The Rings of Ikiria (audio story)

The Rings of Ikiria was the twelfth and final story of the sixth series in The Companion Chronicles audio range. It was produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Richard Dinnick and featured Mike Yates.

Publisher's summary
UNIT is accustomed to dealing with visitors from space, but nothing has prepared them for Ikiria, an alien artist bearing gifts. Could Ikiria's designs be something more than aesthetic?

As the Brigadier turns against him, Mike Yates goes on the run. Can he save the world? Or will he just learn an important lesson in betrayal?

Episode One
Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton are sent on a mission to Sark in the Channel Islands, to investigate a series of large pictograms that have appeared in farm crops over the past several nights.

Yates' driver is Jean Mercer, whom he remembers being his driver during the Silurian incident at Wenley Moor.

The Doctor believes the pictograms are of alien origin, and he and the Brigadier join Yates, Benton and the UNIT soldiers at the farm. While on watch that night, Yates and Benton encounter a blinding light over the farm, that leaves a sixth crop circle in its wake.

This event heralds the arrival of Ikiria, an ethereal alien female humanoid, up to eight-feet in height, who offers the inhabitants of earth the gift of her exceptional artisan talents.

The Brigadier returns to the mainland to alert his superiors, leaving Yates in charge. Yates becomes concerned at the rings Ikiria has given out as gifts to Benton and others. The jewelry appears to have a mildly possessive effect on those who have been given them.

Yates confronts Ikiria in her space craft, who reacts by lashing out with mental energy. Yates blacks out and comes to at the farmhouse. He contacts the Brigadier who appears oddly irritated and dismissive of Yates' alarming report.

Meanwhile the Doctor has gone missing, and the soldier sent to look for him is discovered dead. His face is grotesquely distorted, and not far away a new pictogram has appeared in the grass - a highly detailed depiction of the dead soldier's face.

The Brigadier returns to the island and demands that all resources be redeployed to find the Doctor. Yates protests, saying guarding Ikiria should take priority. To Yate's surprise, the Brigadier responds by dismissing Yates from UNIT entirely.

As a despondent Yates is taken away by helicopter, he realises too late that everyone, including the Brigadier, was wearing gloves - the better to hide the rings of Ikiria. Then, as the helicopter passes over Sark, Yates notices another face has been carved into the fields - the Doctor's!

Episode Two
Yates overpowers the UNIT guard and the pilot, forcing the pilot to land the helicopter elsewhere on Sark.

He secretly makes his way back to the farmhouse, where he finds Jean Mercer also under Ikiria's control, and is pursued by UNIT troops and fired upon by the Brigadier.

When the Brigadier's shots go wide, he suspects a ruse, and playing along, throws himself off a steep cliff.

Yates is rescued and revived by the Doctor, who has in truth feigned death after challenging Ikiria to a psychic dual - the faces of her vanquished victims carved into wheat being a macabre ritual flourish of Ikiria's.

The Doctor also informs Yates that the Brigadier is indeed feigning possession by Ikiria, and has secretly transported equipment to Sark to enable the Doctor to study the ring given to the Brigadier by Ikiria.

In a makeshift lab housed in a coastal cave, the Doctor has developed a crystal that will reverse the polarity of the psionic crystal in Ikiria's craft that projects Ikiria's will through her rings.

The Doctor distracts Ikiria by revealing himself to her and challenging her to another psychic battle, allowing Yates access to her space craft.

Yates manages to swap out the craft's psionic crystal for the Doctor's newly grown one, but not before Jean Mercer inexplicably appears and tries to convince Mike to stop.

The psychic energy emanating through the rings is reversed and reabsorbed by Ikiria, who succumbs to the psychic back-blast and is destroyed.

Jean Mercer is revealed to have never really existed, having been a psychic construct of Ikiria's all along.

Cast

 * Mike Yates - Richard Franklin
 * Ikiria - Felicity Duncan

Worldbuilding

 * During his early days with UNIT, Mike rented a one bedroom flat in Clapham.
 * In his childhood, Mike attended prep school before being sent to public school and joining the British Army.
 * The Doctor tells the Brigadier that he deciphered the Rosetta Stone.
 * Over the course of several nights, five large circles had appeared on a farm belonging to the Oliver family on Sark, one of the Channel Islands.
 * Mike's driver is Jean Mercer.
 * Mrs Oliver owns the farm.

Continuity

 * Corporal Jean Mercer asks Mike if there are "more freaky lizards hell bent on wiping out mankind." He believes that she had been his driver during the Silurian clean-up but, in reality, she was a psychic projection created by Ikiria using his memories as a reference. (TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians)