A Death in the Family (audio story)

 was the one hundred and fortieth monthly Doctor Who audio story produced by Big Finish Productions. It was the final chronological story for Maggie Stables' character Evelyn Smythe with this story taking place many years after she stopped travelling with the Doctor. This is the second Big Finish audio story to feature a companion death, the first being C'rizz in Absolution. However, Evelyn continues to travel with the Sixth Doctor with several events mentioned in this story featuring in stories released after this one, until Stables passed away in 2014 and her character was retired.

Publisher's summary
"The future folds into the past. The homeless hero has fallen. Now begins the time of three tales: The Tale of the Herald. The Tale of the Hidden Woman. The Tale of the Final Speaker. When the last tale is told, all the lights shall fail. The world will end."

21st century London: Nobody No One, the extra-dimensional Word Lord, is again running amok. Only this time, he's unbeatable — and a terrible tragedy is about to unfold.

It is written.

Plot
to be added

Cast

 * The Doctor - Sylvester McCoy
 * Ace - Sophie Aldred
 * Hex - Philip Olivier
 * Evelyn Smythe - Maggie Stables
 * Nobody No-One - Ian Reddington
 * Corporal/Novice/Henry Noone - John Dorney
 * Ayl-San/Faber/Nurse - Alison Thea-Skot
 * Captain Stillwell/Applin/Tour Guide - Andrew Dickens
 * Ann-the-Van/Story Speaker/Webster - Harriet Kershaw

The Doctor

 * The Doctor has something like a calendar of when his friends will die.
 * Nobody No-one wears a scarf in his new incarnation. He claims that it is a homage to the Doctor's fourth incarnation.

Individuals

 * The Doctor dies, killed by Nobody No-One.
 * Evelyn wistfully recalls "her" Doctor and criticises the Seventh Doctor for his scheming, manipulative nature.
 * Evelyn dies of a heart attack, capturing Nobody No One as she does though.
 * Henry Louis Noone was born in St Stephen's Hospital in London on 10 February 2000. A body scan indicated that he would most likely die at the age of 82.
 * Henry Noone writes a story of what he thinks Ace would be like in ten years, if they married, and through a complicated process, creates Dr Dorothy Noone, a being capable of combating the Word Lord Nobody No-One.

Locations

 * The Doctor and Ace search the remains of the Forge's building for alien technology with Captain Stillwell of UNIT.
 * Ace meets up with Henry Noone on several occasions in the White Rabbit pub in London during 2027.
 * By 2027, the United Kingdom has a king.
 * WOTAN 1 is a UNIT base located beneath the BT Tower.

Technology

 * The Doctor finds in the Forge:
 * A Gallifreyan sarcophagus
 * A Makek compensator (burnt out)
 * A Carpatian worry-wheel (useless)
 * A Mobius chip (broken)
 * A remote neutron polariser (faulty)
 * A TG tablet (used by Ace to defeat Nobody; hard drive wiped clean by the Doctor at the end)
 * A Vaspan space-time stamp (only one trip; used by Ace to defeat Nobody)

TARDIS

 * Ace is incapable of flying the TARDIS.

Time travel

 * Evelyn Rossiter was transported from Világ to the planet Pelachan via a temporal device.
 * The people of Pelachan are descendants of the crew of a human time ship called the UNS Pelican which crashed on their planet almost two thousand years earlier, an event which occurred billions of years before the evolution of humanity on Earth. The name of the planet is a corruption of that of the time ship. Several items were recovered from the ship, which Evelyn believed to be a military or containment vessel, and came to be worshipped as holy relics. They included the jawbone of an Ice Warrior, the arm of a Cyberman and the eyestalk of a Dalek. In the Pelachan calendar, it is 1871 AC. It is unclear if "AC" stands for "After Crash" or "After Creation."

Earth

 * Bees were being reintroduced to the UK in June 2027. According to Ace, the bee problem would be resolved by 2040, by which time Earth would also have "new pandas." The implication of this last statement is that panda become extinct at some point in the early 21st century but are eventually brought back to life through the use of cloning. This had been a long-standing issue in Earth's history; bees were facing depleted numbers as far back as 2009, which the Tenth Doctor attributed to Migrant Bees returning home to their native planet Melissa Majoria. (TV: The Stolen Earth)



Continuity

 * The Doctor, Ace and Hex previously encountered Nobody No-One in Antarctica in 2045. (AUDIO: The Word Lord) In a manner similar to a Time Lord, he has regenerated since his previous encounter with the present Doctor. He claims to have battled the Doctor numerous times in the Doctor's personal future.
 * The Doctor mentions that meeting his past or future selves is something which he is "very much not supposed to do." (TV: The Three Doctors)
 * Hex refers to his encounters with the Cybermen (AUDIO: The Harvest) and the Daleks (AUDIO: Enemy of the Daleks).
 * Nobody No-One refers to the Doctor as "Lazarus," the codename given to him by the Forge during his sixth incarnation. (AUDIO: Project: Lazarus)
 * The future Seventh Doctor tells Hex that "burning into existence" is considerably more painful than fading out of existence. (AUDIO: Master)
 * Evelyn relates the events of AUDIO: Project: Twilight and AUDIO: Project: Lazarus to Hex in which she and the Sixth Doctor met his late mother, Cassie Schofield.
 * Evelyn mentions to Hex that the Doctor once told her that he does not always win. (AUDIO: Arrangements for War)
 * Ace reminds the future Seventh Doctor that he once destroyed a planet. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)
 * On 24 May 2027, it is reported that the British government is conducting further Mars research. (TV: The Ambassadors of Death, AUDIO: Red Dawn, TV: The Christmas Invasion)
 * When the Seventh Doctor arrives on Pelachan, Evelyn is initially disappointed to see him as she had been hoping that it would be "her" Doctor. (AUDIO: The Marian Conspiracy)
 * Evelyn mentions meeting Julius Caesar's parents (AUDIO: 100 BC) and Charles Darwin (AUDIO: Bloodtide), "leaping from steam trains in the Wild West" (AUDIO: A Town Called Fortune) and spending time "in a spacesuit bouncing about Axos with that poor boy Brewster" (AUDIO: The Feast of Axos).
 * Evelyn previously met the Seventh Doctor in AUDIO: Thicker Than Water. Prior to that brief encounter, she saw him, Ace and Hex from afar in AUDIO: The 100 Days of the Doctor.
 * The voices of past Doctors being heard, as well as the Doctor dying and being brought back to life by a companion, will happen again. (TV: The Name of the Doctor)
 * The Doctor's TARDIS is still white. (AUDIO: The Angel of Scutari)