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7th Doctor Doctor Who Doctor Who Unbound

Death Comes To Time

Doctor Who: Death Comes To TimeThe planet Santiny is overrun by a massive invasion by a Canisian fleet. Even suicide runs don’t prevent the Canisians, as their leader, General Tannis, seems to be able to forsee every possible tactic. Almost as if in answer to the prayers of the survivors on Santiny, the TARDIS arrives, and the Doctor and his blue-skinned companion Antimony emerge to begin helping Santiny’s resistance movement. Meanwhile, Ace – planted in a strategic position by the Doctor – has been rescued by a Time Lord named Casmus, who begins training her for the next step in her own evolution. Elsewhere, a group of Time Lords called the Fraction, dedicated to interference in time on the side of good, begin falling one by one to a stealthy killer. Finally, the string of deaths draws the Doctor’s attention away from the Canisian problem, and also gets the attention of Casmus. On Gallifrey, Casmus accelerates Ace’s training, speeding her evolution into a new breed of Time Lord. Time is running out, as Tannis is also revealed to be a Time Lord who is using his conquests to disguise his identity. But will Ace learn to use her powers for good soon enough to confront Tannis, or will the Doctor – having witnessed Antimony’s death at the general’s hands – be forced to use his Time Lord powers to a degree that will not only kill Tannis but himself as well?

Order this CDwritten by Colin Meek
directed by Dan Freedman
music by Nick Romero

Cast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Kevin Eldon (Antimony), John Sessions (General Tannis), Leonard Fenton (Casmus), Jon Culshaw (Golcrum / Senator Hawk / President), Jacqueline Pearce (Admiral Mettna), Stephen Fry (The Minister Of Chance), Britta Gartner (Senator Sala), Anthony Stewart Head (St. Valentine), Dave Hill (Nessican), Charlotte Palmer (Dr. Cain), Stephen Brody (Speedwell), Gareth Jones (Campion), Andrew McGibbon (Captain Carne), Michael Yale (Lieutenant Suneel), Peggy Batchelor (The Kingmaker), David Evans (Pilot), Robert Rietti (Premier Bedloe), Julienne Davis (Computer), Emma Ferguson (Megan), Huw Thomas (President of Santiny), Nick Romero (Major Bander / Prime Minister), Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), David Soul (Bob)

Originally broadcast from July 13, 2001 to May 30, 2002

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who Doctor Who Unbound

Auld Mortality

Doctor Who Unbound: Auld MortalityOn the planet Gallifrey, oblivious to the coming inauguration of the new President of the High Council, an author known only as the Doctor spends most of his days in an illegal Possibility Generator, researching and reliving events from the history of a primitive world called Earth, upon which his books are based. As his robotic drudge Badger tends to his needs, the Doctor stays in seclusion and fends off the recurring visits of his dreaded great-grand-uncle, Ordinal-General Quences, who has long harbored an ambition of maneuvering the Doctor into the presidency to gain prestige and influence for their family. Another member of the Doctor’s family, claiming to be his great granddaughter Susan, appears, and the Doctor learns that Susan is the new President-elect, and Quences hopes to follow her into a life of prestige. Having dreamt for years of stealing a TARDIS and fleeing Gallifrey with Susan under his wing, the Doctor finally rebels against Quences by overloading the Possibility Generator and flooding the Capitol with its alternate realities. Now, at last, perhaps the Doctor can escape his staid life – or perhaps he won’t. And perhaps Susan will come with him – or perhaps she won’t.

Order this CDwritten by Marc Platt
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Alistair Lock
main theme by Ron Grainer, arranged by Alistair Lock

Cast: Geoffrey Bayldon (The Doctor), Carole Ann Ford (Susan), Derren Nesbitt (Ordinal-General Quences), Toby Longworth (Badger), Matthew Brenher (Hannibal), Ian Brooker (Surus), Nicholas Briggs (Gold Usher)

Timeline: before An Unearthly Child?

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who Doctor Who Unbound

Sympathy For The Devil

Doctor Who Unbound: Sympathy For The DevilOn the eve of the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China in 1997, the TARDIS materializes near a traditional English pub. The Doctor, reeling from his ordeal at the hands of the Time Lords after his trial for interfering in the course of history, wanders into the pub to find that it’s run by the retired Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart – embittered after years of having to run UNIT’s fight against the unknown without any help. Just as the two become uneasily reacquainted, they hear a low-flying jet smash into something nearby, and yet they never see it. When they arrive at the hillside into which something has crashed, the Doctor and the Brigadier realize it’s a Chinese spy plane using some sort of stealth technology that renders it invisible, not just to radar but to the human eye. UNIT quickly arrives, under the command of the brash Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood – an old adversary of the Brigadier’s – and takes over a nearby monastery, monks and all, to use as a temporary command post. The Doctor slowly grows to realize that something more than espionage is going on here – but by the time he realizes who’s behind it, it will already be too late…and this time even the Brigadier doesn’t trust him enough to lend a hand.

Order this CDwritten by Jonathan Clements
directed by Gary Russell
music by Andy Hardwick
main theme by Ron Grainer / arranged by Lee Mansfield

Cast: David Warner (The Doctor), Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), David Tennant (Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood), Sam Kisgart (Ke Le), Liz Sutherland (Ling), Trevor Littledale (The Abbot), Mark Wright (Marcus), Peter Griffiths (Captain Zerdin), Stuart Piper (Adam)

Timeline: after The War Games and in place of Spearhead From Space?

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who Doctor Who Unbound

Full Fathom Five

Doctor Who Unbound: Full Fathom Five2039 A.D.: After encountering rumors of illegal genetic experiments being conducted by the U.S. military under the cover of the Deep-sea Energy Exploration Project, the Doctor drops in with the TARDIS and confirms his worst fears. The ruthless General Flint has been using Professor Vollmer’s ecologically friendly energy experiments, harnessing power from undersea geothermal vents, as a cover for experiments that even the Army has now disavowed. Faced with the impending end of his secret project, Flint has Vollmer injected with a cocktail of accelerated DNA cultivated from sea creatures, his last chance to prove the value of his project. To prevent Vollmer’s mutation into an amphibious life form, the Doctor kills him, but not before Vollmer makes the Doctor promise to look after his daughter. General Flint confiscates the Doctor’s TARDIS key, forcing the Time Lord to abandon the seabase in an escape submarine before Flint’s plan comes to a deadly end: radioactive dirty bombs detonate around the DEEP base, ensuring that even the most curious and determined explorer can’t get near it.

2066 A.D.: The Doctor insists on leaving his companion Ruth on dry land as he plunges into the ocean to examine the wreckage of DEEP. Ruth’s father, Professor Vollmer, worked there 27 years ago when disaster struck and he was lost and presumed dead. She has never learned what exactly happened to him or who was responsible. And despite the Doctor’s efforts to leave her behind, she stows away aboard a sub he has hired to go to DEEP. The Doctor, having been stranded on 21st century Earth for a quarter century, is desperate to retrieve his TARDIS and continue his travels – and he’ll stop at nothing to get it back. But is he willing to sacrifice Ruth’s life to achieve this goal… or is he willing to take it in cold blood?

Order this CDwritten by David Bishop
directed by Jason Haigh-Ellery
music by Andy Hardwick & Gareth Jenkins

Cast: David Collings (The Doctor), Ed Bishop (General Flint), Siri O’Neal (Ruth), Matthew Benson (Vollmer), Jeremy James (Hoskins), Jack Galagher (Lee)

Timeline: uncertain. According to Ruth, “The Doctor says he has thirteen lives, but he’s used most of those already.”

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who Doctor Who Unbound

He Jests At Scars…

Doctor Who Unbound: He Jests At Scars...During his trial, the Doctor struggles with the Valeyard and becomes trapped in the Matrix as Melanie watches in horror – and the other Time Lords, including a newly elected Lord President, watch with distant interest and no desire to interfere. Mel insists on trying to rescue the Doctor, but finds no interest from the Time Lords, who plan to watch the unfurling of the Doctor’s history with detached curiosity should the Valeyard win. And indeed the Valeyard does win, but he doesn’t limit himself to the Matrix – and he doesn’t stop with killing the Doctor. The Valeyard interferes with time and destroys Gallifrey itself, and even goes back and kills the fourth Doctor en route to Logopolis. That act begins to unravel the Valeyard’s own history, however – and in trying to go back and restore his past timeline as the Doctor, he may destroy the web of time itself.

Order this CDwritten by Gary Russell
directed by Gary Russell
music by Jim Mortimore

Cast: Michael Jayston (The Valeyard), Bonnie Langford (Mel), Anthony Keetch (Vansell), Juliet Warner (Ellie Martin), Tim Preece (The President), Jane MacFarlane (Nula), Mark Donovan (Gerrof)

Timeline: during/after part 14 of The Trial Of A Time Lord

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who Doctor Who Unbound

Deadline

Doctor Who Unbound: DeadlineMartin Bannister, in 1961, was voted one of the Times‘ ten most promising young writers for his innovative stage plays. But he tried to venture into television, and was recruited for a new BBC science fiction program called Doctor Who. Despite his extraordinary efforts to define the show’s characters, themes and parameters, Martin watched as Doctor Who made it as far as one failed pilot episode before being abandoned by the BBC. Now, 40 years later, Martin is confined to a nursing home, subjected to unsettling visits by his adult son, who’s still bitter that Martin divorced his mother when he was only six. Martin isn’t sure what is the truth and what isn’t from what his son tells him, and this isn’t the only place he’s having problems with reality – he imagines a burgeoning romance with a nurse, he imagines that he’s being tapped to write the celebratory 40th anniversary comeback of Doctor Who (but why celebrate a show that was never made?), and he imagines that he is the Doctor, that most mysterious traveler in time and space. Will Martin Bannister trade his unpromising reality for an unrealized fantasy?

Order this CDwritten by Rob Shearman
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas Briggs

Cast: Sir Derek Jacobi (Martin), Genevieve Swallow (Susan), Peter Forbes (Philip), Jacqueline King (Barbara), Ian Brooker (Sydney), Adam Manning (Tom)

Timeline: 40 years after Doctor Who was rejected by the BBC

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who Doctor Who Unbound

Exile

Doctor Who Unbound: ExileTrapped by the Time Lords and tried for the crime of interfering in history, the Doctor is scheduled to be exiled to Earth – but he escapes into his TARDIS and leaves Gallifrey. Not that this really does him much good, as he winds up trapped on Earth anyway. A few incarnations later, the Doctor’s situation has become even more unsettling – he has not only changed bodies, but changed gender as well. Without her TARDIS, the Doctor becomes bored, listless, and – with the help of two friends she makes on a job she takes to eke out a meager existence – perhaps just a little bit alcoholic. Or perhaps a lot – the Doctor begins to see and hear her previous (male) incarnation, warning her of alien invasions and labyrinthine plots against modern-day Earth. When the Time Lords send two agents to track the Doctor down and bring her back to justice (though they don’t know that the Doctor is now a woman), the only thing standing between the Doctor and her doom is an increasing reliance on the bottle. When it comes right down to it, which oblivion will the Doctor choose?

Order this CDwritten by Nicholas Briggs
directed by Nicholas Briggs
music by Nicholas Briggs

Cast: Arabella Weir (The Doctor), Hannah Smith (Cherrie), Jeremy James (Cheese), Toby Longworth (Time Lord #1), David Tennant (Time Lord #2), Graham Duff (Mr. Baggit), Nicholas Briggs (The previous Doctor)

Timeline: after Logopolis – the Doctor’s sacrifice in that episode is said to be a suicide, and a non-fatal suicide attempt triggers not only a regeneration, but a gender change, in Time Lords!

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green

Categories
Doctor Who Doctor Who Unbound

Masters Of War

Doctor Who Unbound: Masters Of WarThe TARDIS brings the Doctor and his companion, retired Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, to the ravaged planet Skaro, devastated by centuries of war and left with only one habitable city. The Doctor and Alistair almost immediately run afoul of a Dalek-imposed curfew; they’re only saved by members of the Thal underground resistance that seeks to overthrow their Dalek rulers. The Doctor and Alistair get a crash course in local history: due to the first Doctor’s intervention during his first visit to Skaro, the Thals rose up and effectively drove the Daleks away from Skaro. The Daleks spread into space, but then abruptly returned to Skaro to enslave the Thals anew. Having helped to change Skaro’s history enough to create the present situation, the Doctor feels a responsibility to change the planet’s destiny again. Alistair relishes the chance to lead the resistance fighters in their fight against the Daleks, but in the background, the Doctor notices repeated propaganda broadcasts focusing on a being he has never heard of before: Davros, the creator of the Daleks, attempting to instill a messianic fervor into his creations. But Davros left Skaro long ago, his destination and his mission unknown, and the Doctor is able to use that mystery to turn the Dalek-Thal conflict into a Dalek civil war. When another invading force arrives – this time neither Dalek nor Thal – the Doctor realizes that his actions have played into the hands of another race that wants to rule Skaro.

Order this CDwritten by Eddie Robson
directed by Jason Haigh-Ellery
music by Martin Johnson

Cast: David Warner (The Doctor), Nicholas Courtney (Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart), Terry Molloy (Davros), Nicholas Briggs (The Daleks), Amy Pemberton (Nadel), Sarah Douglas (Gillen), Jeremy James (Delt), Christopher Heywood (Toloc)

Timeline: after The War Games and after Sympathy For The Devil

Notes: This adventure features the alternate third Doctor played by David Warner and an alternate Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, both of whom were introduced in the previous Doctor Who Unbound story Sympathy For The Devil. Where the previous range of Unbound stories marked the 40th anniversary of Doctor Who, the release of Masters Of War coincides with the 45th anniversary of the first broadcast episode of Doctor Who. As this story presumes that the Doctor’s life has taken a different path from the Doctor accepted as the central hero of the “main” timeline, Davros has never met the Doctor. Given the different “origin story” of Davros’ horrific injuries, this is also a different Davros than the one heard in the I, Davros audio spinoff series.

LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green