The Shadow of the Scourge (audio story)

 was the thirteenth story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Paul Cornell and featured Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, Sophie Aldred as Ace and Lisa Bowerman as Bernice Summerfield.

Bowerman had already been portraying Bernice Summerfield in Big Finish's own brand of Bernice audio stories. The cover of this story features Lisa Bowerman's promotional image for Big Finish's Bernice Summerfield series (which began with Oh No It Isn't!), Sylvester McCoy in a photoshopped image based on his New Adventures costume (which can be seen on the cover of Original Sin) and Sophie Aldred in the costume that was created for Ace! The Inside Story of the End of an Era based on her appearances in Virgin New Adventure novels (post-Deceit).

Publisher's summary
The Pinehill Crest Hotel in Kent is host to three very different events: a cross-stitch convention, an experiment in time travel and... the summoning of the Scourge.

The Seventh Doctor, Bernice and Ace find themselves dealing with a dead body that has come back to life, a mystical symbol that possesses its host, and a threat from another universe that is ready for every trick the Doctor's got up his sleeve.

This time, has the Doctor gone too far?

Part One
Using a sort of ritual, a group of people are calling to an extra-terrestrial "Ohm", who appears. One member of the group, Brian Hughes, is an unbeliever, so Ohm uses him as a host. The woman conducting this ritual, Annie Carpenter, believes he's faking, but Ohm convinces her that he's real. Annie said she created Ohm. Others like Ohm hide within the bodies of the group, but allow them their consciousness back, with a shadow on their hands which portents strange events in time.

The TARDIS trio arrives on the roof and descends into a 20th century hotel lobby in 2003- the Pine hill Crest Hotel in Kent. A dead body is discovered- a likely homeless old man. Micheal Pembroke presents a device to some people and fires it. Brian Hughes enters. The Doctor books three rooms under Benny's name, and has a dizzy spell, due to a "time experiment" in the building due to Pembroke's "temporal accelerator" interacting with the other convention's in the hotel- Carpenter's summoning rituals and a cross-stitch convention.

Ace heads to the experiment, Benny goes to the mystic, and the Doctor explores the cross stitch convention. Benny is told that Ohm is Carpenter's spirit guide, an inter-dimemsional being, and they summon Ohm. Hughes questions Pembroke, and finds Hughes has knowledge he didn't know he had. Ace gets in an argument, and leaves, running into a cross-stitcher who tells Ace the dead man is "Old Will". She demonstrates a lot of police knowledge. Old Will had a strange burn or shadow on his hand. Meanwhile, Mary Hughes, Brian's wife, talks to Benny in Carpenter's room about the difficulties in her relationship. She tells her about the mark on both Brian and Annie Carpenter's hand.

The Doctor leaves the cross stitchers while Benny talks to Annie, finding her to be feeling ill, and pregnant. She questions Annie on the patterned burn on her hand. At the same time, Hughes somehow adjusts Pembroke's device to do something extraordinary, but locks the controls on some distance source. He leaves. Ace and the cross-stitcher talk about Hughes, who locks all the doors of the hotel, swallowing the key while people pound on the doors from outside. Hughes doesn't know why he's doing this.

Annie re-establishes contact with Ohm, who says a gateway is opening while Pembroke's machine runs on it's own paradigms and does something strange. An earthquake seems to happen, causing chaos for the cross-stitchers. The creature within Hughes says they are the Scourge. The Doctor is strangely calm as everyone panics. The Scourge leader arrives through Annie's ritual, and Old Will, somehow reanimated, approaches the Doctor and recognises him as a Time Lord. The Doctor seems to be working with him, and surrenders Earth to the Scourge.

to be added

Cast

 * The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
 * Ace - Sophie Aldred
 * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
 * Annie Carpenter - Holly King
 * Mary Hughes - Caroline Burns Cooke
 * Brian Hughes - Lennox Greaves
 * Michael Pembroke - Michael Piccarilli
 * Gary Williams - Nigel Fairs
 * Scourge Leader - Peter Trapani

Foods and beverages

 * The Doctor muses to himself, "Why does tea made in a hotel room taste worse than tea made in any other situation?".

Objects

 * Ace uses a tool which the Spacefleet use to pry the casings off Daleks to open the lift doors.

Species

 * The Scourge require surrender papers to invade Earth.
 * The Scourge's voices inspire religious awe in humans, allowing them to command whomever they wish.
 * Benny mentions two turtles, Squidgy and Speckley, which she kept when she had run away from Spacefleet Academy.

The Doctor

 * While inside his mind, Bernice sees the Doctor's previous regenerations and what his eighth incarnation will be.
 * The Doctor discovered the Scourge whilst dreaming on the astral plane.

Continuity

 * Ace is pictured wearing her Spacefleet combat outfit, placing this after PROSE: Deceit.
 * When the Doctor falls unconscious, Bernice says he would have told them that "where there is life, there is hope". (TV: Planet of the Spiders)
 * Inside the Doctor's mind, there are mental constructs of concepts (TV: Nightmare in Silver) such as the mathematics of flight.
 * Bernice mentions that Ace has been within the Doctor's mind. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation)
 * Bernice meets the Doctor's eighth incarnation in PROSE: The Dying Days.