The Angel Of Scutari
The Doctor takes Hex to the Crimean War, in the wake of the costly and ultimately futile charge of the Light Brigade. Ace understands why the Doctor has brought them here all too well: Hex can, at least temporarily, make a difference and regain his confidence about traveling in the TARDIS. But this adventure becomes more than any of them can handle when the three time travelers are separated; Hex takes charge of battlefield medicine at the front of the war, but when the TARDIS is lost at sea, Ace and the Doctor are captured by Russian soldiers. The Doctor is treated like a visiting diplomat, while Ace gets to recover from her injuries in a cell. The three time travelers have to use what they know about this juncture in history to try to reunite with each other without changing recorded events. For Hex, avoiding interference with history becomes doubly difficult when he is introduced to Florence Nightingale herself, and is then accused of collusion with the enemy. Hex’s accuser is eager to see Hex dead for this crime, whether he actually committed it or not, and this time the Doctor isn’t there to help him.
written by Paul Sutton
directed by Ken Bentley
music by Toby Hrycek-RobinsonCast: Sylvester McCoy (The Doctor), Sophie Aldred (Ace), Philip Olivier (Hex), Hugh Bonneville (Sir Sidney Herbert / Tsar Nicholas I), Jeany Spark (Florence Nightingale), John Paul Connolly (William Russell / Russian Dungeon Guard), Alex Lowe (Brigadier-General Bartholomew Kitchen), Sean Brosnan (Sir Hamilton Seymour), John Albasiny (Lev Tolstoy / Preston)
Timeline: between Enemy Of The Daleks and Project: Destiny
Notes: Most of the characters portrayed in The Angel Of Scutari – minus the time travelers and their interference in history, of course – were real people, including Florence Nightingale herself, journalist William Russell, Tsar Nicholas I, Sir George Hamilton Seymour and Sir Sidney Herbert. At the end of the story, the Doctor says he’s taking the wounded Hex to St. Gart’s Hospital, the near-future hospital where Hex was working in his first story, The Harvest.
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
Various companions of the Doctor recount their adventures with him. Professor Bernice Summerfield recalls her second adventure with the Doctor’s eighth incarnation, while the redoubtable (and irrepressible) Fitz Kreiner looks back on an adventure in which he had to become the hero of the hour. Comic-collecting companion Izzy tries to use time travel to add an elusive back issue to her comic collection, with disastrous results, and finally, much later in his own timeline, a grievously wounded Doctor arrives on the doorstep of an august gathering of 19th century literary luminaries. But since many of them are noted for writing early horror fiction, will they nurse him back to health… or consider him a freak upon whom to run their own macabre experiments?
The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Lucie to Paris for a night on the town, but turbulence in the time vortex alters the date of their arrival, and the two time travelers beome separated in Nazi-occupied wartime Paris. The Doctor draws the attention of the Gestapo patrols, while Lucie is forced to begin her career on the theatre stage run by the eccentric – and very, very non-human – family Baroque. These goatlike creatures have the technology to disguise themselves as humans, but why hide at the epicenter of one of human history’s most violent conflicts? And why must their grotesque show go on each night, climaxing with the grisly death of one of their own? In the meantime, the Doctor is accused by the Nazis of being an enemy spy with a top-secret aircraft capable of disguising itself. The Doctor finds this notion amusing, until he realizes that he can’t locate the TARDIS either…
In the aftermath of their fateful visit to near-future Manchester, the Doctor and Charley are at odds – the Time Lord doesn’t trust his companion’s story about not remembering her past, and she remains frustratingly tight-lipped. But before they can continue their conversation any further, Charley falls ill, and the Doctor is forced to take her to the TARDIS’ Zero Room to stabilize her. She has contracted some kind of virus, and the Doctor sets the TARDIS on a course for the Amethyst Viral Containment Station, a massive space station devoted to preserving – in complete isolation – samples of every virus known to exist; if the cure for Charley’s illness can be found anywhere, it will be here. But shortly after the time travelers arrive at Amethyst, each of them faces a dilemma. Charley isn’t alone in her own mind, which is now being shared with a chatty being named Mila, who claims that she has been with the Doctor, in noncorporeal form, since his first incarnation. And the Doctor is horrified to discover that two invasion forces are converging on Amethyst: a Dalek strike force seeking ammunition for viral warfare, and a Viyran ship whose crew will stop at nothing to stop the Daleks’ mission. Anyone caught in the crossfire is unlikely to find mercy. And Charley is losing the battle for control of her own mind and body…
The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Lucie to a space city which, according to the TARDIS sensors, is devoid of life. That doesn’t mean it’s completely uninhabited, however – the time travelers are quickly cornered by a band of marauding robots. A barrier separates the two, allowing Lucie to escape to safety, while the Doctor has to talk his way out of danger with a little help from his sonic screwdriver and a helpful cleaning robot who hasn’t joined his savage brethren. Lucie finds herself in the company of the Assemblers, a band of elder robots so pacifistic that they’re in constant danger from the Cannibalists, the all-consuming robots who see any other robot or life form as a source of spare parts. In the middle of the seemingly endless conflict between these two groups are Servo, a meek maintenance droid who simply wants to carry on the work of tending to the city’s needs, and Minerva, an access point for the city itself who could grant immense power to anyone, even to the point of resetting the entire system. Soon, the race is on to see who can control Minerva and rule the city… and the Doctor isn’t sure that either group has earned that power.
Christmas, 2009: retired UNIT Captain Mike Yates spots a classified ad seeking a retired Army captain with experience in dealing with alien threats. With an uneasy feeling that the ad was written specifically to catch his attention, Mike responds, visiting an isolated country cottage called the Nest. Here he finds a stern housekeeper, Mrs. Wibbsey, and the Doctor. The house is filled to the brim with examples of the art of taxidermy, but Mike is startled to learn that the dead animals return to life at night, ready to kill. Demanding an explanation from the Doctor, he learns that some force has reanimated the creatures to use them as pawns for a sinister plan. The Doctor, at great personal risk, has isolated all of the dead creatures in his cottage, using the TARDIS’ dimensional stabilizer to surround the house with a force field and using his own psychic abilities to keep the undead animals docile. But this has also trapped the mind behind the evil plan – a hive-mind swarm of alien hornets – near the house with him. And now Yates is trapped there as well…
The Doctor receives a summons from the Red Emperor of Draconia for an important state event; the TARDIS materializes and the Doctor discovers that the occasion is the Emperor’s own funeral and a vigil held in advance of the announcement of his successor. The time travelers haven’t even arrived on Draconia itself, but rather in the spaceborne tomb of the late Emperor, floating alongside the tombs of previous rulers of Draconia in deep space. Others are in the Emperor’s tomb as well: his late wife (and high priestess), his son (presumably heir to the throne), a lowly fisherman, a mercenary, and most alarmingly, the recently-murdered prefect who had come to deliver the decree of succession which would reveal the identity of the next Emperor. With aliens and commoners at odds with the nobles and their usual court intrigue, nerves are frayed and tempers flare. But elsewhere in this tomb lies an even deadlier threat – a dark secret that has outlived every Emperor of Draconia, and may now outlive everyone aboard the Emperor’s tomb, including the Doctor and Charley.
The Doctor and Lucie visit Earth a few years into Lucie’s future, at a time when a new religion called the Eightfold Truth has gained a foothold in Britain. The Doctor goes to assist scientists with a space probe that has mysteriously gone silent, while Lucie goes shopping and encounters her old nemesis, Karen, last seen with the Headhunter. Karen has joined the Eightfold Truth and says it has turned her life around, and at her urging, Lucie goes along to meet the other members of the Truth… and with the help of a blue crystal, they somehow make Lucie “realize” that her travels with the Doctor have been aimless, without purpose, and perhaps even part of a larger, sinister plan on the Doctor’s part. She turns her back on the Time Lord, though he’s not aware of the Eightfold Truth until he sees a TV interview with a journalist who hopes her new book will expose the movement as a cult built on a fraud. Gradually, the Doctor realizes that there’s a link between the Eightfold Truth and the failed space probe – and it’s only then that he discovers that Lucie has joined the Truth. Within that religious movement, an alien presence is gathering the power it will need to take over Earth… an old enemy who is working for an even older enemy of the Doctor, setting a trap for humanity and its constant defender.
The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Charley – actually Mila in Charley’s body – to future Earth, where the human race is divided into a technologically and scientifically competent caste and a larger tribe of vicious nomads. Infected with something that both sides simply know as “the madness,” the nomadic humans have regressed to a feral state. The only thing keeping the madness at bay for the more civilized pockets of humanity is a vaccine provided by the Viyrans. When the Doctor and Mila/Charley are scanned by the humans for traces of the madness, the Viyrans are very interested in Mila and send a ship to Earth – a ship that also happens to contain the real Charley, alive and well. Now a number of truths must come out: that the Viyrans are terminating their support of the human race and will soon terminate the entire species, that Mila is not really Charley, and that Charley is from the Doctor’s own future – and traveling with him his created a potentially deadly paradox with implications that reach far beyond the TARDIS.
The Doctor tells Mike Yates that his encounter with possessed taxidermist Percy Noggins wasn’t his final encounter with the Noggins family tree; after some investigation, the Doctor discovered that Noggins’ grandmother, dancer Ernestina Stott, has herself suffered unusual effects after being stung by a hornet in 1932. Traveling to meet her in the TARDIS, the Doctor witnesses Ernestina’s unusual behavior, including the smash-and-grab theft of a mysterious pair of ballet slippers in broad daylight and an astounding one-woman presentation of The Nutcracker ballet, wearing the aforementioned slippers. But it soon becomes apparent that the slippers are another means for the alien hornets to possess a human host. The Doctor confronts the hornets again in his attempt to free Ernestina from their grasp, and discovers that he and the hornets are moving in opposite directions through time… something which may work to the Doctor’s advantage when the hornets reveal something that he will do in the future.
1899: The Doctor and Nyssa visit Stockbridge at Christmas, taking in the local flavor, including the performance of a traditional play which includes a doctor who is said to be “an earl of space and a lord of time.” Unnerved by the specificity of that reference, the Doctor sets out to discover the origins of the play.
The giant spiders of Metebelis 3 have made their presence known as the power behind the Eightfold Truth, and the Queen of the spiders has taken possession of Lucie’s body. Lucie’s mind is still there, though, and she battles the Queen for control. The Doctor gathers an unlikely group of helpers, including Karen and the deposed leader of the Eightfold Truth, to strike back at the spiders and help the hypnotized masses regain their minds. In the process of fighting for control of her mind, Lucie learns key parts of the Queen’s plan to dominate Earth and then the entire universe, and soon she becomes the only weapon the Doctor has in the fight to free humanity.
The Doctor chases the alien hornets back to a traveling circus in 1812, where they have “recruited” new circus performers from the local populace by possessing their bodies. This includes a woman who, under the hornets’ control, becomes a high-wire performer whose cursed dance shoes will someday be inherited by Ernestina Stott. The Doctor discovers that the hornets have made their nest in the ringmaster of this circus, but when he confronts the aliens this time, he discovers that they not only resent his interference in their plan to take control of humanity, but they also grudgingly credit the Time Lord for making their conquest possible in the first place…
The Doctor and Nyssa are trapped aboard the Rutan ship, which has been set to apply all available power to the task of leaving Earth. Engine overload is imminent, and the ship explodes with the time travelers aboard.
The Doctor brings the TARDIS to a landing at Blackpool in 1986, promising Peri a relaxing getaway for once. But other alien forces have different plans for Blackpool: the Celestial Toymaker is play-testing a new arcade game there, one which burns out the minds of those players who prove to be very good at it. The two time-travelers are separated, and the Toymaker intends to use Peri as a pawn to secure the Doctor’s cooperation in his scheme to take over the world.