Auton
This is a fan-made production whose storyline may be invalidated by later official studio productions.
Dr. Sally Arnold, senior researcher at an under-funded facility contracted to UNIT, experiments with a round plastic artifact from UNIT’s archives. After running out of other ways to get the sphere to respond, Dr. Arnold bombards it with radio signals from deep space, including one pulsating signal to which it violently responds, killing Arnold’s lab assistant and then disappearing. A pair of unusual investigators and a platoon of UNIT troops arrive to take charge, finding only Arnold and the eccentric UNIT archivist alive. The investigators clearly suspect that there’s more going on, but they aren’t revealing much. When it turns out that the archivist lied about more Auton/Nestene-related items held in UNIT’s warehouse, the search for the missing sphere intensifies – but before long, it will have summoned help in the form of deadly Autons, programmed to defend it at all costs.
screenplay by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Alistair LockCast: Bryonie Pritchard (Dr. Sally Arnold), George Telfer (Graham Winslet), Verona Chard (Janice), Reece Shearsmith (Dr. Daniel Matthews), Andrew Fettes (Sergeant Ramsay), Michael Wade (Lockwood), Roy Hughes, Gabriel Mykaj, Mike Parry, David Ringwood, Richard Smith (UNIT Soldiers), John Ainsworth, Gareth Baggs, Blaine Coughlan, David Ringwood (Autons)
Notes: Part of the code on the Auton crates – “RH / AAA” – refers to the late Robert Holmes, the veteran Doctor Who writer and script editor who created the Autons, and the BBC’s internal production code for the Doctor Who story in which they first appeared, Spearhead From Space. That story is also where the Doctor devised the unwieldly contraption that allows Dr. Arnold to battle the Autons.
Review: A cleverly-made “sidebar” to some past Doctor Who episodes, this opening volley in the Auton trilogy manages to attain quite a creepiness factor with an economy of effects and action. Auton also oozes – if you’ll forgive the pun – “pilot,” as its creators clearly had more story in mind than just this single installment. The characters are set up, the relationships (and potential problems thereof) are established, and yet they come together to win the day – or at least win the immediate battle in what promises to be a longer conflict. This is really the closest there’s been to a fan-made UNIT series, so it’s also refreshing to see that organization get an outing that makes it look bigger and a bit more effective than just, as Nicholas Courtney himself once put it, “the Brig’s Army”.
The seventh Doctor is drawn to a jungle world, where he rescues a hapless bystander and discovers an elderly couple nearby. The couple have a unique relationship based on a mutual loathing that seems like it could become murderous at any moment – and they both have very dark secrets to hide. The fifth Doctor, meanwhile, finds himself locked out of the TARDIS, which has materialized aboard a doomed British ship in the North Atlantic. The ship is torpedoed by a German U-boat, and the TARDIS is lost at sea. The Doctor, along with an Irish woman from the British vessel, drifts along with the debris until taken aboard the German sub as a spy. Elsewhere, on the starliner Edifice, the sixth Doctor’s TARDIS arrives, coinciding with an experiment being performed on a time-sensitive creature known as the Temperon. But shortly after the experiment fails, the entire crew – with the exception of its android helmsman and a waitress who appears to have survived through pure luck – is killed, and the Doctor must find out why. Each incarnation of the Doctor is unaware that he is facing the same threat, but in different places and times. And each Doctor has a piece of the puzzle that could save their besieged home planet of Gallifrey.
The Doctor and Turlough arrive in London, 1702, amidst a rash of disappearances, murders, and robberies. Well-to-do men have been vanishing without a trace, and the only connection anyone can draw between the victims is that they were last seen playing cards with the sinister and enigmatic Sir Nicholas Valentine at the Diabola Club. Turlough himself witnesses one of the horrifying disappearances and finds himself separated from the Doctor, and joins the intrepid Jasper Jeake as he tries to uncover the whereabouts of his friends. The Doctor befriends self-proclaimed occultist Dr. Samuel Holywell, who claims to have made contact with the dead – but the Doctor believes the explanation is simultaneously simpler and more complex than that. And largely unnoticed by the time travelers is the sudden transformation of a well-known robber into a murderer. At least two of these players are not from Earth – and even if the Doctor can discover who they are, the game is almost up.
In the Museum of Aural Antiquities, preparations are underway for a broadcast in tribute to the late actor Visteen Krane, who died mysteriously on the eve of announcing his candidacy for the Presidency. But things begin to go wrong almost immediately. A man is found murdered in the Museum, and the only suspects without an alibi are two intruders who identify themselves as The Doctor and Peri. The Doctor is immediately suspicious of Beth Pernell, Krane’s theatrical agent and potential running mate, who is planning to supplant her late boss as a presidential candidate and use the tribute in his honor for her own publicity. But when another death occurs, the Doctor suspects an even greater danger – a bloodthirsty life form composed of sound waves, which can replicate and transmit itself through any sound-conducting channel…such as, for example, a tribute broadcast which will be heard by millions.
The TARDIS materializes in mid-air over Alaska, 1964, and then vanishes again when a small airplane nearly collides with it. The TARDIS takes the Doctor and Nyssa to the same location in 1994, where British millionaire Shaun Brett oversees the construction of an enormous house. Brett’s employees include the half-Inuit, half-American Tulung, who acts as a mediator between Brett and the local Inuits who have labored on the huge project, and Monica Lewis, an interior designer who hopes that this house’s unique and sometimes macabre designs will enhance her resume. The Doctor and Nyssa encounter savage creatures roaming the frozen wasteland outside the isolated house, and it soon becomes evident that the same beings are in the house as well. Tulung and the elderly Gaborik believe that the creatures are manifestations of angry spirits of the land, which has been defiled to create Brett’s house. The Doctor quickly discovers that the creatures have properties unlike any other creature on Earth, and yet they are native to the planet. It’s only a matter of time before something kills everyone at the house – the only question is whether it will be the increasing hoarde of ancient monsters, or the mad blood feud for vengeance that has tied Brett and Tulung together since childhood.
In the present day, the Doctor and Ace arrive in a London gripped by fear. Terrorists seem to be going to extreme lengths to rid Britain of the ultra-right-wing New Britannia party and its Parliamentary candidate, Sherilyn Harper. The Doctor unceremoniously bursts in on Mick Thompson’s political talk radio show to make contact with a man named Walter who, with an accomplice who is now institutionalized, attempted to assassinate Harper and barely escaped with their lives after being attacked by…something. The Doctor postulates that the deadly entity is a non-corporeal creature which incites fear among its victims – and then feeds off that fear, often leaving the victims traumatized for life. Walter says that he can hear this creature in the voice of Sherilyn Harper, but as the crisis worsens and the streets become even more infested with terrorists – some of whom are not political agitators, but hired guns – it becomes apparent that the Fearmonger could be using anyone as its host… even, as Ace comes to believe, the Doctor himself.
Tracking a disturbance in the fabric of time, the Doctor interrupts a college class being conducted by history professor Dr. Evelyn Smythe – only to discover that she is the disturbance he has been seeking. Evelyn initially wants nothing to do with the garishly dressed stranger until physical evidence of her family history begins to vanish from her home. The Doctor deduces that something in the past is unraveling, erased Evelyn’s ancestors from the timeline – and taking her along with it. He rigs up a stasis device to prevent Evelyn from disappearing altogether, but rather than staying put, the intrepid teacher decides to visit Earth’s history along with the Doctor. The TARDIS tracks the disturbance to a point roughly three years before the end of Queen Mary’s reign, where events – including a conspiracy to remove Mary from the throne by any means necessary – are converging with one inevitable effect unless the Doctor can stop them: Evelyn Smythe’s family will be wiped out in the process.
The Doctor and Ace arrive on the rainforest world of Kar-Charrat, where expatriate Time Lord Elgin has become the librarian of the largest storehouse of knowledge in the universe. Elgin eagerly shows the Doctor his latest innovation: a wetworks facility which has assimilated all of this knowledge into a single consciousness. The Doctor is alarmed by this development, as it means that any invading force could take over the facility – and with it, all of the knowledge of the universe. Elgin admits that some races have tried to do exactly that, including the Daleks, but none have been successful. But the Doctor and Ace quickly learn on a first-hand basis that the Daleks haven’t given up – they intend to take over the library of Kar-Charrat and use the wetworks facility to create a new, all-knowing, all-powerful breed of Daleks. But the Daleks don’t achieve the desired results, even when the Doctor is forced to help – and everyone soon discovers that an even greater power than the Daleks exists on Kar-Charrat…a power which, if unleashed to rid the world of the mechanical invaders, could also exact revenge on a Time Lord guilty of enslaving Kar-Charrat’s indigenous creatures.
The TARDIS takes the Doctor and Peri to a cathedralesque structure on the surface of Mars early in the 21st century at a particularly historic moment – the day of the first American manned landing on the red planet. But NASA’s crew is a motley assortment. Two American astronauts are accompanied by a pair of British civilians, Tanya and Paul Webster, whose only claim to their seats on the mission is their relation to a rich uncle whose financial backing kept the Mars shot from being scrapped. But the Websters’ presence is more than just a favor to the mission’s benefactor. The Doctor, Peri, and the astronauts discover that the elaborate building is an Ice Warrior tomb, guarded by a contingent of Warriors in suspended animation. Paul Webster suddenly shows his true colors: as an ambitious and unscrupulous agent for his equally corrupt uncle, he is on the Mars mission to bring back as much alien technology as he can find. The honor-bound Ice Warriors have a hard time coming to any conclusion other than vengeance – which could kill both the innocent members of the expedition and the time travelers as well. The Doctor feels personally responsible for the entire incident, which might not have happened if not for his presence on Mars.