The House on the Edge of Chaos (audio story)

The House on the Edge of Chaos was the third story in The Eighth Doctor: The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller: Volume One, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Eddie Robson and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Sheridan Smith as Lucie Miller.

Publisher's summary
The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Lucie to a vast house on the planet known as Horton's Orb. The only house on Horton's Orb, in fact. Outside its outsized windows there's nothing. No land. No sea. No sky. No life. Just an endless expanse of static.

Inside the house, there's an upstairs and a downstairs – servants below, gentlefolk from the finest of the house's families above. Alas, there are altogether too few eligible ladies on the upper floors these days. Meaning there's a vacancy for Miss Lucie Miller, single and unattached...

Outside the house, the static howls on. Except now, the static wants to get in.

Plot
The Doctor and Lucie arrive on Horton's Orb, an inhabitable planet in a place where the Doctor believed there were none, and are led by a Navi to a house as the wing collapses. They both feel static in their minds and Lucie passes out, but the Doctor manages to get her to safety, and they tell estate manager Alana Kelly that they are part of a survey team from Earth. She is suspicious as nothing can survive outside of the house due to it being surrounded by static.

Darius Horton is unexpectedly visited by his wife, Evangeline, and declines to join her at dinner as he needs to revise the plans for the expansion of the house following the extension's collapse. Evangeline forces their son, Berrigan, to attend by threatening to send him into the mines and is introduced to the Doctor and Lucie by Alana. She sends the Doctor to work downstairs whilst Lucie is invited to dinner, given a room and handed a dress by the Hortons' daughter, Frances.

After learning more about the house from the lift operator, Loïc, the Doctor convinces Alana that he might be able to help her leave Horton's Orb. Alana theorises that the static is leaking in somewhere, believing that it is responsible for Monica's disappearance, and tasks the Doctor with finding the leak, accompanied by a Navi. They soon leave, however, when Harris reports a leak in the mines and that the static has taken a humanoid form. The Doctor determines that it is blind and confuses it using his sonic screwdriver; it disappears after briefly taking the form of a woman in several portraits around the house.

At dinner, Lucie speaks with Berrigan, who is angry that his mother is trying to set the two of them up when he wishes to marry Monica. Uncharacteristically, Evangeline leaves during the dinner to see Darius about the leak, which he blames on the miners' protests. Alana tells the Doctor about the late Grace Horton, Darius's first wife, and they interrupt dinner to ask to see Darius. The Doctor is refused and tells Lucie that the soil is in the process of being terraformed, leading him to believe that the planet is reacting badly to it. He also tells Lucie about Monica, whose death Lucie decides to tell Berrigan about.

to be completed

Cast

 * The Doctor - Paul McGann
 * Lucie Miller - Sheridan Smith
 * Evangeline Horton - Carla Mendonça
 * Darius Horton - Rupert Vansittart
 * Alana Kelly - Alicia Ambrose-Bayly
 * Frances Horton - Emily Woodward
 * Berrigan Horton - Joe Jameson

Continuity

 * The Doctor says he has never been stuck in one place for more than a few centuries. (PROSE: The Burning, Escape Velocity) He would soon get stuck on Orbis with amnesia for 600 years. (AUDIO: Orbis)