Fugitive of the Daleks (audio story)

Fugitive of the Daleks was the story comprising the eighth release in The First Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Jonathan Morris and featured Stephen Noonan as the First Doctor, Lauren Cornelius as Dodo Chaplet and Maureen O'Brien as Vicki Pallister.
== Publisher's summary ==
Years after ending her travels with the Doctor, Vicki finds herself back in the TARDIS. The Doctor desperately needs her help, and she’s only too happy to oblige. But in the process, the two of them fall into a series of perilous encounters, with the dreaded Daleks never far behind them.
What is the mysterious presence inside the TARDIS? And precisely what damage do the Daleks and their agents intend to cause to the flow of Earth’s history?
The Doctor and Vicki must call upon all their guile and bravery to discover the truth and save the day.
== Plot ==
=== Part one ===
Told by her grandson Antiphus that the TARDIS has appeared in Carthage, Vicki gives him a goodbye message for his father in case she does not return and enters the ship with a goodbye. She finds the Doctor unwell inside and agrees to pilot the TARDIS with the telepathic circuits to get him medical attention, materialising aboard Perpetuity Station in the orbit of the red supergiant Quadrans Majoris. Biomedic Oltan takes the Doctor away to be stabilised whilst Tarmis, a maintenance technician, shows Vicki around the station and introduces her to the controller, Astronomer-Scientist Hedra.
Vicki learns that Hedra, Tarmis and Oltan are the only people aboard the station to have survived an outbreak of space plague which killed almost forty others 560 years ago. They have managed to become effectively immortal using the advanced resources at their disposal and, with the station still under quarantine because of the red supergiant's radiation preventing external communication, hope to leave in the TARDIS once the Doctor has recovered. When Vicki visits him, he tells her that he cannot remember anything from after the burning of the City of the Mechonoids in a Dalek attack and she tells him about the life she has lived since Troy.
The Doctor refuses to help Hedra, Tarmis and Oltan and hurries back to the TARDIS with Vicki, but the storage room it landed in is locked and Tarmis and Oltan take them captive. Whilst Tarmis leads Vicki away, Oltan takes the Doctor to Hedra, who demands that he take the trio anywhere in the universe as the supergiant will become a black hole in twenty years and swallow the station. Vicki overpowers Tarmis during a bout of stellar turbulence and discovers that he is a robot duplicate built to survive the plague, something that the Doctor deduces is the case for all three of them due to them never having to eat despite the station having a store of food.
Although the crewmembers now know that they are robots, the Doctor is sure that they will soon forget as their programming keeps them from going insane and explains that he cannot take them from the station because they are powered by the supergiant and would cease to function if they left. They forget as expected and Vicki takes Tarmis to the medical bay, but they hide when a time machine materialises and Daleks exit. They know that the Doctor is aboard and go to capture him.
=== Part two ===
The Doctor convinces Hedra to help him and Vicki escape Perpetuity Station to get rid of the Daleks and she pretends to hold him prisoner, demanding that the Daleks return to their time machine to await the Doctor's delivery. Once they are inside, Tarmis escorts the Doctor and Vicki back to the TARDIS and they dematerialise, the Daleks following moments after. The TARDIS materialises in a tomb which the Doctor and Vicki look around whilst the ship's computer reorientates and gathers power, but they are soon taken captive by savages whose High Priest communicates with the Doctor through gestures that he and Vicki are accused of defiling the resting place of their ancestors.
The Doctor and Vicki, unsure whether their inability to understand the savages is because of the translation circuit malfunctioning or their language being too rudimentary, are tied to poles to be sacrificed to a scorpion-like creature in a pool of boiling mud which the Daleks attempt and fail to exterminate. Somehow getting himself free from his bonds in the confusion, the Doctor releases Vicki and they flee back to the TARDIS, finding it guarded by a Dalek which commands them to enter the Dalek time machine. However, the Doctor knocks a statue into it and he and Vicki escape into the TARDIS, although the Doctor is almost hit by a shot from the Dalek.
As the roof of the tomb begins to fall in, the TARDIS dematerialises and the Daleks withdraw to their own time machine. Vicki gets water from the food machine and goes to rest in her bedroom, but the door is locked and the Doctor hurries to her, having remembered that he locked an alien inside. The alien, he says, was responsible for his poor health when he and Vicki were reunited and he declares that the TARDIS has been invaded.
=== Part three ===
The Doctor claims to be unable to recall any details about the alien or how it infiltrated the TARDIS and says that he and Vicki will have to wait until it starves to death. Vicki suggests that it could be the alien that the Daleks are after, which the Doctor agrees is possible, and rests in Barbara's room until they land at the site of a battle in North America in 1876. There, they are captured and taken to General Custer, who intends on keeping them with him due to his assumption that the Doctor is a sawbones and could be of use to his men in the war against the Sioux.
Vicki knows that the Battle of the Little Bighorn is imminent and knows it to be a pointless massacre, but the Doctor insists that they cannot change history by averting it. Custer learns of the nearby hostiles and accepts the Daleks' offer to hand the Doctor and Vicki over to them in return for their assistance in the battle on the condition that the fugitives are only handed over afterwards. The Daleks detect an ambush with a seismic detector and withdraw, leaving the 7th Cavalry Regiment to be killed as they do not wish to change human history. 
The Doctor and Vicki, who is surprised by the Daleks' unwillingness to change time, get away on horses with Lieutenant James's help and are shot at with arrows. Vicki is unharmed but notices when the Doctor starts speaking in an unusual manner that he has been hit by one, despite him showing no sign of feeling any pain. He declares that his mission is to infiltrate and kill the Doctor.
=== Part four ===
Vicki gets the Doctor into the TARDIS where he starts acting normally and speculates that he has been influenced by the Daleks' hypnotic control. Removing the arrow, however, Vicki confirms that he is indeed a robot, although she keeps this from him and claims that it was simply caught in his jacket. They briefly land in 20th century London in place of a police box knocked down by Fred and Charlie, resulting in the two workers getting in trouble with Arnold from the council and vindicated once it dematerialises. 
Next, the TARDIS lands on the glass moon Vitros and Vicki plans to lure the Daleks to where the glass is thinnest so that it breaks. Looking around and admiring the crystalline crabs that live on the moon, the travellers see glass worms below and the Doctor attracts them when the Daleks arrive by hitting the glass with his walking stick. A worm bursts through the ice and freezes the Daleks solid. The Doctor's legs are frozen as well, giving Vicki the opportunity to reveal that he is the robot duplicate built by the Daleks to kill the Doctor during her original adventures in the TARDIS. He remembers entering the TARDIS after the Doctor defeated him, wandering into the inner rooms and eventually encountering an intruder he locked in Vicki's room.
The Robot Doctor mourns the fact that he is not the real Doctor, but Vicki assures him that he was the Doctor when it mattered and wonders whether the Daleks want to return him to his original programming because of the reproducer's destruction. The programming starts to return to the surface and the Daleks reactivate, so the Robot Doctor sends Vicki to the TARDIS for her safety and she dematerialises in the hope of finding help. Remembering the prisoner trapped in her room, she opens the door and meets Dodo.
=== Part five ===
Vicki tells Dodo, who heard about her from Steven, about her adventures with the Robot Doctor and Dodo in turn tells her about how the Doctor disappeared after they saved Incherton. She attempted to use the TARDIS controls and went looking for the Doctor when the Cloister Bell rang, coming across the unconscious Robot Doctor and being locked in her room for her own safety after he attacked her. Vicki deduces that Dodo accidentally reactivated him and gave him knowledge of the TARDIS when she operated the controls.
The time path indicator alerts Vicki and Dodo to the pursuing timeship, aboard which the Daleks are failing to get the Robot Doctor to obey them due to the Doctor having damaged his motivational circuits, and they use the telepathic circuits to try to find help. The Dalek timeship materialises around the TARDIS and, after exiting, Vicki tells Dodo to remain inside the TARDIS whilst she goes in search of the Doctor, drawing the Daleks away so that she can head back. Vicki is soon captured, however, and brought before the Dalek Supreme.
Dodo finds the Robot Doctor outside of the TARDIS and enters with him, trying and failing to stop him from leaving Vicki behind and realising that he once again wants to kill the Doctor. As they fly to Earth, where the Robot Doctor believes his target probably is, the Dalek Supreme dismisses the other Daleks and opens its lid, telling Vicki that it has a secret. The Doctor emerges and laughs at having deceived the Daleks with his ruse.
=== Part six ===
Briefly returning to the Dalek Supreme's casing, the Doctor resumes the Daleks' pursuit of the TARDIS to save Dodo from the Robot Doctor and explains to Vicki how he came to be disguised as a Dalek; he was taken out of his time stream by his people and found himself in a polluted capsule which he used to travel to Kembel to capture the Daleks' time machine to follow the TARDIS, taking the place of the Dalek Supreme dying because of the Time Destructor. It was only when his double survived a blast on the savages' planet that he realised that it was the Robot Doctor.
The TARDIS lands outside the Hotel Métropole in 1911 Brussels on the day of the Solvay Conference and the Robot Doctor, planning to damage history to attract the Doctor's attention, forces Dodo to play along with him by threatening the lives of others. The Doctor and Vicki arrive in 1911, but the Doctor is unable to leave the time machine's dimensional field because he remains displaced in time and sends Vicki to find the Robot Doctor and Dodo. When Dodo escapes the Robot Doctor, Vicki tells her to return to the TARDIS and finds the robot inside the hotel, preparing to detonate himself and kill the scientists in attendance. She manages to persuade him to be the Doctor and deactivates him.
Dodo is caught and released by the Daleks because of the Doctor's order that they harm no humans and they depart in the time machine once they detect that the Robot Doctor has been deactivated. She and Vicki take the Robot Doctor into the TARDIS where the Doctor, having used the Dalek time machine to return to his own ship before setting it on a course for Skaro with the Daleks inside, explains that he has more control over the TARDIS than usual because of his circumstances and uses the telepathic circuits to get Vicki back to Carthage. Although she expresses no wish to return to her life without Troilus, she changes her mind upon seeing Antiphus on the scanner.
Vicki insists on a proper goodbye and thanks the Doctor for rescuing her and showing her that life went on, a sentiment which the Doctor shares. She tells Dodo to look after him and returns to her grandson. The Doctor dematerialises the TARDIS and can feel the time tracks shifting, which he believes will cause Dodo to forget about everything that has happened since he disappeared in Incherton. He reactivates the Robot Doctor and leaves him near Amboise where a young Frenchman is waiting to greet the new Abbot of Amboise; the Robot Doctor adopts this identity.
== Cast ==
* The Doctor - Stephen Noonan
* Vicki - Maureen O'Brien
* Dodo Chaplet - Lauren Cornelius
* Hedra - Genevieve Gaunt
* General Custer / Oltan / Charlie / Savage Leader - Mark Elstob
* Captain Myles / Fred / Savage Priest - Gary Turner
* Tarmis / Antiphus / Lieutenant James / Savage Guard / Young Frenchman - Ashley Cousins
* The Daleks / Arnold - Nicholas Briggs
== Crew ==
* Cover Art - Christopher Naylor
* Script Editor & Director - Nicholas Briggs
* Executive Producers - Nicholas Briggs and Jason Haigh-Ellery
* Music - Toby Hrycek-Robinson
* Producer - Mark Wright
* Sound Design - Luke Pietnik
* Writer - Jonathan Morris
* Senior Producer - John Ainsworth
* Daleks created by Terry Nation
== Worldbuilding ==
* In his state of confusion, the Robot Doctor mentions Susan, Ian and Barbara.
* When the Robot Doctor asks Vicki to operate the dematerialisation control, she says that he never taught her how to fly the TARDIS.
* Perpetuity Station is a space station.
* Quadrans Majoris is a red supergiant.
* Tarmis is a maintenance technician.
* Oltan is a biomedic.
* Hedra is an astronomer.
* Hedra offers Vicki water, protein bars and defrosted fruit.
* There was an outbreak of space plague on the station.
* Vicki is sometimes visited by philosophers from Athens.
* The Robot Doctor thinks he should develop a sonic device to open locks.
* Ancestor worship was common in Egypt.
* The Robot Doctor says that he has the directional sense of a homing pigeon.
* Vicki gets water from the food machine.
* The TARDIS has a state of grace which is not currently functioning.
* Vicki rests in Barbara's room.
* Carthage is in North Africa.
* Vicki brings the Robot Doctor a cloak and his walking stick.
* The Sioux fight the Crow.
* Custer fought in the American Civil War.
* President Grant wants Sioux land.
* The Daleks do not recognise a horse.
* The Robot Doctor and Vicki are served baked beans with salted pork.
* The Daleks use a seismic detector.
* Vitros is a glass moon.
* Dodo says that she knows very little about history and did not take it for her O-levels.
* Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Hendrik Lorentz, Max Planck and Ernest Rutherford attend the Solvay Conference.
== Notes ==
* This story was recorded on 8-10 August 2023 at the Soundhouse.
* Jonathan Morris did not want the fact that Dodo Chaplet was appearing in the story to be revealed in pre-publicity. Ultimately, she appeared on the cover. (BFX: Fugitive of the Daleks)
* Genevieve Gaunt stepped in to play Hedra after the original actress fell sick. (BFX: Fugitive of the Daleks)
== Continuity ==
* The cover depicts Vicki wearing the same clothing as she did in WC: The Storyteller
* Vicki has told Antiphus about the events of .
* Vicki parted with the Doctor and Steven in .
* The Doctor and Vicki skipped a time track in .
* The Robot Doctor believes that he is suffering from temporal amnesia as a result of being taken out of time, just as the Sixth Doctor did in .
* The Robot Doctor remembers the burning of the City of the Mechonoids, which he saw in .
* Vicki asks the Robot Doctor if he can remember the events of .
* The Doctor has a collection of swords and antique firearms. He mentioned having a collection of guns in .
* Vicki references the "noble art of fisticuffs", a phrase the Doctor used in .
* The Robot Doctor is aware that deleting a room in the TARDIS with living beings inside would automatically bring them into the main control room. (TV: )
* Dodo heard the Doctor mention the Daleks in .
* Dodo tells Vicki about what happened after she and the Doctor saved Incherton in .
* Dodo mentions how the Doctor turned invisible in .
* Vicki says that somebody would have to be stupid to mistake the TARDIS for a real police box. Dodo did just that in .
* Vicki remembers being in a Dalek time machine in .
* The First Doctor entered a Dalek casing in .
* The Doctor recalls that the last time he encountered the Daleks was .
* Vicki thanks the Doctor for having rescued her in .
* The Robot Doctor becomes the Abbot of Amboise, who appeared in .
== External links ==
== Footnotes ==
=== Notes ===
Category:The First Doctor Adventures audio stories
Category:Dalek audio stories
Category:Six part audio stories
Category:First Doctor audio stories
Category:2024 audio stories
Category:Stories set in Africa
Category:Stories set in the 13th century BC
Category:Stories set in the United States
Category:Stories set in the 19th century
Category:Stories set in London
Category:Stories set in the 20th century
Category:Stories set in Brussels
Category:Stories set in 1911
Category:Stories set in France
Category:Stories set in the 16th century