Phantasmagoria (audio story)

Phantasmagoria was the second story in Big Finish's monthly Doctor Who range.

It was written by Mark Gatiss and directed by Nicholas Briggs. It featured the Fifth Doctor and Turlough. This meant that Mark Strickson became the first televised companion to reprise his role for Big Finish, as the preceding Big Finish audio, The Sirens of Time, was a companion-less adventure.

Publisher's summary
The TARDIS takes the Doctor and Turlough to the London of 1702 where a mysterious highwayman roams the streets, a local occultist has made contact with the dead and gentlemen of fashion are disappearing, only to find themselves in a chamber whose walls weep blood...

The time travellers become enmeshed in the hideous plans of Sir Nikolas Valentine, a gambler at the mysterious Diabola Club who always seems to have a winning hand...

Plot
It’s London, 8 March 1702, and King William has just died. We join some locals in the Diabola Club, celebrating the king’s death and the ascension of his successor with some drinking, gambling, and—as always—gossip. Something isn’t right, however; the mysterious Sir Nikolas Valentine, playing cards alone, is not what he seems…and people are going missing. Meanwhile, the Fifth Doctor arrives, accompanied by Vislor Turlough, arriving inside the house of Dr. Samuel Holywell, a collector of antiquities and oddities. The Doctor and Turlough quickly get separated; Turlough is involved in a carriage accident in the street, and is taken in by two friends from the club, Jeake and Flowers, who tend his injuries. Meanwhile, a third man—Carteret, a friend of Jeake and Flowers—dies in the street, apparently from fright, leading the Doctor to investigate.

The investigation leads the Doctor and the others first to Holywell’s maid, Hannah, and then to a flamboyant highwayman named Major Billy Lovemore; and in the biggest twist of this story, the two are revealed to be one. Hannah/Lovemore is not of earth; she’s not a shapeshifter, as it seems at a glance, but rather, is simply accomplished at disguises, and possessed of a voice changer as well. She has made her way to Earth to apprehend Valentine, who is also in disguise; beneath it, he is an otherworldly criminal known as Carthok of Daodalus. Hannah’s vendetta is personal; in addition to many other deaths, he killed her parents. Stranded on Earth with a damaged ship, he has been kidnapping people to provide bio-organic repairs to his ship. If he escapes, he will destroy the city in the process. The Doctor successfully thwarts him by turning his own technology against him; and Hannah sacrifices herself to destroy him. The Doctor and Turlough then program the ship to self-destruct.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Peter Davison
 * Turlough - Mark Strickson
 * Henry Gaunt - Nicholas Briggs
 * Quincy Flowers / Ned Cotton - David Walliams
 * Edmund Carteret - Jonathan Rigby
 * Jasper Jeake - Mark Gatiss
 * Poltrot / Major Billy Lovemore / Librarian - Jez Fielder
 * Sir Nikolas Valentine - David Ryall
 * Dr Samuel Holywell - Steven Wickham
 * Hannah Fry - Julia Dalkin

Continuity

 * Turlough enjoyed studying history at Brendon Public School on Earth in 1983. (TV: Mawdryn Undead)
 * The Doctor finds a cricket ball and a ball of string in his pocket. (TV: Four to Doomsday)
 * The Doctor tells Turlough that he has seen — and was very impressed by — a Type 70 TARDIS. (AUDIO: The Sirens of Time)