Invaders from Mars (audio story)

 was the twenty-eighth story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Mark Gatiss and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and India Fisher as Charlotte Pollard.

It was the first in a series of 6 audio stories that begins the second "season" of Eighth Doctor stories.

Publisher's summary
Hallowe'en 1938.

A month after a mysterious meteorite lit up the skies of New York State, Martian invaders laid waste to the nation. At least, according to soon-to-be infamous Orson Welles they did. But what if some of the panicked listeners to the legendary The War of the Worlds broadcast weren't just imagining things?

Attempting to deliver Charley to her rendezvous in Singapore 1930, the Eighth Doctor overshoots a little, arriving in Manhattan just in time to find a dead private detective. Indulging his gumshoe fantasies, the Doctor is soon embroiled in the hunt for a missing Russian scientist whilst Charley finds herself at the mercy of a very dubious Fifth Columnist.

With some genuinely out of this world "merchandise" at stake, the TARDIS crew are forced into an alliance with a sultry dame called Glory Bee, Orson Welles himself and a mobster with half a nose known as "the Phantom".

And slowly and surely, something is drawing plans against them. Just not very good ones...

Part 1
In 1938 America, both Ellis and Mouse break into a dime store to steal some “merchandise” from their boss. Detective Halliday later meets up with them and attempts to buy “merchandise”, but Ellis shoots him in retaliation with the “merchandise”.

Later, The Eighth Doctor and Charley land in the same alleyway where Halliday was shot. They notice his corpse and decide to loot it. They notice his body was badly burnt. They decide to go visit his office. Glory Bee meets up with them, mistaking the Doctor for Halliday, which the Doctor promptly impersonates. Bee informs them that her uncle has gone missing in New York City while attending a conference, and wants Halliday to investigate. The Doctor, upon hearing her uncle’s field of study decides to investigate.

Don Chaney and his gang are having dinner at Luigi's restaurant. He notes Mouse is missing. He is then interrupted by two hitmen attempting to kill him on behalf of a mysterious benefactor. Chaney then has his men kill the hitmen with radiation pulse guns.

Meanwhile in a recording studio, John Houseman and Orson Welles are rehearsing for the War of the Worlds broadcast. Bix Biro meets up with them when they’re about to leave and threatens to cancel Welles’s contract due the lack of people tuning in to his program.

Cosmo Devine makes a speech in a club and then goes to make a call to Bix Biro, wanting him to send a signal. He later meets Jimmy Winkler, whom he had kidnapped to coerce Bix into doing what he wants.

Mouse is captured by Don Chaney and is interrogated by him; Chaney knows Mouse is going behind his back and working for a mysterious third party. Mouse, afraid of Ellis, does not reveal that they are working together. Chaney believes him, but notes that since he doesn't know anything there is no reason to keep him alive, and feeds him to a Laiderplacker they keep in a basement.

Part 2
to be added

Part 3
to be added

Part 4
to be added



Cast

 * The Doctor - Paul McGann
 * Charley Pollard - India Fisher
 * Mouse / Winkler / Luigi / Heavy - Ian Hallard
 * Ellis - Mark Benton
 * John Houseman / Thug / Streath - Jonathan Rigby
 * Orson Welles / Professor Stepashin / Halliday - David Benson
 * Bix Biro / Noriam / Man - Paul Putner
 * Don Chaney / Actor - Simon Pegg
 * Glory Bee / Carla / Women - Jessica Stevenson
 * Cosmo Devine / Hotel Clerk - John Arthur
 * Reception Guest - Katy Manning
 * Radio Announcer - Mark Gatiss
 * Thug 2 / Toastmaster - Alistair Lock

Continuity

 * The Sixth Doctor previously met H. G. Wells, the author of The War of the Worlds, in Scotland during the summer of 1885 and subsequently took him on a trip to the planet Karfel. (TV: Timelash) Many years later in his personal timeline, the Tenth Doctor would meet Wells once again in 1889. He intimated that they would have a third encounter later in Wells' personal timeline which occurred earlier in his own. (COMIC: The Time Machination)
 * The Doctor once again speed reads a book in a matter of seconds. (TV: City of Death, Rose, The Time of Angels)
 * The reason for Welles' ignorance of Shakespeare is revealed in AUDIO: The Time of the Daleks.
 * In AUDIO: Neverland, it is revealed why there are forty-nine states in the USA (instead of forty-eight in 1938) and how the CIA, which was actually founded in 1947, can exist in 1938.
 * The Celestial Toymaker would later refer to Orson Welles in a riddle while Charley was playing his games in the Celestial Toyroom. (AUDIO: Solitaire)
 * Later during his eighth incarnation, the Doctor and his companion Tamsin Drew would become embroiled in the events surrounding an actual Martian invasion in the 23rd century, though not of Earth but Mars itself. (AUDIO: Deimos / The Resurrection of Mars)