Curiosity Shop (audio story)

Curiosity Shop was the third and final story in the audio anthology All of Time and Space, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by James Goss and featured Jacob Dudman as the Eleventh Doctor and Safiyya Ingar as Valarie Lockwood.

Publisher's summary
Mr Foreman owns a junkyard. He doesn't get many visitors. In fact, all anyone ever seems interested in is Barbara.

One woman informs Mr Foreman she knows the truth about Barbara, that she went on impossible adventures with a man called the Doctor. This woman, this Valarie, will do anything to be reunited with Barbara and the Doctor. Even if it kills her.

Plot
Valarie visits Mr Foreman's junkyard to look at the TARDIS (which he calls "Barbara") and, exchanging her spinal interlink for money, she tells him that it is a spaceship and that she and the Doctor were in it when they were dragged to the war above this planet after answering a telephone call. The Doctor altered a weapon which would wipe out numerous star systems to emit an electromagnetic pulse which disabled the battle fleets as well as the TARDIS and Valarie. She awoke on the planet and has been looking for the Doctor and the TARDIS since then.

Valarie gives Mr Foreman a tendon enhancer from her left leg and tells him about how the Doctor launched a protest against a government whilst she released the political prisoners and cleared the city of its air pollution. This caused a glitch with the militia's weapons, leading them to join the opposition and the governor to leave in a shuttle. Mr Foreman does not believe in the Doctor, however. The two battle fleets start to wake up and Valarie returns to Mr Foreman the next week, telling him about how the Doctor unplugged the holographic Overseer and forced a civilisation to confront their actions and situation without their kind words. Some of the spaceships start falling from the sky and, to check on the TARDIS, Valarie sells Mr Foreman one of her ocular implants.

The next week, Valarie sells a cochlear implant and tells Mr Foreman about a lone singing bird that made her cry and, the next, she sells him a stabiliser and tells him about how the Doctor stopped the Manrata by refusing to fight or listen to them until they left. Mr Foreman builds a bunker over the next few weeks and Valarie sells him a neural enhancer before telling him about how she and the Doctor visited a world that he had once saved and found that they had not heeded his advice. The Doctor turned off the heat shield that he set up for them and it started to snow, but Valarie is forgetful and leaves before finishing the story. She lies in the road and looks at the stars and battle fleets with Golas, from whom she has been buying food.

The next week, Valarie finds that the TARDIS has been sold and tells Mr Foreman that the Doctor told her in the Screaming Forest that she had to keep going, but she has now accepted that the Doctor will never return. She collapses and Mr Foreman takes her with him to take the TARDIS back from Golas, who wants to escape the planet before the war resumes. Mr Foreman lets Valarie and Golas into the ship and uses a sculpture made from Valarie's enhancements to create a barrier around the planet with the fear of its inhabitants. He declares that he is the Doctor and forces them to hear the fears of the people.

Tasking Golas with rebuilding the planet, the Doctor leaves with Valarie and returns her enhancements. He apologises for using them and explains that he has been rebuilding his brain from the telepathic circuits and Valarie's stories since the electromagnetic pulse. Although he sometimes wishes that he could do nothing with his life, he accepts that he will always have to be the Doctor.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Jacob Dudman
 * Valarie Lockwood - Safiyya Ingar
 * Golas - Derek Griffiths

Continuity

 * Mr Foreman, while emulating the First Doctor's characteristics, calls the TARDIS "Barbara", after Barbara Wright. (TV: An Unearthly Child)
 * Ellery Quest had previously told Valarie that she would have to learn to tell stories. (AUDIO: All of Time and Space)