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The Book of Kells was the fourth story in the fourth series of the Eighth Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Barnaby Edwards and featured Paul McGann as the Eighth Doctor and Niky Wardley as Tamsin Drew.

It marked the return of the Meddling Monk in his first appearance in performed Doctor Who since The Daleks' Master Plan. Here, a new incarnation is introduced.

Publisher's summary[]

"Anyone who's prepared to kill for a book interests me."

Ireland, 1006. Strange things have been happening at the isolated Abbey of Kells: disembodied voices, unexplained disappearances, sudden death. The monks whisper of imps and demons. Could the Lord of the Dead himself be stalking these hallowed cloisters?

The Doctor and his companion find themselves in the midst of a medieval mystery. At its heart is a book: perhaps the most important book in the world. The Great Gospel of Columkille. The Liber Columbae. The Book of Kells.

Plot[]

to be added

Cast[]

Crew[]

Worldbuilding[]

Individuals[]

Species[]

  • A Vortisaur recently crashlanded in a barn near the Abbey of Kells. The monks used its hide to make vellum.

Technology[]

  • The Doctor uses a temporal spectroscope to scan for irregularities in the time space field so as to determine whether any other time travellers have been dragged to the Abbey in 1006. He detects a time eddy in the Abbey's library.
  • The Monk has a Mark IV TARDIS, which is considerably more advanced than the Doctor's TARDIS.
  • The Monk made a DIY time scoop. It is only calibrated for interstitial space.
  • Using its fully functional chameleon circuit, the Monk's TARDIS disguises itself as a sarcophagus.
  • The Monk employed the monks at the Abbey to create a new directional unit for his TARDIS, given that the First Doctor had stolen his previous one many years earlier.
  • Brother Lucianus uses a vocoder to make her voice sound masculine.
  • The Monk's DIY time scoop uses the dematerialisation circuit of the Monk's TARDIS.
  • Among the components of the Monk's TARDIS is a neutrino filter, an epsilon modulator, and a time accelerator - the Doctor notes that the TARDIS didn't have those when he'd taken out the directional unit, and the Monk's dimensional control, or he would have stolen those as well.

Time travel[]

  • Tamsin refers to the Time Vortex as a "temporary whirlpool" rather than a "temporal wormhole".

Notes[]

  • This story marks the first appearance of the Monk in an audio drama as well as his first appearance in performed Doctor Who since the television story The Daleks' Master Plan in 1966.
  • Sheridan Smith is credited as "Ash Hidminster" (an anagram) in the liner notes, to disguise the reappearance of Lucie. She is only recognisable in the sequence after the end titles.
  • As the Doctor states, it is a matter of historical record that the Book of Kells was stolen from the Abbey of Kells in 1006. When it was recovered some weeks later, the gold and jewels of the cover were missing, along with several pages. This brief period was the only time that the Book of Kells was outside the monastery until it was placed on display in the Old Library of Trinity College, Dublin in the 19th century, where it remains today.
  • The story was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra on 10 January 2013.
  • This story was recorded on 17 August 2009 at the Moat Studios.

Continuity[]

Footnotes[]

External links[]

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