Lady Audacity Montague, or Audacity, as she much preferred being called, was a companion of the Eighth Doctor from the Regency era. Gazing through her telescope at the night sky, she caught the eye of the Devouring, a powerful entity who decided to kidnap her into their possession. Although she was saved by the Eighth Doctor, he was unable to dissuade the Devouring from taking her, forcing her to travel in the TARDIS with him, and later, Charlotte Pollard.
Biography[]
Early life[]
A wave of smallpox swept through England, prompting Audacity's aunt to pressure her husband to give their children Edward Jenner's vaccine. Audacity's uncle refused out of fear, and Isadora died of the disease. Audacity was so haunted by the experience, she could recall it in great detail years later. (AUDIO: The Gloaming [+]Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024).)
Audacity decided to marry Ignatius Montague as he was a younger and richer man whom she would be unlikely to outlive, meaning that she would not lose her independence by being widowed. She agreed to support Prince George in his regency so long as he reformed Parliament; with him taking his time to do so, she became rather frustrated. In the meantime, she and Ignatius threw lavish balls, "encouraging" guests to "donate" money by wielding a fire lighter she pretended was a gun. (AUDIO: The Devouring [+]Lisa McMullin, Audacity (Big Finish Productions, 2023).)
Audacity visited Norfolk and did not enjoy the experience. (AUDIO: Twenty-Four Doors in December [+]John Dorney, In the Bleak Midwinter (Big Finish Productions, 2023).) She once made the people working at a shutter telegraph near Hampstead Heath teach her semaphore (AUDIO: The Empty Man [+]Tim Foley, In the Bleak Midwinter (Big Finish Productions, 2023).) and had a keen interest in astronomy. (AUDIO: The Devouring [+]Lisa McMullin, Audacity (Big Finish Productions, 2023).) She also read about alchemy and sympathetic magic. (AUDIO: Winter of the Demon [+]Roy Gill, In the Bleak Midwinter (Big Finish Productions, 2023).)
Travels in the TARDIS[]
At one of her balls, Audacity encountered the Eighth Doctor. He stayed behind after all the guests had fled her latest shakedown. She was intrigued by him after he told her not to look at the stars as they look back. She tracked a strange constellation and didn't believe the Doctor about spaceships. He told her about the Devouring and took her to them. She wanted to sacrifice herself to let all those who were taken be returned. After being rescued by the Doctor she went travelling with him as she was no longer safe on Earth in 1812. (AUDIO: The Devouring [+]Lisa McMullin, Audacity (Big Finish Productions, 2023).)
She went exploring in the TARDIS and found it intriguing. The Doctor and Audacity landed on the Aurum which she found overly gauche. She stopped Dellatine's assassination of Oberon Fix and chased after her. She learnt about the cost of the war on the Vogans and helped Nelvin tend to the sick. The Doctor told her about how the Cybermen worked and that they are not to be trusted. Her wrist was fractured during the assault. She was tasked with being a lookout. Afterwards, she traveled with the Doctor to a monastery in Tibet, meeting his other current companion, Charlotte Pollard. (AUDIO: The Great Cyber-War [+]Tim Foley, Audacity (Big Finish Productions, 2023).)
The Doctor took his friends to 107 Baker Street to celebrate Christmas and showed them the sites. She didn't fully understand the customs of the times and thought that they should have children to celebrate. She inquired about getting a Christmas Grotto for the party. They went to Al Norton's flat to discover what was wrong with him. She enjoyed the party with the Children. (AUDIO: Twenty-Four Doors in December [+]John Dorney, In the Bleak Midwinter (Big Finish Productions, 2023).)
Audacity and Charley waited in the car for the Doctor after tracing a strange creature. After being introduced to Eldridge Brinkwood, they told him about how they first met the creature in the frozen swimming pool, as it looked like Charley. Eldridge took them to a former friend of his to recover from the crash. She worked out that Eldridge's friend was his former male lover. She argued with Charley about their reckless habits and if time travel removes people's morality and empathy. She didn't want the creature to take Eldridge so tried to stop it but was pushed out of phase. (AUDIO: The Empty Man [+]Tim Foley, In the Bleak Midwinter (Big Finish Productions, 2023).)
She became alerted at the sound of the gun being shot at Edinburgh Castle and Archie McClellan told her it was to help with naval navigation. Charley and Audacity went to one of Donald Shaw's balls to help in the Doctor's investigations. She theorised that Maggie MacKenzie was an academic that did manual work. She debated with Shaw about reducing poverty. The Doctor and Audacity when to Maggie's dig. She also knew about alchemy. She went with the Doctor to sabbotage the clock that signalled the Canon to fire as Shaw was using that to measure the solstice. She told him that Maggie's transcription was true. They went with Archie to celebrate another Christmas. (AUDIO: Winter of the Demon [+]Roy Gill, In the Bleak Midwinter (Big Finish Productions, 2023).)
Prompted by a discussion of love and music, Audacity, the Doctor, and Charley attended the premiere of Madame Butterfly. After the performance, they met Giancomo Puccini, the opera's creator, and his wife, Elvira Gemignani. They invited the trio, whom they were fascinated by, to a party being held at the expansive house of Princess Tura, financier of the opera. Tura, in turn, invited the trio aboard a cruise she was hosting tomorrow.
The Doctor, sceptical that Tura was a human after having been told of her by Puccini in a previous regeneration, instructed Audacity to verify his suspicions. Riding with Tura on the way to her sailboat, Audacity peppered her with questions. She concluded that Tura was not human and was potentially dangerous, relating this to the Doctor upon reuniting with him and Charley. He proposed that Tura had been transforming humans into random animals and objects for a reason he could not deduce.
Aboard the boat, Audacity helped Charley, Elvira, and Tura set the table for a dinner taking place that night. The Doctor successfully answered Tura's riddles during the dinner, spurring her to leave in a huff. Following her to the deck with the Doctor, Audacity watched as she interrogated Charley about the Doctor's name and turned Charley into a bird when she was unable to do so. She and the Doctor convinced Tura to free Charley and the other passengers, who had separately been entranced and transformed by Tura, and seek her own definitions of creativity and love instead of stealing them from humans.
By reaching into Tura's dimension, the Doctor enabled him, Audacity, and Charley to have a final conversation with her. Following this, they attended the premiere of a revised version of Madame Butterfly, sporting three acts instead of two, the split filled with a musical interlude, thanks to a suggestion from Audacity. (AUDIO: Puccini and the Doctor [+]Matthew Jacobs, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024).)
Audacity and Charley wanted to visit Iceland to see the aurora borealis, while the Doctor was partial to viewing the moonfall on Xefora 7. Flipping a metaphorical coin using the TARDIS's randomiser, they were taken to rural Iceland. They messed around in the snow for a time, severely annoying a farmer, before returning to the TARDIS to travel to Reykjavik.
The TARDIS materialised in Reykjavik on 24 October 1975, the day of the nationwide women's strike commonly referred to as Women's Day Off. Audacity and Charley, excited by the strike, were swiftly swept up in the thousands-strong march. Avoiding being pelted with eggs, they confronted a mob of men who were harassing a marcher, Audacity threatening to pistol whip with her fire lighter a member of the mob restraining the marcher. They ran away, the mob giving chase, until they were saved by Jefred, an alien from Xefora 7 who had crashed in Reykjavik a week before. Jefred took them to his ship, concealed in a nearby park, and revealed he could not leave without his missing ambionic stabiliser.
Audacity, Charley, and Jefred searched for the stabiliser and the Doctor, reuniting with him when he fell out of a window of Gosbrunnur School. It transpired that their targets aligned, for the Doctor had been hot on the trail of Kyla, a student at the school who had unknowingly been using the stabiliser to cause chaos around town. Charley retrieved Therese Gunnar, a teacher Kyla was fond of, to calm Kyla down and help her out of her state of levitation. After Kyla was safely on the ground and the stabiliser returned to Jefred, the aurora borealis appeared above Reykjavik. Audacity, the Doctor, and Charley admired the sight before deciding to watch the moonfall on Xefora 7. (AUDIO: Women's Day Off [+]Lisa McMullin, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024).)
The Doctor took Audacity and Charley to Gillen-3 so they could enjoy its colourful landscapes. However, the TARDIS materialised farther in the future than intended; by this point, the planet had been depleted of its natural resources, and the trio exited into a grey desert. Noticing a peculiar moon on the horizon, they decided to investigate it instead.
Fighting past a firewall set up by the android Franz, the Doctor piloted the TARDIS to the moon, actually a sleep station known as Gloaming. The trio were immediately noticed by Franz, who demanded they leave to avoid contaminating the many residents unconscious in hypersleep pods. Things were smoothed out by Meryl Zink, a sleeper who had awoken for the first time in decades. She invited the trio to join her for tea.
During the tea, Meryl, who had been infected by a nascent manifestation of the Mara, served a sleeping draught she had brewed called Repose. Charley, to Audacity’s alarm, fell asleep, being placed inside a hypersleep pod by Franz. Alone with the Doctor after Franz left to attend to Dekkar, another sleeper who had woken up, Audacity glumly recalled Isadora's death. She was dismayed that the same horrors and fears persisted centuries later, and she worried that Charley was not all right. The Doctor promised that they would ensure Charley woke up unharmed.
Before the Doctor could respond to a concerning alarm, Franz returned with Dekkar. Dekkar was excited to meet a pair of "freaks", inviting Audacity and the Doctor to drink with him in the observation deck. There, they had a one-sided conversation with him, learning everything there was to know about his history. The Doctor prodded him into revealing he had awoken after dreaming of being spoken to by the Mara. Distraught, the Doctor raced to Charley's pod to prevent her from being possessed.
Unable to contain her own anxiety, Audacity began to feverishly pace. Dekkar glibly dismissed her concerns about the Doctor's safety and Gillen-3's degradation, telling her that Gloaming was composed of wealthy refugees from unrest on Gillen-3, those not as fortunate being left to die. She castigated him for not only helping to strip Gillen-3 of its resources, but being callous about the effects of doing so. Eager to leave, she sought out the Doctor, who clued her into his suspicions that Charley had been taken over by the Mara. Charley, or rather, the Mara, awoke and laughed at them, leading Audacity and the Doctor to realise she had been awake until drinking Meryl's tea. As Audacity came to this conclusion, she fell asleep herself, the consequence of having inhaled Calm, one of Meryl's most popular moods.
The Doctor injected Audacity with an entire charge of Dextro-7, a significantly stronger form of dextronylite. She awoke in a state of delirium, coming down from her high as the Mara laughed. Franz took her to get a glass of water which she reluctantly drank for fear of being drugged. She asked him to help her locate Dekkar, whom they found fast asleep in the observation deck. Meryl arrived and prepared to spray them with a concentrated dosage of Calm, but she was stopped by Dekkar, who was able to spray her and put her to sleep.
Audacity and Dekkar went to the Doctor and Charley, freed from the Mara's control by the Doctor. Audacity explained what she had been told about Gillen-7, theorising with the Doctor that the Mara manifested because the sleepers were greedy and malicious. Learning from Audacity that Franz was probably putting Meryl in a pod, the Doctor retrieved the passenger manifest to confirm his hunch that Meryl would become the latest sleeper ejected to protect Gloaming's reputation. The group stopped Franz before this could happen, and he soon let on that he had been possessed by the Mara. Goaded on by Dekkar, he ejected Meryl, Audacity pleading with him to desist.
As the Doctor and Dekkar overrode Gloaming's systems and woke up every sleeper, Audacity and Charley debated over whether it was worth saving the sleepers and whether they or Mara were responsible for Gillen-7's degradation. The work complete, they and the Doctor left in the TARDIS, the women firmly turning down Dekkar's requests for a kiss and further meeting. (AUDIO: The Gloaming [+]Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024).)
Appearance[]
Audacity was a tall, middle-aged Black woman with frizzy hair done up in a variety of styles. No matter the era, she tended towards wearing dresses. (AUDIO: Audacity, et al.)
Psychological profile[]
Personality[]
Confident, stoic, and highly logical, Audacity proved a marked contrast to Charley. She was self-assured to the point of smugness, knowing for a fact that she would come to understand the TARDIS's controls (AUDIO: The Great Cyber-War [+]Tim Foley, Audacity (Big Finish Productions, 2023).) and bragging about having "an exceptionally vivid imagination." (AUDIO: The Gloaming [+]Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024).) Typical for her time, she was a social reformer, pushing Prince George to reform Parliament (AUDIO: The Devouring [+]Lisa McMullin, Audacity (Big Finish Productions, 2023).) and skewering Dekker for abandoning the less wealthy of Gillen-3 to a horrible fate. (AUDIO: The Gloaming [+]Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024).) Not so typically, she was a feminist, and one so certain of her beliefs, she married Ignatius for purely pragmatic purposes. (AUDIO: The Devouring [+]Lisa McMullin, Audacity (Big Finish Productions, 2023).)
Audacity loved puppies (AUDIO: The Devouring [+]Lisa McMullin, Audacity (Big Finish Productions, 2023).) and enjoyed tea and cappuccinos, (AUDIO: Twenty-Four Doors in December [+]John Dorney, In the Bleak Midwinter (Big Finish Productions, 2023).) the former not being mixed with sugar. (AUDIO: The Gloaming [+]Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024).) She did not believe herself to be a romantic, scoffing at the very idea. Charley, however, thought otherwise. (AUDIO: Puccini and the Doctor [+]Matthew Jacobs, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024).)
Charley quickly grew fond of Audacity, gifting her with the diminutive Dassie and treating her as an older sister she could use to bend the Doctor to her will. (AUDIO: Puccini and the Doctor [+]Matthew Jacobs, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024)., Women's Day Off [+]Lisa McMullin, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024).) Audacity cared similarly for Charley, worrying for her safety after she fell asleep and gleefully reuniting with her upon her liberation from the Mara's control. (AUDIO: The Gloaming [+]Lauren Mooney and Stewart Pringle, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024).)
Habits and quirks[]
Even compared to the Doctor and Charley, Audacity spoke in an upper-class, old-fashioned manner. It took her a while to become comfortable using contractions (AUDIO: Audacity, et al.) and colloquial words effortlessly used by the Doctor, such as "lads", clumsily rolled off her tongue. (AUDIO: Women's Day Off [+]Lisa McMullin, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024).)
Skills[]
Audacity was a passionate astronomer. A room in her and Ignatius's estate was a dedicated observatory, crammed with accurate drawings of constellations and playing host to a telescope she would take with her into the TARDIS. (AUDIO: The Devouring [+]Lisa McMullin, Audacity (Big Finish Productions, 2023).) She could ride a horse one-handed (AUDIO: The Great Cyber-War [+]Tim Foley, Audacity (Big Finish Productions, 2023).) and was quite the actor, convincing more than one person that her fire lighter was a gun which would imminently be used. In Reykjavik, only Charley's nervous admission foiled Audacity's plan. (AUDIO: The Devouring [+]Lisa McMullin, Audacity (Big Finish Productions, 2023)., Women's Day Off [+]Lisa McMullin, Deadly Strangers (Big Finish Productions, 2024).)
Behind the scenes[]
Lisa McMullin largely based Audacity on herself and her own sensibilities. (BFX: The Devouring)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
