Portrait of a Lady (audio story)

 was the third story in the audio anthology Lady Christina: Series One, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Tim Dawson and featured Michelle Ryan as Lady Christina de Souza and Warren Brown as Sam Bishop.

Publisher's summary
When her plot to steal a priceless painting runs into trouble, Christina crashes into an undercover UNIT operation – and Sam Bishop.

Soon, her Number 200 bus is racing from Europe to South America and into the depths of the Pacific, chasing a mysterious and unstoppable foe...

Plot
Siblings Leon and Lucy Clancy work as thieves on behalf of mysterious criminal mastermind ‘El Guapo’, who communicates with the siblings via a voice modulator on a phone and does not reveal their identity. Leon and Lucy come from a working class background and have turned to crime in order to provide for their elderly mother and Lucy’s baby son Frank.

On El Guapo’s orders, Leon and Lucy break into the International Gallery using alien technology to steal ‘Perfection’, which is regarded as the most beautiful painting in the world. After successfully stealing Perfection, Leon and Lucy flee whilst UNIT are called to the scene, led by Sam Bishop. Sam speaks with gallery director Professor Leslie Plush, who expresses her dismay that Perfection was stolen despite heavy security, to which Sam tells her he has a plan to capture the thieves. After tracking down Leon and Lucy, Sam poses as Juan Pablo, a known criminal associate of El Guapo who has previously been captured by UNIT.

Despite their suspicions of his cover story, Leon and Lucy accompany Sam to an aircraft carrier, with Sam claiming that it is part of a plan to smuggle the goods safely. However, the aircraft carrier is swiftly attacked by Mr Kamen, a brutal criminal with no qualms about violence, and his Sontaran assistant Grunt. Leon is wounded and confronted by Kamen whilst Lucy and Sam face off with Grunt, who Sam realises is being mind controlled as he does not conform to usual Sontaran views about the honour of battle. Grunt has a mind control plate implanted in his head, with a feature that can be used by Kamen to give Grunt severe electric shocks if he does not obey orders.

Lady Christina arrives and helps capture Kamen and Grunt. Christina reveals that Perfection is a painting of alien origin and that it forms into a different image depending on what the viewer thinks constitutes ‘absolute beauty’ in the moment. Sam also correctly deduces that Lady Christina is El Guapo and she admits this before the two turn their attentions onto interrogating Kamen. Kamen reveals some information about Perfection but Grunt soon awakes from being unconscious and attacks the group once more. In the chaos, Lucy and Leon escape with Perfection whilst Lady Christina and Sam eventually manage to leave the aircraft carrier and get onto Christina’s flying bus.

Leon and Lucy head for the Amazon jungle in Argentina, where a secret compound containing an auction house for criminals is located. They plan to sell Perfection and receive an offer for £2 million but are interrupted by the arrival of Christina and Sam, leading to a pursuit which ends with the siblings being captured. However, Kamen and Grunt soon arrive and begin attacking the auction. Christina, Leon and Lucy flee whilst Sam draws Grunt’s attention, though Sam is also allowed to escape by Kamen as he is focused on stealing Perfection.

After regrouping on the flying bus, the four discover that Kamen has a flying Bentley using similar technology to the bus and follow him in an airborne pursuit. Kamen spots them and uses a cannon on his Bentley to badly damage the bus, resulting in it crashing into the Pacific Ocean. The Bentley also goes into the ocean in order to arrive at the underwater base of Kamen’s employer, the ‘Keeper’. The bus is briefly protected by an air bubble defence in the water but the damage from Kamen’s attack means that all systems are offline. To make matters worse, a shark also attacks the bus and Sam spots that the shark has the same mind control plate on its head that Grunt has, indicating that the Keeper uses mind controlled sharks to protect their base.

Christina, Sam, Leon and Lucy manage to escape the damaged bus and the shark but Christina is captured by Kamen whilst the others escape to a nearby island. Christina is sent to meet with the Keeper, who is revealed to be Professor Plush from the International Gallery. Plush has built an underwater base that functions as a private gallery for fine artwork, as Plush hates public galleries and wants art to be protected for her own personal enjoyment rather than by the general public and tourists. Christina is left alone to view Perfection, which uses telepathic paint and is thus able to communicate mentally with Christina. Perfection tells Christina that it is depressed due to being constantly sought after by so many people because of its beauty and that it no longer wishes to exist as a prisoner for art.

On the surface, Leon, Lucy and Sam use the blood from Leon’s prior wound to attract one of Plush’s sharks so that Sam can damage its mind control implant, force it to return to base and thus allow Sam to discover where Christina is being held. Lucy goes with Sam on the underwater mission and once they breach the base, Plush triggers a lockdown. Grunt attempts to fight with Sam, who reacts instead by appealing to Grunt’s Sontaran instincts about honour and succeeds in helping Grunt override the mind control. Assuming his former identity of Skral, a Marshal within the Sontaran military, Grunt attacks Kamen and pulls them both into Plush’s shark infested pool. Kamen is immediately eaten whilst a mortally wounded Skral manages to crawl out of the pool and salute Sam as a fellow soldier before dying.

Christina challenges Plush to actually look at Perfection, as she has avoided doing so out of fear for its telepathic abilities. In defiance, Plush does so but Perfection reaches out and absorbs Plush in a suicidal act to free itself from its constraints, killing them both. In the aftermath, Sam reasons that Leon and Lucy will escape criminal charges due to helping defeat Plush and Kamen but as Sam attempts to arrest Christina, she escapes once more.

Cast

 * Lady Christina de Souza / El Guapo - Michelle Ryan
 * Sam Bishop - Warren Brown
 * Leon Clancy - Gareth Corke
 * Lucy Clancy / Perfection - Emily Carewe
 * Mr Kamen - Matthew Brenher
 * Professor Leslie Plush / The Keeper - Jenny Lee
 * Grunt - Christopher Ryan

Continuity

 * Christina relates to Sam her meeting a rebel in a long brown suit who rejected her as a companion. (TV: Planet of the Dead)
 * Sam refers to parties picking up the trade of alien material following the fall of the Auctioneers. (AUDIO: Master of Worlds)
 * Sam confronts Skral about the strange Sontaran tactics. He asks the Sontaran why he isn't invading, and furthermore why he has a human owner. The Tenth Doctor was similarly confused when a group of Sontarans chose to choke the Earth during the 2009 Sontaran invasion of Earth rather than a simple invasion force. (TV: The Sontaran Stratagem / The Poison Sky)
 * Sam Bishop is a soldier for the Unified Intelligence Taskforce. (AUDIO: Vanguard et al)