Phobos (audio story)

 was the fourth story in the first series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Eddie Robson and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Sheridan Smith as Lucie Miller.

Because Blood of the Daleks was released in two-parts, it was the fifth release of the series. It was co-produced with BBC 7.

The story was released along with the other stories in Series 1 in the collection The Eighth Doctor and Lucie Miller on 3 October 2023.

Publisher's summary
The TARDIS lands on Phobos, moon of Mars — where extreme sports nuts of the future indulge their passion for gravity-boarding and wormhole-jumping. But there's something lurking in the shadows, something infinitely old and infinitely dangerous. It's not for nothing that "Phobos" is the ancient word for "fear"...

Plot
Chrissy is sucked into a whirlpool and down through a series of tunnels. Finding herself trapped in an underground is cutting in and out. Through the distortion, Chrissy can hear Scott begin to scream.

The TARDIS lands halfway up an icy mountain on Phobos. When Lucie falls into an icy pool, Hayden and Drew arrive and lift her out.

Amy and Farl are taking a shuttle to Martian Lunar Park. Amy recalls seeing something resembling a "big ant" on their approach to the park. When they arrive, Eris introduces herself as the camp engineer, and tells them nobody has officially been in charge of Lunar Park for a while. She offers to take their bags, and on the way to their cabin Eris shows them the environment dome.

Drew and Hayden ask the Doctor about his TARDIS. They then say that a park guide told them he'd seen a monster. Drew tells the Doctor and Lucie about a wormhole at the top of a nearby mountain. He says that thrill seekers can jump into the hole and fall through without ever touching the sides, something the Doctor considers to be a gravitational anomaly.

Amy and Farl unpack in their room. The park guide Kai arrives and helps them turn their cabin the right way up. He tells them the park is full of adrenaline junkies, who he calls "drennies", and is surprised to find that Amy and Farl are not thrill seekers. He tells them to be careful at Lunar Park, and to avoid the monsters which live in the wormhole on the mountain.

Drew and Hayden take the Doctor and Lucie to the wormhole. They prepare to bungee jump into the hole, tying climbing ropes around themselves. They tell the Doctor and Lucie that nobody's ever hit the bottom, but whoever goes deepest into the hole gets the most respect.

Amy asks Kai is he could have imagined the monsters, but he says he's seen them with his own eyes. He calls them Phobians, describing them as strange animals that make a whinging, screaming noise. He says nobody believes his warnings. When a strange noise is then heard in the distance, Amy believes it could be one of the Phobians.

Hayden jumps into the wormhole, expecting to bungee to a depth of 3 kilometers. After Lucie spots something in the distance, the Doctor retrieves a telescope from his pocket and Lucie looks at a man and a woman in the distance. They are lying on the ground, not moving. Drew begins reeling Hayded back up the hole, and they all head over in a buggy to investigate.

Back at Amy and Farl's cabin, Eris arrives and asks Kai to stop scaring the guests with "ghost stories". When Kai leaves, she tells the newly arrived guests that Kai's stories aren't even consistent.

Hayden and Drew recognise the bodies as their parkmates Chrissy and Scott. Scott has been savagely killed, Chrissy is alive and shivering. Drew suggests that she might have hypothermia, but it turns out instead that she's shaking from fear. Drew heads off to get some help. Inside the park building, Eris is again telling Kai to stop staring tourists when Drew bursts in. He tells them that that he needs their help. Kai, Eris and Drew meet up with the Doctor and Lucie, where the Doctor is inspecting Scott. He has been ripped in half, viciously, by something more powerful than a human.

The next morning, Hayded sneaks up on Drew to scare him. Drew does not find it funny, since he's been feeling paranoid about monsters all night. Hayden asks if he has a spare pressure valve so they can go Grav-boarding. Hayden says he wants to chase adrenaline to clear his head, and Drew agrees to join him.

When the Doctor sees Lucie in the canteen that morning she has barely slept, and is on her third cup of coffee. Amy and Farl walk into the canteen having a shifty conversation. They are worried about being found by someone. The Doctor and Lucie hear this and speculate on why those two could be acting unusually. The Doctor and Lucie are then eavesdropped on by Eris, who tells them Amy and Farl are unlike the regular drennie tourists. Upon the mention of the monsters, the Doctor tells Eris that he wants to speak to Kai.

Farl storms away from his and Amy's table, and Lucie goes to see if Amy is okay. Amy says they want to leave the park but there's no shuttles leaving for another three days. Lucie asks why they're on Phobos in the first place, and Amy invites her on a walk.

After seeing Farl storm off, Kai goes to him and apologises on behalf of the park, mistakenly believing Farl has overheard someone making unpleasant remarks being made about his race. Farl wants to know who has been making these remarks, but Kai is swept away by Eris before he can tell him.

Drew and Hayden are preparing to grav-board. Hayden begins boarding first with Drew following him down the slope, and they talk to each other through their headset radios as they go.

Eris apologies to Kai for never believing him about the monsters. Kai tells the Doctor that the creatures have always been on Phobos, and he believes they were what halted the still-unfinished construction of Lunar Park. Eris says that stories of the park being dangerous only add to the excitement for the drennies, making it seem like a haunted house.

Amy and Lucie put on space suits then step through an airlock onto the surface of Phobos. Lucie tells Amy that Farl is a Githian, a member of a pwople whose numbers are dwindling, and so can't marry outside of his species without being condemned by his family and friends. Amy says Farl's family have hired a hunter to bring Farl back home. Farl wants them to split up for Amy's sake, but Amy is pregnant and Farl doesn't know. Suddenly, Amy and Lucie pick up a signal on their short-range headsets - it's someone screaming. They set out to find where it came from. When they discover the body of Kelly they radio the Doctor asking for help. The Doctor and Eris head out to find them, and Kai stays with the radio in case Lucie gets in touch again.

Drew sees a monster moving behind a rock near Hayden. He radios Hayden telling him to stop, but Hayden doesn't get the message and keeps going towards the monster. When Hayden is out of sight, Drew hears him scream over the headset.

Amy and Lucie see a monster in the distance and decide to leave Kelly behind. They bump into Drew, and he tells them Hayden is badly injured. The creature that attacked him had been knocked off balance by Hayden's grav-board and fallen into a crater. When the creature reappears Lucie throws rocks to distract it, but this only appears aggravates it.

Meanwhile, Farl encounters some rude drennies who insult and abuse him for being a Githian. Farl punches one of them, breaking his nose.

Eris and the Doctor set out of the airlock on a buggy. When they're within radio range of Lucie and Amy, Lucie tells the Doctor that she's being chased by one of the Phobians. The Doctor directs them towards a big rock and tells them to climb. He quickly reaches the bottom of the rock and throws a climbing rope up to Lucie, who then clamps it onto the Phobian. The buggy drives away, dragging the creature behind it. They take the creature back to the park, tied up and apparently unconscious. Upon inspection, the Doctor discovers it to be an old construction droid covered with sack cloth.

The Doctor explains that these droids are usually used for jobs such as surface mapping, manual repairs and mineral drilling. This droid does not appear to be malfunctioning, but rather has been reprogrammed to attack on sight. Or perhaps, the Doctor speculates, it could be under remote control.

Kai finds Farl and informs him that Amy had left the camp and then been rescued. When Farl goes to find Amy, Kai sends the abusive tourists to the med bay. With Farl out of earshot, Kai turns to the tourists and says Githians are "savages".

Farl is frustrated with Amy for going outside and the pair argue. Farl tells Lucie and the Doctor to stay away from him and his wife since he doesn't trust them. The Doctor tells Farl never to threaten him. A drennie asks Farl to leave Lunar Park, saying a number of people have said that they're uncomfortable with him being there after assaulting a guest. Amy then sees the boy's broken nose and is frightened. She runs away from Farl.

The Doctor accuses Kai of controlling the refashioned construction droids. He believes Kai did it to drive the monster in the wormhole away, but Kai denies it. He then knocks the Doctor and Lucie unconscious before radioing Droid 4 and instructing it to take the Doctor and Lucie to the wormhole.

Eris sees Droid 4 taking the Doctor and Lucie up the mountain. She takes Farl and Drew to investigate while Amy stays behind with Hayden.

The Doctor and Lucie wake up and find they've been tied up. Kai tells them he's planning to throw them into the wormhole. Before he gets the chance Drew arrives and knocks him out by firing a climbing rope at him. Drew reveals that he took the buggy most of the way up the mountain, but climbed the last leg of the journey to avoid being detected. While Kai is incapacitated Drew ties him up.

When Farl arrives he is attacked by Droid 4. The Doctor unscrews one of the droid's legs with his sonic screwdriver, which completely disables the droid. With Kai being unconscious, the Doctor wonders how he could have been controlling it.

Kai quickly comes round, and the Doctor asks him what's in the wormhole. He says it hides a "God of Fear" from another reality, a reality of fear. The Doctor deduces that this entity created the wormhole, a singularity bridge, to enter N-Space. It also created the unexpectedly humid atmosphere on Phobos, making the moon more suitable for its pending arrival.

According to Kai this entity fed on fear and adrenaline, but pure fear without a "spoonful of sugar" in the form of love or excitement would poison it. To appease the entity, Kai created the Phobians from the park's construction droids, and designed them to kill guests and generate fear among the adrenaline-filled visitors. This fed the entity, but was also making it stronger.

The entity begins to speak through Eris, revealing that has learned about this reality from Kai, but speaks through the body of someone he loves so that Kai will obey it. As well as making Kai obedient, this will also sustain within him the combination of fear and love that the entity feeds upon. The Doctor tells Drew to grab Eris and tie her up, immobilising the Entity which has yet to fully break through to its new reality. When Eris is tied, Kai reveals his plan was to terrify Doctor and Lucie before throwing them into the wormhole, in order to poison the creature with pure fear.

Using a climbing rope, the Doctor descends into the wormhole to communicate telepathically with the entity. He shows it all of the horrors he has seen. The entity begs him to stop but he keeps going. The entity says it will give him everything he wants. He keeps going, showing it fears of the future. Eventually the entity is sick from the pure fear it has been fed, and lets go of Eris' body. Lucie comforts Kai when they both realise that Eris is dead. The Doctor then shouts up, asking them to pull him out of the wormhole.

Drew goes to tell Hayden what happened. Farl tells Amy that he doesn't want to split up with her, but was afraid about their safety. Amy tells him that she's carrying his baby.

Kai asks Lucie to light Eris' funeral pyre. He tells Lucie and the Doctor that he'd heard the Entity in his head for so long that he had lost all perspective. The Doctor said Eris bought them vital time by fighting back against the entity, preventing it from fully moving into their reality. Even though the entity has retreated, the Doctor suggests keeping Lunar Park adrenaline-free for a while to be on the safe side. The Doctor and Lucie then give Kai some time alone with Eris.

Lucie asks the Doctor about all of the fear he has, but he dodges the question. Lucie suggests that he might be scarier than the monsters, and they head back to the TARDIS.

Drew is feeding Hayden in the hospital when Hayden asks why Drew puts up with so much from him. Drew is about to confess his love for Hayden when a woman named 'Rosa' comes round from a head injury she had sustained when falling of a bicycle a few days previously. Almost immediately, Rosa asks Hayden and Drew if a woman named Lucie Miller has arrived yet. They tell her that Lucie has been and gone, and Rosa (who is revealed to in fact be the Headhunter) sets off to chase her.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Paul McGann
 * Lucie Miller - Sheridan Smith
 * Headhunter / Amy / Chrissie - Katarina Olsson
 * Kai Tobias - Timothy West
 * Eris - Nerys Hughes
 * Drew / Scott - Ben Silverstone
 * Hayd - John Schwab
 * Farl - Tim Sutton

Crew

 * Cover Art - Alex Mallinson
 * Associate Producer & Director - Barnaby Edwards
 * Executive Producer - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
 * Music - Andy Hardwick
 * Producer Nicholas Briggs and Sharon Gosling
 * Script Editor - Alan Barnes
 * Sound Design - Gareth Jenkins
 * Writer - Eddie Robson

Worldbuilding

 * Githians are huge, furry humanoids that humans dislike due to their muscular bodies.
 * Lucie compares Amy to Polly Pocket and Farl to Hagrid.
 * Lucie is amazed when she looks up and sees the surface of Mars.

Continuity

 * The TARDIS lands halfway up a mountain. It previously did that in the previous story (AUDIO: Immortal Beloved) and on Peladon. (TV: The Curse of Peladon)
 * The idea of a god-like entity pushing its way through from another universe, feeding on emotions, was explored in greater detail in PROSE: Where Angels Fear and PROSE: Twilight of the Gods.
 * AUDIO: The Fearmonger also features an entity which fed off of fear.
 * AUDIO: Deimos, like Phobos, is named after the Martian moon on which it takes place. It also features space tourists encountering an ancient threat. Both stories note the meaning of their name in Greek, "dread" and "fear", respectively.
 * Lunar Park was already operational by the 23rd century. Gregson Grenville, a security guard on the Deimos moonbase, described it as a "hippie holiday camp." (AUDIO: Deimos)