The Whispering Forest
Trying to track down the surviving carrier of Richter’s Disease from Hellheim, the TARDIS brings the Doctor and his friends – with Nyssa once again aboard the TARDIS – to an alien forest. The Doctor and Tegan are taken to Purity, a village in turmoil in the wake of its leader’s disappearance. While the locals are concerned with the implications of two “unclean” visitors, they also fear the Takers and observe almost-ritual hygenic cleansing practices. Nyssa and Turlough meet more locals from Purity, but they also encounter the Takers, who seem to be far more advanced and powerful. The Doctor and Tegan are caught up in the succession struggle in the village of Purity, and their lives are threatened at every turn by a pretender to the throne who thinks they’ll bring infection and death with them.
written by Stephen Cole
directed by Barnaby Edwards
music by Richard Fox & Lauren YasonCast: Peter Davison (The Doctor), Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka), Sarah Sutton (Nyssa), Mark Strickson (Turlough), Hayley Atwell (Seksa), Sue Wallace (Mertil / Woman), Paul Shelley (Jestan / Man / Taker), Harry Melling (Hervey / Taker / Demi-Taker), Lennox Greaves (Anulf / Taker), Aneurin Barnard (Antan / Taker)
Timeline: for the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough: between Enlightenment and The King’s Demons; for Nyssa: 50 years after Terminus.
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
With the Mara once again forcefully asserting its dominance over Tegan’s personality, the Doctor tries to go into his companion’s mind to excise the evil influence once and for all. But the Doctor’s best intentions have even worse results: the Mara takes over his mind instead. The Doctor, under the Mara’s influence, pilots the TARDIS to Manussa, the homeworld of the Mara’s empire… over a century before that empire will come into being. While Tegan is found to be free of the Mara’s influence, the possessed Doctor is working behind the scenes to ensure that the Mara will hold thrall over the entire planet, using Manussa’s mass media as the vehicle for the Mara’s message. Slowly gathering allies and power, the Mara prepares to take over the minds of the Manussans, even if it rewrites history by bringing the Sumaran Empire about too early. In the meantime, Nyssa, Tegan and Turlough watch helplessly as the Doctor becomes an agent of evil, leaving it to them to save Manussa.
The TARDIS arrives at the planet Samur, a strategic location in Rutan space which was once the site of fierce fighting between the Rutans and Sontarans. The planet is now coated in a colorful form of mold, with no other signs of life, at least until a Sontaran ship crashes. Only a few of its warrior crew is left alive, but they’ve lost their sealed order. When the Sontarans round up the TARDIS travelers and learn that one of them is the Doctor, they assume that their orders are somehow related to the capture and execution of the Time Lord and his companions. There are only things that save the Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa, and Turlough: this platoon of Sontarans is more inept than most, and Samur may not be as uninhabited as it looks.
