The Crucible of Souls (audio story)

 was the fourth and final story in the audio anthology Doom Coalition 3, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by John Dorney and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, Nicola Walker as Liv Chenka, Hattie Morahan as Helen Sinclair and Alex Kingston as River Song.

Publisher's summary
The date has been set.

The trap has been sprung.

A life has been taken and a maniac is on the loose.

With the TARDIS crew separated and in terrible trouble, will today be the day the bad guys win?

Spoilers...

Plot
The Doctor struggles to control the Clocksmith's TARDIS, which resists him and River apparently due to it not wanting to travel to the coordinates of doomsday. They materialise in real space with the aim of flying to the coordinates without using the Time Vortex.

The Nine plays around with the Doctor's console whilst Liv explains regeneration to Helen, believing that the Nine is the Doctor's next incarnation. The Nine meditates to hold the voices of his previous incarnations at bay and, proving to be a kleptomaniac, excitedly heads to the wardrobe room for new clothes.

The Doctor finds that reality beyond the point determined by the Doomsday Chronometer no longer exists, explaining why the TARDIS cannot head in that direction. He tries to find a trace of the destruction and finds a number of trails travelling backwards in time, with one stopping in the recent past.

The Nine dresses himself up as a dandy pirate and is reminded by Liv and Helen of the Clocksmith, the Chronometer, the Eleven, the Sonomancer and how the Doctor had been intending to visit Gallifrey. The Nine agrees that they should go, saying that they should visit the archives in the Capitol.

The Doctor and River arrive at their destination, a drifting, old-style timeship which they believe is unlikely to belong to whoever destroyed the universe. They reach the control room and find it full of the corpses of temporal refugees, killed to prevent them telling anybody in the past about the universe's destruction.

To be completed.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Paul McGann
 * Liv Chenka - Nicola Walker
 * Helen Sinclair - Hattie Morahan
 * River Song - Alex Kingston
 * Padrac - Robert Bathurst
 * The Imposter - John Heffernan
 * Captain - Beth Chalmers

Continuity

 * The Nine ponders what he should call himself if he was to become immortal. He believes that the Infinite would make him sound too much like the Infinite warriors. (AUDIO: The Seeds of War)
 * Liv recalls the circumstances of her last trip to Gallifrey, and the escape of the Eleven. (AUDIO: The Eleven)
 * Liv recalls Stormblood. (AUDIO: Scenes From Her Life)
 * Padrac claims that in every matrix simulation of Gallifrey's future bar one, Gallifrey is destroyed in one way or another. (PROSE: Goth Opera, Dead Romance, Alien Bodies, The Ancestor Cell, TV: The End of the World, AUDIO: Zagreus, Enemy Lines)
 * The end of this story leads directly into the next one, AUDIO: Ship in a Bottle.
 * Gloria Swannicker previously pretended to be a regeneration of the Doctor in order to trick Melanie Bush into assisting a robbery. (AUDIO: A Life of Crime)