The Cold Equations (audio story)

The Cold Equations was the forty-fourth release in the Companion Chronicles audio range. It was the twelfth story of season 5. It was written by Simon Guerrier and featured Steven Taylor and Oliver Harper.

Publisher's summary

In the remnant of a shattered satellite, far above the ruined planet Earth, Steven Taylor and Oliver Harper are dying. As time runs out, they face their pasts... and a secret long kept is revealed.

The borrowed time is elapsing, and they realise they are facing an enemy that cannot be defeated. The cold, hard facts of science.

to be added

to be added

This is Oliver's first trip in the TARDIS.
Oliver refers to the 1960 film The Time Machine. He initially thought that the TARDIS, like the time machine in the film, would be able to move in time but not space. He was therefore expecting to see Shoreditch in the "time of the dinosaurs" or the 21st century.
Oliver compares the experience of seeing the future to Dan Dare.
Oliver learned trigonometry in school.

This audio drama was recorded on 13 September 2010.
In the special features, writer Simon Guerrier cites inspiration for Oliver's character and experience of homosexuality in the 1960s from the 1961 film Victim, about a homosexual man on the run from the law, and the television series Mad Men, which featured a gay character.

Oliver Harper reveals to Steven that he was on the run from the law for engaging in homosexual practices. (AUDIO: The Perpetual Bond).
This story appears to take place in the same time period that serves as the setting for the trilogy of Companion Chronicles stories that revolve around the copy of Sara Kingdom in the House: Earth in the far future where the Human Empire had apparently abandoned the planet for unspecified reasons leaving the Human remaining on Earth to regress back into more primitive times and a mysterious sickness has taken hold that causes those afflicted to fall asleep and waste away. (AUDIO: Home Truths, The Drowned World, The Guardian of the Solar System).