Stage Fright (audio story)

 was the third full cast audio story in the The Sixth Doctor: The Last Adventure audio anthology released in 2015 by Big Finish Productions.

Publisher's summary
The Doctor and Flip visit Victorian London, where investigators Jago and Litefoot explore theatrical performances that have echoes of the Doctor's past lives...

Plot
The story opens on the Valeyard staging a theatre play about a group of people experiencing their friend dying. He explains that he will himself be playing the dying man and then goes on to instruct the actors, Susie, Sylvie, and Tommy, in their roles. During all this a weird machine keeps humming in the background. As the Valeyard lays out the scene, Sylvie interrupts him with questions, noticing that another actor, Johnny, has mysteriously disappeared since the first rehearsal, but the Valeyard responds that it is normal for actors to come and go, and she accepts the explanation though she still finds it strange. She then asks about the plot of the play, pointing out that when she rehearsed it alone with the Valeyard it was about man dying from being poisoned, but now it has changed to be about a man dying after falling from a great height, to which the Valeyard answers that the final act is always the most important one and sometimes you have to rewrite it several times to get it right. He then asks everyone to take their places and begin the rehearsal. It soon becomes clear that the scene is actually an re-enactment of the Fourth Doctor's regeneration, though with slightly altered lines. As the actors play their roles and begs the Doctor not to die, the strange machine begins humming with increasing intensity, and soon the actors start screaming in extreme agony.

Elsewhere in London, the Doctor and Flip arrives in the TARDIS. Wanting to show Flip the cultural side of Victorian London, the Doctor takes her to the New Regency Theatre, but they find it to be to locked with a sign explaining that the building is temporarily closed for private use. The Doctor decides that they should instead try to find the owner of the theatre, his old friend Henry Gordon Jago, and the Doctor has a good idea where to start.

The Doctor and Flip finds Jargo, along with the Doctor's other old friend, Professor George Litefoot, at the Red Tavern as they are being served a lavish lunch by Ellie Higson. After he has introduced Flip to Jargo and Litefoot, the latter tells the Doctor about some rather mysterious murders involving some impossibly old bodies he has been investigating lately, which intrigues the Doctor who offers his help. Jargo, meanwhile, offers to show Flip around the New Regency Theatre while the Doctor and Litefoot visits the morgue.

more to be added

Cast

 * The Doctor - Colin Baker
 * Flip Jackson - Lisa Greenwood
 * Henry Gordon Jago - Christopher Benjamin
 * George Litefoot - Trevor Baxter
 * Ellie Higson - Lisa Bowerman
 * The Valeyard - Michael Jayston
 * Susie/Sylvie - Andree Bernard
 * Bella - Lizzie Roper

Continuity

 * The Valeyard performs scenes of the Doctor's past regenerations on stage at the theatre company: a frail man, a trial with a computer genius and a Scotsman, giant spiders in an army base, falling from a great height, and being poisoned. (TV: The Tenth Planet, The War Games, Planet of the Spiders, Logopolis, The Caves of Androzani) More theatrical versions of dialogue originally spoken in these stories are presented here.
 * Jago and Litefoot recall previously meeting the Doctor with a different face. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang, AUDIO: The Justice of Jalxar)
 * The Valeyard uses the pseudonym of Timothy Yardvale, which both recalls the name he previously used. (AUDIO: The End of the Line)