The Creed Of The Kromon
Still trapped in the divergent universe without the TARDIS, the Doctor and Charley encounter what seems to be an impenetrable barrier, guarded by a being known as the Kro’Ka. After assessing what both of the travelers fear, the Kro’Ka lets them pass through to a neighboring zone, where the native humanoid population has been enslaved by the insectoid Kromon. The Doctor and Charley meet C’rizz, a refugee from the Kromon biodomes in a suicidal mood since he lost his mate. The Doctor offers to help, and the three make their way into the nearest Kromon dome, which is also where the Doctor hopes to find the TARDIS. Once inside, however, they become prisoners of the Kromon. The insectoid creatures, following the creed set down by a long-vanished Company, intend to mine the Doctor’s knowledge of space travel and enslave C’rizz once more. And they have something else in mind for Charley – a fate worse than death in the Kromon breeding chambers.
written by Philip Martin
directed by Gary Russell
music by David DarlingtonCast: Paul McGann (The Doctor), India Fisher (Charley), Conrad Westmaas (C’rizz), Brian Cobby (The Oroog), Stephen Perring (The Kro’Ka / Kromon voices), Jane Hills (L’da), Daniel Hogarth (Kromon voices)
Timeline: after Scherzo and before The Natural History Of Fear
LogBook entry and TheatEar review by Earl Green
The Doctor, Charley and C’rizz arrive in Light City, a self-contained biodome whose citizens happily toil for – and all but worship – the State. State-approved broadcasts outline the approved behavior of a citizen of Light City, but certain ideas are considered thought-crime – and questions are illegal. Naturally, the three travelers are bursting with questions about where they’ve arrived, and they soon learn first-hand of the State’s other means of controlling its populace: those who break the rules are forcibly brainwashed and “revised,” and their original memories are recorded and become part of the broadcasts as a warning to others. The “revised” citizens are implanted with new, productive, docile personalities – and yet problems keep cropping up with the beings who think they were once a trio of time-travelers.
The Doctor, Charley and C’rizz continue their search for the TARDIS into another “zone,” where they find themselves on a jungle world where a band of freedom fighters is taking refuge from their pursuers. Led by, and fanatically devoted to, the mysterious Major Koth, the guerillas have strange changes in attitude on very little notice. When the Doctor is captured and taken into a nearby cave where the fighters have set up camp, he becomes aware of a powerful telepathic presence, and he suspects that it is influencing everyone else around him – a suspicion confirmed when Charley betrays him during their attempt to escape, and when C’rizz takes up arms to help the freedom fighters. But is Koth the mind manipulating his army, or is he just the first victim?
Still wandering through the Divergent Universe without the safety of the TARDIS, the Doctor, Charley and C’rizz suspiciously follow the Kro’ka to a place called the Multihaven. A melting pot of multiple religious beliefs, the Multihaven tolerates all of them equally, and dozens of churches have been established there. And any safe haven would be a blessing for C’rizz, plagued by memories of fulfilling his mate’s request for a mercy killing in the Kromon biosphere; the memories have taken on a new intensity of late, at times rendering him almost helpless. The Doctor and Charley leave C’rizz in the care of a peaceful sect of monks while they set out to explore the Multihaven, but while they’re gone, C’rizz’s caretakers themselves wind up on the wrong end of a hostile merger with another religion. The 23rd Church of Lucidianism is gaining new recruits at a rapid rate, even converting long-standing members of other established religions in the Multihaven. The Lucidians’ leader, Lan Carder, has more than just charisma on his side – and the Doctor suspects that the object of the Lucidians’ worship may be an alien force with a sinister agenda.
On the planet Bortresoye, a global nuclear war has laid waste to the surface and the planet’s entire population is wiped out. The Doctor, Charley and C’rizz arrive here, driven thorugh the interzone by the Kro’Ka, who delays the Time Lord briefly to haunt him with memories of fallen companions. They seek shelter in a bombed-out building, but it collapses underneath and on top of them, leaving Charley paralyzed from the neck down and the Doctor buried under the rubble. C’rizz goes to get help, but can find only a strangely circumspect being who calls himself Requiem. The Doctor and Charley are found by a survey team and brought to a well-protected underground bunker where the planet’s only survivors are barely managing to stay alive – and earthquake damage to their bunker is slowly whittling down even that population. The ruler of one of Bortresoye’s warring nations, the Lady Excelsior, terrifies her two surviving cabinet ministers with her ability to remain blissfully deluded about the outcome of the war, and her insistence on consorting with a mysterious man named Landscar.
The Doctor is asleep in the interzone between worlds, and the Kro’Ka appears to torment him – only to find that it must put up with Charley and C’rizz, who quickly become aware that the Kro’Ka seems to be powerless while the Time Lord is unconscious. Once awakened, the Doctor is subjected to a kind of mind-probing technique by the Kro’Ka, but he quickly gains the upper hand on the interzone guardian, forcing it to tell him, at least in general terms, where the TARDIS is located. The Doctor follows the trail to a place called Caerdroia, a surreal world where verdant hills populated by seemingly normal cows and rabbits lead to a circular maze. But that’s not the most surreal thing about Caerdroia – topping that list is the fact that the Doctor has emerged from the interzone in what seems like three aspects of his character: one rational, one inquisitive and easily distracted, and one dark and quick to anger. Charley and C’rizz can only tag along with the three Doctors as they look for a way out of the maze – and a way to find out who’s holding the Kro’Ka’s leash.
Notes: Caerdroia is a Welsh word for a labyrinth. This audio adventure received an early release – with alternate cover art (seen here) – at a Doctor Who convention in November 2004; the limited edition alternate cover version was also sold by the internet vendor Tenth Planet.
A planet appears in the path of the TARDIS, moving so fast that a collision is unavoidable. Charley and C’rizz each awaken in a virtual reality of their past lives, but they each quickly figure out that the Kro’Ka is behind the illusions and are freed. When they awaken, they find not only the Kro’Ka, but Rassilon as well, who claims that he has nursed them back to health after the destruction of the TARDIS. But he shows them that the Doctor has survived as well, and he appears to have found company – a woman who has found him wandering through the jungle of the planet’s sole land mass. Charley and C’rizz both demand to be set free, but before he releases them Rassilon tries to put doubts in their minds about the Doctor – and each other. He’s at least partially successful, as the two TARDIS travelers go their own way in the jungle.
Greeted by Davros and the Daleks after their escape from the Divergent universe, the Doctor, Charley and C’rizz are separated from each other. Davros is suffering from a split personality as he begins to lose himself in the identity of the Emperor Dalek. Charley and C’rizz flee the Daleks with members of a local resistance cell, but they too are separated from each other; Charley joins up with a woman who talks frequently about how her daughter was killed by the Daleks, while C’rizz ends up on the run from the Daleks with a young woman who could very well be that daughter. But the Doctor discovers that she could also be a former TARDIS traveler – even though he has no memory of her. And worse yet, Charley finds out that this planet, the new Dalek homeworld, is also known as Earth – and that its resistance movement is run by the Daleks themselves.
When C’rizz expresses a desire to see an unspoiled planet in its primacy, the Doctor brings the TARDIS to the twin worlds of Caludaar and Endarra. After nearly destroying themselves in a war, the people of Caludaar pledged to leave Endarra untouched – but the TARDIS detects a distinct energy reading from Endarra. The Doctor discovers that a small party from Caludaar has broken the promise, and worse yet, they’re experimenting on the native life forms of Endarra. The Doctor and his friends try to set things right, but quickly find that those performing the experiments will do anything to continue them. What the Doctor hasn’t taken into account is that Endarra itself may step in and correct the balance of good and evil.
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…
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…
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…
The TARDIS lands in the middle of a suburban living room, but the woman whose home has just been invaded by a time machine seems unperturbed by the sudden appearance of a Police Box, or the three people who walk out of it. The Doctor tries to take things in his stride, until he notices that the television snooker tournament is being interrupted repeatedly by the same series of scenes taking place aboard a spaceship with two astronauts. Even more incongruous is the fact that the woman who lives in this house has a grandson who she insists is 10 years old, but her “grandson” is quite clearly one of the two astronauts seen on TV. C’rizz runs afoul of a woman who would appear to be the other surviving astronaut, and the Doctor is alarmed to find that the street this house is on has no beginning and no end – and worse yet, the TARDIS is being stolen on the back of the ice cream truck. But how can the ice cream truck escape from this street if no one else can, and why is one of the astronauts acting like a child, building Lego models of his abandoned spacecraft?
As the TARDIS is in mid-flight, Charley watches as C’rizz goes through his personal effects from the Divergent Universe, including an odd glowing vessel, which Charley insists on peering into – and something is released, at about the same time the time machine comes grinding to a halt. C’rizz and Charley rush to the console room, just in time to help the Doctor bring the TARDIS in for a rough landing – after which the ship seems to split apart, with C’rizz disappearing into the void. C’rizz finds himself in the company of a man called Aboresh, who begins to unlock abilities that he didn’t realize he had. The Doctor and Charley, in the meantime, find themselves among a superstitious people, though there seem to be hints of more advanced knowledge among some of the people there. Walled up in a compound surrounded by an energy barrier, this small society defies a creature called the Borarus, which constantly tries to break into the compound. The barrier stops it, but Aboresh – who lives on the outside with those cast out from the compound – now has a powerful new weapon at his disposal: C’rizz. As C’rizz’ powers increase exponentially, he may now be the greatest threat to the Doctor and Charley’s survival.