Fire and Ice (audio story)

Fire and Ice was the second story in the audio anthology Between Two Worlds, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by John Dorney and featured Jemma Redgrave as Kate Stewart, Ingrid Oliver as Petronella Osgood, Christopher Naylor as Harry Sullivan and introduced Eleanor Crooks as Naomi Cross.

Publisher's summary
When Kate needs Harry Sullivan's help with a threat from the Eleven, she and Osgood travel to Australia to meet him. He’s there with Naomi Cross, investigating footage of an apparent UFO crash that turned up on social media.

They find themselves caught in the middle of a conflict between Ice Warriors. And one Ice Warrior isn’t so icy - in fact, he's red hot. And getting hotter...

Plot
In Australia, Harry meets with backpacker Ros Green at a bar to discuss her sale of an orange Ice Warrior whom she found in a crashed spacecraft. There is an explosion and they run from what seem to be robots to Ros's rental car, a hybrid which Harry struggles to drive whilst Ros records a message for her social media followers. They are pursued by an Ice Warrior ship and crash when it shoots one of the tyres. The ship lands behind them.

Kate and Osgood take an aeroplane to meet with Harry and keep up with his goings-on through Ros's social media. By the time they reach the site of the car crash, Harry and Ros have been saved by Naomi, who was following them in a van and used a pulse weapon to disable the supposed robots for a time. Naomi takes them to a cave, but the ship follows and fires lasers at them until Kate has her pilot distract it and lead it away. Ros tricks Harry into giving her the keys to her car and drives off, leaving him and Naomi behind.

Commander Jakernia of the First Martian Elite Death Squad makes contact with Kate and refuses UNIT's help before damaging her plane and forcing her to land. Jakernia, accompanied by Ice Warriors who, like her, wear environment suits that makes them resemble robots, asks Harry and Naomi about the whereabouts of the crashed Ice Warrior, whom she calls "the rogue". She invites the two of them, as well as Kate and Osgood, onto her ship. There, Kate and Osgood explain to Harry that they have come to ask him to duplicate the Eleven's antitoxin.

Ros returns to the rogue and gets him into the van to take him to a television station in Alice Springs.

Jakernia explains that the rogue is Abiathar, a scientist who sought to find a way to improve the Ice Warriors' tolerance of heat and, as a result of his experiments upon himself, now absorbs heat from the environment. He fled and is likely to explode. Kate calls UNIT Australia to organise an evacuation and Harry uses the Ice Warriors' laboratory, finding that the toxin mutated from one that the database has a record of.

Abiathar accidentally detonates the fuel in the van, killing Ros. Kate, Naomi and the Ice Warriors arrive and attempt to subdue him to take him into space to die without endangering anybody else, but he is unharmed and apparently empowered by the attacks. Osgood leaves the ship and informs Kate that Abiathar will explode in six minutes and will wipe out the entirety of the Northern Territory; she suggests that they use the Eleven's toxin to swamp Abiathar in heat-resistant webs to get him into space. The plan is successful and Jakernia confides in Kate that Abiathar was her pair-bond and that she had insisted on being in charge of this mission.

With information from the Ice Warriors' database, Harry has succeeded in duplicating the antitoxin. The group accept Jakernia's offer to drop them off in the United Kingdom, with Osgood being worried about what the Eleven might have been up to whilst they have been away.

Cast

 * Kate Stewart - Jemma Redgrave
 * Osgood - Ingrid Oliver
 * Harry Sullivan / Abiathar - Christopher Naylor
 * Naomi Cross - Eleanor Crooks
 * Ros Green / Jakernia - Olivia Poulet

Worldbuilding

 * Ros orders a lager.
 * Kate and Osgood fly over the Red Centre.
 * Ros drives a hybrid vehicle.
 * Ros mentions Men in Black.
 * Alice Springs is a town with a population of about 25,000 people.
 * Josh has been "minding the shop" whilst Kate has been in Australia.
 * Harry always wanted to see the Great Barrier Reef.

Continuity

 * Harry refers to using gold dust against the Cybermen. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen)
 * Osgood asks if any other companions of the Doctor are hiding in the bushes, such as Melanie Bush.