The Seeds of War was the one hundred and seventy-first story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Nicholas Briggs and featured Colin Baker as the Sixth Doctor and Bonnie Langford as Melanie Bush.
This story was a sequel to the first-recorded but later-released Destroy the Infinite which featured the Fourth Doctor — or, put another way, Destroy the Infinite is a prequel to this story, since it came out second.
Publisher's summary[]
Humanity is emerging from a long, exhausting war. Against an enemy so powerful, so implacable, it seemed unstoppable — right up until the moment it stopped.
Now, despite its "victory", the human race is on its knees. The Doctor and Mel join its struggle for survival to try to ensure it has a future.
A race against time takes them from the Great Tower of Kalsos to the Reliquaries of Earth. In an epic journey across the ten systems, their fates are intertwined with one family. The Tevelers are to feel the effects of war more than most...
The Doctor has a plan. Mel is sure he can save the day. But something is lurking. Watching. Waiting. A presence the Doctor knows of old. But just how far does its influence pervade?
The Eminence awaits...
Plot[]
Part one[]
Having rummaged through his “rainy day chest”, the Doctor takes Mel to the grand opening of the Great Tower of Kalsos. Unfortunately, they arrive a few years too early, while the tower is in the process of being built. The Doctor decides that they might as well have a look around anyway, but the entire building begins to shake violently and sections of it crash down around them, separating them and plunging the TARDIS far out of reach. The Doctor decides to try and reach the control room, while Mel begins to choke but is saved by a masked stranger, who reveals to Mel that his name is Barlow Teveler. He tells Mel that the tower was actually opened eighty years before the Doctor and Mel arrived, and the Earth Alliance has come to destroy it.
The Doctor makes it to the control room and also discovers that the building is not, in fact, under construction, but has been deliberately wrecked. He manages to reroute power to the lifts and send oxygen to Mel, but the computer has a message for him: the Eminence is waiting, Doctor…
Meanwhile, Barlow’s father Helgert and sister Sisrella drink to Barlow while watching the efforts of the Earth Alliance on television, from the planet Ridius IV. They, along with many other Ridians, resent that their planet has effectively been abandoned by the rest of the human race following the conclusion of the Alliance’s recent war with the Eminence, due to severe food shortages. Helgert is in charge of a facility attempting to solve the shortages by creating a new kind of crop. However, the two of them are shocked to discover that the Alliance’s plans have changed - the tower is going to be blown up immediately.
Just as Barlow is about to try and abseil out of the tower with Mel, the Doctor, having repaired the lift, arrives on their floor. Barlow tells him that the bottom three floors are being used as the Alliance’s base, and the Doctor lets the lift fall before stopping it at the ground floor just as the charges go off and the tower explodes - leaving the three of them unable to escape.
Part two[]
Several days after the tower’s destruction, Mel wakes up onboard Barlow’s ship, en route to Ridius, with the three of them having survived the tower’s collapse by hiding in the security bunkers. However, with the Doctor being non-human, he has been tied up and subjected to questioning from members of the team sent to destroy the tower, including from Captain Trellak, who is extremely suspicious of the Doctor due to him apparently reviving the Eminence when using the tower’s central control. Barlow takes Mel to Trellak’s office so that she can protest the Doctor’s treatment - and to Mel’s surprise, Trellak lets her see him, although she orders Barlow to keep watch on them.
While walking in Delechor, a city on Ridius, Sisrella and Helgert have their ration packs stolen, but the thief is immediately apprehended by Elkinar Dajan. Elkinar is a research associate of Helgert and a former lover of Sisrella’s who has been agitating the people of Ridius to fight back against their situation. Helgert dislikes him for this, arguing that Elkinar is wasting his time on protests and should be helping with the research. Elkinar leaves them and advises them to stay away from the spaceport gates. Ignoring him, Sisrella and Helgert make their way there and see Elkinar, stirring up a large crowd with an impassioned speech against the Earth Alliance’s administrators and the way the Ridians have been treated. He is able to successfully incite a riot, and the crowd storms the spaceport and commandeers a shuttle.
After a brief conversation, Barlow comes to declare the Doctor and Mel’s time up. Mel finally loses patience and demands to know what the Eminence is, so the Doctor explains: it is a gaseous entity that travels in teleportation caskets and is able to control the mind of any being it comes across, as long as they inhale the Breath of Forever, turning them into Infinite Warriors - walking corpses who are impossible to kill. The Doctor uses this to convince Barlow that they have nothing to do with it - they are clearly not under its control and it has no need for spies. Barlow informs them that four months ago, the Eminence began a retreat all the way to Kalsos, with nobody quite sure of why.
Suddenly, a civilian shuttle begins docking with the ship, and the people aboard the shuttle breach the ship’s hull and start to storm it, with one of them being shot in the process. Barlow recognises their leader’s voice - Elkinar, who has come to raid their ship for food. Trellak allows the civilians into the food supply to take what they can, while the Doctor and Mel escape. The Doctor explains to Mel that the Eminence was not retreating, but was instead allowing the human race to turn against itself through starvation, propaganda and anarchy. He predicts that the Eminence will make another push against the Alliance soon - but little does he know that it is much, much closer than he realises…
Part three[]
After landing on Ridius IV, Barlow is reunited with his father and sister, with Helgert telling him that he is proud of him, despite their differences. The Doctor and Mel touch down at the same time, having been on the civilian shuttle, and Barlow introduces them to his family. The group hire a carriage to get home but during the journey, the Doctor feels the presence of a hooded figure who appears to him to be an Infinite Warrior - but nobody else can see it. Eventually, they arrive at the Teveler home, but Helgert takes the Doctor and Mel on to the research facility. The Doctor, after inspecting the seeds, concludes that they were deliberately infected by a biological weapon used by the Eminence. Mel quotes a line from Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”, reminding Helgert and the Doctor of the Agricultural Antiquities Reliquaries, a storage facility that contains fast-growing seeds that could be used to solve the Ridian food shortages. The Doctor and Mel decide to pay it a visit and Helgert gives them the access codes, but suddenly, a ship descends on the facility from above.
The Doctor and Barlow inspect the ship and find several bodies, but all signs point to the ship having landed rather than crashed. The ship’s log says that they had just left Delechor spaceport, heading for Ridius III. Barlow points out that the ship could easily get the Doctor and Mel to Earth, due to it being a long haul vessel complete with cryogenic suspension pods, but their examination of the ship is interrupted by Helgert collapsing outside, and their attempts to resuscitate him are tragically unsuccessful. The Doctor and Mel decide to travel to Earth, with Sisrella and Barlow in tow. The siblings place themselves in their cryopods, as does Mel - though she questions the Doctor about his wellbeing before going under. She was right to do so, as the Eminence has taken over the Doctor’s mind.
Part four[]
The Doctor’s company has arrived on Earth - but the Doctor himself is missing. The Eminence is planning to use him to infect the Reliquaries’ seeds with the Breath of Life. They are greeted by a robot who demands that Mel be processed for immigration. A hatch closes between Mel and the siblings and Mel is dragged off by the robot - but Barlow is infected with the Breath of Forever.
The Doctor makes his way into the seed bank, going through Administrator Kenneth first. He meets up with Barlow, now controlled by the Eminence, and they soon arrive at the seed vault. Barlow looks inside, only to realise that it is empty and the Doctor is gone. The Eminence orders him to find the Doctor immediately.
Mel, having been held by the robot for seemingly no reason, works out that its name - CRT-JCE-006 - is short for “carrot juice”. This turns out to be a password that activates a prerecorded message from the Doctor - who suddenly arrives in person and explains to her that he had been possessed by the Eminence, but that he was able to fend it off by suspending himself in a cryopod and that he took the seeds himself. They make their way back to the ship and the Doctor reveals that he stored the seed canisters in CRT-JCE-006.
The possessed Barlow demands that Kenneth tell him where the seeds are, destroying Kenneth’s robot, DDC-GTU-159. Kenneth asks if Barlow is any relation to Helgert. By telling him his memories of Helgert, Kenneth is able to stop Barlow long enough to activate the self-destruct sequence for the seed bank, which explodes, killing Barlow and Kenneth and stopping the Eminence's efforts on Earth.
Mel and the Doctor discover that Barlow was able to put Sisrella in suspension just before he lost all of his humanity. Mel is also put under and the Doctor begins the two-month flight back to Ridius IV. The Eminence, though, is far from gone…
Cast[]
- The Doctor - Colin Baker
- Melanie Bush - Bonnie Langford
- Barlow Teveler - Ray Fearon
- Sisrella Teveler - Ony Uhiara
- Helgert Teveler/Kenneth/Trooper/Docking - Stuart Organ
- Trellak/Thief/DDC-GTU-159 - Lucy Russell
- Elkinar/CRT-JCE-006 - John Banks
- TV Anchor/Pilot/Elevator - Beth Chalmers
- The Eminence/Kalsos Computer - David Sibley
Crew[]
- Cover Art - Mark Plastow
- Director - Barnaby Edwards
- Executive Producers - Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery
- Music and Sound Design - Andy Hardwick
- Producer - David Richardson
- Script Editor - Alan Barnes
- Writers - Matt Fitton and Nicholas Briggs
Worldbuilding[]
- Mel sings a line from "Big Yellow Taxi", which she says was sung by Joni Mitchell.
- The Eminence travels in teleportation caskets which it calls "infinity caskets" and which Elkinar thinks are baroque.
- Delechor is city and spaceport on Ridius.
Notes[]
- This audio drama was recorded on 3 and 4 September 2012 at The Moat Studios.
- Subscribers whose subscriptions included this story also received the audio short story The Young Lions.
Continuity[]
- The Doctor tells Mel that he once visited the Great Space Elevator of Sumatra "a few lifetimes ago." (AUDIO: The Great Space Elevator)
- When pretending to the Eminence to be working for it, the Doctor says, "I am your servant" just as the Daleks did on Vulcan. (TV: The Power of the Daleks)
- This story must take place in or after the 30th century as the work of agronomist Sarah Lasky is documented, which the Doctor thinks is best to stay away from. (TV: Terror of the Vervoids)
- Mel looks for the "mythical" TARDIS swimming pool. (TV: Paradise Towers)
- The Doctor previously encountered the Eminence on Delafoss during his fourth incarnation. (AUDIO: Destroy the Infinite) He encountered it again on multiple occasions during his eighth incarnation. (AUDIO: Time's Horizon, Eyes of the Master, The Death of Hope, The Reviled, Masterplan, Rule of the Eminence, Eye of Darkness)
External links[]
- Official The Seeds of War page at bigfinish.com
