The Children of the Future (audio story)

was the second story in Sontarans vs Rutans, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Tim Foley and featured Tim Treloar as the Third Doctor, Sadie Miller as Sarah Jane Smith and Jon Culshaw as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
It was released in celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Sontarans and the first mention of Rutans.
== Publisher's summary ==
The war between the Sontarans and the Rutans has been going on for Millennia. And is likely to continue for millennia more.
The Brigadier is used to the Doctor acting strangely, but this time there’s something decidedly different about the whole affair. As he looks into the Time Lord's odd activities outside of UNIT, there's a mystery that'll take Lethbridge-Stewart to a site very familiar to Sarah Jane Smith.
Can the Brigadier trust his old friend? Who are his mysterious new allies? And is the future of humanity really at stake? A Sontaran threat could spell the end of their long-standing friendship...and the entire planet!
== Plot ==
Sarah answers the telephone for the Brigadier and is told by Private Larkins that the Doctor is being held up at the gate as the Brigadier requested. She realises that the Brigadier means to follow the Doctor incognito and joins him, agreeing that the Doctor has been acting strangely recently and wanting to know where he is sneaking off to in Bessie. In addition to the Doctor being secretive, the he has been ordering equipment similar to that that he had been using to fix the TARDIS during his exile which he has been taking off-site and looking at old maps of Hampshire, towards which he is driving. The Doctor speeds up, apparently having realised that he is being followed, and disappears.
Inquiring about Bessie at a petrol station, Sarah sees a postcard of the ruins of Lindsay Castle, which she recognises as the castle where she met Linx. They find that the castle is surrounded by soldiers led by Sergeant Moss, who demands that they leave until the Doctor shows up and has her lower her gun. The Doctor and Moss take the two of them to Captain Saint and they explain that they belong to the Earth Defence Force and are survivors of a Sontaran invasion in 1994. Saint recounts the invasion and how they managed to travel back in time thanks to the battery of Linx's osmic projector leaking into the castle's walls, creating a time tunnel which the Doctor detected when the first group arrived.
The Doctor, feeling that he is nearing the end of his regeneration, wants to help the survivors' immigration and integration into 20th century society and does not want UNIT involved, but Sarah and the Brigadier disagree with the survivors, who have augmented their physical abilities and mental capacity, breeding with 20th century people and changing history. As she and the Brigadier leave, Sarah realises how unlikely it is that the Doctor would agree with this project, named the Cascade Project, and is suspicious of the survivors and their claims; she has a dictaphone from 1997 Taiwan, noticed the survivors' strange vocabulary and believes that she recognised some of the soldiers, casting doubt on Saint's story.
Return to the petrol station so that Sarah can call a friend at The Herald, the Brigadier advises Stanley, who works there, to stick with a friend he is afraid he is drifting away from as much as possible, seeing a similarity with his own relationship with the Doctor in his varying incarnations. Sarah identifies an old copy of The Herald she saw at the castle and finds that the people there are all copies of people depicted in it, with Moss and Saint being copies of a pair of actors. They realise that they must be Rutans, whom the Doctor mentioned to them, and Sarah suspects that the Doctor too might be an impostor given his strange behaviour. As Stanley was briefly in the army, the Brigadier makes him an acting private.
Stanley pretends to be making a delivery to the castle and the Brigadier inside whilst Sarah gets herself captured by Moss in the nearby woods to distract the soldiers and is brought before the Doctor and Saint. The Doctor gets Sarah on her own and reveals that he knows that the soldiers are Rutans, that he has been trying to find out what they are up to and that he has been delaying the Cascade Project by making them believe that the crossings had to be gradual. When the Brigadier accidentally travels through the time tunnel, he arrives on a spaceship orbiting another planet and is followed by Saint and Moss, the latter of whom he shoots after he takes his form. The time tunnel starts to give way and the Doctor comes through to save him.
Saint takes the Doctor's form and the Brigadier is uncertain of which of the two Doctors is real until one of them calls him by his full name, after which he pushes him and leaves with the other. Sarah and Stanley get all of the Rutans through the tunnel to their spaceship so that they are not separated from the rest of their people and the tunnel closes. The Doctor explains that he felt that he had to complete this mission on his own as he is afraid of how he and UNIT will cope without one another and that they will never know the complete story of the time tunnel or the Rutans' interest in Ireland. Stanley admits that he is a Rutan and was being punished by Saint by acting as a lookout for leaving his brood and is given leave to remain on Earth.
== Cast ==
* The Doctor - Tim Treloar
* Sarah Jane Smith - Sadie Miller
* The Brigadier - Jon Culshaw
* Captain Saint - Nicholas Boulton
* Sergeant Moss - Lucy Goldie
* Stanley - Jeremy Ang Jones
=== Uncredited cast ===
* Photographer / Soldier - Nicholas Boulton (BFX: The Children of the Future)
== Crew ==
* Cover Art - Sean Longmore
* Director - Ken Bentley
* Executive Producers - Jason Haigh-Ellery and Nicholas Briggs
* Music - Joe Kraemer
* Producer - David Richardson
* Script Editor - John Dorney
* Sound Design - David Roocroft
* Writer - Tim Foley
* Senior Producer - John Ainsworth
== Worldbuilding ==
=== Fashion ===
* The Brigadier wears a flat cap.
=== Food ===
* Sarah buys the Brigadier some gumdrops.
* Corporal Bell makes a trifle for the Brigadier's birthday.
=== History ===
* Captain Saint claims he and his soldiers were agents of the Earth Defence Force from 1994, who fled from a major Sontaran invasion through a time tunnel.
* Many are said to have tried to flee to the Moonbase, but never made it beyond the atmosphere.
* Sarah has a dictaphone made in 1997, in Taiwan.
=== Individuals ===
* Private Barry Larkins works at UNIT's front gate.
* Sergeant Benton told Sarah that the Doctor had organised a wine and cheese evening for which the Doctor did not show up.
=== Locations ===
* Irongron's castle is named Lindsay Castle, and its ruins are now a tourist attraction featured on local postcards.
* Lindsay Castle is near Wessex Castle.
=== Media ===
* Sarah has a friend at The Herald, a newspaper.
* Deborah Creevy is the star of Morning Farm. The Doctor and Jo Grant once visited the set to investigate an unusual actor.
* Ronald Golightly was an actor in the 1950s.
=== Organisations ===
* Sarah mentions Galactic Heritage.
=== Rutans ===
* The Rutans belong to the Twenty-Seventh Fleet.
=== Science ===
* The Doctor promises to explain quantum osmosis, and has experienced time quakes.
=== Technology ===
* Sarah has a dictaphone from the future which the Doctor gave her.
* The Brigadier has binoculars.
* Linx used an osmic projector to capture scientists.
== Notes ==
* This story was recorded on 17 May 2023 at the Soundhouse.
== Continuity ==
* The Doctor and Sarah recently came back from the end of the world in .
* Sarah recounts the events of .
* Sarah describes the Sontarans as "nasty, brutish and short", a description the Doctor gave in .
* The Doctor mentions the Brigadier's murder of the Silurians in . 
* The Doctor feels that he is nearing the end of his life. He will regenerate in .
* The Rutans had an interest in Ireland. In 55 BC, the Eighth Doctor encountered the Rutans and the Sontarans there, in .
== External links ==
== Footnotes ==
=== Notes ===
Category:Sontarans vs Rutans audio stories
Category:Third Doctor audio stories
Category:Sarah Jane Smith audio series
Category:Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart audio stories
Category:UNIT audio stories
Category:Stories set in England
Category:Stories set in the 1970s
Category:Rutan Host audio stories
Category:2024 audio stories
Category:One part audio stories