Island of the Fendahl (audio story)

Island of the Fendahl was the fourth and final story in The Eighth Doctor: The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller: Volume One, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Alan Barnes and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Sheridan Smith as Lucie Miller.

Publisher's summary
The Fendahl is the death of evolution, the horror that lies in wait at the far end of the food chain.

The Fendahl is death itself.

And the Fendahl is dead. The Doctor destroyed it many years ago, in another incarnation, when he encountered it in a place called Fetchborough.

But if the Fendahl is dead... how can it live again, on the remote island of Fandor?

Plot
The TARDIS, which electrocuted the Doctor after taking exception to his piloting, lands but loses power. The Doctor slips into unconsciousness to resynchronise his hearts whilst Lucie takes his sonic screwdriver to open the doors. She finds that they have landed on Earth and meets Dieter, who offers to drive to Fandor Village to call for an air ambulance for the Doctor but, when she asks him to go on his own, he uses a chloroform solution on her.

DC Howard is looking for Maxine Mitchell, a girl believed to have been brought to the island against her will, when Dieter brings Lucie to her, believing her to be Maxine. Lucie awakes and DC Howard quickly realises that a mistake has been made and explains who Maxine is. When Dieter remembers Lucie's companion and learns that he is called "the Doctor", he asks DC Howard to call an air ambulance and drives off. Mrs Morrison at the inn tells them that the one telephone on the island is down.

The Doctor wakes up and, finding Lucie missing, leaves the TARDIS to find her. He nears a monastery and encounters Freddie, who calls him "Doctor" and invites him inside. The community, including Maxine, welcome him and refuse to allow him to leave. Freddie claims to have called the village looking for Lucie, but the Doctor realises that the island has no telegraph poles and tries to leave, but he cannot move his legs. When it passes, he leaves, with Freddie calling after him that he will return.

Dieter reaches the TARDIS and suddenly finds that he cannot move his legs. Later, Lucie and DC Howard arrive and find a heavily decomposed body. The Doctor joins them and remembers having seen something similar before, but cannot recall when until Lucie mentions Dieter's surname which she saw on his passport: Fendelman, meaning "man of the Fendahl". DC Howard heads to the monastery when the Doctor mentions Maxine being there and, when the Doctor realises that the commune were waiting for Dieter (a doctor) to complete their coven, the Doctor follow her.

Lucie goes to the village for help and interrupts the villagers' Lammas Eve festival. Mrs Morrison tells her about how they would sacrifice the first lamb of the season to Old Fandowen and, this year, Lucie is said lamb. She hides and is saved from a Fendahleen by Dieter using a bullet containing rock salt. The two of them retreat to a tunnel which Dieter found after escaping the Fendahleen at the TARDIS, where he tells her that the body at the TARDIS was that of an electrician. The tunnels are in the shape of a pentagram, the sign of the Fendahl.

The Doctor and DC Howard find a secret passage into the same tunnels in the monastery and encounter a Fendahleen. They reach the centre and find Maxine on the altar. DC Howard reveals that she is with the cult, having heard the call after entering the monastery, and that she is Thea Ransome's cousin. Inside of the altar is the skull, returned from the Canthares supernova. The villagers bring Lucie and Dieter to the altar and the Doctor explains that the Core took control of the Daleks and was set free by the Doctor, projecting itself back in time to Earth.

The villagers die to manifest the Fendahl Core within the Doctor. Dieter shoots him twice in the shoulder with his rock salt bullets, knocking out the coven as they were under his control, but the control of the Fendahl will return soon unless they can get rid of the skull. The Doctor and Lucie take it into the TARDIS, telling Dieter to send the members of the coven home and to keep them away from one another, and the TARDIS switches back on and shows Lucie that the locations of their recent adventures had been forming the shape of a pentagram. Had the pentagram been complete, the Fendahl would have been able to move between those worlds at the speed of thought.

The Doctor tricks Lucie into using the telepathic circuits to active the Hostile Owner Destruction System, which will soon open a spare dimension and suck the entire TARDIS inside of it. He tells Lucie to leave, but she deactivates the system and he comes under the control of the Fendahl, communicating with Lucie through the circuits and summoning Freddie and Mrs Morrison as Fendahleen. The Doctor remembers a song and the TARDIS goes back in time to when, in his fourth incarnation, he threw the skull into the supernova. Lucie opens the door with the sonic screwdriver, causing the Fendahleen and the skull to be pulled out into the black hole. There is an explosion as the skull touches its earlier self.

The Doctor and Lucie return to Fandor Island to check on the other members of the commune, finding that they had not been summoned to the TARDIS as they were holding hands and preparing to jump off of the cliffs at the time. They say goodbye to Dieter, DC Howard, Maxine and the others and discuss something that the Fendahleen had said: that they could smell death on Lucie. The Doctor says that they were likely referring to the salt on her, which would cause them death. Lucie hopes that he is right.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Paul McGann
 * Lucie Miller - Sheridan Smith
 * Diane Howard - Carlyss Peer
 * Dieter Fendelman - Attila Akinci
 * Freddie - Paul Panting
 * Maxine Mitchell - Lauren Cornelius
 * The Landlady - Bethan Dixon Bate

Crew

 * Director - Nicholas Briggs
 * Executive Producers - Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery
 * Music - Jamie Robertson
 * Producer - Scott Handcock
 * Writer & Script Editor - Alan Barnes
 * Sound Design - Iain Meadows
 * Fendahl created by Chris Boucher

Worldbuilding

 * The Doctor used to debate with Marcel Marceau.
 * DC Howard stays at the Angel and Star.
 * Most people reach Fandor Village by boat from Whitehaven.
 * Three weeks have passed for Lucie and the Doctor since the events within Canthares. In the time between then and now, the TARDIS has taken them to 12 locations. These include the black hole of Cantheres, Castus Sigma, Cilento (a pod planet), the twin moons of Akh, Horton's Orb, and finally, Earth in 2007 and Cantheres again.

Culture

 * Lammas Eve is the first of August.

Music

 * Lucie thinks the Doctor's frock coat is as bad as Coldplay.

Television

 * Lucie calls Dieter "Inspector Morse".

TARDIS

 * The Doctor gets Lucie to activate the TARDIS' Hostile Owner Destruction System (HODS).
 * The Fendahl speaks through the Doctor through the telepathic circuits.

Continuity

 * The Fourth Doctor previously met the Fendahl. (TV: Image of the Fendahl)
 * The Doctor set the Fendahl free when he allowed people to escape the Canthares black hole. (AUDIO: The Dalek Trap)