Odyssey (audio story)

Odyssey was the seventy-sixth story in the Torchwood - Monthly Range by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Patrick O'Connor.

Publisher's summary
Ida Scott has spent her life running from her father. But now she's come looking for him.

The Spire is an ancient relic left behind by The Resilient - a mysterious race who warped both gravity and time.

Odysseus Scott lies dying in a bed in The Spire. He believes it will cure him. But are The Resilient really dead?

Plot
After managing to get through the gravity storms in a borrowed Torchwood spaceship, Ida arrives at the Spire on Faber to see her ailing father, physicist Odysseus Scott. Tom, Odysseus's assistant, explains to Ida how the Spire is the last relic of the Resilient, gravitysmiths from the dawn of time who supposedly created the Spire, which is used for gravitational therapy, and whose powers Ida is sceptical of. Despite Tom's protests, she goes to her father's room whilst he is receiving treatment and is accused of visiting only because of her failed expedition to Krop Tor.

Ida suspects that her father has paid off the staff and other patients to leave given that he, Tom and an Ood are the only ones staying at the Spire and argues with him over dinner, but he starts having difficulty with his speech because of his illness and retires. She is concerned about Odysseus relying on gravitational therapy rather than conventional medicine and has Tom find out where Professor Destin has gone on leave in the hopes of speaking with him, watching the initial message that Odysseus sent him in the meantime. She is interrupted, however, by the sound of the Ood reciting something about agony followed by apparent nonsense.

Ida accuses her father of using the Ood to try and scare her, which he denies, and learns that he brought old colleagues with terminal illnesses to the Spire to form a community, although he cannot remember why and does not know where they are. With Tom claiming to be unable to find the leave requests, Ida looks into the research on the Spire and wonders if the Ood is in tune with the Resilient. She also deduces that it would have been impossible for the other patients to have left Faber and forces Tom to admit that they walked out into the gravity storms to their own deaths. He claims never to have said this when Ida confronts her father with the information.

The Ood prevents Ida from leaving the Spire at midday and she suddenly finds that it is midnight, but Tom too stops her going out and they see screaming mouths form on the wall. Leaving Tom talking to himself about hearing the screams when he was one of a hundred orphans aboard a colony ship, she goes after her father only to find that the stairs headed up to the top of the Spire are now going down. She finds Odysseus and the Ood with a gurgling creature in a fold of reality and passes out, learning from her father upon awakening that he is creating a new form for the Resilient by merging his colleagues and sedating him for his own good.

In tune with the Resilient as Ida suspected, the Ood channels Tom, who was absorbed whilst waiting for her to return. The Spire starts to fall apart as the Resilient begin the construction of a new Spire to send out their song and Ida gets Odysseus and the Ood to the Torchwood ship and away from Faber, which turns to dust and ceases to exist because of gravity. Faber, Ida suggests, did not exist until the Resilient were created, after which they formed the planet from the dust and built the Spire backwards in time to create a loop. She intends to leave Odysseus but, before she does, she accepts the Ood's offer to read out a father's encouraging words from a book she stole as a child.

Cast

 * Ida Scott - Claire Rushbrook
 * Odysseus Scott / The Ood - Silas Carson
 * Tom - Jay Perry

Worldbuilding

 * Tom believes that Ida and Odysseus have the same frown.
 * Ida has a coffee pod with a voice command.
 * Odysseus is a physicist.
 * Odysseus once attended a conference on Delva and had all of the speakers fired, delivering the presentations himself for the rest of the week.
 * Professor Kennedy Destin runs the Spire.
 * Ida has borrowed a Torchwood spaceship from a friend.
 * Odysseus has Axobar's syndrome.
 * Dr Gatrin Pendle, Dr Marius Kay and Dr Carter Green were patients diagnosed with terminal illnesses.
 * Ida's mother used to cook for the family. She goes on pilgrimages.
 * Odysseus's voice is used for the translator spheres, which he created.
 * Ida wants Odysseus to go to the Granter Unit for medical attention.
 * Tom compares gravitational therapy to acupuncture.
 * Ida mentions the story of Cnut.
 * Tom is one of the hundred Gentle Orphans who were found with food and water in a colony ship in the Hemingway Pass.
 * Tom read about Atlantis, Moon II and the Spire.
 * Hester Vrall was an anthropologist.
 * Ida has a stellar rosary.
 * Ida has only one holograph of herself and her mother.
 * Ida stole a book from Daphne Zane when she was at school.
 * Grapes are a traditional gift for the sick.

Continuity

 * The Beast described Ida as a scientist "still running from Daddy". (TV: The Satan Pit)
 * Tom mentions Ida’s recent work on a gravitational anomaly at Sanctuary Base 6. (TV: The Impossible Planet) Odysseus recalls the expedition failed. (TV: The Satan Pit)
 * Ida's mother is Neoclassic Congregational. (TV: The Satan Pit)