Hexagora (audio story)

 was the second story in the third series of The Lost Stories, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Paul Finch, from the original story idea by Peter Ling & Hazel Adair, and featured Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, Sarah Sutton as Nyssa and Janet Fielding as Tegan Jovanka.

Publisher's summary
When a newspaper reporter goes missing, the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa uncover a case of alien abduction. The trail leads them to the planet Luparis, and a city that appears to be a replica of Tudor era London.

What are the monsters that lurk in the shadows? And what is the terrible secret at the heart of Luparis? To save a world, the Doctor must try and defeat the evil plans of Queen Zafira.

And one of her plans is to marry him...

Part one
The Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan relax in a villa outside of Brisbane following the events on Florana, but Tegan reads in a newspaper about how investigative reporter and school friend Mike Bretherton disappeared after reporting a meteor and enlists the Doctor and Nyssa's help in searching for him. A visit to Mike's apartment in the TARDIS reveals that Mike had been investigating a series of disappearances, after which the Doctor uses an ionograph to detect two space pods which travelled to Luparis, a tropical and supposedly empty planet. They travel there and find that Lupara greatly resembles 16th century London.

The trio meet Lord Jezzevar, one of the two current husbands of Queen Zafira, who invites them to a duplicate of the Palace of Whitehall upon learning that Nyssa is effectively a Trakenite royal. Knowing that they are unlikely to find Mike on their own, they accept and are given Zafira's hospitality. Nyssa goes riding with Jezzevar and the Doctor goes for a walk on the veranda with Zafira, who indicates that she is attracted to him and advises that he direct any questions about the city to Astorius, the Minister of Science and chief astrologer. Meanwhile, the impatient Tegan scales a gate and heads back into the city, finding the TARDIS gone and Mike living as Sergeant Zax, a member of the city watch.

Part two
Zax arrests Tegan for walking the streets unaccompanied, but Lord Zellenger, head of security and another of Zafira's husbands, learns who she is and takes her back to the palace. Zafira and Astorius explain to the Doctor about how Luparis is rapidly cooling and that people are going into comas, leading them to start putting people into sleep pods in rooms known as nurseries. The sleep pods are arranged in pairs, one being for the husband and the other for the wife, but only one of each pair seems to be operational. The Doctor is also told that he will become Zafira's next husband and be known as her Consort Counsellor, prompting the upset Zellenger to engage him in a duel. Although the Doctor is able to disarm him, Zellenger accuses him of terrorism and has Zax take him to the nurseries.

Tegan catches up with Nyssa, who informs her that Jezzavar is planning to rebel against Zafira and would like to install Nyssa as her replacement; he believes that Zafira is too soft on her people and intends to rule through Nyssa. When serving girls Anza and Eva inform them of the Doctor and Zafira's wedding and that Nyssa and Tegan will be maids-in-waiting, they disguise themselves in the maids' clothes and run from a guard onto the streets. They hide in a dark passage where they they hear a clicking sound which Tegan heard before she met Zax. They flee to another hiding place, but a panel opens and they realise that they are in the nest of a group of insect creatures, one of them tells Tegan that he is Mike Bretherton.

Part three
Mike explains that the Hexagora put humans into insect bodies and did so to him because he was close to discovering them. Nyssa and Tegan go with him into the secret passageways and, whilst Tegan sleeps, Nyssa tells Mike about the Doctor and how he can help. She goes to Jezzavar's party without telling Tegan and pretends to join him in his planned coup d'état; when Tegan awakens, she runs from Mike to go and find her.

Astorius refuses to place the Doctor in a sleep pod without an express order from Zafira and sends Zax away to help when one of the sleepers is brought back to the palace. The Doctor accuses him of lying about the sleep pods, leading Astorius to admit that his race are the Hexagora and that Lupara is based on their memories of a temporary stay in London. They have been kidnapping and switching bodies with humans whilst the youngest Hexagora mature enough to leave the planet, but damage to their technology means that they are unlikely to be able to leave and, as a result, the human hosts are to be permanent, a prospect that troubles Astorius. The Doctor is chased by Zellenger and runs to Zafira, telling her that he would love to be her husband.

Part four
Zafira makes an order that Zellenger will be banished from the inner courts and be made to sleep outside the palace for twenty-five years, after which they will be divorced. Upon learning that the Doctor knows the truth, she further explains that the hexian substance containing the knowledge of the Hexagora is degrading and that their only option, given the short life of humans, is to kidnap Gallifreyans and mate with them to produce children who will be able to out-live the ice age of Luparis. The wedding goes ahead and Jezzavar attacks, holding Zafira at knifepoint until Astorius holds a flintlock into his back and makes him let her go. Zafira sentences him to death, but the Doctor asks for mercy.

The Doctor realises that the hexian is increasingly inaccessible because it no longer recognises the Hexagora due to them being in human bodies and that they will have to return to their original forms. The Hexagora act on this and gain the knowledge to rebuild their space pods to travel to a new world and to send the humans home, with Mike asking to be sent home last. This gives Tegan, who saved his life on the way to the palace, the chance to say goodbye and to promise to see him soon. On Earth, Beth, the human whose body Zafira used, tells her husband Bill, whose body was used by Zellenger, that she had a strange dream and asks whether they are going to watch the Queen's silver jubilee.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Peter Davison
 * Tegan Jovanka - Janet Fielding
 * Nyssa - Sarah Sutton
 * Queen Zafira - Jacqueline Pearce
 * Mike Bretherton - Toby Hadoke
 * Lord Jezzavar - Richard Mark
 * Lord Zellenger - Dan Starkey
 * Astorius - Sean Brosnan
 * Seamstress - Caroline Keiff

Uncredited cast

 * Zax - Toby Hadoke (BFX: Hexagora)

Crew

 * Cover Art - Alex Mallinson
 * Director - Ken Bentley
 * Executive Producers - Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery
 * Music and Sound Design - Simon Robinson
 * Producer - David Richardson
 * Script Editor - John Dorney
 * Writers - Peter Ling and Hazel Adair, adapted by Paul Finch

Worldbuilding

 * Graham Sturges is Mike's news editor.
 * Luparis is the third planet of Proxima Centauri and is supposed to be overgrown with no intelligent life.
 * Proxima Centauri is the closest solar system to earth's own.
 * Tegan and Mike Bretherton, who were next door neighbours, went to high school together in Brisbane. They were taught physics and chemistry by Miss Anderson. When she was fifteen, she broke her toe during track and gym and Mike carried her books home for her.
 * Luparis is a replica of Tudor London, featuring reproductions of the River Thames (which has frozen over due to the planet's rapidly falling temperatures, leading to a frost fair), London Bridge and the Palace of Whitehall.
 * The Doctor once sparred with Errol Flynn.
 * Tegan and Nyssa each have their own TARDIS keys.
 * The Doctor says that Gallifreyans can live for "millennia".
 * When attempting to climb the locked 12 foot gate, Tegan comments to herself about "always wearing heels at times like these."
 * The Doctor uses a device called an ionograph to help track down Mike. This is a device that can detect a diminishing ion stream from a spacecraft, or rather space pod. The Doctor further explains that "a spacepod isn't made of solid material; it is a spherical force-field, a sort of gravity bubble that uses photonic propulsion, capable of fantastic velocity and ideal for interplanetary travel, except that it can only usually carry one or two passengers at a time." He likens them to eddy made by liquids in flow; Nyssa comments that it is similar to a vapour trail from an earth aircraft.
 * Astorius describes the Agellae as "a race of hideous, moronic ape creatures".
 * The Hexagorans use a device called a "Scry warp" to observe other potentially habitable planets.
 * Hexian is a material from the Hexagoran's homeworld that they use for both nutrients and technology.

Continuity

 * The Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan spend several days on holiday in Brisbane, Australia following their ordeal with the Elite on Florana. (AUDIO: The Elite) The three of them and Turlough would subsequently visit Brisbane during World War VI in the early 51st century. (AUDIO: The Butcher of Brisbane) Later in his personal timeline, the Doctor would return to the city on 22 September 2006, where he would be reunited with Tegan, approximately 22 years after she had left the TARDIS following an encounter with the Daleks in London in 1984. (AUDIO: The Gathering)
 * The Doctor tells Lord Jezzavar of the destruction of Traken in 1981 while Nyssa obliquely refers to the death of her father Tremas. (TV: Logopolis)
 * Nyssa mentions the time of Malador. (AUDIO: The Guardians of Prophecy)
 * Tegan refers to the Great Fire of London in September 1666. (TV: The Visitation)
 * The Doctor tells Queen Zafira that he has previously visited the Palace of Whitehall. He did so in November 1688 during his second incarnation in the company of Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot (AUDIO: The Glorious Revolution) and again, during his fourth incarnation, in 1588 in the company of Leela. (AUDIO: The Devil's Armada)
 * The Doctor mentions that he has witnessed humans thriving during one of Earth's Ice Ages. (TV: An Unearthly Child)
 * Tegan refers to Nyssa being brainwashed by the Elite on Florana. (AUDIO: The Elite)
 * The Doctor has been reluctantly engaged before. (TV: The Aztecs) He would get engaged to a royal monarch again, (TV: The Day of the Doctor) as well as, accidentally, to Marilyn Monroe. (TV: A Christmas Carol)
 * The Doctor would again encounter aliens snatching human bodies. (TV: The Unquiet Dead)
 * The Doctor and Nyssa have visited a planet resembling a period of England's past. (AUDIO: Spare Parts)
 * The Doctor once sparred with Errol Flynn. He would mention this again in his twelfth incarnation during his duel with Robin Hood. (TV: Robot of Sherwood)
 * The Doctor mentions that his home planet Gallifrey is located in the constellation of Kasterborous. (TV: Voyage of the Damned, The Day of the Doctor)
 * The Doctor is forced to wear a wedding suit, complete with trunk hoes, cartwheel ruff and tights. He wore a similar costume under different circumstances when attending a party at Cranleigh Hall. (TV: Black Orchid)
 * The Doctor has visited other planets in the Acteon galaxy before, such as Metebelis III. (TV: The Green Death, Planet of the Spiders, Hide)
 * The Tenth Doctor later mentioned he would be rubbish at weddings, especially his own. (TV: Blink)