Meanwhile, Elsewhere (audio story)

Meanwhile, Elsewhere was the first audio story in the audio anthology Cass, the fifth series of The Eighth Doctor: Time War. It was written by Tim Foley and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, Emma Campbell-Jones as Cass Fermazzi and Sonny McGann as Alex Campbell.

Publisher's summary
The Doctor and Alex arrive on a tropical beach where something's amiss.

Meanwhile, elsewhere... a desperate pilot runs for his life.

Meanwhile, elsewhere... it's Cass Fermazzi's first day on an errand-class starship.

Meanwhile, elsewhere... it's the beginning of the end of everything.

Plot
The Doctor and Alex land on a tropical beach on Shimmer where the Doctor detects a hyperstatic temporal incursion which will tear apart the planet.

Cass reports to the Vice for her first commission on an errand-class ship and is shown to her room where Pester, a robot, is also staying. Despite her being an engineer, the Vice has her clean up Squidface's cat sick and she encounters Hieronyma Friend, the sole passenger, who gives her a device to take to the flight deck to ensure that the ship does not crash. On her way, she suddenly finds herself in a forest with Alex; when she returns, she tells the Vice, who has heard similar reports from other members of the crew and says that the ship has no passenger.

On the ship, Alex meets Friend and the Doctor joins Cass on the flight deck, attempting to help save the life of the sick Captain Mex. The captain dies, however, and Garaban flies burst from his corpse, indicating that he visited Garaba despite it being thirty-thousand light-years away; the Doctor explains that portals are opening all over the ship and Cass manages to find a way to detect them. They join Alex and Friend and learn that the latter is a temporal diplomat from the Council of the Last and that she gave Cass a dimension slider, putting the ship outside time to stabilise it. She was travelling with a temporal creature which was erased from time, but it has escaped its vortextual storage unit.

Being outside of time, the ship's stringbearer engines, which rely on the strings of reality, needs to be shut down to prevent an explosion. Cass and Alex, who has no memory of meeting Cass before, go to deal with the engines whilst the Doctor and Friend go in search of the creature, building a scoop in order to capture it. When Cass and Alex reach the engines, Alex sets it to overload and places it in a force field before jumping through another portal with Cass. They arrive on Shimmer and meet the younger Doctor and Alex, confirming the Doctor's suspicions about the hyperstatic temporal incursions.

The Doctor explains to Friend that, after encountering Cass and future-Alex, he and Alex travelled to Bissle III, Garaba and Hervandel, where Alex first met Cass. They eventually got to the ship where they met Friend, who the Doctor knows does not really have a temporal creature and has being using the vortextual storage unit to imprison the inhabitants of various planets. She admits that she is intending on turning them into Meanwhile Soldiers to sell to the highest bidder, but the fracturing of reality has nothing to do with her. Alex and Cass return from Shimmer and the Doctor reveals that the portals are being shut down by the dematerialisation of his TARDIS on each of the planets, drawing off the energy.

Locked onto Alex and Cass's biosignatures, Friend attempts to scoop them away into the cage. It does not work, however, as Alex and Cass returned from Shimmer earlier than expected and sabotaged the scoop settings to instead target the Garaban flies, which the Doctor says was incredibly risky. The Vice locks Friend up and she asks whether Alex knows that the version of him from this universe is dead and why he is taking on Cass, who has declined the Vice's offer of a promotion to join him. He says that he feels that someone is missing and that Cass might fill that gap; he leaves with Alex and Cass, possibly with Squidface aboard, and asks where they will go next.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Paul McGann
 * Cass Fermazzi - Emma Campbell-Jones
 * Alex Campbell - Sonny McGann
 * Hieronyma Friend - Jaye Griffiths
 * Vice - Nicholas Boulton
 * Mex - Greig Johnson

Worldbuilding

 * Cass has several brothers, enough to man a flight deck. The siblings once rescued a Mini 60 from the scrap shores.
 * Cass got drunk and beat up several Martians the night before departure.
 * Cass jokingly mentions ballet.
 * Squidface is a cat. Alex believes that he has sneaked aboard the TARDIS.
 * Stanley saw an icy blast near the engines.
 * Trisk reports sand in the mess hall.
 * Alex looks for wood nymphs
 * The Doctor and Alex have been to Woodstock.
 * Garaba is thirty-thousand light-years from the ship's position.
 * The Doctor and Cass encounter a hippopotamus-esque creature from Bissle III.
 * Friend says that she is on her way to Gulta and that the skirmishes near the Morning Realm might soon end.
 * Friend gives Cass a dimension slider.
 * Cass mentions string theory.

Continuity

 * The Doctor is travelling with Alex. (AUDIO: Restoration of the Daleks)
 * The Doctor introduces himself to Cass by saying, "I'm a doctor, but probably not the one you were expecting". (TV: The Night of the Doctor)
 * Cass mentions Hudson Sage. (AUDIO: Vespertine)
 * When the Doctor tells Friend that he is travelling with Alex, she says that it "sounds blissful". He wonders why she used that word and later says that he is letting Cass join him because he feels that someone is missing from the TARDIS. (AUDIO: The Starship of Theseus, etc.)