Love and War (audio story)

 was the second story in Big Finish Productions' Doctor Who Special Releases range. It was an adaption of the novel of the same name created to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of its original release.

Publisher's summary
On a planet called Heaven, all hell is breaking loose.

Heaven is a cemetery for both humans and Draconians — a final place of rest for those lost during wartime. The Doctor arrives on a trivial mission — to find a book, or so he says — and Ace, wandering around Joycetown, becomes involved with a charismatic Traveller called Jan.

But the Doctor is strenuously opposed to the romance. What is he trying to prevent? Is he planning some more deadly game connected with the coffins revered by the mysterious Church of Vacuum and the unusual Arch that marks the location of a secret building below ground?

Archaeologist Bernice Summerfield thinks so. Her destiny is inextricably linked with that of the Doctor, but even she may not be able to save Ace from the Time Lord's plans.

This time, has the Doctor gone too far?

A new adaptation of the Virgin New Adventures novel which introduced Bernice Summerfield; also contains the prelude from Doctor Who Magazine and a behind-the-scenes documentary about the making of the story.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
 * Ace - Sophie Aldred
 * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
 * Jan Rydd - James Redmond
 * Máire Mab Finn - Riona O'Connor
 * Roisa McIlnery - Aysha Kala
 * Christopher - Ela Gaworzewska
 * Brother Phaedrus - Bernard Holley
 * Audrey McShane - Maggie Ollerenshaw
 * Clive Aubrey - Christopher Allen
 * Julian Milton - James Unsworth
 * Piers Gavenal - Scott Handcock
 * Death - Charlie Hayes
 * Eros - Peter Sheward
 * Weather forecaster - Paul Cornell (uncredited)

Continuity

 * Several months before the Doctor and Ace's arrival on Heaven, the Travellers, including Jan, Christopher and Roisa, were able to look into their future using Puterspace and learned that three-quarters would soon die. Death referred to them as Time's Champion and his steward respectively. At the same time, Clive Aubrey believed that he saw a new planet in the sky while drunk. (PROSE: Prelude Love and War)
 * Ace refers to the Daleks' use of time travel. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
 * Máire tells Ace that she was once a Dalek Killer. (COMIC: Abslom Daak... Dalek Killer) She uses a Dalek gunstick as a weapon. (TV: The Daleks)
 * Although this is Bernice Summerfield's first encounter with the Doctor from her perspective, the same is not true of him. The Sixth Doctor and his companion Evelyn Smythe had met Benny and Irving Braxiatel on a dig conducted by Irving's collection. The Sixth Doctor remained completely ignorant of the fact that Benny would later travel with him. It can be assumed the archaeologist did not reveal this information to him to avoid disrupting the Web of Time. For the same reason, the Doctor does not reveal to Benny that he has previously met her future self. (AUDIO: The 100 Days of the Doctor)
 * Benny tells the Doctor that her father Isaac Summerfield, an admiral in the Spacefleet of the Earth Empire, disappeared during a battle with the Daleks and was assumed to have been killed. She would later discover that his ship, the Tisiphone, had fallen through a time rift and was transported, along with its surviving crew, to Earth space in November 1963. The Doctor, Benny, Roz Forrester and Chris Cwej met him in the village of Little Caldwell, England in 1983. (PROSE: Return of the Living Dad)
 * While he is in Puterspace, the Doctor experiences his worst memory, namely his third incarnation spending ten years dying in the TARDIS while travelling through the Time Vortex. He refers to his former companion Sarah Jane Smith. (TV: Planet of the Spiders)
 * While in Puterspace, Ace meets an illusory version of her mother Audrey McShane. This is Ace's third encounter with her (in some form or another) since she began her travels with the Doctor. She previously met her as a baby in Maiden's Point in 1943 (TV: The Curse of Fenric) and as a toddler in London on 8 May 1945 (AUDIO: Casualties of War).
 * Audrey refers to Ace's younger brother Liam McShane. Several years earlier in her personal timeline, Ace was reunited with Liam in San Antonio on Ibiza on 14 May 1997. (AUDIO: The Rapture)
 * Ace mentions her maternal grandmother Kathleen Dudman, whom she likewise met in Maiden's Point in 1943. (TV: The Curse of Fenric) That was the first time that Ace met her grandmother as she died in 1973, when Ace was only three years old. (AUDIO: Night Thoughts)
 * Ace refers to being transported to Iceworld in the far future by a time storm. (TV: Dragonfire)
 * The Doctor mentions that he has a model train set somewhere in the TARDIS. (PROSE: Model Train Set, PROSE: Vampire Science, PROSE: Genocide) The Fifth Doctor claimed that he had wanted to drive a steam train as a boy. (TV: Black Orchid)
 * The Doctor tells Benny that he was what the monsters have nightmares about. The Tenth Doctor would later tell the young Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson the same thing in 1727. (TV: The Girl in the Fireplace)
 * Ace has never heard of Dodo. She only knows the word dodo as in the the expression "dead as a". Dodos were, infact, a well known extinct bird. The Doctor had found examples of surviving Dodos on two occasions, one time before this adventure, one time after. (COMIC: The Didus Expedition, PROSE: The Last Dodo)
 * The Doctor refers to his former companion Dodo Chaplet (TV: The Massacre of St Bartholomew's Eve), whom he claims reminded him of his granddaughter Susan Foreman (TV: An Unearthly Child)
 * The Doctor initiates telepathic contact with Benny. (TV: The Three Doctors)
 * In the aftermath of Jan's death, Ace left the TARDIS and joined the the Earth Empire's Spacefleet. She fought the Daleks as well as other aggressive species. Three years later, combat-hardened and cynical, she resumed travelling in the TARDIS with the Doctor and Benny. (PROSE: Deceit)
 * Benny would visit Heaven once again in the aftermath of the invasion of the Braxiatel Collection by the Daleks and the Fifth Axis in the early 27th century. (AUDIO: Death and the Daleks)
 * While in the Land of Fiction library, Ace would later find a fictionalised version of these events in the form of a novel entitled Love and War. (PROSE: Conundrum)
 * An alternative version of the Doctor was able to save the Travellers. (PROSE: So Vile a Sin)