire spinoff audios to the proceedings. The plot heavily rehashes the 1964 television story The Dalek Invasion Of Earth, as the Daleks are merely here to try the same invasion plan again, on a somewhat grander scale. (Perhaps Terry Nation should’ve gotten a story credit here.)
