The House of Masks (audio story)

The House of Masks was the second story in the audio anthology Geronimo!, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Georgia Cook and featured Jacob Dudman as the Eleventh Doctor and Safiyya Ingar as Valarie Lockwood.
== Publisher's summary ==
For Valarie's first trip through time and space, the TARDIS takes them to one of the Doctor's favourite places: Venice, during Carnivale.
Unfortunately, not everyone is there to enjoy the party. Captain Tomasi has a murder to commit, and he needs Valarie's help to do it...
== Plot ==
The TARDIS, having been hijacked, materialises with its systems damaged and needing time to recover. The Doctor and Valarie find themselves in late 18th century Venice during Carnivale and go looking for the woman who called them for help, the TARDIS currently being unable to trace the call. After Valarie changes in the TARDIS wardrobe, they go for a stroll and join a masquerade at a palazzo using the Doctor's psychic paper to present themselves as representatives of the Doge of Venice.
Valarie is amazed by the masquerade, which she says her mother would have loved, and has a dance whilst the Doctor meets the hostess, Lady Sicura. Lady Sicura takes the Doctor to her study and asks him to protect her from being killed by Captain Tomasi, whom she believes plans to kill her before the end of Carnivale at midnight as he claims that she stole the palazzo from him. She tasks the Doctor with capturing him discreetly.
After stepping on her dancing partner's toes several times, Valarie meets Captain Tomasi and is concerned for him due to his ramblings. He shows her that the palazzo is sinking into the water and claims that Lady Sicura is planning to kill all of the party guests by locking them inside. He also claims that Lady Sicura is essentially a witch and is keeping the windows and doors from being opened or smashed; to save everybody, Lady Sicura must be killed by midnight. Valarie refuses to help him commit murder and leaves him, returning to the Doctor and attempting to leave with him.
The Doctor and Valarie find that the front door is locked and simultaneously made of entirely wood and entirely metal. Valarie attempts to knock it down without success, drawing the attention of all of the guests for a moment, before taking the Doctor to see the flooding. They search Lady Sicura's study, finding all of her drawers empty and her books entirely blank, and notice the room flicker for a moment. When it flickers a second time, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to reveal a secret door to the bridge of a starship rapidly being drained of its reserves.
An informational video tells the Doctor and Valarie that the ship is the Sicura, a luxury cruiseliner for the stars. Security footage shows Captain Tomasi and Riley as the Sicura crashes into Earth during last year's Carnivale, having collided with something during warp, but the log claims that the ship landed safely at the first sightseeing spot and that nobody died or suffered any injury. The Doctor and Valarie return to the ballroom, which has begun to flood, and find that the Riley and the guests are all robotic duplicates of the crew.
Lady Sicura, an artificial intelligence in a walking base station, orders Riley to detain the Doctor and Valarie, but the Doctor disables him with his screwdriver and they flee, soon running into Captain Tomasi. Captain Tomasi reveals that he is armed with a power diverter capable of wiping out artificial intelligences and goes to kill Lady Sicura, which the Doctor labels murder. When Lady Sicura captures the Doctor and Captain Tomasi, Valarie destroys the diverter and empathises with Lady Sicura's grief. The Doctor understands Lady Sicura's desire to bring back those that died because of her and convinces her to shut down the robots, rerouting the power to the ship and sending a distress signal.
Lady Sicura and Captain Tomasi thank the Doctor and Valarie and return to the bridge to fly into orbit. The Doctor and Valarie depart and watch the ship take off, after which Valarie asks the Doctor what he meant about causing multiple people's deaths. He tells her about the Last Great Time War and how he ended it by wiping out the Daleks and the Time Lords, offering to take her home if she no longer feels comfortable travelling with him. She does not believe that he is a monster and, just as he promised to be there if she wanted to talk about her mother, she promises to be there if he wants to talk about it.
The Doctor and Valarie return to the TARDIS to trace the phone call that brought them here, finding that it came from every point in time and space simultaneously. The Doctor gives Valarie a final chance to back out and return home, but she says that he is stuck with her. They dematerialise in search of Clara Oswald and the "mysterious phone woman".
== Cast ==
* The Doctor - Jacob Dudman
* Valarie Lockwood - Safiyya Ingar
* Lady Sicura - Genevieve Gaunt
* Captain Tomasi - Fode Simbo
* Riley - Richard James
== Worldbuilding ==
* The Doctor asks Valarie if she wants a gondola ride, ice cream at St Mark's Square or a stroll along the Grand Canal.
* Valarie gets a dress from the TARDIS wardrobe.
* The Doctor says that Casanova kissed one of the most decorated Sontaran generals to live, giving the Doctor the opportunity to blow up the Sontarans' atmosphere converter.
* Valarie has never heard of Venice and wonders if, by her time, it is the site of a components factory or a research rig.
* Valarie has an in-built universal translator.
* Valarie went to university with a girl named Lemon-Drop.
* Valarie wears a bird mask and gives the Doctor one that she calls "clowny".
* Valarie rarely goes to parties. The ones that she and her mother did go to were Fulcrum parties with the same piped music and branded presents.
* The Doctor tells Valarie about the Time War between the Time Lords and Daleks.
== Notes ==
* Following the change from four stories a box set to three, Geronimo! was left without a historical. To rectify this, a story was moved to a later box set and The House of Masks commissioned. (BFX: The House of Masks)
* Alfie Shaw selected Georgia Cook's pitch of a story set in Venice partly due to the Eleventh Doctor having previously visited the city with Amy and Rory in The Vampires of Venice. Rather than have him mourning them, he is shown to be moving on. (BFX: The House of Masks)
* Other locations pitched included the ballrooms of Bath and 1920s New York on New Year's Eve. (BFX: The House of Masks)
== Continuity ==
* Valarie mentions the Doctor finding a bomb in a wall. (AUDIO: The Inheritance)
* The Doctor gives Valarie directions to the TARDIS wardrobe, telling her to take the "first door on the left, second right, under the stairs, past the bins, fifth door on the left." These directions are similar, but not identical, to those given by the Ninth Doctor to Rose. (TV: The Unquiet Dead)
* The Doctor mentions him owing Casanova a chicken. (TV: The Vampires of Venice)
* The Doctor recalls fish people trying to breed in Venice. (TV: The Vampires of Venice)
== External links ==
Category:Geronimo! audio stories
Category:Stories set in Venice
Category:Stories set in the 18th century