The Romanov Project (audio story)

was an audiobook in the Audio Originals range from BBC Audio featuring the Thirteenth Doctor, Yasmin Khan, Ryan Sinclair and Graham O'Brien, written by Niel Bushnell, released on 7 December 2023.
== Publisher's summary ==
Toby Longworth reads this original adventure for the Thirteenth Doctor and Graham, as played on TV by Jodie Whittaker and Bradley Walsh.
There is a darkness here. A darkness that feeds.
It's 1970, and record-breaking explorer Silvia Sandstrom has completed an epic lone drive to the North Pole. But as she activates her on-board experimental equipment, her vehicle is swallowed by a massive hole in the ice.
Meanwhile the TARDIS is drawn to an arid wasteland, also apparently at the North Pole. There the Doctor and Graham meet Silvia - but it's clear that she is a woman out of her own time.
Why is a nearby experimental base haunted by deranged figures? And who is the genius behind the Romanov Project, the wave of energy that now threatens to rip the Earth apart at every point in history?
Toby Longworth reads Niel Bushnell's atmospheric story about human endeavour and its consequences.
== Plot ==
In a snowcat running low on fuel in 1970, Silvia Sandstrom finally reaches the North Pole and switches on a NASA device to make contact with the Nimbus satellite as it passes overhead. She suddenly feels as though she and the snowcat are falling and hears angry voices around the vehicle, one of which she hears warning about "the darkness that feeds".
An energy wave at the North Pole confuses the TARDIS's navigational trackers and the Doctor tasks Graham, who has started thinking about leaving the ship, with keeping an eye on the helmic regulator after they land in Sheffield. Ryan and Yaz go to buy ice cream and the TARDIS dematerialises, dragged along the path of a temporal disturbance, with the Doctor and Graham inside. They black out and, when they awaken, find that they have materialised in a wasteland which the Doctor deduces was once a seabed. Before they go to explore, she tells Graham that he is in charge and he takes the lead.
The Doctor and Graham find Silvia's snowcat, which Graham recognises from the television in the 1960s, and the Doctor disappears after detecting temporal energy with her sonic screwdriver, transported to a dirty building with late 21st century technology. Graham notices the building and joins the Doctor and Silvia inside, where they encounter the zombie-like Lizbet Martinez talking about the darkness and another which advances upon them threateningly. As they flee, Graham and Silvia, who insists on being called Mrs Sandstrom, are transported back in time and go in search of the missing Doctor.
After being identified as intruders by the pre-disfigurement Martinez, Graham and Silvia are returned to the Doctor, who pushes Silvia to explain her mission at the North Pole. Graham is sent back in time again and accused by Stefan Romanov of being a saboteur, but he is soon returned to the Doctor again and an older Romanov, who has been hiding from his disfigured team, reveals himself. Romanov attempts to shoot the Doctor and attacks Graham as he believes that they are responsible for what has happened to his team. 
The Doctor manages to get Romanov to drop his gun and explain the purpose of the Romanov Project: to supply energy to the Romanov 1 spacecraft and make it capable of interstellar travel. The experiment disrupted time, however, and will destroy the Earth at every point across its history. The Doctor, Graham, Silvia and Romanov escape to the Romanov Prism room when the disfigured team attack, but Martinez manages to get herself and the other two surviving members of the team inside and they target their former leader as the centre to the time disruption, a portal to a void universe, opens.
The team pull Romanov into the portal, which grows and pulls in the generator before collapsing in on itself and disappearing. The wave cannot properly collapse and the portal reopens because the snowcat's signal to the Nimbus satellite intersected with the Romanov Wave, so Silvia heads out and tears the Nimbus communicator apart. The Doctor then takes her and her snowcat to Station Nord in 1970 before returning to Sheffield, comforting Graham on the way and encouraging him to carry on despite his grief at having lost Grace. Although he still feels out of place, he decides to do what Grace would and goes to speak with Ryan.
== Characters ==
* Thirteenth Doctor
* Graham O'Brien
* Silvia Sandstrom
* Lizbet Martinez
* Stefan Romanov
* Ryan Sinclair
* Yasmin Khan
== Worldbuilding ==
* Silvia has a bottle of 1968 Cristal champagne.
* Ryan says that apples taste different in the TARDIS.
* Ryan once wanted a gaming chair.
* Fluctuation in the helmic regulator causes the TARDIS to drift.
* Graham asks for a lemon top ice cream.
* Graham's grandfather had an allotment.
* The artron capacitors overheat.
* Graham remembers Silvia from the television in the 1960s.
* Graham wears a cardigan and a jacket.
* Lizbet is a launch technician.
* The Entangled Memes of Novostene ensure that they are not important.
* The Doctor references Yazz and the Plastic Population.
* The Doctor does not like guns. She dislikes bullets more.
* When Graham was young, he visited a lighthouse.
* Oliver is Silvia's youngest son.
== Notes ==
to be added
== Continuity ==
* Graham asks himself "what would the Doctor do?" Yaz was seen to have written "WWTDD", standing for the same phrase, on her palm in .
* The Doctor reads a book by quickly flicking through its pages, just as the Ninth Doctor did in .
== External links ==
Category:Thirteenth Doctor audio stories
Category:2023 audio stories
Category:Stories set in the Arctic
Category:Stories set in 1970
Category:Stories set in Sheffield
Category:Stories set in 2018
Category:Audio Originals audio stories