This episode, written by Paul Cornell, was the first Big Finish audio to explicitly take place in the Doctor Who New Adventures timeline rather than the Big Finish timeline (specifically, it and "The Dark Flame" are set between "All-Consuming Fire" and "Blood Harvest"). It's also the first Big Finish Doctor Who episode to star Professor Bernice Summerfield, who had already had her own Big Finish series for a few years.
The Seventh Doctor takes Bernice and Ace to a hotel where three conventions are held: one on aerospace engineering, one on new age channelling, and one on cross-stitching. The aerospace scientists have developed a new technology that might, one day, lead to time travel. The leader of the new age cult, Annie, is a charlatan who's tricking her followers into believing she can contact "The Great Ohm". She's very confused when it turns out she's actually psychic and "Ohm" is really an Eldritch Abomination called the Scourge, which uses the new technology to transport the entire hotel into a space/time void.
The Scourge turn out to feed on despair, and have inspired much of human religion (most notably the idea of hell, which is very very real and full of hungry Scourge). They've enlisted the Doctor as their servant. Seven tries to play cat and mouse with them, but they manage to transform him into one of their own, sending his morphed body into a deep coma and absorbing his mind into their collective consciousness. Benny and Ace are forced to work together with people from all three conventions in order to contact the Doctor and withstand the Scourge. The Doctor is part of the Scourge, the Scourge are part of the humans they possess, the humans are inside the hotel, the hotel is inside the void and the void is part of the Scourge's mind. Like nested Russian dolls trying to eat each other. While Bernice jumps into the Doctor's mind (with Annie's help) to drag him back to reality, Ace makes herself immune to the Scourge's words by having someone destroy her ear drums and sets about getting the hotel back into the regular universe. In the end, the Doctor manages to work one of the organisers of the cross-stitching convention like a ventriloquist's doll, uses the guy's body to manipulate the TARDIS and contain the Scourge's dimensional meddling, and starts Talking the Monster to Death. The Power of Friendship saves the day.
Tropes
- Another Dimension: Where the Scourge come from.
- Author Appeal: Paul Cornell briefly mentions owls, focuses on the reveal of characters being in relationships with each other, teases the Benny/Eight ship a bit, and references his own most famous Seven line by having him state he's what the monsters are afraid of.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Throughout the episode. Seven notably kicks Bernice out of his mind when things get too dangerous, and she reponds by jumping right back in.
- The Doctor gets an awesome one fighting off a Scourge though.
- Care-Bear Stare: Once discovered what they really are and do.
- Casual Time Travel: The Scourge can potentially easily move through the fourth dimension, as 8th dimensional beings.
- Phrase Catcher Interruptus: "It's bigger on the...!" "Yeah, yeah, not now!"
- Closed Circle: The hotel gets locked down so no one can get in or out.
- Continuity Nod / Discontinuity Nod: The "Everybody Laughs" Ending has the Doctor say he's only half human...
- Compelling Voice
- Continuity Nod: Bernice sees a mirage of the Eighth Doctor in Seven's mind, and instantly fancies him, even jokingly asking the Doctor if he plans on regenerating soon. He's a bit weirded out by it, and teases her mercilessly about it later. In the novels (which is the continuity this episode is set in), Bernice is heavily implied to eventually sleep with the Doctor when he's in his Eighth body.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: Ohm is a golden man with blonde hair in disguise.
- Cult
- Deconstruction: The story works as a deconstruction of the Seventh Doctor's most extreme Chess Master stories: He waltzes into a catastrophic situation without a care in the world with a plan set in place to take care of everything — Only to discover at a crucial moment that his preparations had been discovered and ruined, and apparently he was so confident in himself he didn't bother double-checking beforehand. From there he has to act more like other Doctors, relying on his quick thinking, willpower, strong morals and his friends.
- Demonic Possession: The Scourge taking over has a bit of this.
- Inverted Trope as well The DOCTOR takes over a Scourge at one point, when his body is out of comission.
- Determinator: When Ace realises that the Scourge talk people into despair and manipulate people with their words, she has someone destroy her eardrums. She knows the TARDIS medbay can fix her up, so she spends almost half the story completely deaf and bleeding heavily from her ears. And she's not even bothered.
- Disability Immunity: Intentionally invoked. How does Ace get around the Scourge's Compelling Voice? Easy! Just have somebody shatter her eardrums!
- Doing In the Wizard: See Fire and Brimstone Hell.
- Dying Alone: Old Man Will triggers the plot this way.
- Eldritch Abomination
- Elevator Floor Announcement: Horror, tragedies and mysterious deaths!
- Emotion Eater
- Evil Sounds Deep
- Fate Worse than Death
- Fire and Brimstone Hell: Apparently the Scourge home dimension is the inspiration of the Christian concept of Hell.
- Go Mad from the Revelation
- Good Eyes, Evil Eyes
-
Harsher in Hindsight: The Doctor's explanation of how the Scourge are eight dimensional beings causes someone to realise "We can look down on a world of flat circles and do anything." Cue the 2014 episode Flatline and it turns out no, no we really can't. - Hive Mind: The Scourge have a Psychic Link with each other in order to spread their Emotion Eater ways.
- Humans Are Flawed
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight
- I'm a Humanitarian
- Insectoid Aliens
- Lampshade Hanging: "You know, I'm getting tired of running up and down corridors." "You should try doing it professionally."
- Mark of the Beast
- Meat Puppet: Gets namedropped.
- Multiversal Conquerers
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: The Scourge.
- No Indoor Voice: Ace at one point gets deafened (on purpose). This is the result.
- Not Quite Dead: The Doctor.
- One-Winged Angel: The bodies that get taken over slowly reassert themselves into the Scourge.
- Other Me Annoys Me: Inside of the mind of the Doctor there's the occasional other regeneration of the Doctor (future and past), but he states they have no influence on him but turn up their noses.
- Phlebotinum Analogy: The things inside the Russian dolls. It Makes Sense in Context.
- Power Echoes: A slow reverb for the Scourge.
- Puppeteer Parasite
- Readings Are Off the Scale
- Sanity Slippage: The Doctor.
- Say My Name: "Ohm. Ohm. Ohm. Ohm. Ooooooooooooohhhhhm."
- Shapeshifting Sound: The Scourge quickly alter their human hosts to match their true selves, accompanied by a sickening series of crunches and pops as the new arms, eyes, and other appendages sprout.
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Bernice delivers one.
- Soft Glass: Subverted. The windows were made with terrorist bombings in mind.
- Spanner in the Works
- Spooky Séance
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Ohm.
- Talking the Monster to Death: Seven, as per usual.
- The Chessmaster: Seven. So, so much.
- The Fool: The Doctor states he acts like this every now and then in order to entertain his companions.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech
- The Tramp: Old Man Will, who's dead as the story starts.
- The Trickster: The Doctor.
- Think Happy Thoughts: Inside of the Doctor's mind.
- True Companions: How the Doctor defines himself.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: The Doctor, Bernice and Ace don't think twice about a deceased person, it bothers the Muggles though..
- Weirdness Censor: Under the thrall of the Compelling Voice, humans only see the original human hosts instead of the Scourge.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: People stuck in the Scourge home dimension will. Not. Die.
- Xanatos Gambit: The Doctor sets one in motion against the Scourge. He gets Out-Gambitted, leading to a frantic game of Xanatos Speed Chess.
