The House on the Edge of Chaos (audio story)

The House on the Edge of Chaos was the third story in The Eighth Doctor: The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller: Volume One, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Eddie Robson and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Sheridan Smith as Lucie Miller.

Publisher's summary
The TARDIS brings the Doctor and Lucie to a vast house on the planet known as Horton's Orb. The only house on Horton's Orb, in fact. Outside its outsized windows there's nothing. No land. No sea. No sky. No life. Just an endless expanse of static.

Inside the house, there's an upstairs and a downstairs – servants below, gentlefolk from the finest of the house's families above. Alas, there are altogether too few eligible ladies on the upper floors these days. Meaning there's a vacancy for Miss Lucie Miller, single and unattached...

Outside the house, the static howls on. Except now, the static wants to get in.

Plot
The Doctor and Lucie arrive on Horton's Orb, an inhabitable planet in a place where the Doctor believed there were none, and are led by a Navi to a house as the wing collapses. They both feel static in their minds and Lucie passes out, but the Doctor manages to get her to safety, and they tell estate manager Alana Kelly that they are part of a survey team from Earth. She is suspicious as nothing can survive outside of the house due to it being surrounded by static.

Mr Horton is unexpectedly visited by his wife, Evangeline, and declines to join her at dinner as he needs to revise the plans for the expansion of the house following the extension's collapse. Evangeline forces their son, Berrigan, to attend by threatening to send him into the mines and is introduced to the Doctor and Lucie by Alana. She sends the Doctor to work downstairs whilst Lucie is invited to dinner, given a room and handed a dress by the Hortons' daughter, Frances.

After learning more about the house from the lift operator, Loïc, the Doctor convinces Alana that he might be able to help her leave Horton's Orb. Alana theorises that the static is leaking in somewhere, believing that it is responsible for Monica's disappearance, and tasks the Doctor with finding the leak, accompanied by a Navi. They soon leave, however, when Harris reports a leak in the mines and that the static has taken a humanoid form. The Doctor determines that it is blind and confuses it using his sonic screwdriver; the static disappears after briefly taking the form of a woman in several portraits around the house.

At dinner, Lucie speaks with Berrigan, who is angry that his mother is trying to set the two of them up when he wishes to marry Monica. Uncharacteristically, Evangeline leaves during the dinner to see Mr Horton about the leak, which he blames on the miners' protests. Alana tells the Doctor about the late Grace Horton, Mr Horton's first wife, and they interrupt dinner to ask to see Mr Horton. The Doctor is refused and tells Lucie that the soil is in the process of being terraformed, leading him to believe that the planet is reacting badly to it. He also tells Lucie about Monica, whose death Lucie decides to tell Berrigan about.

The static creature kills Loïc and chases the Doctor and Frances. The Doctor holds it using his sonic screwdriver whilst Frances flees and learns from it that Mr Horton has a secret. They find themselves trapped in the north tower, which Evangeline has ordered sealed off to contain the creature, and realise that the creature has been emerging through the portraits of Grace. Using his screwdriver on one such portrait, the Doctor expels the creature.

Upon learning of Monica's death and that Evangeline knew about it, Berrigan tells Evangeline that he and Lucie are to be wed. He and Lucie meet with Mr Horton, ostensibly to get his blessing for the marriage, and ask him to turn off his terraforming device but he refuses. Berrigan uses a laser cutter belonging to Monica to behead his father, revealing that he is a robotic duplicate, and Lucie informs the Doctor. The Doctor has learnt that the house is made of Mr Horton's DNA, cloned hundreds of thousands of time over. His consciousness lives in the house itself and makes itself known, admitting that he has been allowing the creatures in to kill those who threaten his order. Evangeline is killed by the static.

The Doctor tells Lucie, Berrigan and Frances that the static is created by the terraforming machine due to Mr Horton's feelings of guilt over Grace's death, caused by the landscape being infected by the quarrels between them. Berrigan now knows this, but Mr Horton does not wish to kill his heir and shows him, the Doctor, Lucie, Frances and Alana to the terraforming machine. They focus on their roles as part of a new order, keeping the static from eliminating them as rogue elements. The Doctor removes Mr Horton's DNA from it, unwittingly causing the house to disappear. This greatly upsets Berrigan, whom Lucie accuses of wanting to have his cake and eat it by being in a relationship with Monica but refusing to change anything.

Lucie says goodbye to Frances, whose advances she gently lets down, and returns to the TARDIS with the Doctor. Whilst the Doctor wants another random trip, Lucie asks to go somewhere normal for a change. In flight, the TARDIS suddenly aborts the landing and the Doctor demands that it continues. He switches to manual control and is zapped.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Paul McGann
 * Lucie Miller - Sheridan Smith
 * Evangeline Horton - Carla Mendonça
 * Darius Horton - Rupert Vansittart
 * Alana Kelly - Alicia Ambrose-Bayly
 * Frances Horton - Emily Woodward
 * Berrigan Horton - Joe Jameson

Crew

 * Director - Nicholas Briggs
 * Executive Producers - Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery
 * Music - Jamie Robertson
 * Producer - Scott Handcock
 * Script Editor - Alan Barnes
 * Sound Design - Iain Meadows
 * Writer - Eddie Robson

Worldbuilding

 * Monica was an engineer. She was on her way to perform maintenance on the Navis building the extension but never made it. Alana believed that the static leaked in and killed her.
 * Lucie does not know how to curtsy.
 * Loïc is a lift operator.
 * Thomas Wibrahan's father is Horticulture Minister in the Upper Chamber, Henry Knavely's grandfather was pilot of the second wave settler ship and Cole Galbraith's father once solved a murder.
 * Evangeline eats cheesecake.
 * Berrigan saves Lucie some trifle.
 * Frances is or was secretly involved with the "Collinses' girl", as well as with other girls. She is also attracted to Lucie.

Continuity

 * The Doctor says he has never been stuck in one place for more than a few centuries. (PROSE: The Burning, Escape Velocity) He would soon get stuck on Orbis with amnesia for 600 years. (AUDIO: Orbis)