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Neverland was the thirty-third story in Big Finish's monthly range. It was written by Alan Barnes and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor, India Fisher as Charlotte Pollard, Lalla Ward as Romana II, Anthony Keetch as Vansell and Don Warrington as Rassilon.

This story concluded the arc of stories beginning with Invaders from Mars concerning the paradox of Charley Pollard's surviving the R101's destruction.

Neverland was one of three audio stories to feature Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor alongside Romana as played by Lalla Ward. The others were the audio adaptation Shada, which itself was an extended release of the webcast of the same name, and Zagreus.

Publisher's summary[]

The Web of Time is stretched to breaking. History is leaking like a sieve. In the Citadel of Gallifrey, the Time Lords fear the end of everything that is, everything that was... everything that will be.

The Doctor holds the Time Lords' only hope — but exactly what lengths will the Celestial Intervention Agency go to in their efforts to retrieve something important from within his TARDIS? What has caused the Imperiatrix Romanadvoratrelundar to declare war on the rest of creation? And can an old nursery rhyme about a monster called Zagreus really be coming true?

The answers can only be found outside the bounds of the universe itself, in a place that history forgot. In the wastegrounds of eternity. In the Neverland.

Plot[]

Part One[]

A mechanical voice reads out key dates in the Humanian Era, including the crash of the R101. This voice is overlapped by a female voice, which reads out key dates in the Sensorian era. The first voice is still going, and lists dates and events in the Rassilon era, but when it gets to the Dalek Fleet being captured in the vortex, it begins breaking up, and screams that it "can't remember".

In the TARDIS, the Doctor explains to Charley that although the Daleks are trapped in a paradox, a time pocket, they may still be brought back by the Time Lords to avoid disruption to the timeline. They are in the Acteon galaxy, which the Doctor describes, saying that he hasn't been there since he "was an old man. Probably". Then, on the scanner, they see a large number of grey battle TARDISes, and realise they are there for them. Meanwhile, Vansell tells Romana that they have located the Doctor, and are blocking entrances to the vortex across 5 million consecutive years. The time station they are in heads towards them. The Doctor receives a message ordering them to power down their TARDIS, which the Doctor ignores, and is shot at by time torpedoes. However, a time slip hits them, which sends their TARDIS through time.

When it's over, the Doctor asks Charley how long they've been travelling together, and Charley guesses it to be about six months. The Doctor wishes her a happy birthday, and says she's going to an amazing party, inside the Jovian Fold. Acting excited, he says he won't be attending, and will pick her up in a year. The Doctor will go and see the Time Lords in the meantime, and try to sort out the paradox of Charley's existence. Charley doesn't want to hide away, saying that it's time to stop dreaming, time to grow up, but the Doctor doesn't want to give up on her. She hits the fast return switch.

Kurst and Levith, CIA agents, enter the TARDIS, which has been frozen for a few hundred years. The Doctor awakens and mutters about adventures he's had, and they take him for his "date with the President". They use a time-space converter to wake up Charley. The Doctor comes to his senses in a metal room in a 7C Supra-Orbital Time Station, where he teases Vansell about their time in the Academy. Vansell lists the many occasions on which Vansell has been traced to in different time periods after her death. Romana gives her word that no injustice will be carried out against Charley.

Charley is prepared for a procedure by the CIA agents while Vansell continues interrogating the Doctor about recent time slips. This leads the Doctor to explain the theory of Anti-Time, which he doesn't believe in, but is convinced when Romana shows him the time slips and disruptions originating from the 1930s. They describe Charley as patient zero; a rip in the fabric of space-time. Time is "running out", and the Matrix cannot cope. The Doctor is standing on a door to the Matrix, which he enters unwillingly.

Inside the Matrix, he sees the future if the slips continue: Gallifrey burning, Mount Cadon obscured by smoke. He meets an old man, who tells him Gallifrey is dead, and the people who are left alive have turned cruel. This is now the Empire of Zagreus. He sees Romana as an Imperiatrix, who has become cruel. She takes the Dalek Emperor and it's fleet as prisoners.

to be added

Cast[]

Crew[]

Worldbuilding[]

Botany[]

Conventions[]

Galaxies[]

Gallifreyan culture[]

Gallifreyan history[]

Gallifreyan technology[]

Space-time vessels[]

Other realities[]

Species[]

TARDIS[]

Theories and concepts[]

  • The Web of Time is stretched to breaking point. Even Gallifrey's own continuity is ready to break.
  • The theory of Anti-Time is given even less credence than the Flat Galaxy Society, but has been around for far longer.
  • The theory of Anti-Time is the idea that the Web of Time could not exist until Rassilon had built the Eye of Harmony, anchoring time, but this Web must also have it's shadow: anti-time. A "perpetuity of meaningless chaos".

Timeline[]

Time Lords[]

  • When Romana was a young girl of sixty, her family went to the shores of Lake Abydos on Gallifrey.

Literature[]

  • Charley makes various reference to Peter Pan.

Gallery[]

Notes[]

  • Don Warrington's name was not included in any of the cast lists printed in Doctor Who Magazine, www.doctorwho.co.uk or the CD's inner booklet in order to conceal the character's identity. His name does, however, appear on the cover of the CD.[1]
  • Despite Neverland being publicised as a traditional Big Finish Productions four-part story, it was released as "a special two-part, feature-length" presentation with episodes of seventy-two minutes each.[1]
  • Part 2 of Neverland leads directly into Zagreus. However, there was a gap of a year and five months between the release of Neverland in June 2002 and the release of Zagreus in November 2003.
  • This audio drama was recorded on 24 and 25 January 2001 and 27 February 2002.

Continuity[]

If you'd like to talk about narrative problems with this story — like plot holes and things that seem to contradict other stories — please go to this episode's discontinuity discussion.

External links[]

Footnotes[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 Neverland. The Millennium Effect. Retrieved on 4 February 2012.
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