Together in Eclectic Dreams (audio story)

Together in Eclectic Dreams was the third story in the audio anthology The Stuff of Nightmares, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Roy Gill and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor.

Publisher's summary
The Sixth Doctor takes companion Mari to the Archipelago of High Dream to try and stop the nightmares she's having in the TARDIS.

Instead, they find the Lethe Foundation, a research facility overseen by musician Tara, lulling her clients to sleep with soothing melodies. But the Kantrofarri are hunting, and a mystery Green Man holds the key to escape...

Plot
As Mari has been having bad dreams aboard the TARDIS, the Sixth Doctor takes her to the Archipelago of High Dream to visit a monastery. The monks welcome them and help Mari fall asleep. She finds herself in the TARDIS with the Eighth Doctor, who tells her that she has not been to High Dream and that her life is draining away as she sleeps, her brain being devoured. He tells her to wake up.

Mari wakes up at the Lethe Foundation and is told by her sleep mentor, Sam Duffy, that she came here with the Doctor for her sleep troubles. She tells Sam about the Green Man she saw, recognises Professor Klovis as the monk from High Dream and wonders how she and the Doctor got here. The Doctor privately says to her that they have to investigate and goes to speak with Tara at the Sleep Museum whilst she stays with Sam. She learns that Sam has the same head pains that she gets and that, when he dreams of someone, he meets them in real life.

After seeing a slimy trail in the corridor, Mari falls asleep and finds herself with the Eighth Doctor again. He says that he needs her help to escape and that she must remember him, but she soon awakes back on the ward with Sam and the Doctor. The Doctor tastes the slime and identifies it as a mucus excreted by some crustaceans and asks about Jed Fraser, a dreamer who has died and has a puncture wound to his temples. He examines the Dream Guide by Fraser's bed and is taken to the sleep bay by an orderly on Tara's orders.

Mari and Sam fall asleep and encounter the Eighth Doctor, who tells them that High Dream is real and that, when he visited there some time ago, he was given a flask containing a Kantrofarri and took it aboard the TARDIS. The Kantrofarri attack, helped by Mari and Sam thinking about them, but the trio escape thanks to Sam's dream skills. Upon realising which Doctor Mari is travelling with, the Eighth Doctor realises that something is wrong as he cannot remember ever having travelled with her.

The Doctor finds that the Dream Guides contain infant Kantrofarri and is saved from them by Mari, the Eighth Doctor and Sam. The two Doctors use Contact to freeze the Kantrofarri, scaring them with their memories, and they begin to crumble to dust. They turn against Professor Klovis. Tara knocks Sam unconscious, sending the Eighth Doctor back into the dream world, but the Doctor has realised that they too are in a dream and that he and Mari do not really travel together. Tara refuses to believe him until the Doctor asks her, Mari and Sam to sing one of her songs and find that they do not know any. The Kantrofarri attack her.

Sam is able to wake himself, the Doctor, Mari and Tara up. The Doctor awakes in the TARDIS and a Kantrofarri falls off him and turns to dust. He switches off the intruder alarm, regrets accepting a flask from High Dream and remembers that Mari was never really with him. He wonders if he has been on his own too long and says that there is always time for one more adventure. He dematerialises the TARDIS.

Mari wakes up to Sam knocking on his door and remembers him from the freshers' fair. As the radio DJ talks about Tara's new instrumental song, Dream Guide, Mari gets ready to begin a "new adventure" with Sam.

Cast

 * The Doctors - Colin Baker and Paul McGann
 * Mari Yoshida - Susan Hingley
 * Tara - Rebecca Front
 * Sam Duffy / Orderly / Radio DJ - Sam Stafford
 * The Monk of High Dream / Professor Klovis - Raj Ghatak

Worldbuilding

 * Mari says that her grandmother told her about Tsukumogami: household objects which, after a hundred years, come to life.
 * The Doctor says that he had a hatstand which dropped things and hid his coat.
 * The Doctor says that some people can get timesick.
 * Mari likens the Eighth Doctor to Heathcliff.
 * Mari likens the Eighth Doctor to an 'edgy Sergeant Pepper'
 * The Doctor quotes William Shakespeare and describes him as a nervy sleeper and nocturnal chewer of goose quills.
 * Mari mentions Jules Verne.
 * Klovis is a somnologist.
 * Klovis mentions alpha waves.
 * In legend, Lethe was the river encircling the cave of Hypnos.
 * The Sleep Museum contains electric cardiogram profiles of atypical dreamers, Native American webcharms and dreamcatchers and records of dreams.
 * Mari likens Sam to a heron.
 * Robert Louis Stevenson got the idea for Jekyll and Hyde during a fever dream.
 * Niels Bohr dreamt of electrons orbiting a nucleus.
 * Mari is a student of journalism.
 * The Lethe Foundation is in the Brecon Beacons.
 * Mari says that it has been ages since she saw her mother and father.
 * Sam says that he was kicked out of the school choir as he was dragging them down.
 * Kitsune are shapeshifting foxes. Mari had comic books full of stories about them.
 * Sam says that the Green Man changes face. His faces include an old skeleton man, a woman wearing a rainbow and, often, a man with wild hair dressed in shades of velvet moss.
 * The Doctor mentions Jayne's Guide to Psychoactive Monstrosities.
 * The Doctors use Contact.
 * The Doctor had a "terrible" great-aunt who lived in a draughty house high in the Gallifreyan mountains. She would sing him lullabies.
 * The Eighth Doctor quotes Dylan Thomas.
 * Sam lives at Murray Hall and met Mari at the freshers' fair.

Continuity

 * The Eighth Doctor mentions shoes that fit abominably. (TV: Doctor Who)
 * The Sixth Doctor feels a twinge of "cosmic angst". (TV: The Five Doctors)
 * The Eighth Doctor mentions the one with the ears. (TV: Rose)