Catch-1782 (audio story)

 was the sixty-eighth story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Alison Lawson and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and Bonnie Langford as Melanie Bush.

It was the third team-up between the the Sixth Doctor and Mel characters since their turn on television. It was notable for providing the first substantial details about Mel's family and general back story in performed Doctor Who. It was also unusual for not having a "villain" per se, and no real alien presence at all. Because of this, and its setting in 2003 and 1782, it was a "pure historical", even at the time of its release. The main "enemy" in the piece is actually the concept of the Grandfather Paradox and the Doctor's efforts to retrieve Mel from her family's past history without causing damage to Mel's personal timeline.

Publisher's summary
When the Doctor and Mel visit the National Foundation for Scientific Research as it celebrates its centenary, Mel expects only to be able to catch up with her uncle. She doesn't expect to meet her own ancestors...

What is buried in the grounds of the Foundation?

What secret has Henry Hallam kept from his descendants for three hundred years?

Can Mel escape her own past?

Visiting your relatives can sometimes be trying, but surely it should never be this difficult?

Part one
The Doctor acquires a letter sent to Mel from her uncle, Dr John Hallam, in which he invites her to the National Foundation for Scientific Research's centenary celebration in 2003 Berkshire, on the way to which the Doctor hears a voice calling for help through a kink in time. A keen historian, John shows the Doctor and Mel around Hallam House, which his father leased to the Foundation, and tells them how many claim to have seen the ghost of the mysterious Eleanor Hallam. The Doctor initially wonders if the phenomena is related to the kink in time, but rules it out.

Whilst the Doctor talks to Professor David Munro, an old friend and the director of the Foundation, Mel learns from her uncle how the time capsule that the Foundation is burying is made of a new and unique alloy and goes to his study to look at his notes on the family history. David finds an object whilst burying the canister and the Doctor and John take it to the laboratory for analysis, discovering that it is an 18th century box containing the prototype canister which, impossibly, is in John's study. Mel and the canister in the study are relocated by a time disturbance and the Doctor enters the TARDIS, finding that there has been an explosion in the control room.

Part two
The Doctor deduces that the new alloy, created by the Foundation from elements supplied by the Space Agency, was activated by its proximity to the TARDIS and sent Mel back in time, but the TARDIS attempted to warn her with its telepathic circuits. He and John look through the notes on the Hallam family and head off in the TARDIS to find Mel upon learning that the mysterious Eleanor arrived at Hallam Hall exactly 222 years earlier during a period which Henry Hallam tore from his journal.

Mel finds herself in 1781 and is taken by the housekeeper, Mrs McGregor, to the master of Hallam Hall, Henry. She claims to be a member of his late wife's sewing circle and forgets her name and home, vaguely remembering a doctor and collapsing on her way to the study to be saved by him. Dr Michael Wallace suspects that she might be attempting to exploit Henry's charity but diagnoses her with a concussion and suggests that they humour her by taking her to the study as she keeps asking. There, Mel says that she is in the wrong time and that she needs to go home.

Part three
The Doctor and John arrive in June 1782, by which point Mel (referred to by the misheard name of Nell or Eleanor) has been living with Henry for several months and treated with laudanum by Dr Wallace. Whilst John drinks tea with Mrs McGregor, the Doctor apologises to the confused Mel for arriving late because of interference caused to the TARDIS systems by the canister and gives her medicine from Xanthus IV. He suggests that Mel be removed from the house, but Henry comes to suspect that he and Dr Wallace are attempting to have Mel, whom he loves, committed to an asylum.

Henry kicks the Doctor, John and Dr Wallace out of the house. Mel has benefitted from the Doctor's medicine and talks with Mrs McGregor about how a violent fit at Christmas led to her being treated by Dr Wallace and that she is a time traveller, becoming distraught upon learning that the Doctor has been banished as she expected that he would rescue her. Outside of the grounds, the Doctor tells John that Mel has now become part of history and must be left behind to live out her life as Eleanor Hallam.

Part four
Mel refuses Henry's marriage proposal as she does not love him nor know for sure that he has not taken advantage of her, but he insists that she think on it and she wonders if the Doctor has left her to become his second wife. The Doctor is unwilling to leave her behind and, whilst Dr Wallace digs a hole for the prototype canister to be buried in, sneaks into the house with John and finds Mrs McGregor distraught after learning of Henry's proposal. Having hoped to marry him herself, she helps John rescue Mel and they regroup with the Doctor and Dr Wallace, who bury the canister in a sewing box to be dug up in 2003. Mel points out that she cannot leave as Eleanor supposedly died in 1811, but the Doctor believes that Eleanor's life is a fiction and her death symbolic and takes Mel and John back to 2003.

Henry attacks Mrs McGregor when she confesses her feelings and tells him that Mel has returned home, but Dr Wallace stops him and he breaks down over the death of his wife, never having got over it and needing rest. In 2003, John decides to destroy the prototype canister to prevent any further incidents and the trio deduce that Mrs McGregor went on to marry Henry and removed the entries in his diary from the time of his breakdown. Mel decides that she needs to spend some time at the seaside to recuperate, although she has very little memory of her time in the 18th century, and together she and John insist that the Doctor go with them back to the Foundation's celebrations.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Colin Baker
 * Melanie Bush - Bonnie Langford
 * Dr John Hallam - Derek Benfield
 * Dr Wallace - Michael Chance
 * Henry Hallam - Keith Drinkel
 * Professor David Munro - Ian Fairburn
 * Rachel - Rhiannon Meades
 * Mrs McGregor - Jillie Meers

Worldbuilding

 * The Doctor has a pill he picked up as a hangover cure from Zanthas IV which successfully counteracts the effects of laudanum.
 * Royal mail doesn't deliver to "out here" (implied to be outer space or wherever the TARDIS is when the Doctor reveals he has Mel's uncle John's letter and invitation).
 * The Doctor mentions being friends with Richard Dawkins and David Munro.
 * Doctor Hallam's cat Jupiter is named after the planet Jupiter.
 * Doctor Hallam is a historian but has an interest in chemistry and dabbles in it.
 * David Munro and the Doctor worked on a Nuclear Magnetic Resonance imaging project together many years ago for the Foundation. It investigated the course of disease evolution. (14:30)
 * John mentions electron microscopes.
 * John refers to the TARDIS as a police box.
 * John mentions the secret project of the Foundation involves particle physics and unstable chrono atoms.
 * Mel drinks some brandy.
 * Daisy is a servant at Hallam Hall.
 * The Doctor claims to be an expert on diseases of the mind, including mania, schizophrenia, hysteria, delusions, neurosis and dementia.
 * The Doctor has a cure for hangovers and similar maladies which he picked up on Xanthus IV.
 * Mel has an eidetic memory.

Continuity

 * During her childhood, Mel often visited the museum with her uncle John. (AUDIO: The Wrong Doctors)
 * Gallifrey is mentioned to be in Ireland. (TV: The Hand of Fear)
 * The Doctor claims to be a doctor of "practically everything", including medicine. (TV: The Moonbase, Spearhead from Space, The God Complex et al.)