The Time Machine (audio story)

23 November 2013. In an Oxford laboratory, graduate Alice Watson helps Professor Chivers assemble the final pieces of an impossible machine. A time machine.

The scientist and his assistant believe they are making history, little suspecting that the project's completion will threaten the existence of the entire universe. But someone has sensed the danger, and when the mysterious Doctor arrives, Alice is taken on a desperate race from libraries and dreaming spires all the way to the nightmare world of Earth's future.

The monstrous Creevix are coming. They seek control of time itself and are certain that the Doctor is already too late to stop them. But can the key to saving the future lie in the Time Lord's past lives?

Plot

to be added

Cast

Characters

References

The Time Agency was set up at some point after the 42nd century. Anomaly trackers are standard issue equipment for them.
The Doctor mentions Alice in Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes and Back to the Future.
Chivers had Ian Chesterton as a science teacher.

Notes

Originally scheduled for release on CD in early November 2013, the release was put on hold due to publisher AudioGo going into administration in October 2013. A download copy of the story was released by audiobook sites Audible and iTunes, and later by Big Finish Productions. On 18 November, Big Finish announced that it would be releasing the CD version as well.[1] The packaging for the Big Finish release omits any mention of AudioGO, though a credit for the company is still read by Coleman.
Unusually, despite it being read by Jenna Coleman, the character of Clara does not appear, her place taken by one-off companion Alice Watson (also performed by Coleman). That said, given the unique nature of Clara's character, it's possible that Alice might be one of her "echoes" as established in TV: The Name of the Doctor, although the story contains no overt indication of this (i.e. the catchphrase "Run you clever boy, and remember").
This story was recorded on 14 June 2013.
The first name of Police Chief McNeil is James in AUDIO: Night of the Whisper and Joseph in this story.
The person who introduced Cedric Chivers to the Bob Dylan music was Susan Foreman in AUDIO: Hunters of Earth. However, in this story, the Doctor claimed that his first incarnation was the one who did so. The Doctor was partially telling the truth, as Susan only introduced Cedric to the music because of the message she had received from the Eleventh Doctor. In the message, he had said, "It's blowing in the wind," referring to the Bob Dylan song, Blowin' In The Wind, which is the song that the Doctor had Alice quote lyrics from to Cedric.
The existence of the Time Lord hypercube is an ontological paradox, also known as a bootstrap paradox. The cube that the Seventh Doctor gave to OhOne was sent to him by the Eleventh Doctor's TARDIS, which the Eleventh Doctor got from Professor Chivers, who received the cube from Alice Watson, who got it from the Eleventh Doctor, who retrieved the cube from Guy Taylor's time machine, which had been put there by Guy Taylor, who got it from his father, OhOne, who received it from the Seventh Doctor. As such, the cube has no discernible origin.

Continuity

The Doctor's plan from throughout the Destiny of the Doctor series is revealed to have been laid out as such:
He gets Cedric Chivers to remember him by quoting lyrics from a Bob Dylan song, which the First Doctor introduced Chivers to while Chivers was still a student at Coal Hill School. (AUDIO: Hunters of Earth) The Bob Dylan song changed Cedric's life, as he attended concerts, through which he met his wife, Joyce. They would go on to have children, who would have children of their own. As such, Cedric hesitates when the time comes for him to use the time machine, as he thinks of his family, and the potential risk of them losing him. This hesitation allows the Doctor to stop the Creevix.
An artificial copy of the Fourth Doctor inside the Babblesphere (AUDIO: Babblesphere) sent messages through time influencing the Creevix to seek out Chivers. The messages would not have reached the Creevix, nor the psychic messages the Eleventh Doctor was sending to his former incarnations, however, had the Eighth Doctor and Charley Pollard not cleared up some interference in the form of an alien invasion using the William Tell Overture to invade the Earth in 1935 (AUDIO: Enemy Aliens), nor if the museum that the Babblesphere was stored at hadn't been capable of sending sub-pulsar transmissions, which was only made possible because the Second Doctor saved Sophie Topolovic's research on the Quiet Ones. (AUDIO: Shadow of Death)

Guy Taylor - the man at the centre of the Creevix' plan - is the son of OhOne (AUDIO: Shockwave) and Lyric Erskine (AUDIO: Death's Deal), who were saved by Ace McShane and Donna Noble respectively. Lyric and OhOne conceived Guy during their second honeymoon at the Memorial Hotel - which was founded by Joseph McNeil after the Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, and Jack Harkness ensured he lived to became mayor of New Vegas. (AUDIO: Night of the Whisper)
After the Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa, and Tegan Jovanka returned the Ovid sphere to the Ovids, the Ovids were so impressed with the efforts of Tegan in particular that they shared their knowledge of psychokinesis with humanity in the far future. (AUDIO: Smoke and Mirrors) The Doctor uses technology invented using this knowledge to throw a chunk of super-dense therocite - saved from destruction by the Third Doctor and Mike Yates (AUDIO: Vengeance of the Stones) - at Chivers' time machine, destroying it.
The Doctor's TARDIS is able to break free from the Creevix' trap because of the omniparadox stored away inside it by the Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown. (AUDIO: Trouble in Paradise)

The Doctor tells Cedric that he doesn't know where he is going, meaning the Doctor has not yet visited Trenzalore. (TV: The Name of the Doctor) Whether he is at a point before he meets Clara Oswald (TV: The Bells of Saint John) or in between any of his adventures with her is unknown.
The Doctor said he went to St Cedd's College , when Alice if he was from the University of Cambridge. (AUDIO: Shada)

External links

Official The Time Machine page at bigfinish.com

Tardis

The Time Machine (audio story)

Contents

Publisher's summary