Ghost Walk (audio story)

Ghost Walk was the two hundred and thirty-fifth story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by James Goss and featured Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor, Matthew Waterhouse as Adric, Sarah Sutton as Nyssa and Janet Fielding as Tegan Jovanka.

Publisher's summary
This is a city of ghosts and no-one knows them better than Leanne. Twice a night she leads tourists to visit the most haunted sites - the Hanging Yard, the Witch Pool, the Screaming House, and, of course, the Catacombs.

Leanne's realised the ghosts of the city are real. Something's lurking in the Catacombs - an ancient force that has been growing in the darkness for centuries. Sabaoth is returning and they must be stopped before they devour the world. Leanne knows this, because a ghost told her.

A ghost called The Doctor.

Part one
Whilst Leanne is giving a ghost tour at the catacombs beneath a city on Earth, a man runs to an altar in a forbidden room and declares that the hungry Sabaoth is coming and needs Leanne. She hears the voice of the Doctor in her mind, apologising for the theatrics and asking if she believes in ghosts.

The Doctor answers a distress call and pilots the TARDIS to the catacombs in the 17th century instead of aiming for Heathrow. The travellers split up and Nyssa senses something which attacks Adric and pushes into her mind to make her feel afraid and hungry. After leaving a room with markings written in chicken blood and bones drained of energy, the Doctor and Tegan find Adric and Nyssa shivering on the floor and get them back to the TARDIS, but the ship is dead and the Doctor instead uses an emergency temporal shift to send his companions to safety. Tegan, however, chooses to stay and help.

Leanne now understands how the Doctor ended up being stuck in the catacombs and that all of the talk of hauntings over the centuries have indeed been real. She does not know how he got out, however, and he answers that he did not. He says that he died in the catacombs.

Part two
Having appeared in 1738, Nyssa is rescued from being burnt as a witch by Matthew Doyle and taken to his vicarage where she tells him about time travel and learns that the catacombs are currently owned by the reclusive Brotherhood of Sabaoth. Matthew visits them to find her friends and is kept waiting in the cold for hours, after which he kisses Nyssa and is rejected when he offers her a quiet life with him. Mrs Stubbs spreads the rumour that Matthew has been bewitched by Nyssa and, heartbroken and kept from his church, he stops defending her and she is to be drowned, watched by the Brotherhood.

The Doctor is without a plan and realises from Tegan's lethargy that she is being fed on by the alien. To keep her awake, he makes her walk with him around the catacombs.

Adric confesses in court to stealing a loaf of bread and is imprisoned pending execution. The cloaked Brotherhood attend his execution, drawn by the temporal energy around him and intending to feed it to Sabaoth, and he ensures that his name is mentioned in the newspaper. A noose is placed around Adric's neck and, despite his request for a few minutes more in the hopes that the Doctor might save him at the last minute, the floor beneath him drops as the crowd cheers.

Part three
Leanne goes to the Doctor's tomb in the catacombs and starts breaking into it using a fire extinguisher, but the Doctor stops her so as to prevent the question of whether he is alive or dead from being answered. She runs when the Brotherhood appear and the Doctor informs her that they are wraiths, come to use her as a psychic anchor for Sabaoth due to her having worn a groove in reality with her tours of places connected to him.

Tegan goes looking for a pickaxe in a TARDIS storeroom and is locked inside by the alien, who is able to speak using the ship and tells her that he wants to be reborn and devour the world. He sends her spirit ahead in time to the 1980s using her own energy and the telepathic circuits to serve as his anchor and she tries to warn people, but returns to her body unaware of how successful she was before apparently dying in the Doctor's arms. He puts her body into a stasis chamber and fights to stay awake.

Katya and Martin play with a ouija board and Katya becomes possessed, leading Martin to seek out Father Angelo to exorcise her. Whilst the Brotherhood stand outside the building, Father Angelo performs the ritual and she gives a warning about Sabaoth, saying that her name is Tegan Jovanka.

Part four
The Doctor temporarily disappears from Leanne's mind because of her fear overloading her telepathic channels and tells her the next day that Sabaoth has put a trigger in her mind, meaning that she will be in danger if she returns to the catacombs. He tries to make Leanne help him by causing poltergeist activity, but she blocks him out and psychically blows up a café. At work, she is approached by the Brotherhood and takes them to the Temple of Sabaoth in the catacombs, accepting that Sabaoth will return and she will die.

In the catacombs, the dying Doctor builds a wall to prevent himself and the TARDIS from being discovered and deduces from Tegan's transportation that his ship remains in the catacombs in the future. He enters a healing coma and interfaces with the TARDIS's telepathic circuits to project himself into Leanne's mind, but she sends him back in the café and he uses the recharged TARDIS to collect Adric, Nyssa and Tegan and join Leanne in the catacombs, disguised as members of the Brotherhood. Thanks to a telepathic trigger that the Doctor placed in Leanne's mind, she is able to use his power to prevent his return.

Leanne realises that the Doctor arranged Adric and Nyssa's mysterious disappearances to create two of the stops on her ghost tour and learns that Tegan was placed in a stasis chamber before death to keep Sabaoth from feeding on her, the Doctor waking her up some time after rescuing his other two companions. With the TARDIS no longer projecting, the city will no longer be home to ghostly goings-on; Leanne does not mind, however, as she has never really believed in ghosts.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Peter Davison
 * Adric - Matthew Waterhouse
 * Nyssa - Sarah Sutton
 * Tegan - Janet Fielding
 * Leanne - Fenella Woolgar
 * Matthew - Sacha Dhawan
 * Sabaoth - Stephen Greif
 * Mrs Stubbs - Carolyn Seymour
 * Giles - Philip Childs
 * Louie - John Banks
 * Nancy - Rebecca Tromans

Worldbuilding

 * The character Sabaoth derives its name from a Latinised spelling of one of the Hebrew names of God found in the Bible, "Tzeva'ot".
 * Tegan asks the Doctor if he has ever seen a Peter Cushing film. The Doctor replies "Well actually..." (PROSE: The Day of the Doctor)
 * The Doctor explains that the TARDIS is good at travelling, but the more exact point in time they can try to reach, the more unlikely the TARDIS is to find it. Nyssa comments "that's silly" but Adric retorts that it's not at a quantum level. He is, of course, referring to the famous Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which says that the more certain one is of a particle's momentum, the less certain one is of its position or vice-versa.
 * The Doctor claims he's always thought of the TARDIS as a "she", not an "it".
 * Adric quotes some sentences written on the TARDIS such as on the front door: "officers and cars respond to urgent calls".
 * Traken staircases were very straight and regular.
 * The Doctor explains that something is attacking the valency of the bonds in the molecules.
 * On Traken, fear is felt but Trakenites try not to show it.
 * The Doctor compares an interface between mental and atomic energy to the energy used to boil a kettle translating into a nice cup of tea.
 * The Doctor claims he "gabbles" when he's nervous.
 * The TARDIS telepathic circuits are mentioned and featured heavily in the story.
 * Tegan helps Adric stand using her "drunk passenger" training from her air stewardess training.
 * The HADS doesn't always activate because it is selective.
 * Tegan mentions Captain Nemo and the Nautilus, both featured in the book 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
 * Adric mentions Tegan is from Australia.
 * The author Dan Brown is mentioned.
 * Leanne used beta blockers to calm herself down before her driving exam which she passed on the fifth time, after which the examiner gave her a hug and a wagon wheel (chocolate).
 * The Doctor tried to get a cold once, just to see what all the fuss was about.
 * Tegan asks if the Doctor is "something like 8000 years old" to which the Doctor replies "more-or-less".
 * Artron energy and psychic spores are mentioned.
 * Winston Churchill liked bricklaying.
 * When Louie tells Leanne that hospitals are using candlelight for light after she blows out the city's power supply, she says it's a very "Florence Nightingale thing to do".
 * The movie Poltergeist is mentioned.
 * The Doctor is impressed with himself in that he managed to save Nyssa using underwater materialisation.
 * Emailing was banned on Traken for being too distracting.
 * Tegan says coffee is expensive in the future.
 * Humphrey Moore dies of ague.

Continuity

 * Nyssa tells Matthew about the death of her father Tremas (TV: The Keeper of Traken) and an encounter with a "giant frog". (TV: Four to Doomsday)
 * The Doctor refers to the TARDIS as a "she". The TARDIS would later inhabit the body of a female named Idris. He also mentions that it is a living entity. (TV: The Doctor's Wife)
 * The Doctor mentions the HADS. (TV: The Krotons, Cold War et al.)
 * When preparing for the worst, the Doctor offers some comfort at the sudden change by saying "Deep breath!". This exclamation was used as the title for the first episode of the Twelfth Doctor's era. (TV: Deep Breath)
 * Tegan once again exclaims, "Rabbits!" (TV: Logopolis, Frontios, et al.)
 * Tegan is still trying to get to Heathrow Airport (TV: Logopolis, et al.)
 * Nyssa falls in love again when she and the Doctor visit Stockbridge in the 21st century. (AUDIO: Circular Time: Autumn)
 * Nyssa is put on trial for being a witch and the villagers attempt to dunk her by putting her in a ducking stool. A similar trial is performed on the Thirteenth Doctor when she is also accused of being a witch. (TV: The Witchfinders)
 * After Tegan's energy is drained and she dies, the Doctor puts her body in stasis and says "Brave heart Tegan". (TV: Earthshock et al.)
 * The Doctor creates a tomb for himself so that his body will not be found, as the body of a Timelord can be turned into a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands. The Eleventh Doctor's body had to be burned after he was killed on Lake Silencio, as even a single Timelord cell could be dangerous in the wrong hands. The Tenth Doctor burned the Master's body after he refused to regenerate from a bullet wound in order to stop it from falling into the wrong hands. (TV: The Last of the Time Lords, The Impossible Astronaut)