The Foe from the Future (audio story)

The Foe from the Future was originally submitted as the possible conclusion to Season 14. When writer Robert Banks Stewart was called away from Doctor Who by Verity Lambert to guide the writing of a troubled soap opera at, however, the story lapsed and script editor Robert Holmes instead wrote The Talons of Weng-Chiang as the season-ender. (DOC: The Foe from the Future)

About 40 years later, Big Finish Productions resurrected the original script idea and adapted it to audio. It was then released as a six-part adventure starring Tom Baker and Louise Jameson. As a sort of in-joke to the relationship between Foe and Talons, Big Finish adapter John Dorney explicitly set it immediately prior to the events of Talons.

Publisher's summary
The Grange is haunted, so they say. This stately home in the depths of Devon has been the site of many an apparition. And now people are turning up dead. The ghosts are wild in the forest. But the Doctor doesn't believe in ghosts.

The TARDIS follows a twist in the vortex to the village of Staffham in 1977 and discovers something is very wrong with time. But spectral highwaymen and cavaliers are the least of the Doctor's worries.

For the Grange is owned by the sinister Jalnik, and Jalnik has a scheme two thousand years in the making. Only the Doctor and Leela stand between him and the destruction of history itself. It's the biggest adventure of their lives – but do they have the time?

Part one
A fissure in time brings the Doctor and Leela to Staffham Village, 1977, which has been beset by time distortions and deadly apparitions - ever since the arrival of new inhabitants at the village Grange. While investigating the anachronistic sound of bells coming from the boarded-up church, the Doctor's and Leela's lives are endangered as the church bell crashes through the belfry.

Part two
While Leela is detained by the local constabulary, the Doctor and Staffham resident Charlotte Willis investigate the Grange. Exploring underneath a crypt, they discover a secret laboratory containing one end of the time fissure, before they are confronted and attacked by the Grange's new owner - the half-human, half-insectoid, Lord Jalnik.

Part three
The Doctor and Charlotte are taken through the time fissure to a domed city in the year 4000, where its inhabitants are undergoing training for living life in the twentieth century. Leela follows the Doctor and Charlotte through the fissure. Escaping into a desolate wasteland after being pursued through the city, the Doctor and Leela are attacked by the giant, locust-like Pantophagen.

Part four
The future earth has been overrun by the Pantophagen after Lord Jalnik - really a time travel scientist in love with the secret leader of an aggressive political faction - brought them back from the Time Vortex, in order to implement a coup that has gone disastrously wrong. Cornered by coup soldiers, execution orders are given for the Doctor, Leela, Charlotte, and their unwitting associate, Shibac.

Part five
Jalnik and the Pantophagen travel through the time fissure to devour twentieth century earth, Leela is lost to the time vortex, and with access to the fissure destroyed, the Doctor is stranded in the year 4000 with no way of stopping the destruction of the universe.

Part six
Leela survives the journey through the vortex by lassoing a Pantaphagen with the Doctor's scarf. The Doctor manages to get back to 1977 by lashing up equipment left over from Jalnik's research. The Doctor destroys the entrance to the time fissure in the twentieth century, restoring order to the time lines and wiping out the Pantaphagen. Shibac remains in Staffham with Charlotte.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Tom Baker
 * Leela - Louise Jameson
 * Jalnik - Paul Freeman
 * Charlotte Willis - Louise Brealey
 * Butler - John Green
 * Instructor Shibac - Blake Ritson
 * Constable Burrows - Mark Goldthorp
 * Father Harpin - Philip Pope
 * Supreme Councillor Geflo - Jaimi Barbakoff
 * Historiographer Osin - Dan Starkey
 * Councillor Kostal - Camilla Power

Continuity

 * The Doctor tells Leela that William Shakespeare is the greatest poet in the English language "with [his] assistance." (PROSE: The Empire of Glass, The Stranger, The Writer, His Wife and the Mixed Metaphor, TV: City of Death) However, the Fifth Doctor later described him as a "hack" to his companions Peri Brown and Erimem. (AUDIO: The Kingmaker) By the time of his tenth incarnation, his opinion of Shakespeare's work had considerably improved as he spoke of it in glowing terms to his companion Martha Jones. (TV: The Shakespeare Code)
 * Leela once again refers to members of the Metropolitan Police Service as "blue guards." (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang, AUDIO: Energy of the Daleks)
 * After hearing his voice over the intercom in his house, Leela states that Jalnik "speaks through the air like Xoanon." (TV: The Face of Evil)
 * The Doctor tells Charlotte that he has previously visited the year 4000 and he believes that history has been altered. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)