Spirit of the Season (audio story)

Spirit of the Season was the first story in the audio anthology Everywhere and Anywhere, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Georgia Cook and featured Jacob Dudman as the Eleventh Doctor, Safiyya Ingar as Valarie Lockwood and Mandi Symonds as Patricia Lockwood.
== Publisher's summary ==
It's a Christmas miracle! The Doctor and Valarie have finally found another Clara. Shame she wants to kill them both.
== Plot ==
On the way to Lapland, the TARDIS is contacted once again by the mysterious caller, who says that they "can't let them win", and remotely controlled to travel to the 1890s. The Doctor and Valarie awaken in the home of Clara, a young girl who knows their names and claims that she brought them to her for their final Christmas before she kills them, but the Doctor does not believe that she is the Clara that he is looking for. She runs away and the Doctor and Valarie meet Harpreet and Brother Edmund.
Harpreet and Edmund explain that they too arrived at the house inexplicably, from 1995 and the 1500s respectively, and that three other visitors from different times have disappeared. Clara returns to lead Harpreet into a room identical to her kitchen during Diwali in 1974 and she begins to experience pain, so the Doctor and the others help her through another door and find themselves in the courtyard of the Priory of St Helena's where Edmund sees a little boy in the snow. He too experiences pain and the group return to the parlour inside. 
Edmund confirms that the little boy was himself when he almost died in the cold one Christmas and Harpreet reveals that Diwali 1974 was the night that her sister, Talia, disappeared. The next room they find is Valarie's living room on Research Rig 6 during the holidays and the Doctor is unable to get Valarie out before Patricia appears and goes through the door into Clara's house despite his concern for the Web of Time. Clara locks Valarie and her mother outside together and they find the skeleton of Marcellus, one of the other visitors, whilst the Doctor, Harpreet and Edmund are menaced by a flying shark.
The Doctor gets Harpreet to imagine a door from her past and they force the flying shark through it and into Harpreet's Year 5 classroom. He heads outside to fetch Valarie and Patricia, the latter of whom Clara stunned with a gun to make Valarie believe for a time that she had been killed once again, and brings them back in, learning from them that the only light that can be seen from the outside is a bright blue one from the attic. The Doctor deduces that they are inside a bubble created from their memories by the Arkheion, whose mission was to preserve aliens' emotions in archived bubble universes before they started selling the emotions for profit.
Harpreet pictures another door and the group go looking for the control room in the attic, but Clara separates them; she taunts Edmund about his uselessness and Harpreet about Talia's disappearance, confirms Patricia's deduction that she is Valarie's memory of her dead mother and reminds the Doctor of the deaths of Oswin, Amy, Rory and Clara, but the Doctor remains resolute. He makes Clara feel scared and alone and makes a psychic connection to the other members of the group through her to tell them to stand up to the bubble. Edmund comforts his younger self by promising that they can both be strong and Harpreet remembers her happy memories about her sister.
The Doctor uses the fake TARDIS that Clara has put him in to travel to the Arkheion control room. He fails to switch off the system with his sonic screwdriver because Valarie's emotions are still being fed on, as Clara has killed and revived Patricia once again. Prompted by the Doctor, Valarie says a tearful goodbye to her mother and promises that she will not continue to avoid furthering her relationship with Roanna. Clara is drained by her fear and the system is switched off, allowing the Doctor to create doors to take Edmund and Harpreet home and to summon the real TARDIS, into which he takes the dimensionally transcendental Arkheion device.
The next time the mysterious caller makes contact, the Doctor intends to trace the call using the Arkheion device. He prepares to give Valarie lessons on how to fly the TARDIS on the Endless Beaches of Pernia, but she wants to visit Roanna instead and calls her to ask for her availability for a date.
== Cast ==
* The Doctor - Jacob Dudman
* Valarie Lockwood - Safiyya Ingar
* Patricia Lockwood - Mandi Symonds
* Clara / Arkheion - Becky Wright
* Harpreet - Natasha Patel
* Edmund - Edward Harrison
== Worldbuilding ==
* Valarie has never heard of Lapland.
* Patricia hated tinsel.
* The Doctor once played charades with the eight-handed Queen of Heltak IX.
* Harpreet was buying a coffee in 1995.
* Edmund belongs to St Martin's Abbey in the 1500s.
* Marcellus was from the Roman Empire.
* Bracka and Olga did not know what time it was.
* Valarie made bunting at school for the holidays and her mother hung it over the door.
* Mrs Patterson was Harpreet's Year 5 teacher.
* The house is inescapable thanks to a recursive loop.
* Patricia was strong whilst Valarie's father was in hospital. All he wanted on his memorial holo was a message saying "told you so".
== Notes ==
to be added
== Continuity ==
* Patricia Lockwood died in .
* The Doctor encounters a flying shark which he identifies as the same one he met in .
* Clara says "halfway out of the dark", a phrase which Kazran Sardick and the Doctor said in .
* Clara mentions how the Doctor was alone on a cloud and failed to save a new friend, referring to his self-imposed exile and Clara Oswin Oswald's death in .
* Clara mentions the deaths of Amy Pond and Rory Williams, who were sent back in time by a Weeping Angel in . She also references two other deaths for Rory, referring to his temporary deaths in and .
* Clara mentions the death of Oswin Oswald in .
== External links ==
Category:Everywhere and Anywhere audio stories
Category:Stories set at Christmas
Category:Stories set in the 1890s