The Famished Lands (audio story)

 was the second story in the audio anthology The Eighth Doctor: Time War: Volume Three, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Lisa McMullin and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, Rakhee Thakrar as Bliss and Adèle Anderson as Major Tamasan.

Publisher's summary
Trying to make a difference far from the front lines, the Doctor and Bliss arrive in the Vale of Iptheus, where the Time War is starving populations out of existence.

The inhabitants have taken matters into their own hands – but are now on course for something worse. Bliss discovers exactly how the robot Enablers are helping the people, while the Doctor uncovers a terrifying secret...

Plot
The Doctor and Bliss arrive at the Vale of Iptheus, home to a famished people whose supply routes have been cut off by the Time War. Although there are aid workers, accompanied by armed robots, there does not seem to be any food. The robots massacre the people and the Doctor promises that he will make sure that this does not happen again.

Aeronwen takes Zendo down into a restricted area where there are growling creatures.

The Doctor and Bliss run away and catch a ride in the back of a truck to civilisation. They find that the people, although emaciated, seem happy and head to a shop where the shopkeeper provides them with a gelatinous substance to eat. Once they have left, the shopkeeper reports them to Aeronwen, telling her that they looked healthy and well-fed and did not know about the ichor. Aeronwen orders an Enabler to find out who they are and how they are being fed.

An Enabler approaches the Doctor and Bliss and explains that the Enablers that they saw earlier at the township helped the people there by killing them. It also tells them about ichor and escorts them to a restaurant at gunpoint where the menu is full of delicious dishes. Meanwhile, Aeronwen sends a message to the military, checking if the Doctor and Bliss are with them. The Doctor and Bliss are given ichor which, to Bliss, tastes like her orders and starts to look like food. The Doctor, however, is immune to the perception modifier and sees and tastes only putrid gloop.

The Enabler reports back to Aeronwen, who determines that the Doctor and Bliss must be from off-world. She orders the Enabler to assume that they are hostile and to bring them in.

The Doctor is analysing the ichor with his sonic screwdriver when the Enabler returns and teleports him away. Bliss is able to escape and sees a man calling out for the people to "bring out your hungry" to be taken to the Nutrition Centre and goes with him and Emory in the drop wagon. Emory tells Bliss that the ichor does not work for everybody and that those who remain hungry, like him, are taken away to the Nutrition Centre, but he knows nothing about it.

The Doctor meets Aeronwen and tells her that he is from Gallifrey, which she believes makes him a Dalek. He corrects her, but she believes that this makes him even worse and that the Time Lords and Daleks are a single army. She takes him to the Ichor Processing Plant and leaves him to have a look around; he finds that the ichor has almost no nutrition and is told by Zendo that he should be wearing a mask to protect himself from the fumes. He hallucinates green monkeys on the ceiling and Zendo reports his presence to Aeronwen, who pretends not to know about him and wonders why he is not dead.

Bliss is taken off of the wagon by an Enabler and finds that she is back in the ghetto where she and the Doctor arrived. She realises that the Enablers are going to kill the hungry and tells Emory, who collapses to distract an Enabler and allow Bliss to take its teleport and escape. She tries the preset locations and eventually finds the Doctor and runs away with him from the Legion of Bone.

An Enabler tells Aeronwen that the Doctor and Bliss are surrounded by the Legion of Bone and that a "blue wardrobe" has been located. Aeronwen then destroys the Enabler and reports that she might have found a Time Lord's timeship.

The Doctor detects that the skeletons have altered and reduced brains and is able to incapacitate them using a specific frequency which confuses them, allowing him and Bliss to slip away. They confront Aeronwen about the ichor and she tells them that it is kinder to allow the people to starve whilst unaware than in pain; there are rations enough to feed 10% of the population for four years whilst the other 90% eat ichor and become the Legion of Bone, an army to fight the Time Lords and Daleks. This disturbs Bliss, who ate the ichor.

The Legion of Bone have gone rogue thanks to the Doctor's frequency, leading them to get loose and destroy the compound and to ignore any orders not from the Doctor. The Doctor agrees to stop them if Aeronwen promises to put a stop to the programme and tells her that the Time Lords have no reason to attack a starving planet; holding a gun to them, Aeronwen forces the Doctor to take her into the TARDIS. He takes her to another galaxy in another time where the war is raging, showing her how useless the Legion of Bone would be and convincing her to cure Bliss.

Aeronwen now has no hope and plans to start feeding ichor to the entirety of Iptheus, but the Doctor plans to have the Time Lords protect the trade routes and keep the planet from starvation. In return, Aeronwen must confess what she has done to her people and to face the consequences, as will Zendo. The Legion of Bone will be looked after until they die, listening to the sounds of the sea.

The Doctor feeds Bliss one of his mother's recipes and contacts the regenerated Tamasan, asking her to avoid the Seas of Nemocene. She ignores him, telling him that the Dalek Time Strategist is trying to attack the multiverse and that the Daleks have begun exploiting time fissures to break open multidimensional temporal irregularities.

Tamasan suggests to the Time Lords that they must stand together and use the Doctor as a weapon, calling in a favour in return for protecting the Seas of Nemocene.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Paul McGann
 * Bliss - Rakhee Thakrar
 * Aeronwen - Natalie Gumede
 * Zendo / Emory - Raj Ghatak
 * Enablers / Aid Worker / Shopkeeper / Drop Wagon Driver / Waiter - Andrew Fettes
 * Major Tamasan - Adèle Anderson
 * Digital Voice / Comms Message - Tracy Wiles

Worldbuilding

 * Iptheus has a green sun.
 * Aeronwen works for Famine Relief.
 * The Doctor gives Bliss a dish cooked from one of his mother's recipes.
 * Tamasan tells the Doctor that the Dalek Time Strategist is trying to attack the multiverse. The Daleks have begun exploiting time fissures to break open multidimensional temporal irregularities.
 * In a Panopticon session, the Doctor is brought forward as a potential weapon.

Continuity
to be added