The Macros (audio story)

The Macros, formerly "The Macro Men", is the eighth and final Lost Story of Season 23 to be developed into an audio play. It stars Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant as the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown.

Publisher's summary
The TARDIS materialises on the USS Eldridge, after the Philadelphia Experiment has gone disastrously wrong. Most of the crew are dead, the ship is disintegrating, and the Doctor soon realises that the problem comes from another dimension...

As they attempt to find a way to get the ship home, the Doctor and Peri visit the distant planet Capron and meet its tyrannical ruler Osloo. But the search for a possible solution only creates increasingly dire problems. Osloo's horizons have been widened – and space and time are hers for the taking...

Part one
Two men aboard the a ship are talking. They check the instruments and repair some damage that one attributes to moisture at sea. He says the interface was a few seconds off. They discuss the countdown on board and what will happen when it reaches zero.

The TARDIS lands and the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown walk out. Peri notices that there is thick fog outside. Peri is trying to get back to Baltimore to contact her family. The Doctor determines that they are on a ship at sea. Peri hears two men talking, but they don't see her or acknowledge her when she tries to make contact with them. They are repeating their previous conversation. As Peri tries to get back in the TARDIS to leave, the Doctor tells her that he noticed something went wrong as they were materializing, some sort of interdimensional temporal flux that caught them between two dimensions. Peri looks and sees the same two men repeating the same conversation again. They decide to investigate. Peri calls the Doctor over to the capstan where he finds it covered in a strange, green rust. They notice that the ship is being eaten away by the rust.

Up in the wheelhouse, the Doctor and Peri find the Captain and helmsman. The Doctor tries talking to them and notice that the Captain is just like the other men they saw on the ship, he can't see or hear them. The Captain initiates a 20 second countdown. Peri tries to switch off the panel, but is unable to change anything. The Doctor determines they can't interact because all this has already happened. At zero, the men on the bridge disappear. Suddenly, the conversation begins again. A life vest on the ship reads USS Eldridge and the Doctor explains that the Eldridge was the subject of invisibility experiments in 1943. They head back to the TARDIS as the conversation on the bridge starts again.

to be continued

Part two
to be added

Cast

 * The Doctor – Colin Baker
 * Peri Brown – Nicola Bryant
 * Presidenta Osloo/Anne Tessler - Linda Marlowe
 * Commander Ezz - Jack Galagher
 * Lady Yka - Rachael Elizabeth
 * Professor Brian Tessler - Vincent Pirillo
 * Bosun/Guard - Stewart Alexander
 * Mers/Admiral Greg Calloway/1st Rigger - Paul David-Gough
 * Chancellor Bundth/2nd Rigger/Captain/Guard/Tannoy - Matt Addis

Continuity

 * Peri requested that the Doctor take her to visit her mother Janine Foster and her stepfather Howard Foster in Baltimore, Maryland in 1984 to let them know that she is alright after she left them on Lanzarote to travel with the Fifth Doctor. (TV: Planet of Fire) They would eventually do so after Peri learned that Anthony Chambers, her best friend Katherine Chambers' father, had been murdered. (AUDIO: The Reaping)
 * The Doctor tells Peri that the TARDIS was once accidentally reduced in size. (TV: Planet of Giants)
 * The Doctor is able to restore Peri to full health by placing her in the Zero Room. He tells Ezz and Yka that he has used it himself to recover from accidents. (TV: Castrovalva)
 * Peri tells Yka that, during her travels with the Doctor, she has been transformed into a bird (TV: Vengeance on Varos), placed on "an Androgum's lunch menu" (TV: The Two Doctors), chased by Ice Warriors (AUDIO: Red Dawn, The Bride of Peladon, Mission to Magnus) and Tractators (AUDIO: The Hollows of Time) and that she was once almost trapped on the astral place (AUDIO: Point of Entry).
 * The Doctor took a battery from Reverend Foxwell's laboratory in Hollowdean, England during the early 1980s. (AUDIO: The Hollows of Time)
 * The Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond would later visit the U.S.S. Eldridge during the 23rd century. (GAME: Shadows of the Vashta Nerada)