Storm Warning
The Doctor happens upon a recursive disaster in the time vortex – a timeship whose fiery demise is repeating itself over and over again, leaving the vessel helpless to fend off the attack of vortex-dwelling creatures swarming over the wreck. The Doctor impetuously tries to nudge the timeship out of its predicament, putting the TARDIS in danger of joining it in its never-ending fate. The gambit works, but when the Doctor makes a hasty emergency exit of the vortex, vortizores follow the TARDIS to its destination: Earth, 1930, aboard the doomed maiden voyage of British Airship R-101. The Doctor becomes stranded aboard the ship – which history records as having crashed in France on its first flight with all hands lost – when the TARDIS, having landed in one of the ballast tanks, is dumped overboard. He then meets stowaway Charlotte Pollard – “Charley” for short – who boarded the R-101 in the guise of a steward, but has now been found out and is on the run. Lord Tamworth, the Minister of the Air, is also aboard, as is the dirigible’s nervous designer, fearful of the changes that Tamworth made to his specifications. And in Cabin 43, a heavily-sedated passenger is kept in isolation, though someone aboard the craft has made arrangements to return her home…to an alien space vehicle at an altitude of 5,000 feet.
written by Alan Barnes
directed by Gary Russell
music by Alistair Lock / theme arrangement by David ArnoldCast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Gareth Thomas (Lord Tamworth), Nicholas Pegg (Frayling), Barnaby Edwards (Rathbone), Hylton Collins (Chief Steward Weeks), Helen Goldwyn (Triskele)
Timeline: after the 1996 TV movie and before Sword Of Orion
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green