A Stain of Red in the Sand (audio story)

A Stain of Red in the Sand was a 2010 Big Finish audio short story read by David Troughton, featuring the Second Doctor and Zoe Heriot. It was notable for its highly challenging, Doctor-lite point-of-view, which left it open to many different interpretations.

Summary
Indigo lives in a world without hope on a council estate so gloomy its residents call it "The Slab". The Doctor must prevent an insectoid species from seeping across the worlds.

Plot
On the thirteenth floor of the Slab lives a sculptor named Roger, a man Indigo thinks of as her boyfriend, were he not so obsessed with his art. She returns to his flat again and again, despite his inattentiveness, to peer out his kitchen window into another reality, where a man named the Doctor is fighting the Caretakers on a sandy world with two suns. These insectoid creatures have been crossing into Indigo's world and unpleasantly populating the Slab.

Roger's latest creation is a girl far too innocent for his own world. Her name is Zoe, and by using the medium of "memory meat" to sculpt her, he believes he can save her. On the night he completes Zoe and finally allows himself to rest, the sculpture disappears. When Roger and Indigo look out the kitchen window in the morning, they see a blood stain in the sand. Roger declares that he has saved Zoe and that the Doctor has won his struggle against the Caretakers. This seems confirmed by the fact that the Caretakers no longer inhabit the Slab. Indigo notes that the kitchen window has been left slightly ajar for her to follow, before settling down contentedly with Roger to look out the window all day onto that other world.

Characters

 * Second Doctor
 * Zoe Heriot
 * Caretakers
 * Roger
 * Indigo

Worldbuilding

 * Jamie is not mentioned in this story.
 * The narrator calls Roger and Indigo "human", in comparison with the Caretakers.

Continuity
to be added