The Shroud (audio story)

The Shroud was the third and final story in the audio anthology James Robert McCrimmon, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Bob Ayres and featured Michael Troughton as the Second Doctor, Frazer Hines as Jamie McCrimmon and Emma Noakes as Raven.

Publisher's summary
Arriving on the planet Ninevah, the Doctor and Jamie find a desperate human colony fighting the effects of a devastating super weapon - the Shroud. Nullifying all light, the Shroud has rendered the humans blind in the face of aggressive alien invaders dubbed 'Squids', and it's only a matter of time before the colony falls.

The Doctor and Jamie are caught between helping the humans fight back against the 'Squids' and investigating their latest mission for the Time Lords - but as they haven't been told what that mission is, the pair are in the dark in more ways than one.

Part one
The Doctor and Jamie arrive on Ninevah and are captured by Scout Leader Donya and her team who, unlike the two travellers, are wearing dreamscopes and thus able to see despite the darkness. They are taken to the School, a scientific foundation, where Eskander has Fariba fit them with dreamscopes and tells them about the Shroud, a superweapon which nullifies light and has attacked several planets.

The Squids, believed to be responsible for the Shroud, attack the School and an electromagnetic pulse wipes out the building's power as well as the dreamscopes. The Doctor is captured when he attempts contact with the Squids and Jamie, Donya and Fariba get to a shielded bunker where they find Paul and acquire new dreamscopes. The group formulate a plan to rescue the Doctor from the hospital that the Squids have made their base using an underground passage built for robots.

The Doctor finds himself tied to a bed at the hospital and is told by a Squid, through a translator, that he is to be experimented upon. The Squid identifies itself as the Hearken Prime, leader of the Hearken, and performs a scan which identifies the Doctor as a Time Lord, something that concerns it. It calls its guards and the Doctor cries out.

Part two
The Hearken Prime releases the Doctor and provides him with a dreamscope. The hospital is actually being used by the Hearken to feed and provide medical assistance to humans since the arrival of the Shroud, which they deny responsibility for. Although the Hearken Prime claims that human emissaries have been sent to the School and were shot at, Eskander denies any knowledge of this and the Doctor suspects that the Time Lords are involved because of Eskander's work on a temporal field generator.

The Doctor hijacks the communications systems when Jamie arrives with Donya and her team and convinces them to surrender after Donya is killed. He learns from Fariba that Paul, whose wife died in a car crash when the Shroud arrived, was goading the group on to fight the Hearken and summons Raven, who admits that the Time Lords released the Cloak of Rassilon to stop Eskander's experiments and that it has since gained sentience. With Raven's help, the Doctor shuts down the Cloak's systems, but Paul, actually an avatar of the Cloak in the form of a dead man only visible through dreamscopes, keeps Raven in a pocket of darkness.

Paul takes Raven back to Gallifrey to be brought before the High Council, whom he believes will have to punish her and her paymasters for their actions. After sabotaging Eskander's temporal field generator, the Doctor returns to the TARDIS with Jamie and confides in him that he believes that there is more to Raven than they know. He dematerialises the ship.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Michael Troughton
 * Jamie McCrimmon - Frazer Hines
 * Raven - Emma Noakes
 * The Hearken / Daria / Boots - Eva Savage
 * Eskander / Jack - Gary Turner
 * Fariba / Negs - Pepter Lunkuse
 * Donya - Ony Uhiara
 * Paul / Kaz / Guard - Mickey Knighton

Crew

 * Director - Nicholas Briggs
 * Executive Producers - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
 * Music - Toby Hrycek-Robinson
 * Producer - Mark Wright
 * Script Editors - Nicholas Briggs and John Ainsworth
 * Sound Design - Mark Hendrick
 * Writer - Bob Ayres
 * Senior Producer - John Ainsworth

Worldbuilding

 * The Doctor carries a torch.
 * The Doctor asks Donya if she is wearing a woggle.
 * Ninevah is in the Babel system.
 * Donya orders Jack to tail-end Charlie.
 * Eskander mentions the Seven Systems.
 * Fariba was born blind.
 * Dreamscopes use echolocation.
 * Fariba is a cybernetics expert.
 * Paul is a software designer.
 * Donya is an engineer.
 * Eskander is building a temporal field generator.
 * The Doctor plays his recorder.
 * The Doctor carries jelly babies.

Continuity
to be added