Big Finish - Blog Posts

friday-is-unfunny

9 months ago

Dear Spotify...

Thanks for forcing every album to be on shuffle for people who don't use premium. Makes it MUCH easier to listen to Big Finish Doctor Who, which is broken up into ~3 minute segments and must be listened to in order to get the story.

An overview of expanded universe concepts referenced in Zagreus

The audio story Zagreus, as Big Finish's fiftieth main range story and their story for the fortieth anniversary of Doctor Who has a lot of continuity nods. What makes it special (and fun for me) is how many of those continuity nods are to other places in the expanded universe. I think this is really cool, and have tracked down a lot of information as to how moments in Zagreus relate to other parts of the EU.

A lot of this comes down to the stories co-authors: Garry Russell and Alan Barns. Both had been heavily involved in Big Finish to date, and both had experience writing whorniverse works outside of it as well. Russell had been a writer for both Virgin Books and BBC Books, and Barns had just finished being head writer for the Doctor Who Magazine comic a few years prior.

Since we're all listening to Zagreus, I decided it would be fun to compile a list of continuity moments that I could present to you all. Some of these are deliberate shout outs. Others might not be. I'm going to be focusing on Expanded Universe references here, as I'm assuming a general familiarity with classic who (and, honestly, the classic who references aren't the fun ones). In any case, listen to Zagreus and then enjoy this.

Part One - Wonderland

1) Okay, first of all. The Zagreus poem didn't actually originate in Zagreus or Neverland. The Sixth Doctor happily sings the first verse in Project: Twilight, which was a Big Finish audio story released almost a year before Neverland (and over two years before Zagreus).

2) The other thing to talk about up-front is that everyone is played by companion actors. Everyone who had played a companion for Big Finish thusfar appears as a different role here. Also, Anneke Wills, who had yet to reprise her role as Polly on Big Finish, plays a role here. In addition to the tv companions, this includes:

Caroline Morris, who played Fifth Doctor companion Erimem

Maggie Stables, who played Sixth Doctor companion Evelyn Smythe

Robert Jezek, who played Sixth Doctor companion Frobisher the shapeshifting penguin (he's originally from the Doctor Who Magazine comics)

Lisa Bowerman, who played Seventh Doctor companion Bernice Summerfield (she is originally from the Virgin New Adventures books)

Stephen Fewell, who played Bernice's husband Jason Kane (he is originally from the Virgin New Adventures books)

Conrad Westmaas, who would play Eighth Doctor companion C'rizz starting two stories later in The Creed of the Kromon (which was already in production when Zagreus was recorded)

aaaaaaaaaand the odd one out is Stephen Perring, who played a one-off villain in a recent Eighth Doctor audio and would play a recurring Eighth Doctor villain starting in The Creed of the Kromon

3) Charley Pollard met the Brigadier before in the Big Finish audio story Minuet in Hell. Not much to report on this one, but that's why she recognizes him.

4) That mysterious voice Zagreus hears early on in the story is John Pertwee, from recordings made before his death. Pertwee had agreed to take part in a fan film called Devious (set between The War Games and Spearhead From Space), and Pertwee's lines from it were repurposed here with his family's permission. (This is probably why the audio quality with him is as bad as it is). The fan film itself would lay dormant until 2018, when parts of it began releasing onto YouTube. You can see all currently released parts here.

5) At one point, the Doctor references checking up on the Oracle on KS-159. KS-159 is the formal name for the asteroid that houses the Braxiatel Collection, and the Oracle is a future-predicting... thing that exists on the Collection. This is established in the Virgin Book Tears of the Oracle and Big Finish book Life During Wartime, both part of the Bernice Summerfield Series.

6) Shortly afterwords, the Doctor mentions that someone once blamed him for the death of JFK. This might be a reference to the Virgin Book Who Killed Kennedy, where the Master tries to prevent the assassination in order to destabilize Earth's history. This one might also be a coincidence.

7) At one point we get the following exchange:

The Doctor: I can see things, in my mind's eye. I can see me. Thousands of mes, doing different things in different places but all at once. Alternative realities, or maybe this is an alternative, and one of those others is real. You're part of me, can't you see what I'm seeing? Zagreus: Always. The Doctor: Look there. I see myself on the planet Oblivion, facing a race called the Horde. And there, look! A tiny reality where Gallifrey isn't a planet but a timeless diamond drifting through the stars. I can see a universe where the Time Lords have terrible mind powers and another where they have ceased to exist - time wound backwards to eliminate their every trace. A planet, Earth, where the Nestenes very nearly destroyed everything and another Earth upon which I have plucked out one of my own hearts. But which is real and which are the alternatives? Zagreus: There is no alternative. The Doctor: You mean no one knows which reality is the real one? Zagreus: They are all real and primary to their inhabitants. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter. Who is there to care? They all exist. Occasionally sharing moments and eras, the rest of the time, self-contained and unaware. But all are destined to end together, and soon. The Doctor: I'm scared. Zagreus: Good. You should be.

So the gist of this exchange is, honestly, why I made the post. Pretty much every alternate universe the Doctor sees is a different Expanded Universe project done during the wilderness era. In order:

The Doctor faced off the Horde on Oblivion in the Doctor Who Magazine comic titled, well, Oblivion

The "timeless diamond" thing is (I think) a reference to the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures books - specifically, that description is reminiscent of Timeless and Sometime Never...

The universe where Time Lords have terrible mind powers is probably intended to be the webcast Death Comes to Time (which is kinda notable as it was published after the tv movie but features the Seventh Doctor permadying), but it could theoretically also reference the Doctor Who Magazine comic Star Death

The universe where the Time Lords have been wound out of time would probably be the BBC Eighth Doctor books again - this (possibly) happens about halfway through the series.

Earth being almost destroyed by Nestenes is, I think, a reference to Auton Trilogy - three hour-long home video releases produced by BBV.

The Doctor plucking out one of his hearts is definitely the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures - this is a somewhat inaccurate recounting of events that happened in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.

So the general thrust of this exchange is to separate the different ongoing Doctor Who projects into distinct, equally valid alternate realities that had an overlap in the form of the tv era. I'm sure the impetus behind this was to avoid having the BBC books, DWM comics, Big Finish, or anyone else let continuity get in the way of taking the Eighth Doctor in whatever direction they wanted.

8) While looking for Charley, Zagreus says, "Yssgaorth curse you girl!" Yssgaorth is the name that the Virgin book The Pit and Faction Paradox book The Book of the War gave to the Great Vampires whom the Time Lords had a massive war with in their early history. A little bit more on that later.

9) While in the Schrodinger's Cat-Box, the Doctor lights an everlasting match. These were presented as an invention of the Doctor's in the first ever novelization, Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks (it's novelizing The Daleks), and have sporadically appeared in random places in the Expanded Universe ever since.

10) At one point, Dr. Stone tells that Captain McDonnell that he should do something, "For King and Country!" That exact phrase is commonly used by The Forge, a creation of Big Finish that had prominently appeared thusfar in the audios Project: Twilight and Project: Lazarus. Think Torchwood, but with less governmental oversight and being run by a vampire. The implication is that both Dr. Stone and Captain McDonnell work for The Forge, with Project: Dionysus being one of their projects. That phrase is the only strong clue, but Dr. Stone's behavior does generally line up with what we've seen elsewhere from the Forge.

Part 2 - Heartland

11) Ouida speculates that Rassilon was behind Omega's death. The concept that Rassilon was in some way behind Omega's death was kicked around a bit and given a lot more prominence in the audio story Omega.

All that being said, the Doctor Who Magazine comic Star Death shows the actual event and has Rassilon be innocent in the event, with Omega's ship being sabotaged by an enemy from Gallifrey's future. Star Death is not being intentionally referenced here but I still wanted to bring that up for sake of thoroughness

12) Cassandra referring to science being against the ways of her Sisterhood and the references to Rassilon outlawing the Sisterhood's religion draws pretty heavily on the plot thread running through the Virgin Books (most prominently Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible, Christmas on a Rational Planet and Lungbarrow) which established that Rassilon fought a magic vs science war against a woman named Pythia and her forces. Rassilon won the war and established science as the dominant force in the universe. Pythia killed herself and her followers left (or were exiled, depending on who you ask) Gallifrey to become the Sisterhood of Karn as seen in The Brain of Morbius. According to Gary Russell, in earlier drafts the Great Mother was intended to be Pythia, but they changed it in order to not tie themselves too far into the Virgin continuity.

13) The concept of a Commitee of Three being an investigative group of Time Lords comes from the Virgin book Blood Harvest. This notably implies that Tepesh, Ouida, and Aratra were either vampires under deep cover for them to have been granted such an important position or (what I consider more likely) they were targeted and turned after having gotten that role.

14) While the concept of Rassilon leading a war against the vampires was established on tv, it had been expanded on by both the Virgin Books, BBC Books, and Faction Paradox (Time's Crucible, The Pit, Goth Opera, Damaged Goods, Interference, and The Book of the War), giving a good deal more scope and backdrop to Tepesh's interactions with Rassilon and the Time Lord/vampire war that Tepesh and the Great Mother allude to.

That being said, Tepesh's account as the Vampires being essentially Rassilon's victims after Rassilon had fought the sisterhood and established time travel does contradict with pretty much everything above (the general timeline is that the Time Lords accidentally unleashed the vampires into the universe with their time travel experiments, before the "death" of Omega or the war against Pythia). I personally suspect that Tepesh's bloodline was from a vampiric colony founded in the universe by the vampire lords and then abandoned, which Rassilon hunted down later. (Perhaps the colony founded by the vampire deserters from the Doctor Who Magazine comic Monstrous Beauty?)

15) The concept of the Time Lord's symbiotic nuclei (aka the Rassilon Imprimatur) first came up in the tv story The Two Doctors, but basically no information was actually given about it there. It being tied to regeneration comes from the Virgin Book Love and War. The concept that Rassilon engineered regeneration popped had popped up before in a few Virgin books, including The Cystal Bucephalus (where it was attributed to the Time Lords having triple-helix DNA, which Rassilon engineered) and Lungbarrow (where it was stated that only Time Lords that were Loomed could regenerate).

Speaking of which, the books Goth Opera (Virgin) and The Book of the War (Faction Paradox) proposed as in-universe speculation that the powers of regeneration were stolen from the vampires. Interesting in light of Tepesh's claims, huh?

(oh and if you're wondering if/how this all works with the Timeless child stuff, I have good news for you. Check out my essay here that addresses that question).

16) Tepesh at one point mentions Rassilon letting "Omega and Vandekirian go to their deaths". Vandekirian was Omega's assistant aboard the starship Eurydice (and it was the Eurydice that fell into the newly created black hole) according to the Big Finish audio story Omega. In the speculations that Rassilon caused Omega's death, the story goes that he convinced Vandekirian to sabotage the Eurydice.

17) The concept of humans colonizing an abandoned/destroyed Gallifrey dates back to the Virgin book The Crystal Bucephalus. A later Faction Paradox story The Story So Far (available to read for free online here) would imply that Winkle's Wonderland was built on one of the many cloneworlds of Gallifrey created during the War in Heaven (Faction Paradox's equivalent to the Time War).

18) Romana mentions a vortisaur race in her fanfic - the Big Finish audio Storm Warning introduced vortisuars as a pterodactyl-like thing that live in the Time Vortex. She also mentions "Theta's" professor being named Luvis - Luvis was established as the name of the teacher of Omega in the audio story Omega. In-universe, this is probably a coincidence, but out of universe, given that Omega was only released a few months before Zagreus, I doubt it.

19) The Gallifreyan Watchtower (that's where Brax contacts Romana from) was established as a thing in the Doctor Who Magazine comic The Final Chapter. It's basically a central hub for Gallifrey's security systems.

20) Given how this is the Gallifrey Relisten, the appearance of Braxiatel probably doesn't come as a surprise, but for the time this was a deep a cut as any of the rest of the things I've gone on about here. First of all, this is actually the first appearance of Brax when he is actually on Gallifrey. The dude originated from the Virgin books: Theatre of War introduced him as the head of the Braxiatel Collection (an art and artifact collection) with The Empire of Glass establishing Braxiatel as something of a Gallifrey-sanctioned interventionist and the Doctor's brother. He appeared once more in Happy Endings in what amounts to a little bit more than a cameo. After that, he became a regular in the Bernice Summerfield series after Virgin lost the license to publish Doctor Who, and he was one of the few parts of the Virgin Bernice Summerfield series to follow the series when it switched to Big Finish. This, however, is his first appearance in a Doctor Who story proper since 1996. (And as an additional fun fact he wasn't even in the original plan; they were apparently hoping to have Matthew Waterhouse - who played Adric - play a "bored Castellan" here.)

21) Romana being Lord President of the Time Lords was a thing in the Big Finish audios The Apocalypse Element and Neverland, but it was set up properly in the Virgin Books. Blood Harvest was the book where Romana returned to Gallifrey from E-Space. In Goth Opera (Blood Harvest's immediate follow-up), Romana gets offered a seat on the High Council. The book Happy Endings shows she has ascended to presidency, and The Apocalypse Element picks up from there.

I will say Romana reminding K-9 of "the mirror that finally brought us back home" in the third act does contradict the Virgin Books' explanation for Romana's return. K-9 explicitly did not return with Romana in Blood Harvest however, so perhaps that was how he returned to Gallifrey (this, once again, is speculation).

Romana II's presidency had been explored more in-depth in the book Lungbarrow, but Lungbarrow featured Romana and Leela already knowing each other and being friends. If one is to assume Zagreus and Lungbarrow are in the same continuity, then Lungbarrow would have to take place after Zagreus (I have an upcoming post that'll dig into all of this a little more thoroughly).

Part 3 - Wasteland

22) I know we already saw this in Neverland, but I'm trying to be comprehensive here. Rassilon's mind existing as a guiding force for the Time Lords within the Matrix is a concept that originated from the Doctor Who Magazine comic story The Tides of Time (which, by the way, actually predates Rassilon's appearance onscreen in The Five Doctors). This was a concept that the DWM had revisited more recently with the story The Final Chapter, and I suspect Rassilon's appearance in Neverland stemmed from that.

Slight tangent, but The Final Chapter and Neverland were both written by Alan Barnes (who was one of Zagreus's cowriters) and he has stated that Neverland evolved out of concepts cut from The Final Chapter. If you are inclined to track down old Doctor Who Magazine comics online, I encourage you to check The Final Chapter out - it is a very different look at Gallifrey than Neverland and Zagreus, but it does share a lot of lifeblood with them.

Rassilon still existing in the Matrix also came up in the BBC books The Eight Doctors and Unnatural History, btw, although in their case it feels a lot more likely that they are drawing on The Five Doctors.

23) Romana has met the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors before in Goth Opera (Virgin book), The Apocalypse Element (Big Finish audio), and Blood Harvest (Virgin Book) respectively - hence, it makes sense for her to recognize Townsend, Tepesh, and Winkle on sight.

24) The Doctor referencing Polidori and Mary was part of a running reference to an unseen adventure with Mary Shelly Big Finish was doing with its Eighth Doctor audios ever since their first, Storm Warning. We would finally see that adventure proper when Big Finish released The Company of Friends in 2009.

25) Charley mentions that the Doctor has claimed to know Rasputin. The two of them met in the Third Doctor BBC book The Wages of Sin.

26) Charley mentions that the Doctor has escaped Colditz Castle - this is a reference to the Seventh Doctor Big Finish audio Colditz.

27) Romana recognizes the (image of the) Brigadier. This is because Romana, then in her first incarnation, met in the Brigadier in the BBC book Heart of TARDIS.

28) The concept that Rassilon created a "single, unchangeable history" (as stated by Winkle/the Doctor) through the Eye of Harmony was introduced in the Virgin book Christmas on a Rational Planet. This moment was shown in the Doctor Who Magazine comic The Final Chapter, and Faction Paradox's The Book of the War would name that moment the "Anchoring of the Thread."

29) The concept of a species opposed to the Time Lords who could create an alternate web of time - as Rassilon describes the Divergence - draws some pretty interesting parallels with the Enemy from the BBC books and Faction Paradox. The concept is that the Enemy are a mysterious (and still unnamed) force that in the future will challenge the Time Lords to an endless war over who gets to decide history. One of the few facts that has been explicitly stated about the Enemy (in Faction Paradox's The Book of the War) is that the Enemy has the power to create and maintain a web of time just like Gallifrey did.

30) Rassilon talks about breaking the laws of time in order to manipulate the Eighth Doctor - while it's brought to an extreme here, Rassilon did basically that in the BBC books The Eight Doctors and Unnatural History, which can totally be treated as him setting up for the events of Neverland in retrospect

31) When rattling off places on Earth the Doctor has been to, one of the places mentioned is the canals of Venice - the site of the Big Finish audio story The Stones of Venice, starring Eight and Charley.

32) The Doctor mentions people having seen a "Grey lady" in the Tardis engine rooms. The Grey Lady - who was very much another avatar of the Tardis - showed up in the Doctor Who Magazine comic story A Life of Matter and Death.

33) The Doctor openly states that he expects Romana to be dragged down by the presidency - specifically telling her to "enjoy her corruption." A more militaristic third incarnation of Romana was an antagonist to the Eighth Doctor in the BBC books The Shadows of Avalon and The Ancestor Cell (and, btw, if you take both the BBC books and Big Finish in the same continuity, it's very possible that the books take place before Zagreus for the Eighth Doctor, so he's seen the end results of Romana's corruption).

34) The bit at the end where the Doctor starts reading a book is a call-back to Storm Warning, Big Finish's first Eighth Doctor audio, which opened with him reading that same book but then getting interrupted by the plot.

35) And, finally, when this was being recorded, plans were already underway to continue Romana and Leela's story in a new audio series titled Gallifrey, which would end up being (in my opinion) the centerpiece of Big Finish's The Worlds of Doctor Who lines of stories. You might have heard of it.