Relative Dimensions
Determined to make amends for the Christmas that he ruined for her in 2009 – the Christmas that made her decide to leave the TARDIS – the Doctor offers to provide Lucie with a more relaxed Yuletide holiday, taking her to Earth’s future to celebrate with his family for a change. Susan Campbell, still helping to rebuild the Earth and raising her son Alex, is surprised to see the TARDIS show up on schedule. For his part, Alex is still coming to grips with the fact that his mother is an “alien,” and his great-grandfather travels through time and space in a police box. As Lucie dives headfirst into preparations for a perfect Christmas, Susan’s fears about Alex’s future come to the surface: she’s worried that he’ll want to travel with the Doctor instead of staying on Earth to take part in the reconstruction effort. And deep in the TARDIS, something dating back to Susan’s travels with the first Doctor is about to crash the party.
written by Marc Platt
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Jamie RobertsonCast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), Sheridan Smith (Lucie Miller), Carole Ann Ford (Susan Campbell), Jake McGann (Alex Campbell)
Notes: The airborne fish creature that inhabits Susan’s old room in the TARDIS was picked up – in its infant form – by a much younger Susan in the Big Finish Companion Chronicles story Quinnis, which is set even before An Unearthly Child. The Doctor apparently keeps his former comapnions’ rooms “on file” in the depths of the TARDIS, and many of them are name-checked – though interestingly, the names mentioned include only former television companions rather than any companions who have appeared only in Big Finish audios (with the exception of the recently-departed Tamsin).
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
The Doctor miraculously survives the destruction of the Dalek ship on which he’s being held prisoner, but his brief time among the Daleks leaves him riddled with guilt: the Dalek Time Controller, who he thought he had destroyed in the distant future, has traveled back in time to lead the Daleks’ second invasion of Earth. The Doctor learns that the Dalek Time Controller was sucked into the time vortex and had an eternity to observe history and concoct a plan to wipe out all non-Dalek life using a combination of potent viruses, spreading disease through the universe by using Earth as a mobile plague planet. The Doctor plans to take a nuclear bomb that the Monk has stashed away forward in time to correct his error and prevent this chain of events from happening, but Lucie insists on using the nuke in the present to wipe out the Dalek invasion force. For once, the Doctor is in no position to save the world, but he will witness the death of many dear friends and family members as they battle the Daleks without him.