Immortal Beloved
The Doctor and Lucie find themselves literally among the gods, as they land on a planet apparently ruled by Zeus, Hera and a host of other gods. But how did they get there? And given the fact that they clearly age, how do they maintain their immortality? When Zeus’ son Kalkin falls inlove with a young girl named Ararti, it sets in motion a chain of events that will alter the landscape forever.
written by Jonathan Clements
directed by Jason Haigh-Ellery
music by ERSCast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Ian McNeice (Zeus), Elspet Gray (Hera), Jennifer Higham (Sararti), Anthony Spargo (Kalkin), David Dobson (Tayden), Jake McGann (Ganymede)
Notes: Elspet Gray portrayed Chancellor Thalia in the original Doctor Who story Arc Of Infinity. Jake McGann is Paul McGann’s son. Ian McNiece would go on to play William Churchill in Doctor Who television episodes starring Matt Smith, and would return to audio in Big Finish’s fourth Doctor range in Renaissance Man.
Timeline: after Horror Of Glam Rock and before Phobos
LogBook entry & review by Philip R. Frey
On Phobos, one of the moons of Mars, tourists engage in a wide variety of extreme sports. Key to the thrillseekers is bungie-jumping into a wormhole found on the surface. But there’s a problem: tourists keep disappearing or winding up dead. Kai, who runs the place with his longtime girlfried Eris, says it’s all caused by monsters from the wormhole and tries to warn everyone away, to no avail. But tensions among the guests begin to run high and even Kai himself seems somehow tied in to the danger. When the Doctor and Lucie show up, things begin to come to a boil and it’s anyone’s guess who’ll come out alive.
The Doctor and Lucie are entangled with a rogue time traveller named Zimmerman who escapes, leaving them at the mercy of an group of angry aliens, bent on finding the cause of the time trouble, no matter the cost. But when the Doctor and Lucie finally catch up to Zimmerman, they find him happily married and enjoying a garden party that seems to go on forever. Only Zimmerman can end the time loop and thereby save the space/time continuum. But even though he has denounced his former life, he is disinclined to help, as ending the time loop would cause the death of his beloved wife, leading to a standstill between the Doctor, Zimmerman and the Tar-Modowk, who get ever closer.
The Headhunter has finally gotten Lucie and puts her to work…in an office. Of course, it’s in Telford and she thought she was going to work in London, but it’s a nice enough place and she settles in quickly, having easily gotten over her dreams of travelling through time. Meanwhile, the Doctor finds that his TARDIS won’t work without Lucie (handiwork of the Time Lords) and accepts a time ring as a means to locating her. But Lucie is already finding trouble and even once she gets her memory back via the Doctor, she can’t keep from getting fired. As this involves her finding herself in the middle of an alien jungle during major hostilities, its hardly back to the dole queue on Monday. When the Doctor learns the sinister truth behind the “company” for whom Lucie was working, he tries to throw a spanner in the works only to be thrown himself by who is trying to do business with them. They’re a group with whom the Doctor has had plenty of experience and they give new meaning to the term “hostile takeover”.
With the Doctor and Lucie embroiled in a conflict with warmongers on one side and the inhuman Cybermen on the other, the Doctor isn’t sure who he should back. But even as he noodles his way through that question, many more are raised. Who is responsible for this war being fought? Why is it being run in such a peculiar fashion? And what was so important about Lucie that so many people were making so much fuss about her? The answers lead all the way back to the Doctor’s home planet of Gallifrey and, as usual, he’s not going to like them…
As the TARDIS is in mid-flight, Charley watches as C’rizz goes through his personal effects from the Divergent Universe, including an odd glowing vessel, which Charley insists on peering into – and something is released, at about the same time the time machine comes grinding to a halt. C’rizz and Charley rush to the console room, just in time to help the Doctor bring the TARDIS in for a rough landing – after which the ship seems to split apart, with C’rizz disappearing into the void. C’rizz finds himself in the company of a man called Aboresh, who begins to unlock abilities that he didn’t realize he had. The Doctor and Charley, in the meantime, find themselves among a superstitious people, though there seem to be hints of more advanced knowledge among some of the people there. Walled up in a compound surrounded by an energy barrier, this small society defies a creature called the Borarus, which constantly tries to break into the compound. The barrier stops it, but Aboresh – who lives on the outside with those cast out from the compound – now has a powerful new weapon at his disposal: C’rizz. As C’rizz’ powers increase exponentially, he may now be the greatest threat to the Doctor and Charley’s survival.
Devastated after C’rizz makes his exit from the TARDIS crew, and outraged over the Doctor’s apparent lack of emotion about it, Charley decides she’s had enough time travel and wants to return home – even though history records her death aboard the doomed airship R-101. The Doctor tries to surprise her by taking her to her intended destination, Singapore in 1930, but the TARDIS is drawn off course in time, depositing the Doctor and Charley in Singapore in 2008. Now more disgruntled than ever, Charley tries to leave as the Doctor tends to the TARDIS controls to see what caused the time change, instead running into a man named Byron who not only seems to know who she is, but has a gun drawn on her the whole time. The Doctor arrives to foil whatever it is that Byron’s planning, and talks Charley into one last adventure – a trip back in time to the 1940s, and the source of the temporal event that redirected the TARDIS. The trail leads them to a docked sea freighter, but even there something is making a mess of the flow of time. Charley is stuck in the 1940s with a man who looks and sounds exactly like Byron – not a day older or younger – while the Doctor winds up back in 2008, only to find that Byron has staked a claim to this ship. An elderly woman accompanies Byron, and though he initially introduces her as his mother, the Doctor learns that her name is Charlotte Pollard, age 85, and she doesn’t remember anything about traveling in time – and she certainly doesn’t remember the alien invasion force stored in the ship’s hold…at least not until they stand before her, and then she remembers a single word: Cybermen.
The Doctor and Lucie are aboard a train bound for Sweden in the 1800s; also on the train are priceless artifacts by an artist named Tardelli. This piques the Doctor’s interest: he has followed Tardelli through time and space, removing his artwork, which has a psychically active component that tends to manifest itself as a malign influence wherever it takes root. But two other old acquaintances are aboard the train as well: the Headhunter and Karen, Lucie’s former co-worker who seems to have been liberated from a dark destiny to serve as the Headhunter’s sidekick. They’re also there to pilfer Tardelli’s latest masterpiece, a hefty black diamond, until the Doctor and Lucie intervene in their plans. The two sets of time travelers are in a race to see who can steal the diamond first: the Doctor wants to prevent it from depositing an evil psychic influence on Earth, and the Headhunter’s motive is pure profit… but she hasn’t even told Karen what the real job is, or who they’re really working for. 
The Doctor and Lucie travel to 1984 to pay another visit to Lucie’s Aunty Pat, and Lucie discovers that Pat’s married to a former folk singer and running a secluded hotel – a marriage that Lucie’s never heard of before. Two other visitors to the hotel also catch the Doctor’s eye; Lucie tries to spy on them, and discovers that they’re Zygons – aliens who can shapeshift to resemble any human that they kidnap and put into their equipment… a fate that Pat’s husband Trevor has suffered, and a fate that now awaits Lucie. The duplicated Lucie tries to throw the Doctor off-course, but even with her interference, he soon discovers that Lucie’s Uncle Trevor is a Zygon warlord who has defected to Earth, taking with him the secrets needed to launch a terrifying new Zygon invasion. Trevor’s fellow Zygons want those secrets, and they’ll do anything, from exposing Trevor’s true identity to killing the human woman he has fallen in love with, to get them.
After a near-miss with the TIme Lords’ time scoop in the vortex, the TARDIS materializes in the cargo hold of a space freighter. The Doctor and Lucie are immediately ambushed the moment they set foot on the ship; Lucie awakens in a prison cell, with no idea who took the Doctor or where he was taken, and is questioned by a large, centipede-like police officer named Rosto, who doesn’t seem inclined to believe a word she says. Straxus appears, asks Lucie about the Doctor’s whereabouts, and then infuriates her by leaving her stranded in Rosto’s custody. A woman appears and attempts to kidnap Lucie, but when her cover story slips, Rosto comes to the rescue. Lucie’s would-be kidnapper vanishes into thin air, but not before Rosto identifies her as the leader of the raiding party that took the Doctor. Rosto and Lucie follow the clues and discover that the woman was a member of an obscure mystic sect called the Sisterhood of Karn. Rosto and Lucie travel to Karn, hoping that they’ll find the Doctor there, unaware that a much larger crisis looms, endangering the whole universe.
The Doctor and Lucie are reunited by the Sisterhood of Karn, but the Sisters plan to summarily execute them both, eliminating the Doctor as a potential subject for gene-splicing experiments to revive Morbius. However, the Sisters have miscalculated: the Doctor isn’t the only Time Lord available to become an unwitting DNA donor to revive Morbius. Forced down on Karn, Straxus becomes the donor and Rosto is enslaved. The new reign of Morbius begins. The Doctor and Lucie are whisked away to Gallifrey, already under siege from Morbius’ forces. Unsurprisingly, the Time Lords respond to the crisis by going into hiding, while the Doctor and Lucie use the TARDIS to go to Karn. With the Time Lords cowering, the Doctor is ready to take Lucie’s advice: he plans to cross his own timeline and prevent Morbius’ rebirth from taking place. But with Gallifrey’s Eye of Harmony faltering under attack from Morbius, the Doctor’s TARDIS misses the intended temporal destination and arrives ten years into Morbius’ new reign of terror.