Here There Be Monsters (audio story)

Here There Be Monsters was the first story of the third series of The Companion Chronicles, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Andy Lane, narrated by Carole Ann Ford and featured the First Doctor, Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright.

This was the first audio story to feature a non-Unbound version of Susan Foreman.

Publisher's summary
A new adventure with the First Doctor as told by his grand-daughter, Susan.

"It was a terrible sound, like someone had just stabbed the universe and it was crying out in pain."

The distant future. The TARDIS, with the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara aboard, is drawn out of the Vortex and lands aboard the Earth Benchmarking Vessel Nevermore, where Captain Rostrum is navigating by punching holes in the very fabric of space. The Doctor is appalled by this act of vandalism, and fearful that it could unleash monsters from the dark dimensions.

As the benchmarking holes begin to fray, the fate of the universe is at stake. And while the Doctor contemplates a terrible sacrifice, Susan befriends the Nevermore's First Mate — someone she will remember for the rest of her life...

The Hole in Space (1)
Some time after leaving the TARDIS, Susan keeps hearing a voice inside her head, a voice connected to a sound like a thunder. She says that it was when she heard that sound that she knew she had to leave the TARDIS. Wishing to silence the voice, she begins writing down what happened.

The TARDIS is hit by a terrible time-space event, sending it off course. It lands on a spaceship that seems to be filled with vegetal life, but no visible crew: all the rooms the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara explores are only seemingly occupied by branches and leaves, some of them dead, operating the controls and governing the ship. Eventually, they arrive to the console room, when they meet Rostrum, the captain of the vessel. He is a vegetal-life form genetically created by mankind to govern ships and direct manual operations as they dedicate themselves to more "artistic" and "philosophic" endeavours, and this is his ship, the Earth-Benching-Vessel Nevermore, whose task is to put "benchmarks" in space.

The Doctor is enraged by what he deems as a careless and dangerous meddling with space: it could awake and attract beings from beneath the surface of the space, the monsters lurking there. A debate between the Doctor and Rostrum starts, and a bored Susan wanders off in the engine room, where she meets the (apparently) human First Mate of the ship. He shares the Doctor's doubts about the advantages and possibile dangers of what Rostrum is doing, and also encourages Susan to think with her own mind, instead of always relying on her grandfather. The sound of an alarm sends Susan back to the control room: a ship appeared in front of them, and it is preparing to launch missils at the Nevermore: mankind (as Rostrum will conferm) didn't ask permission to other races for going around their space, therefore they are invading foreign territory.

Messages from the Other Side (2)
Before the missils can reach the ship, a fissure opens in space, from which giant tentacles come out to grasp the other ship and the missiles inside it. This proves the Doctor right: Rostrum's benchmarking is damaging the fabric of space, endangering the entire universe. Pulling her aside, the Doctor confides to Susan that he could use the TARDIS' energy to repair the fissure, but that would mean depleting the ship and leaving them stranded in this century. Susan is not too happy at the prospect, and leaves to find the First Mate again. She exposes their problem to him, and when he mentions being a traveller, suggests he take them with him, but he rejects the proposal as completely impossible; once again, he also invites Susan to think for herself, instead of always relying on a parent figure.

As they talk, Susan grows incredibly weak, until she finally collapses to the floor, and is left there by the First Mate. She is found and revived by Barbara, who goes on telling Rostrum about his "crew"'s behaviour - but there is no crew on board, Rostrum says, he and the travellers are the only living beings there. Together, the travellers guess that the First Mate is a stowaway or a saboteur, that his presence causes people and living beings to lose energy, and that he hides in the rooms where Rostrum's leaves and vines are dead, so that the Captain can't find him. They split up to search for him, and Susan rejects Barbara and the Doctor's suggestion to stay behind (which may be the first time the Doctor realises she is not a child anymore). Susan finds the First Mate in the engine room and confronts him, leading him to admit he is here to stop Rostrum and he drains energy; she keeps him occupied long enough for the Doctor and Ian to take him by surprise and capture him.

With Ian and Barbara outside, Susan and the Doctor question the First Mate. He comes from beneath space, from that dimension the Doctor identified as full of only monsters (funny, he says: we say the same thing about you); he came to stop Rostrum with any means necessary, including intelligent conversation if he had a chance. He took on a human appearance based on Susan's memory, and he could fix the fissure, but that would cost everyone's life: if he comes back to his original form, he will drain their energy even faster. At that time, Rostrum takes Ian and Barbara prisoners: he has finally decided that they are all working together to stop him, and will deliver them to the proper authorities, with no intention to fix the damage he caused. Susan then asks the First Mate if he could revert to his original form gradually, to allow them time to escape, and he agrees.

Figthing against the growing weakness as the First Mate unveils his true form, the travellers finally reach the TARDIS and find shelter there. They come out after a while to see what happened, and find Rostrum dead and a message from the First Mate to his people, asking them to remember him and saying that the people beneath are intelligent and benevolent. They leave, but Susan states that the First Mate's voice always resounded in her afterwards, giving her eventually the strenght to leave her grandfather and start a new life for herself.

Cast

 * Susan Foreman / Rostrum - Carole Ann Ford
 * The First Mate - Stephen Hancock

Crew

 * Cover Art - Simon Holub
 * Director - Lisa Bowerman
 * Executive Producers - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
 * Music & Sound Design - David Darlington
 * Producer - David Richardson
 * Script Editors - Alan Barnes and Jacqueline Rayner
 * Writer - Andy Lane

Worldbuilding

 * Susan claims that having a perfect memory is "the curse of her people."
 * Rostrum's species were created to pilot Earth's ships and spread the Human Empire.
 * The Nevermore uses gravitational singularities to punch holes in space every tenth of a light-year. Eventually a fissure rips open between two holes, which Ian tries to understand by comparing it to fabric, paper, or layers of Arctic ice, but the fissure isn't like that.
 * The fabric of space (and time) is weak, more so in some areas.
 * Susan mentions the TARDIS's time engines.

Continuity

 * Susan refers to her departure from Gallifrey with her grandfather, claiming that she was "an accidental passenger." (PROSE: Lungbarrow; COMIC: Time & Time Again; TV: The Name of the Doctor)
 * Susan has never told her husband David Campbell that she is not human. (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth)
 * Susan wonders if Ian and Barbara ever became a couple. (PROSE: The Face of the Enemy; TV: Death of the Doctor)
 * Susan recalls the petrified forest on Skaro and her first encounter with the Daleks. (TV: The Daleks)
 * Susan is beginning to realise she will need to leave the Doctor soon and make her own life. The Doctor is also intending to leave her somewhere safe, as he believes the Time Lords will be after him for changing history. (PROSE: The Time Travellers)
 * The spaceship upon which the TARDIS lands has a jungle in it. Ian suggests that it provides oxygen, similar to the Byzantium's Treeborgs. (TV: Flesh and Stone)
 * Rostrum's appearance is reminiscent of the Animus. (TV: The Web Planet)
 * This is the Doctor's first meeting with live, intelligent vegetation. He would later encounter the Weed creature, (TV: Fury from the Deep) Krynoids, (TV: The Seeds of Doom) the Vervoids, (TV: Terror of the Vervoids) and the Forest of Cheem. (TV: The End of the World)
 * Susan refers to her time at Coal Hill School. (TV: An Unearthly Child)