The Devil's Footprints (audio story)

The Devil's Footprints was the twelfth story of the eighth season of Big Finish Productions' Short Trips series.

Publisher's summary
The Doctor's old friend, the reverend HT Ellacombe, has been out of touch for too long. But when the Doctor goes to find him, he and Mel discover something else entirely: unidentifiable footprints in the snow around the Victorian village where he lives.

The villagers are terrified that the very Devil walks their lands in the wintry nights, but with the Doctor distracted by finding his friend, it seems it's up to Mel to do the snooping around in attempt to uncover the truth...

Plot
The Doctor lands the TARDIS in January 1850 to see the Reverend HT Ellacombe and sends Mel to the costume room to dress warmly and era-appropriately. In the snow, they find footprints made by something two-legged with cloven hooves and spot the Reverend and two farmers inspecting them with a magnifying glass. The Reverend sends the farmers away and tells the Doctor that he is more interested in the welfare of his parishioners than the origin of the footprints.

Mel follows the footprints, correctly assuming that the Doctor and the Reverend would follow her. They lead in a straight line through a hedgerow at the end of a field which the trio have to use a stile to cross and to and beyond an old hay bale, indicating that the creature climbed or flew over it. They meet Mrs March, whose relative Gabe has locked himself in a cowshed as he believes the prints were made by the Devil. She asks the Reverend to speak with Gabe, but he says nothing and moves on whilst the Doctor assures the woman that she is wrong about what made the prints.

The Doctor and Mel are puzzled by the Reverend and get him to abandon the hoofprints and invite them back to the vicarage. The building is cold, but the Reverend is stern when Mel asks if she could use one of his stacked newspapers to kindle the fire and fetches some wood. Mel goes to make tea for the two men and uses the opportunity to look around the vicarage, finding a warm study full of maps, telescopes, astrolabes and the like. There, she finds a wooden box with a screen displaying tiny flashing lights. The Reverend finds her and angrily takes the box before he transforms into the hooved creature. He turns back when the Doctor shouts that there is somebody at the door.

Outside, the congregation shout about the hooves and the curse of the Devil. Mrs March asks the Reverend to go to church and to protect them from the Devil, so he leads them in prayer. The Doctor and Mel sneak back into the house and to the study, where Mel tells the Doctor about the Reverend's transformation and the Doctor determines that he has been taken over. Whatever it is is using the Reverend for its pre-invasion mission and has been conducting surveys for that very reason; the box is to send back information. The Doctor uses it to send a report claiming that Earth is inhospitable and unsuitable for invasion.

The Doctor calms the congregation down and says that the footprints will remain unexplained and that they will not happen again. He sends them back to their families and tells them to exchange theories which will become stories that will be passed down through the generations. They obey. The Doctor tells the Reverend that he has thwarted his plans and learns that the true Reverend is unaware of what has happened to him and does not know that it is the alien' who brought about his shared interests with the Doctor. The Doctor tells the alien that he will have to stay here for the rest of his life and will be remembered for centuries.

Characters

 * Seventh Doctor
 * Melanie Bush
 * HT Ellacombe
 * Farmer
 * Jake
 * Mrs March

Worldbuilding

 * The Doctor lists animals with cloven hooves: oxen, sheep, goats, deer, gazelles, roebuck, wild goats, ibex, antelopes and mountain sheep.
 * The Doctor and Ellacombe share an interest in fossils.
 * The Doctor says that he is craving Mrs Boyle's fruitcake. The alien frightened her away.
 * Jake is an old, round and rugged farmer.
 * Ellacombe is a geologist, palaeontologist and zoologist.
 * The Reverend has a dying aspidistra in a chipped plant pot.
 * Mel does not drink tea and instead drinks water.
 * As a girl, Mel would fidget and complain that she was sitting on something. Her father would sarcastically say that she was sitting on a chair and her mother would liken her to the titular character of The Princess and the Pea.
 * Palimpsest is writing imposed on earlier writing.

Continuity
to be added