Crossed Lines was the first story in the audio anthology Stranded 4, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Matt Fitton and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, Nicola Walker as Liv Chenka, Hattie Morahan as Helen Sinclair, Rebecca Root as Tania Bell and introduced Colin Baker as the Curator.
Publisher's summary[]
The Doctor interrupts a pivotal journey for young Robin, while Tania and Helen are caught up in events past and present.
As the timeline dissolves and the Void encroaches, the Doctor’s friends ask the Curator for help. But he is not the man he was...
Plot[]
to be added
Cast[]
- The Doctor - Paul McGann
- Liv Chenka - Nicola Walker
- Helen Sinclair - Hattie Morahan
- Tania Bell - Rebecca Root
- Robin Bright-Thompson - Joel James Davison
- Mr Bird - Clive Wood
- The Curator - Colin Baker
- Ken Bright-Thompson - Alan Cox
Worldbuilding[]
- As he mentioned to the Eleventh Doctor in TV: The Day of the Doctor [+]Steven Moffat, 50th Anniversary Specials (BBC One, 2013)., the Curator can "revisit" old faces. This time, he has adopted the form of the Sixth Doctor, taking on his body, personality, and mannerisms and wearing a variation of his coat and waistcoat.
- The Curator explains to Liv and Tania the TARDIS' relationship with the Web of Time. Events normally crystallise around the TARDIS and its occupants, knitting together the threads of the Web, but the TARDIS sustained enough damage during the events of AUDIO: Day of the Master [+]John Dorney, Ravenous 4 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Ravenous, Big Finish Productions, 2019). to splinter the Web upon crashing in 2020 London. (AUDIO: Lost Property [+]Matt Fitton, Stranded 1 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2020).) To the Curator, the version of 2020 that has been seen throughout Stranded is "a temporal cul-de-sac" with the potential to destroy all of existence if it is left unchecked.
- Mr Bird is Robin, aged into an older man over the course of many millennia. He engineered the events that turned Robin into him, namely by creating the machine that extended Robin's life and by relocating Robin and his father to Edinburgh (AUDIO: Dead Time [+]Matt Fitton, Stranded 2 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2021).) and Divine Intervention with it.
- The Void is the space between dimensions. The timeline fragmentation created by the crashing TARDIS enabled it to take a physical form based on Tania's; per the Curator, it seized on her for being at the centre of the paradox.
- A locked door at the end of a tunnel in the Under Gallery serves as an "emergency exit" to elsewhere in time and space. The Curator only uses it in "the direst of circumstances", one of these being an imminent attack by the Void.
- The presence of "multiple iterations of multiple individuals", as occurs when Younger Tania and Older Tania, Robin and Mr Bird, and the Doctor and Curator are simultaneously on the train to Edinburgh, can plunge a location into temporal instability.
- Both the Doctor and the Curator tell a story of the Hermit returning shimmerlings to the Time Vortex through the Untempered Schism.
- While encouraging the two Tanias to touch, thereby triggering the Blinovitch Limitation Effect, the Doctor mentions the Effect's eponymous creator.
Notes[]
to be added
Continuity[]
- The Doctor, Liv and Helen have just seen a future Robin genocide humanity by triggering a "kill switch" embedded in every human. (AUDIO: What Just Happened? [+]John Dorney, Stranded 3 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2021).)
- Liv recalls Tony Clare's memories shifting as his past was altered by Gron's time loop and the interference of the Doctor and Andy Davidson. (AUDIO: UNIT Dating [+]Roy Gill, Stranded 2 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2021).)
- Liv suggests Tania contact her "lot", to which Tanya replies that she was told by Andy that they are gone. (AUDIO: Dead Time [+]Matt Fitton, Stranded 2 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2021).)
- Liv recalls her and Helen's previous encounter with the Curator. (AUDIO: Lost Property [+]Matt Fitton, Stranded 1 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2020).)
- When the Curator, Liv, and Tania arrive in the Under Gallery, the Curator paraphrases the Sixth Doctor's remark to Peri Brown at the end of TV: The Caves of Androzani [+]Robert Holmes, Doctor Who season 21 (BBC1, 1984)., instead saying "Changes, my dear? And, it seems, many moments too late."
- Younger Tania asks Helen if by her time, they had worked out what caused the barren future Earth. (AUDIO: Dead Time [+]Matt Fitton, Stranded 2 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2021).)
- The Doctor, Helen, Younger Tania, and later the Curator, Liv, and Older Tania, visit the train taken to Edinburgh by Robin and his father. (AUDIO: Dead Time [+]Matt Fitton, Stranded 2 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2021).)
- Younger Tania notes Mr Bird vanished (AUDIO: Must-See TV [+]Lisa McMullin, Stranded 1 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2020).) just before the "lizard assassins from the future" arrived to kill the Doctor. (AUDIO: Divine Intervention [+]David K Barnes, Stranded 1 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2020).)
- Liv and the Curator discuss the TARDIS' crash-landing and subsequent withdrawal. (AUDIO: Lost Property [+]Matt Fitton, Stranded 1 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2020).)
- Mr Bird reveals the stasis bomb defused by Tania and Liv in AUDIO: Baker Street Irregulars [+]Lisa McMullin, Stranded 2 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2021). was meant to contain the Doctor, as were the squad of Judoon which chased the Doctor and his companions onto the planets depicted in AUDIO: Patience [+]Tim Foley, Stranded 3 (The Eighth Doctor Adventures: Stranded, Big Finish Productions, 2021)..
- Mr Bird boasts about being the last human. Two regenerations from now, the Doctor faces Cassandra O'Brien.Δ17, another claimant to the title. (TV: The End of the World [+]Russell T Davies, Doctor Who series 1 (BBC One, 2005).)
External links[]
- Official Crossed Lines page at bigfinish.com