The Angel of History (audio story)

The Angel of History was the third story in the Bernice Summerfield box set The Story So Far: Volume Two.

Publisher's summary
Annis is an archaeology lecturer at a university. Under fire from friends, students and the police for holding entirely the wrong view of history, the only person who seems to believe her is a mysterious Professor.

Plot
Ignoring Magistra Alker's warning not to argue with the administrators, Magistra Annis meets with Magister Feris to discuss her belief that she was passed over for a fellowship because of her background. When she leaves his office, she finds the Professor listening outside the door and he warns her not to forget her real life, calling her "Summerfield".

Temaire invites Annis to his dig upriver and sorts her a travel permit, but she is told on the barge that her permit requires her to have been travelling with Temaire from the outset and that she could suffer serious penalties including loss of employment. When Temaire boards, he points out the authorised dispensation from the Office of Internal Affairs and the matter is resolved. They travel to the dig and Temaire gives Annis a subjectivity recorder which allows her to feel the full lives of a family who lived at the ruins and which she could use to record all of her feelings.

Annis returns to the Capital and uses the subjectivity recorder on the objects she has acquired from her own dig, which she is currently unable to travel to due to her permits being repeatedly rejected. She learns that what she thought was a small chapel built by her people was actually a cathedral, which goes against what the experts claim, but she is forbidden from mentioning this to her students due to it being considered contentious. The Professor suggests that she do what she thinks is right rather than what she is told.

Despite Alker's advice, Annis attends a demonstration with Temaire which the guards label an illegal gathering and break up using their clubs, frightening Temaire off attending any protests in future, and Feris tries to convince her to be compliant for the sake of their people. Feris attends one of her lectures on behalf of the Cohesion Committee and, afterwards, he fires her for teaching "extraneous material" but continues to insist that they stick together. She accuses the Professor of informing on her, a charge that he denies, and later learns that it was Alker.

Without a job, Annis sells her possessions and gives her notes on the cathedral to Temaire for their safety. Feris and his wife disappear and Annis resorts to begging, but she is reported and leaves the city to join her people at her dig. She encounters the Professor on the way before he fades away and eventually arrives at the cathedral where she sees Temaire burying her work. He claims that he is ensuring that her work survives and gives her a forged pass to get her across the border. She is chased, shot and buried in a shallow grave.

The Doctor takes Benny, who has been using the subjectivity recorder to experience Annis's life, to the planet's future long after the Dark Times have ended to dig up the buried cathedral.

Cast

 * Bernice Summerfield - Lisa Bowerman
 * The Professor - David Warner
 * Temaire - Joe Shire
 * Alker - Hussina Raja
 * Feris - Simon Ludders

Worldbuilding

 * Ingrair gets the fellowship.
 * The people of the unnamed planet didn't discover space travel and are sceptical of the idea.
 * Bernice uses a device to re-live Annis' experiences nearly a century after her death.
 * The planet has more than one nation, since some of Annis' people have attempted fleeing persecution across the border.
 * Benny describes the planet as being peaceful and prosperous before darker instincts got hold of its' inhabitants. At the time of her and the Doctor's arrival ethnic tensions subsided, with time of Annis' life being seen as a dark page of history.
 * The Doctor tells Benny about a clever man who escaped his enemies but was told that he would be sent back to his country. He committed suicide.

Continuity
to be added