Buried Secrets
Two years after Hilda Winters’ attempt on her life, Sarah suddenly finds herself relieved of the obligation to testify about the incident – Winters herself is murdered while awaiting trial. Josh, still overprotective of Sarah, marks the occasion with a bitter “good riddance,” but when a letter from Winters arrives – apparently written before, and yet predicting, her death – Sarah is spooked. When Sarah shows up for a yearly rendezvous with her fellow former TARDIS traveler Harry Sullivan, Harry doesn’t show, but a man claiming to be his stepbrother, Will Sullivan, shows up instead. Due to leave for a 13-month stay at an Antarctic research base (which, coincidentally, happens to have been funded by Sarah herself with the money she inherited from her late Aunt Lavinia), Will is also looking for Harry. Sarah’s friend Natalie has moved on to become a research assistant to a prominent forensic scientist, though an excavation into a crypt that should contain a body thousands of years old turns out to hold the body of a very recent murder victim, and Nat herself becomes a suspect. When Sarah and Josh go to visit her in Italy, Sarah discovers that the Book of Tomorrows mentioned in Hilda Winters’ posthumously delivered letter is very real – and it belongs to a secret order that believes Sarah herself is playing her part in an ancient prophecy. And one member of that order wishes to help Sarah complete her prophetic role by killing her.
written by David Bishop
directed by John Ainsworth
music by Steve FoxonCast: Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Jeremy James (Josh), Sadie Miller (Nat), Tom Chadbon(Will Sullivan), Ivor Danvers (Professor Edmons), Daniel Barzotti (Luca), Shaun Ley (Newsreader), Jacqueline Pearce (The Keeper), David Gooderson (Dexter), Patricia Leventon (Maude Fletcher), Stephen Greif (Sir Donald Wakefield)
Notes: Tom Chadbon appeared twice in televised Doctor Who, as rough-and-tumble detective Duggan in City Of Death (1979) and Merdeen in the first four episodes of The Trial Of A Time Lord (1986). This second “season” of Sarah’s audio adventures also reunites the original pair of villains from Blake’s 7, Jacqueline “Servalan” Pearce and Stephen Greif, who originated the role of Travis in that show’s first season.
LogBook entry by Earl Green
Subjected to the first stage of Cyber conversion – a deadening of the human nervous system – Commander Barnaby is on the verge of finding out for himself what the Scorpius plan entails, and what President Brett’s new allies would turn humanity into. Also captured, the android agent Samantha isn’t succumbing to the process, but she realizes she has very little time to act. Needing Barnaby’s knowledge of the Cyberman-commandeered Earth ship they’re on, Samantha has for force the human’s animal instincts to the surface as best she can, enabling him to resist the conversion process. On Earth, President Brett goes public with the latest stage of Scorpius, but sugar-coats the facts, claiming that the Cybermen now patrolling the streets of Earth’s cities are volunteers who underwent rigorous training to serve as a new breed of advanced troops. Barnaby and Samantha manage to change their ship’s course, sending it into android space and then launching themselves to safety in an escape pod. But even after Barnaby helps android troops try to retake the Earth ship (and hopefully capture a Cyberman prisoner), the head of the androids’ war effort comes to a chilling conclusion: to win the war, the androids must deprive the Cybermen of the raw material for their conversion process – and to do that, humanity must be destroyed.
The TARDIS brings the Doctor, C’rizz and Charley to Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851, but when the blue box in the Crystal Palace begins to attract too much attention, C’rizz and Charley leave it unattended so they can find the Doctor and make their escape again. What they don’t count on is the pair of French diplomats who stumble into the time machine and accidentally activate it, leaving the time travelers stranded. The Doctor finds a woman latching onto him in the mistaken belief that he is her missing explorer husband, while C’rizz falls afoul of the owner of a freakshow. Charley tries to seek the help of the Duke of Wellington, only to find that he needs her help to impersonate one of the missing French diplomats…and possible avert a war in the process! And while the time travelers each assume these new and unlikely roles, they wonder if the TARDIS will make its way back to Hyde Park in their lifetimes…
Suffering from a serious case of moping, the Doctor reluctantly gives in to Evelyn’s insistence that he needs a vacation…in somplace like Brighton. The TARDIS manages to take them there, in the year 1936, but things are already taking a dark turn when the Doctor overhears a young couple talking about strange noises from the water. The Doctor encounters Professor Talbot, a secretive man who, according to local legend, hasn’t been seen in 15 years. The Doctor instantly senses something horribly wrong with Talbot – he’s doing the bidding of some sort of alien consciousness, while also trying to swindle the being. But the Doctor discovers that he’s facing a power that has the ability to control nearly anyone’s mind – even Evelyn’s, and even his own.
Both the androids and the Cybermen, led by the recently Cyber-converted Karen Brett, race to the planet Telos as the Cybermen’s plans for Earth and humanity come to a head. But both parties are in for a surprise – something has collided with Telos, leaving not a planet but an asteroid belt. The vault of the Cybermen’s tombs, however, survived intact and could still give the Cybermen the advantage. The androids, still only reluctantly trusting Barnaby to help them, decide to lay a trap – but the Cybermen decide to advance their plans even further, resulting in a fight to the death over the spaceborne vault. And even if Barnaby, Samantha and the others survive long enough to spring their trap, there’s still the Cyber occupation of Earth to contend with…
The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Ace and Hex to a stormy island, where Hex admits to experiencing strange visions of an incident in an operating room that he’s never personally witnessed, and Ace has a vision of her own near a body of water, and falls in. Spotting a nearby house, the Doctor decides they should seek shelter there, but the handful of people in the house are as unsettling as any of the strange things they’ve seen so far. Everyone there seems to be trying to keep some kind of a secret under wraps, but when one of them turns up dead, they’re all suspects…and so are the time travelers. It turns out that the TARDIS may not be the only time machine on the island, and that none of the residents of the house may have chosen to be here – and every layer of the secret that is revealed seems to cost another life.
Two months after her brush with death in Italy, Sarah is still recuperating from being shot, and planning to pay the Morgan expedition in Antarctica (and Will Sullivan) a visit. Josh insists on going with her, not quite trusting how conveniently a close relative of an old friend has insinuated himself into Sarah’s life. When they arrive there, however, all is not well – Will is sporting a black eye, tensions are running high among the small team at the isolated Antarctic base, and it seems that Sarah can’t get a straight answer to any straight questions. She begins to worry that another Krynoid seed pod has been found, but something else is happening behind the scenes – something deadly, and something that has a connection to the secret order whose members tried to murder Sarah in Italy.
It’s Monte Carlo, 1966, and Peri and Erimem are on an assignment: the Doctor has sent them to steal the Veiled Leopard, a spectacular diamond with unusual markings at its center. But this time, the TARDIS travelers are on their own, and the Doctor isn’t there to help them deal with someone else who’s there for the same reason, to say nothing of the other shady characters populating the casino. Two of the other guests in particular stick out like a sore thumb, which is an odd coincidence, because their names are Hex and Ace – and they’ve been sent by the Doctor to make sure that nobody steals the Veiled Leopard.
The TARDIS brings the Doctor, Charley and C’rizz to a world where time is frozen – and faces are frozen in fear of some unknown force. The Doctor suddenly orders his friends back to the TARDIS, but when they reach it, not only are they unable to open it, but the Doctor is nowhere to be found. Time resumes its normal course around the Time Lord, and he finds himself an hour in the past, in a society where everyone lives in fear of the Clockwork Men, who strike if anyone is idle when they should be working toward the goal of Completion. As he has no duties other than to ask questions, the Doctor soon becomes such a target, and has an unpleasant audience with the local monarch. In the clock tower at the center of this kingdom, Charley and C’rizz find time is still frozen around them – including the scene of Doctor’s own execution by beheading, mere minutes into his future…
After returning from another brush with death in Antarctica, Sarah, Josh and Will pry into a research company with ties to Hilda Winters – and to the secret society that has twice tried to kill Sarah. Protests fill the streets outside the company’s research center, where Josh finds his environmentalist friend Maude worried about her daughter, who managed to get inside the building but never returned. Will uses his medical credentials to gain access to the center, only to discover that he is expected. Sir Donald Wakefield, a terminally ill multimillionaire who has made recent news headlines by planning to be on the first passenger flight into space, contacts Sarah and reveals that he heads up another faction of the secret society, and warns her that one of her closest friends has orders to kill her. When the society’s more violent faction starts a countdown to the release of a deadly bio-engineered plague, they name their price for stopping the outbreak: Sarah must lay down her life willingly.
A Shakespeare premiere goes awry when Peri and Erimem wind up drawing too much attention to themselves, but that’s not as incongruous as the Doctor attempting to drink the Bard himself under the table during a heated argument over historical accuracy, specifically with regards to the fate of the two princes in the Tower of London. The Doctor, after clearing his head, decides to investigate the matter for himself, but the TARDIS is in the hands of an impaired driver – a temporal “hiccup” strands Erimem and Peri in the right place, but two years before the Doctor’s arrival. The Doctor is brought before Richard III, and is disturbed to find himself in the presence of a King who is not only aware of time travel, but of the Doctor himself. Peri and Erimem set out to solve the mystery for themselves in the Doctor’s absence, but they find no princes in the Tower – instead, they become the Tower’s two captives, changing history with nearly everything they say or do…no matter how hard they try not to.
Once again, Sarah’s life is saved by Josh, though this time, in addition to killing the Keeper, he’s also killed Will Sullivan. Sarah puts as much distance between herself and Josh as she can, but he still tries to stay in touch with her, even showing up at Will’s funeral. Just when Sarah’s had about enough, Sir Donald Wakefield shows up too, inviting her to join him on the first passenger flight into space – a flight that will coincide with Earth passing through the tail of a comet that last approached the planet 500 years ago, a comet whose return now was predicted in the writings of Count Giuliano. Sir Donald also reveals that Josh is his son – and an operative of the pacifist chapter that follows Giuliano’s writings as prophecy. Sarah and Nat take Sir Donald up on the offer and are flown to the launch site – a place the rest of the world knows as Area 51. But while Sarah is undergoing training for her first visit to space since her travels with the Doctor, there’s a change of crew: Sir Donald’s cancer returns with a vengeance, and on his deathbed, he asks Josh to replace him on the flight. But once the passenger spaceship launches, something goes wrong. The pilot exposes himself as one of the Keeper’s last operatives, carrying out his mission to deliver Sarah to death’s door. Josh and the pilot exchange gunfire, damaging the controls in the process and leaving Sarah as the only survivor as the ship pushes into a higher orbit than it was designed for – and straight into the path of the comet.
The Doctor, Ace and Hex arrive in Ireland, 1649, to the sound of thunder…only it’s not thunder. The TARDIS has brought the time travelers to Drogheda, just before Oliver Cromwell and his New Model Army raze the town to the ground, and there are almost no survivors. The Doctor befriends a pregnant widow named Mary, after sternly telling Ace and Hex not to get involved in historical events. But when the moment comes, Hex and Ace take up arms alongside the Irish. Ace is injured in battle, and Hex is captured by Cromwell’s forces. Hoping he can change history and prevent another massacre like Drogheda, Hex becomes Cromwell’s personal advisor, trying to steer him toward more humane treatment of prisoners, civilian and otherwise. Hex tries to get Cromwell to be more concerned with how history will see him. As the Doctor tries to help Mary bring a new life into the world, Hex is helpless to watch as his best efforts only ensure that Cromwell will continue carving a bloody path through history at Wexford.
Leela receives news that Andred has been found murdered in the chambers of the Chancellery Guard. Leela intends to claim the Sevateem right of vengeance, but Romana needs her friend to continue serving as the acting Castellan, not a bloodthirsty killer. That’s only the latest in a series of violent incidents, including a bombing of the Time Lord Academy, targeting the alien students. Inquisitor Darkel, now openly challenging Romana’s presidency, can’t resist suggesting to the Gallifreyan public that if Romana can’t ensure that the presence of aliens at the Academy can’t be maintained without violence, then the aliens should be sent home. Romana sets Leela and K-9 on the trail of the bombers, while also assigning Coordinator Narvin of the Celestial Intervention Agency to investigate. But what Romana doesn’t know is that Narvin is working with Darkel to secure the Inquisitor’s rise to the presidency. Romana continues to consult in secret with the being known as Pandora, but continues to insist that she won’t go down the path that Pandora says in inevitable. Leela’s K-9 finds evidence of another bomb at the Academy just before it explodes; Guard Commander Hallan closes the blast doors before K-9 or many of the alien students can escape. Romana raises Gallifrey’s defensive transduction barriers and puts the planets on a war footing. Darkel calls for a public, and openly broadcasted, debate in the High Council, and Romana agrees…but she has something in mind other than than the orchestrated open debate that Darkel is planning. And naturally, Romana only has the best interests of Gallifrey and the Time Lords at heart…even if that means that the freedom to disagree with her policies is about to become a thing of the past.
The Doctor, Charley and C’rizz find themselves trapped in a maze-like prison whose occupants call it the Cube. The Doctor and the TARDIS are snatched away, leaving Charley and C’rizz to hide in the darkness with a trio of desperate prisoners. Once recruited to by psychically augmented to help their world win a war, the “prisoners” have now been banished to a Cube, as their recruiters can’t find a way to deactivate or control their psychic powers. Something called the brain worm stalks the Cube, killing its victims after burning out their minds. The prisoners insist that the Doctor vanished because he was the brain worm’s last victim. Charley refuses to believe it – and then C’rizz disappears, leaving her at the mercy of her fellow prisoners. The Doctor, however, isn’t in the clutches of the brain worm. He’s held prisoner, tortured and interrogated to Rawden, the man who operates the Cube and keeps the prisoners captive. And Rawden is just as worried about the brain worm as his prisoners are…