1963: The Space Race (audio story)

1963: The Space Race was the one hundred and seventy-ninth story in Big Finish's monthly range. The second story in the 1963 audio trilogy celebrating the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who.

Publisher's summary
November 1963, and the Soviet space programme reigns supreme. Having sent the first animals, then the first men beyond Earth's atmosphere, now they're sending a manned capsule into orbit around the Moon.

Just as Vostok Seven passes over into the dark side, however, its life support system fails. Only the intervention of the Sixth Doctor and Peri, adopting the identities of scientists from Moscow University, means that contact with the capsule is regained.

But something has happened to the cosmonaut on board. She appears to have lost her memory, and developed extreme claustrophobia. Maybe she’s not quite as human as she used to be...

Part One
to be added

Part Two
to be added

Part Three
to be added

Part Four
to be added

Cast

 * The Doctor - Colin Baker
 * Peri Brown - Nicola Bryant
 * Larisa Petrov - Karen Henson
 * General Mikhail Leonov/General Paterson - David Shaw-Parker
 * Captain Alexei Kozlov/Captain Andrews - Tom Alexander
 * Sergeant Leonid Kurakin/Scientist - Stuart Denman
 * Marinka Talanov/Female Worker/Laika - Samantha Béart

Continuity

 * The Doctor mentions that he once spent several months travelling across China with Marco Polo in 1289. (TV: Marco Polo)
 * Peri tells Sgt. Kurakin that she is a vegetarian. (AUDIO: The Eye of the Scorpion)
 * Dr. Petrov refers to the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. (PROSE: Heart of TARDIS, AUDIO: 1963)
 * According to another account, Laika died in space. The Third Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith buried her on Quiescia. (PROSE: Alien Bodies)
 * The Doctor refers to the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas on 22 November 1963. He tells Petrov that he has always intended to travel back and witness the assassination. He would later do so during his ninth incarnation. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy, TV: Rose) The Eighth Doctor once claimed that he had been accused of the assassination. (AUDIO: Zagreus)
 * Peri refers to the Apollo 11 moon landing on 20 July 1969. (TV: Blink, The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon)
 * While the Doctor was returning to the Baikonur Cosmodrome aboard the US Rocket Lincoln on 23 November 1963, eight other versions of him were present in England on the same day. One of these was another version of the Sixth Doctor, who was likewise travelling with Peri. It is unclear which event occurred first in their personal timelines. Over the course of two hours, the First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors and their respective companions Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, Jamie McCrimmon, Zoe Heriot, Sarah Jane Smith, Leela, Nyssa, Peri, Ace and Charley Pollard all visited Bob Dovie at 59A Barnsfield Crescent in Totton, Hampshire, much to his annoyance. (AUDIO: The Light at the End)
 * Aside from visiting Bob Dovie in Hampshire, the Seventh Doctor would return to November 1963 on three subsequent occasions. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, PROSE: The Algebra of Ice, AUDIO: 1963: The Assassination Games)