Food Fight (audio story)

 was the third story in the audio anthology Ravagers, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Nicholas Briggs and featured Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, Camilla Beeput as Nova and Jayne McKenna as Audrey.

Publisher's summary
The TARDIS is starting to get a little crowded! Audrey finds herself haunted by a ghostly Doctor.

Plot
Inside the TARDIS, the Ninth Doctor and Nova discuss how to find the drones that attacked Nova and reprogram them to wipe out the time particles as the Doctor works on the lead one. He explains that the TARDIS can reverse-navigate by detecting a time eddy that includes Nova's DNA, but as they arrive, the Doctor is instead forced to dodge a laser blast from the robot warrior that Lieutenant Farraday had been made to fight. Theorising that they followed the wrong DNA, the Doctor is surprised to find Farraday and brings him into the safety of the TARDIS before taking off. As the Doctor introduces Nova and Farraday to each other and Farraday recovers from the ordeal, the Doctor realises that Audrey Mohinson was right in saying that they do not have enough time to fix everything person by person.

On Tarlishia, an evacuation ship carries off members of the public to be placed in hibernation. Audrey encounters another vision of the Doctor, five years on from the last time he spoke. She describes how she is trying to make a new weapon from the Gallifreyan node to stop the Ravagers, but it is too late for her planet with its president dead. Understanding that the Doctor is from her future, she explains that her plan is to slow down the Ravagers using a certain pheromone, but the Doctor simply disappears as she talks.

The TARDIS attempts to follow the correct DNA again, this time landing back in 1959 London as Captain Halloran and Marcus Aurelius Gallius battle, materialising over both of them with the Doctor disarming Marcus. He attempts to explain the situation to the confused group but quickly leaves the questions to Nova so he can work. Meanwhile, Audrey receives another vision of the Doctor as she activates the Sphere of Freedom, now with a much less kind personality after another ten years of waiting. He asks why she wants to use time eddies to place people inside her immersive reality games, but she explains that their experiences are real and are fed back into the games to make them addictive, in turn creating profit for further research and development. The Doctor just leaves again, much to her frustration.

In the TARDIS, Marcus attempts to attack the rest of the group, forcing everyone else to restrain him with difficulty as the Doctor flies the TARDIS. With Marcus trying to escape, the Doctor lets him out of the doors into the middle of the Time Vortex, held safe by the TARDIS forcefields, which eventually convinces him to join their side. The TARDIS successfully lands on the planet Nova was taken to, immediately after the Doctor left with her, and releases the prime drone, which he has now nicknamed "Cynthia", to join its fellows to reprogram them. He then visits the Sphere of Freedom directly after the TARDIS was first captured by Audrey and shows her the drone fleet and his new acquaintances. With the drones not yet activating, Audrey calls her guards back to imprison them, but Marcus incites a mass brawl as the Doctor tries to get his friends to safety, getting himself shot in the process.

The Doctor wakes up strapped to an interrogation slab in the central arc, which he derides as clichéd, and finds out that his friends have successfully escaped. In the drains, Nova, Halloran, Farraday, and Marcus discuss their next moves and how to rescue the Doctor and activate the drones. Meanwhile, Audrey admits she trusts the Doctor to fix her problems and he deduces that he will come to know her better in her past. In Freedom Square, Marcus decides that he will create a distraction away from the TARDIS to allow Nova to enter unseen. The Doctor learns that Audrey has been refusing to explain her actions due to potentially upsetting causality, but finally relents. She explains how the space-time shadows project the displaced people's experiences into Fugitives as Nova escapes into the TARDIS.

Inside, Nova attempts to appeal to the drones but they initially refuse orders from anyone another than the Doctor. She reconfirms her name and they reveal that he has trusted her to issue commands, allowing them to destroy the offending time particles. Audrey releases the Doctor and he reunites with Nova just as the central arc breaks down, allowing the Ravagers and time eddies to escape too. The Doctor pushes Audrey out of the way of a time eddy and he is teleported away.

The Doctor awakes inside the time eddy and turns to the node for advice, and using its power, he is able to psychically appear to Audrey throughout her life and learn of her plans. Meanwhile, the drones finish destroying the time particles and the Doctor's allies reconvene, watching the Ravagers running free. After witnessing Audrey's life, the Doctor realises how destroying the time particles broke the link between the Ravagers and Fugitives and endangered the universe, just as the node's power fails and he is delivered to the Ravagers themselves. On the Sphere, Audrey admits that she always believed the Doctor could save them and Nova prays that he can find a way back.

The time eddy places the Doctor inside the Ravagers' neutron star where he is able to talk to one of them, taking the voice of a young girl. He understands how they are innocent of just trying to survive as they cannot have "the sweetness" and finally understands that Audrey was holding them back by giving them the taste of fear from Fugitives that they needed. Realising that the TARDIS key is allowing him to talk to the Ravager, he tries to connect it to the node, sonic screwdriver, and TARDIS itself to rescue himself, now enlightened and determined to satiate the Ravagers. The TARDIS materialises around him and he hears his own voice from his past, realising that it crossed his own timeline, placing him before all the events so he can fix them, ecstatically deeming it "fantastic" because "the food is fighting back".

Resolving to change time, he lands not in 1959 London, but on the Sphere of Freedom where he relives his first meeting with Nova. He asks her why she knows so much about time travel. With this version of her having never met him, he slowly tries to win her over with what he knows but fails just as he summons Audrey and her guards, who are now much friendlier towards him. He asks for access to the central arc and her node as his version of it disappears to its own timeline. Nova leaves to go to work. Inside the central arc, the Doctor explains that the Ravagers live off their own fear, not that of the time-displaced people. Therefore, if they could create an infinite loop of gameplay with added random inconsistencies, the Ravagers would never destroy the universe, the innocent people could be returned home, and the time eddies would resolve themselves. Audrey promises to do so, but the Doctor adds that she should free all her enslaved workers as well. She commits to the plan.

Some time later, a huge fireworks display in Freedom Square celebrates the stopping of the Ravagers. In a café, the Doctor meets Nova again with a drink now she has been given enough credits to start a new life. Nova asks about her alternate self's adventure with the Doctor and, slightly tipsy, he explains it. Nova explains how her father introduced her to science fiction videos, giving her all the information she needed, which the Doctor finds hilarious. Understanding, the Doctor offers Nova one trip with him. She happily accepts, and the Doctor adds that does not even need to ask where she wants to go... because he already knows.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Christopher Eccleston
 * Nova - Camilla Beeput
 * Ravager - Clare Corbett
 * Farraday - Ben Lee
 * Drones - Anjella MacKintosh
 * Audrey - Jayne McKenna
 * Halloran — Jamie Parker
 * Marcus Aurelius Gallius — Dan Starkey

Worldbuilding

 * The Doctor realises that Farraday is "a few years early" to know about DNA.
 * The Doctor explains how in Farraday's time, space travel extended only as far as "an orbital dog".
 * Farraday likely encountered robot gladiators from Brengross Five which were outlawed in 3052.
 * Nova and Audrey have never heard of tea.
 * 2D vids have taught Nova about Hercules.
 * The Doctor drinks two extra-large cups of Charganze which he had previously been offered.
 * The Doctor laughs at Nova when he deems her a "sci-fi nerd".
 * Nova is a huge fan of Professor X, having watched all 861 episodes, which is the same amount of Doctor Who TV episodes when the story was recorded.

Continuity
to be added