Sympathy for the Devil (audio story)

 was the second Doctor Who Unbound audio story produced by Big Finish Productions. It featured David Warner as the Doctor with Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (retired). This story was set post-The War Games though in an alternate universe where the Doctor did not arrive on Earth for his exile in the 1970s but instead in 1997. The universe of this story and its sequel Masters of War crossed over with the "mainstream" Doctor Who universe in the later release The Unbound Universe.

Publisher's summary
What if...the Doctor had not been UNIT's scientific advisor?

1997... and a lone exile arrives on Earth, years later than planned.

On the eve of the Handover, an advanced Chinese stealth bomber crashes in the hills above Hong Kong. The discredited United Nations Intelligence Taskforce has just 24 hours to steal the technology, rescue the passenger and flee to international waters.

Down by the harbour, there's big trouble in Little England — a bar owned by an old soldier who simply wants to forget the past. But an ancient evil is stirring in a place of peace.

The Doctor finds a world on the brink of terror. A world that has lived without him for years. A world that is frighteningly like our own...

Plot
After being put on trial by the Time Lords, the Doctor was intended to be exiled to 1970s England, but instead, he landed in 1990s Hong Kong, on the night of the handover to communist control.

Finding his old friend, the Brigadier, he found out the world had changed due to him never coming to earth since the 1970s. Subsequently, the U.N.I.T. project had failed, and the Brigadier had been kicked out of U.N.I.T., due to failing to stop various disasters. As the two talk, an invisible plane crashes into the nearby mountain.

The Doctor and the Brigadier approach the mountain, looking for Ling, one of Alistair's employees. Ling and Adam discover that the crashed plane belongs to the communists. They rescue the pilot, but he is heavily wounded. The Brigadier and the Doctor then arrive, and the Doctor attends to the pilot's wounds.

U.N.I.T. then arrive, much to the Brigadier's chagrin, led by Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood. Brimmicombe-Wood seals off the area and takes the pilot in for questioning. A local Buddhist monastery is used as U.N.I.T. field headquarters. Adam is still trying to the find the other passenger but is killed by the mysterious Ke Le...

Brimmicombe-Wood interrogates the Doctor and the Brigadier, and chastises the Brigadier for his failures, criticising him for failing to stop the Probe 7 disaster, and the plastic purges, amongst other invasions.

In the monastery, the Brigadier visits the abbot, who tells him about the "soul jar" of which the monks have chanted, non-stop for 150 years. Meanwhile, the Doctor translates the pilot's speech, saying that Ke Le told him to crash the plane, and threatened to kill him. Ke Le was the head of the Ke Le division, a Chinese group of ex-convicts who go on government suicide missions, and are presumably mind-controlled. The pilot mentions something that could "steal souls". The Brigadier tells the Doctor about the soul jar. Ling recalls the passenger "changing". The Doctor works out who the passenger really was.

Adam's body is taken back to the monastery, as the soldiers assume he is Ke Le. The Master hands himself in. Upon entering the monastery, the Master threatens the abbot and makes him give the Master the soul jar. The Master reveals the soul jar actually contains a mind-control parasite. The abbot is killed by the Master, and the Doctor, the Brigadier and Brimmicombe Wood are captured by mind-controlled U.N.I.T. guards.

The Doctor is released by the Master, who tells him that his new plan has "noble intentions". He intends to rule the world to cause world peace. The Master reveals that he has been trapped on earth for decades, and chastises the Doctor for never returning to earth. The Master rants about how he has had to live through the wars, and the panics, and the shortages, while causing "minor diversions" to hopefully attract the Doctor's attention. He plans to use a Chinese military bomb testing to release the parasites to control the world. The Doctor agrees to make a deal with the Master, and Brimmicombe-Wood and the Brigadier are released.

They lead the mind-controlled monks and soldiers down to the waterside, and the Master agrees to stop the parasites in exchange for the TARDIS. He gives the Doctor the soul jar in exchange for the keys to the TARDIS. The Doctor and The Brigadier take the TARDIS to Mongolia and throw the soul jar into the bomb testing site destroying it. Meanwhile, back in Hong Kong, the Master was tricked into thinking the TARDIS was disguised as the Little England pub. The Ke Le divisions approach above in helicopters after the handover is complete. Brimmicombe-Wood prepares to leave, and the Master begs him to take him with him, but Wood refuses. The Master reveals that the Ke Le divisions will go mad, now that the parasites are dead. Thousands are killed by the helicopter gunfire.

Later, the Doctor manages to free the TARDIS, and the Brigadier accepts. They leave together to continue their travels. The Doctor quickly realises he needs to find new footwear, his current shoes don't fit him at all.

Cast

 * The Doctor - David Warner
 * Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Nicholas Courtney
 * Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood - David Tennant
 * The Master (Ke Le) - Sam Kisgart
 * Ling/Girl in Street/Pub Customer - Liz Sutherland
 * The Abbot - Trevor Littledale
 * Marcus/Private Jacobs - Mark Wright
 * Captain Zerdin - Peter Griffiths
 * Adam - Stuart Piper
 * Bouncer/Chinese Pilot/Monk/Tannoy Voice/Bomb Control - Jonathan Clements
 * Newsreader - Gary Russell
 * Pub Customer - John Ainsworth

Uncredited cast

 * The Master - Jonathan Clements

The Doctor

 * The Doctor says he can speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Manchu, Mongolian and Hokkien.
 * To the Chinese, he is known as Hu: the Tiger, for his courage; Hu: the Fox, for his cunning and Xue.
 * He knew Chairman Mao when he was a librarian.

History

 * The Boxer Rebellion is said to have been the result of the mind parasites.

Alternate timeline

 * The Brigadier ordered the saturation bombing of Surrey.
 * The Mars Probe 7 affair ended with a "line of mile-wide craters across America".
 * Stahlman Gas is a hot stock market option.

The Master

 * The Master briefly worked as a United Nations advisor before defecting to China.
 * The Master regenerates after escaping the wreck of the plane near the monastery.
 * Separated from his own TARDIS for 20 years, the Master has been trying to attract the Doctor's attention for that length of time.

Continuity

 * The events of TV: The War Games have just taken place with the Doctor being exiled to Earth.
 * Alternate versions of Third Doctor stories include: the Autons resulting in the "plastic purges", an economically damaging action; the there was an attack by the Silurians ("the lizards"), stopped by Mike Yates travelling back in time to nuke the Silurians before they awoke in the 1970s (at the cost of a crater in the middle of London); the events of TV: The Ambassadors of Death lead to a line of mile-wide craters across the United States of America; Stahlman Gas (TV: Inferno) is still an ongoing project; lives lost whenever UNIT handled a peace conference, a dual reference to TV: The Mind of Evil or Day of the Daleks.
 * Every alien attack has been repulsed by more draconian and destructive methods than in the show, leaving the Brigadier disgraced due to the lack of evidence of alien threats. Brimmicombe-Wood states that the Brigadier also once ordered the saturation bombing of Surrey, that he's known for "a mad story about dinosaurs" to describe the London crater, and that tabloid The Sun had a headline "Barmy Brig in Fake Flower Fiasco" (referring to the events TV: Terror of the Autons). Notably, Brimmicombe-Wood doesn't believe the stories about aliens, despite being a high-ranking UNIT officer.
 * Clements has stated TV: The Mind of Evil is "the critical moment" in the alternate timeline. The Master defected to China after the (alternate) events of this story, the Mind parasites are the same creatures used in the Keller Machine, and the Master's alias (Ke Le) is a Chinese version of his "Emil Keller" one.
 * As established The Mind of Evil, the Doctor once knew Chairman Mao. There, while talking to a Chinese ambassador, the Doctor claims he was with Mao on the Long March in 1936. However, the Doctor says he only knew Mao as a librarian, indicating he was lying in The Mind of Evil to get into the ambassador's good graces. The Master informs the Doctor that Mao "spoke ever so highly of you", and the Doctor's reply indicates that he knew about Mao's future when he met him.
 * The Master, upon entering what he thinks is the Doctor's TARDIS, mutters "a new TARDIS ... at last", referring to TV: The Keeper of Traken where he mutters "a new body ... at last" upon possessing Tremas.
 * Adam mentions watching Professor X. (PROSE: No Future)
 * In N-Space, the Seventh Doctor would also visit Hong Kong at the time of the Handover of the island to Chinese rule and was reunited with his former travelling companion, Sarah Jane Smith. (PROSE: Bullet Time)
 * Also in N-Space, Colonel Brimmicombe-Wood succeeded Brigadier Winifred Bambera as the head of the British division of UNIT in 1997, serving that position until his apparent kidnapping by ICIS. In reality, he was a double agent and the commanding officer of ICIS who faked his own kidnapping to create chaos in UNIT. He was involved in attempts to bring down the British government for reasons of ultra-nationalism and was imprisoned for his actions. (AUDIO: Time Heals, The Wasting)