Paradise 5 (audio story)

 was the fifth story in the first series of The Lost Stories, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was adapted by Andy Lane, from the original script by PJ Hammond, and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and Nicola Bryant as Peri Brown.

Publisher's summary
The Doctor and Peri visit the planet Targos Delta to check in on old friend Professor Albrecht Thompson, only to discover that he has vanished. He was last sighted taking a shuttle to the holiday resort of Paradise 5, then never seen again.

The Doctor's curiosity is piqued. They must investigate, but they must do so stealthily...Peri will go undercover on Paradise 5, while the Doctor hides in the shadows. Because paradise holds a terrible secret beneath the white marble and golden trimmings. The mute Cherubs have a story to tell. And the Elohim are coming.

Beware.

Part one
The Doctor corrects the TARDIS's course mid-flight to take himself and Peri to meet his old friend Albrecht Thompson on Targos Delta in the 35th century, only to learn from an information booth that Albrecht left for Paradise 5, a space station orbiting Targos Beta, on a private space shuttle three months ago. Despite his return ticket being for three days after his departure, he has failed to return and the two travellers go to Paradise 5 to find him, the Doctor hiding in the hold of a shuttle whilst Peri is employed as a Paradise Corporation hostess.

Peri is given a tour by Gabriel, the face and voice of the Paradise Consortium, when she arrives and learns that the contents of the hold, including the Doctor, will have been transported "backstage" to the area closed to the guests. After being shown the Paradise Machine, she encounters one of the enslaved Cherubs and is introduced to two of her three fellow hostesses: Bella and Lorelei. The other two members of staff are Stella, who is supervising the Cherubs as they clean, and Michael, who mainly works in the control room.

The Doctor looks around the space station and comes across a Cherub which struggles to communicate with him and writes out a warning: "Beware". The Doctor asks it to elaborate and it names the threat as the Elohim. He regrets asking.

Part two
Peri is tasked with giving a tour of the aquarium and is caught by Gabriel when she sneaks away to check the list of the next group of guests to arrive. She finds the Doctor by following the sound of his humming and they update one another on their lack of progress before she has to return to work, with the Doctor trying to work out how to get from backstage to front of house without triggering an alarm in the meantime.

There is no sign of Albrecht in any of the rooms nor a record of him having left and Mr Gelter, for whom the trip was arranged by his colleagues, disappears. Peri learns that Mr Gelter's room, as well as two others, register as having been empty for several days despite her knowing that this is not the case and is advised by Stella not to ask questions. The new guests arrive, having been surprised with trips there just like Mr Gelter and eager to use the Paradise Machine to relax, and Peri hears the voices of the robed Elohim when she goes to find the Doctor.

Part three
The Doctor meets a man who has been on Paradise 5 for three weeks, believing that he is waiting for a job interview with Winterbourne and Snell, and who thinks he might remember Albrecht. They find Peri when she cries out and Winterbourne, as the Doctor names the amnesiac man, runs away when he senses the "serpent" of the Paradise Machine, an entity which he says accompanies the Elohim. The Doctor sneaks in amongst the next lot of guests to better investigate Gabriel and the machine, to which Peri gets him access before convincing Stella to show them to what they find is an Elohim ship from which the guests supposedly leave.

Gabriel decides to process the remaining guests and put Paradise 5 in a decaying orbit as a cover-up once Michael realises that the Elohim ship has been discovered. He calls the Doctor to a supposed communications suite to receive a message from an old friend, a ruse which the Doctor sees through, and has the Cherubs forcibly take him to the shuttle whilst Michael captures and interrogates Peri and Stella, shooting the latter. The Cherubs release the Doctor when the one who warned him about the Elohim speaks on his behalf and he and said Cherub hide from the Elohim before finding the guests chained on the ship; the Doctor wonders what the Elohim intend to do with the guests and the Cherub writes out that he is Albrecht Thompson.

Part four
The Doctor and Albrecht save Peri and Stella from imprisonment by incapacitating Lorelei, who is working with Gabriel and Michael, and locking her up in their place. Gabriel and Michael locate the group and reveal that there is a civil war in the higher dimensions, with the Elohim wanting to be more involved with the lower races and working with Gabriel and Michael to collect human minds to fight for them, leaving behind the Cherubs. The group escape thanks to Albrecht attacking Gabriel, Michael throwing him into a wall and snapping his neck in response, and they head to the control room to stop Paradise 5 from crashing. The controls are locked, however.

The Doctor fetches Mr Winterbourne, a reject of the Paradise Machine, and plays along with his delusions to get him to join him in subjecting themselves to the process so that the Doctor can attract the attention of the serpent that Mr Winterbourne encountered there. Peri sends Stella to gather the Cherubs whilst she and Bella save Gabriel and Michael's prisoners with the sonic lance to escape with the Cherubs in the arrival shuttle, after which she wakes the Doctor and Mr Winterbourne up by pulling out the Paradise Machine's plug. The serpent, a representation of the Elohim's opponents in the civil war, attacks its rivals.

With the arrival shuttle having departed with the Doctor, Peri, Mr Winterbourne, Bella and Stella aboard, Gabriel and Michael have no way to escape the crashing Paradise 5 and instead resign themselves to drinking gin and tonic before their deaths. The Doctor and Peri return to the TARDIS, discussing how neither side in the civil war of the higher dimensions is likely to be good, their hope that the hospital will be able to treat Mr Winterbourne and how Albrecht would probably have rather died than be a Cherub. To cheer them both up, Peri suggests a trip to Manhattan.

Cast

 * The Doctor – Colin Baker
 * Peri Brown – Nicola Bryant
 * Gabriel – Alex Macqueen
 * Michael – James D'Arcy
 * Stella / Bella – Helen Goldwyn
 * Lorelei – Andree Bernard
 * Mr Gelter / Mr Bliss / The Elohim – Teddy Kempner
 * Mrs Aht – Claire Wyatt
 * Mr Tapp / Mr Winterbourne – Richard Earl

Worldbuilding

 * The Targos system has at least four planets.
 * Targos Epsilon is a business destination.
 * Targos Beta has lava oceans on its surface.
 * Paradise 5 is a leisure space station orbiting Targos Beta. It is owned by the Paradise Corporation.
 * The Elohim are fighting a war in another dimension.
 * The Doctor sings "The Nightmare Song" from the comic opera Iolanthe by Gilbert and Sullivan.
 * Winterbourne believes that he is in the offices of Winterbourne and Snell on Gresham Street.
 * Mrs Grediga is a guest.
 * The Doctor carries a sonic lance.
 * Gumblejack vol-au-vents are served on Paradise 5.
 * Gabriel sings "He Who Would Valiant Be".
 * The Doctor eats caviar.
 * Peri wears perfume.

Continuity

 * The Doctor and Peri both refer to the events of AUDIO: The Hollows of Time.
 * The Doctor tells Peri that he has not been to Manhattan since 1965. (TV: The Chase) He would visit it again in his tenth incarnation. (TV: Daleks in Manhattan / Evolution of the Daleks).
 * One of the guests makes a joke about the Psychic Fair. (TV: The Greatest Show in the Galaxy)
 * The Doctor appears to carry around a sonic lance similar to the one he used in TV: Attack of the Cybermen.
 * The Doctor compares the Paradise Machine to the Matrix "on a good day". (TV: The Deadly Assassin)
 * The Doctor will later encounter another Gabriel involved in finding soldiers for a war in the higher dimensions. (AUDIO: The Rapture)