Gods and Monsters (audio story)

 was the one hundred and sixty-fourth story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Mike Maddox and Alan Barnes and featured Sylvester McCoy as the Seventh Doctor, Sophie Aldred as Ace, Philip Olivier as Hex, Amy Pemberton as Sally Morgan and Maggie O'Neill as Lysandra Aristedes.

Publisher's summary
The TARDIS travellers arrive in a bizarre landscape seemingly immune to the physical laws governing the rest of the universe. Ace, Hex, Sally and Lysandra battle to rescue the Doctor from the trap he's walked into... soon realising that the odds are stacked against them.

Because the Doctor is playing an old adversary again: Fenric, shatterer of worlds. But the gods and monsters who inhabit this strange realm loaded the dice against them long ago, in the dim and distant past — and defeat's their only option.

Part one
The Doctor discovers he has been captured and chained up by Fenric and he accidentally lets slip that his companions, who have just arrived in the TARDIS, have brought Weyland's shield with them. Fenric is pleased and prepares to capture them and take the shield for himself, against the Doctor's protests. The shield points Hex, Ace, Sally and Lysandra in a direction and they choose to follow thinking it may lead them to the Doctor. They discover dead Saxons with machine guns, and travel further. Meanwhile Ace splits off from the group and encounters Persian prince Hurmzid after they had earlier seen a group of what appeared to be Persian soldiers walking through a mist and after getting to know him, discovers that he was brought by a time storm thanks to a hammer given to him by none other than the Doctor. Ace, suspecting something, decides to take him and find the group. Fenric, in the meantime, discovers what is going on and summons the Ancient One to deal with them. The Ancient One summons the Haemovores to attack the group. They escape and are reunited with Ace and Hurmzid who brings them up-to-date. They discover that they are on some plane, and peer over the edge, only to see space. Looking over the vast plane, they see large chess pieces in the distance.

The group makes a plan to break the Doctor out, suspecting he is being held prisoner by Fenric. Ace takes Hurmzid's hammer and confronts Fenric but he sweeps Lysandra and Sally away with a time storm and brings Ace to Perivale, explaining he has brought her to hell...

Part two
Fenric has brought Ace back to the day in 1987 just before the time storm swept her to Iceworld. He offers Ace a choice: stop herself and live a happy life by giving up on the Doctor or grow old and beaten fighting his battle. He taunts her saying that his punishment is showing her that he made her everything she is. Despite being angry she uses the hammer to return to Fenric's dimension.

Lysandra and Sally land in some strange part of the UK near Swindon at some point in their future. Hurmzid finds the Doctor and tries to release him to no avail him just as Ace arrives. Having snuck some of his tools with her, she frees him and he explains the situation. The Doctor says they must get the shield, assuming it has been left in the TARDIS but is corrected by Ace just as Hex arrives. Hex accidentally released some Haemovores that are encroaching on them while he was searching for them. However, Ace remembers that the Haemovores feed on faith and drives them off with her faith in her ability to kill them with nitro-9. At a safe distance, the Doctor examines the shield and notices the strange runes on it.

Lysandra and Sally observe their future selves attempt to stop an alien invasion with Sally, now having reached the rank of Commander, interrogating a discharged Lysandra for pass codes to use a weapon that will destroy the invading fleet and the Earth in a last-ditch effort to stop them. The Doctor contemplates the scripts on the shield, but just then Hurmzid says he sees his father, who turns out to be the Ancient One. Hurmzid is killed by his father who relents that he is now under Fenric's control and only serves him. Lysandra and Sally watch as Sally figures out how to activate the weapon after Lysandra is killed from the overload of the truthsayer. The world as they know it is about to end...

Part three
Fenric appears and reveals the truth of the situation after which Lysandra and Sally are knocked out, and awaken to meet Peggy, who reveals that Fenric has made an illegal move, and they ask her if she is playing this game as well. The Doctor discovers Hex is injured and the Ancient One offers Hex some of his bio-armour to help the wound. Hex is forced to take it by the Doctor. Ace then takes the hammer from the Doctor and summons a time storm and finds Lysandra and Sally, who have been told by Peggy that they are pawns in this world called the "Board", the plane on which the elder Gods play their games. The Doctor tells Hex they will return to the TARDIS to get a better view of the board, while Fenric summons the Ancient One to ask what has happened and becomes furious as the board has changed to his disadvantage. He confronts the Doctor, demanding Weyland's shield but the Doctor reveals he doesn't have it and Fenric, in anger, begins to summon the rest of his forces as the Elder Gods descend upon the board to watch the final battle for their own amusement.

Peggy advises the three of them to pick up weapons and prepare, explaining that Fenric's game is coming to an end. Fenric's hoards of Haemovores descend upon Hex and the Doctor but the TARDIS materialises and they get in. When Hex asks how he did it, the Doctor explains it wasn't his doing, and someone else is playing the game with them, and they are just this other player's pawns, berating himself for his stupidity. The TARDIS arrives in the middle ages and they find Weyland the blacksmith, Fenric's true opponent and the other elder God, who becomes angry when Hex calls him a mortal and he transforms into his true form, scaring Hex. The Doctor warns Hex not to look or else he'll go mad...

Part four
Weyland explains that he was always playing the Doctor and was the one who influenced many of the events the Doctor experienced, including crossing paths with Sally Morgan, the creation of the Forge, etc. He then departs in the Doctor's TARDIS, having taken control of Hex and making him his servant and leaving the Doctor stranded, awaiting for the end of the world. They arrive on the board to battle Fenric while Ace, with Lysandra and Sally, deduces something is wrong and with Hurmzid's hammer fully charged again, travels to find the Doctor. She arrives at Weyland's forge to find the Doctor smithing and they hatch a plan.

Back on the board, Fenric's wolves and forces fight Weyland's and Sally and Lysandra make a plan to try and attack a weakened Fenric, growing weaker as his body deteriorates trying to control all his forces. Just then, as Lysandra, having rushed into battle, is about to be killed, a tank materialises and saves her, from which Ace and the Doctor emerge, having made some weapons at Weyland's forge. They travel through the battlefield inside it, where Peggy explains she has been following Fenric's plan in order to get Albert back, thinking he will keep his world despite the Doctor's warnings. The ladies find Hex and take him into the tank, while the Ancient One dies in front of Fenric after having been gravely injured on the battlefield but Fenric merely muses his disgust at such a pathetic creature and he deduces Weyland's end-game plan from the Ancient One's final words.

Ace, Sally and Lysandra manage to free Hex and the Doctor explains that Weyland is controlling them all and that Hex has been Weyland's secret weapon since the events on Scutari and had been playing the Doctor for a fool, with the Doctor's ultimate role being to bring Hex to the board. They realize the shield is in fact a weapon, Weyland's secret weapon and discover that Fenric wants the shield to gain back his previous form, but as Weyland appears, Peggy takes it and threatens to use it against him unless he returns Albert. However, he kills Peggy and orders Hex to come with him to confront Fenric. They try to stop him but Hex assures him he knows what he's doing. Weyland and Hex confront Fenric and Weyland explains the elder Gods had him create create the shield in order to stop Fenric. Weyland orders Hex to read the runes of the shield as Fenric begins to panic, becoming aware that the shield is present. Hex begins to read the inscription but the Doctor arrives and attempts to stop Hex from sacrificing himself but Hex refuses to listen, and in his trick, changes the words and has the shield seal away Weyland instead of Fenric. The game is over and Hex, having been kept alive by Weyland, is dying and they realize that the elder Gods are packing up the board and the dimension is about to fall apart. The TARDIS is too far away but Ace uses the hammer and brings them to the TARDIS while it seems Fenric has slipped away into the darkness amid the ensuing commotion.

The five of them make it inside the TARDIS but after Hex calls Sally by her full name and not the usual 'Sal' he normally refers to her by, they realise that Fenric has taken control of him and is trying to escape in Hex's body. The Doctor encourages them to have faith in Hex and once their faith begins to weaken Fenric, Hex manages to reassert control and insists that the only way to end this is to open the TARDIS door and let him be sucked into the chaos, thereby destroying Fenric forever. The Doctor begs Hex to stop and initially none of them will do it until Lysandra realises he is right and that he's dead anyway due to all the blood lost, and opens the door amid the protests. Hex, with Fenric trapped inside him, is sucked out, leaving the rest of them to grieve, while Ace's anger reaches its boiling point and she screams at the Doctor for having allowed this to happen.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
 * Ace - Sophie Aldred
 * Hex - Philip Olivier
 * Lysandra Aristedes - Maggie O'Neill
 * Sally Morgan - Amy Pemberton
 * Fenric - John Standing
 * Hurmzid - Blake Ritson
 * Weyland - Gus Brown
 * Ancient One - Tim Treloar
 * Peggy Marsden - Elizabeth Bennett

Continuity

 * The Doctor says, "We play the game again", mirroring Fenric's first words after possessing Dr. Judson: "We play the contest again...Time Lord." (TV: The Curse of Fenric)
 * Prior to Hex joining the TARDIS crew, Ace once visited Mars. (AUDIO: The Pyramid of Sutekh)
 * Fenric refers to Ace as "child of the baby." (TV: The Curse of Fenric)
 * Ace mentions the Karnas'koi, (AUDIO: Lurkers at Sunlight's Edge) the Mi'en Kalarash (AUDIO: House of Blue Fire) and Moloch. (AUDIO: Protect and Survive)
 * Lysandra is aware that Sally suffers from athazagoraphobia. (AUDIO: House of Blue Fire)
 * In an alternative timeline, Sally uses the Truthsayer on Lysandra. In 2015, a younger version of Lysandra used it on Sally. (AUDIO: Project: Nirvana)
 * Hex recalls being shot by Brigadier-General Bartholomew "Barty" Kitchen in Scutari on 19 November 1854. (AUDIO: The Angel of Scutari)
 * Ace refers to her friend Midge. (TV: Survival)
 * Weyland is revealed to be the blacksmith which the Doctor mentioned was located in Perivale. (TV: Dragonfire, Ghost Light)
 * It is revealed that the chess sets in the Swiss sanatorium in 1926 were left there by Fenric. (AUDIO: The Magic Mousetrap)
 * Fenric claims that he had a backup companion in mind for the Doctor, namely "a lovelorn motorcyclist...from Wales." This is a reference to Ray. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen). This is an in-joke, as that character was, at one point, being considered as a new companion, before it was decided to introduce Ace.
 * Weyland claims to have directly influenced the creation of the Forge, and manipulated the lives of all of its personnel. (AUDIO: Project: Twilight, et al.)
 * Ace explains that Hurmzid was brought to the plane by a time storm, similar to how she was brought to Iceworld. (TV: Dragonfire)
 * Ace is carrying Nitro-9 with her. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, et al.)
 * Ace mentions Ganymede drivers. (TV: The Hand of Fear)