The Scorchies (audio story)

The Scorchies was the sixty-fifth release in the Companion Chronicles audio range. It was the ninth story of season 7. It was written by James Goss and featured Jo Grant.

Publisher's summary
The Doctor, his companion Jo Grant and the Brigadier face their strangest case yet — a Saturday night TV show that has been invaded by aliens that look like puppets!

The Scorchies want to take over the world. They want to kill the Doctor. And they want to perform some outstanding showtunes. Though not necessarily in that order...

With Jo caught inside The Scorchies Show, can she save the day before the planet Earth falls victim to the dark side of light entertainment?

Part one
Jo is within the Scorchies show, and she is told she needs to complete three tasks on the show: tell a story, make a thing, and sing a song. She begins by telling the story of how she came to be on the show. One day the Doctor was working on his TARDIS, when the Scorchies show caught his eye. He tells Jo how he has seen the show before, and how it takes over the entire adult population of a planet, before burning it, the Scorchies then say how this is how they earned their name. The Scorchies then take a break from the story to make Jo begin the second task, to make a thing, with help from Amble the Ugly Doll, they begin to make an anti-Scorchie gun, but Mr Grizzfizzle sees through this and kills Amble. Jo reveals that she followed the Doctor to the studios when he failed to return. She then wants to know what they have done with him, and is horrified when Mr Grizzfizzle claims to have killed him.

Part two
Professor Baffle then tells the story of how the Scorchies came into existence, about how their world was burned by an invader through television, and the inventor of television found a way to transmit the population as an disembodied intelligence to other worlds. The Scorchies then decided to take revenge on the universe until either it was sorry, or everyone was dead. Professor Baffle then reveals that he was in fact the inventor of the television back on their home world, and the Scorchies were punishing him by making him watch the terrible things that they were doing. The Brigadier then begins an attack on the studios, and Mr Grizzfizzle sends the Magic Mice to deal with the attack. The Scorchies spot the Doctor in amongst the UNIT soldiers-he is alive after all. Suddenly, the Magic Mice are destroyed. The Scorchies believe that the Doctor has reversed their signal, and force Jo and Professor Baffle to make a device to reverse the polarity back again. Professor Baffle then activates the device, and the Scorchies begin to disintegrate, Baffle then reveals that the polarity was never reversed in the first place, and that he allowed the Doctor to infiltrate his personality long ago. The reversed signal then destroys physical form of the Scorchies. The Doctor concedes that they continue to exist, as an intelligence floating through in space.

Cast

 * Jo Grant/The Scorchies - Katy Manning
 * The Scorchies - Melvyn Hayes

Continuity

 * The Doctor and Jo build a reverse polarity polarity reverser using a wine bottle and several corks. (TV: The Time Monster)
 * The Scorchies would reappear in AUDIO: The Wax Princess.