This was the first
Big Finish episode to feature the shape-shifting companion Frobisher, taking place in the
Doctor Who Magazine comics canon rather than the
Big Finish canon.
It's also
Steven Moffat's favourite Sixth Doctor episode in all of
Doctor Who.
Frobisher, the shapeshifting penguin detective, has convinced the TARDIS to create semi-living fish for him to toy with. The Sixth Doctor tries to explain that even semi-living things can feel pain and distress, but Frobisher won't listen until the TARDIS herself can't cope with Frobisher's games anymore and shuts down entirely. She parks the Doctor and Frobisher inside a medieval-style castle, where the new god-king is about to be crowned.
The
World of Snark is inhabited by people whose entire lives revolve around rituals. The old king had ritualistically married his pretty wife, ritualistically conceived a do-good son and grown to ritualistically deeply hate him. The queen had ritualistically slept with the captain of the guard, who was then ritualistically executed for fathering the ritualistic bastard son. This son, the new king's ritualistically evil half-brother, plans to depose his brother now that the old king has died. An old scribe notes down every moment of the king's life, gathering each new Bible in the library. Well, sort of a library. Well, his bedroom.
Upon arriving in the middle of the ceremony, the Doctor and Frobisher are instantly
mistaken for the Holy Big Talking Monochromatic Bird and his companion who brings with him every colour of the rainbow. The new king, who's really very confused about the whole deal, becomes even more confused when the coronation fails to give him actual god-like powers. He's too nice of a chap to pretend he's divine, so he promptly abdicates and tells the people to assassinate him for blasphemy. They won't listen, though, and he's forced to accept his new role. The new king's wife begins with the ritualistic torturing and mocking of the old queen (who's not in the mood), while the high priest goes off the ritualistically conspire against the new king together with the evil half-brother.
While Frobisher stays with the king (after observing the ritualistic assassination attempt), the Doctor soon finds out that the old scribe's books are all written in the same handwriting. Even the ones dating back to previous dynasties. What's more, each king's life ends exactly on the final line of the final page of each book.
The king decides that he really, really,
really doesn't want to do any of this, so he makes Frobisher the new god-king instead. This does not go over well with Frobisher.
Meanwhile, the evil half-brother has a secret that's decidedly
not tradition. He has a child, a young boy who's been kept alive for five years in the castle's deepest dungeons. The child was raised "pure", without language — even his mother's tongue had been cut out during his birth. The child turns out to be a malicious God, intent on killing everyone it encounters. The Doctor is an unexpected factor in its plans, but — as the child finds out — isn't immune to
Mind Rape. After violating the Doctor's memories, it goes off into the castle and starts murdering everything it can find... asking
"are you my father?".
In the end, it turns out that the evil half-brother wasn't the child's father after all. It was the old scribe, whose punishment this prison pocket-world revolves around. The old man had once killed his own son, and had created the fantasy of kings hating their sons and princes becoming god-kings as a coping mechanism. He had already lived the story many times over, in a continuous loop, always ending with the child's murderous rampage. When the TARDIS' dimensional stabiliser became damaged by Frobisher forcing her to create semi-living lifeforms, she had fled to the nearest dimensionally transcendental space going through the same kind of thing, in order to repair herself with its data. The scribe confronts his child for the final time, and ends the
Groundhog Day Loop by commiting
Heroic Suicide.
The Doctor tries to pretend that none of it mattered, since none of it was real, but Frobisher reminds him that even sort-of-living things count.
The Holy Terror provides examples of:
- Absurdism
- Abdicate the Throne
- Adipose Rex: The former empress.
- A God Am I: Played with, Frobisher is worshiped as being some sort of an angelic being (All hail the big talking bird!). He is not comfortable with it at all. Also, the King is traditionally worshiped as a living God. This leads to problems, since each King invariably commits the ultimate blasphemy by dying.
- And Then What?
- Bastard Bastard: Childeric.
- Big Bad Wannabe: Clovis, as described by the Doctor.
- Blatant Lies: The Sixth Doctor: "The TARDIS, like her master, has her ego under control."
- Buffy Speak: Frobisher is nearly constantly referred to as "The big talking bird".
- Burn the Witch!: Heretics.
- Call Back: To "then you won't feel the bullets when we shoot you".
- Clarke's Third Law
- Continuity Nod: The Sixth Doctor is still opposed to fishing.
- Corrupt Church: And how! The High Priesthood has a long history of betraying the true monarch to the evil brother going back to time immemorial.
- Creepy Basement
- Deathseeker: Peppin and Childeric's mother. She succeeds by the hands of Eugene's son.
- Designated Villain: In-Universe even: The High Priest and the bastard brother. Not only Childeric but everybody before them in the Generation Xerox.
- Dirty Coward: Clovis despite the fact he was trying to gear up for a Heroic Sacrifice in contrast with his nature.
- Doom Magnet: The Tardis' tendency to do this gets lampshaded.
- Downer Ending
- Dream Apocalypse
- Egopolis: As soon as a new emperor is crowned, his people convert all the old statues into images of him.
- Enfante Terrible / Reality Warper: Childeric is trying to groom one. It works... FAR too well.
- Epiphanic Prison
- Everything Is Better With Penguins: Frobisher.
- Evil High Priest
- Evil Plan: The bastard son is obligated to have one for the rebellion. But Childeric takes it a step further.
- Eye Scream: If you don't pledge your allegiance to the latest God Emperor one eye is gouged out so you can watch yourself be burned at the stake.
- Existentialism: Frobisher says heaven doesn't exist and this brings Peppin down.
- Faux Affably Evil: Childeric
- Fisher King: Eugene has this effect on the reality
- Generation Xerox: Invoked. Every generation has the abusive royal parents, a milquetoast heir, a Bastard Bastard who conspires with the High Priest to overthrow the heir, etc. It's the key to the truth about the place.
- God Emperor: Though they're not immortal
- Groundhog Day Loop, unbeknowest to Eugene until the Weirdness Censor shatters.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The Captain of the guard for the people. Peppin for his mother.
- Hoist by His Own Petard / The Dog Bites Back: Childeric
- Insane Troll Logic: As an emperor, Peppin is supposedly invincible so the ritual assasination attempt is done with blanks because it wouldn't work anyway.
- Irony: Scribes are not important? They are.
- Journey to the Center of the Mind: Begins the moment The Doctor and Frobisher step out of the TARDIS.
- Lady Macbeth: Pepin's wife.
- Last Words: Finding out what they are, For the Evulz.
- Luke, I Am Your Father
- Madwoman in the Attic: Childeric's son in the vault
- Mind Rape: What's actually going on. The entire castle serves as Eugene's punishment for the murder of his own infant child.
- The child also commits Mind Rape on the Doctor.
- Merlin Sickness forced on Peppin's wife
- Mood Whiplash: One of the most well-loved examples in Big Finish. The serial switches from a hilarious parody of stereotypical Shakespearean tragedy and suddenly becomes a disturbing examination of destiny as the characters stare inevitable death in the face and a man's fractured mind is slowly torn apart before the Doctor and Frobisher's eyes.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Each God-King has to perform a miracle during their coronation. By the time the Doctor arrives, it's been pared down to a (rigged) card trick.
- My God, What Have I Done?: When Eugene remembers that he killed his son.
- Narrator: The scribe actually narrates.
- Pocket Dimension The Castle.
- Precision B Strike: Alright, you evil old bitch!.
- Psychological Torment Zone: For Eugene.
- Reality Warper
- Secret Underground Passage
- Self-Inflicted Hell: Somewhat. Eugene is forever stuck in it because of his own deeds.
- Sharing a Body Childeric plans this. He dies.
- Shout Out: When Pepin addresses his people, it seems very much like Monty Python's Life of Brian.
- Tear Jerker: "Daddy.. You were a God to me..
- The Grotesque: Childeric, Pepin's evil brother who plots to overthrow him. He appears to be the villain of this story, but isn't.
- The Thermidor: God-King, bastard brother, corrupt High Priest. Lather, rinse, repeat.
- The Unfavourite: Peppin.
- There Are No Coincidences: All of the bibles end exactly on the last page.
- Tongue Trauma: In order to mute Childeric's son his servant.
- Too Kinky to Torture: The former empress says back in her day they REALLY knew how to torture.
- Verbal Judo
- “Well Done Son” Guy
- Wham Line: "Are you my father?"
- World Limited to the Plot
- Your Head Asplode: The Enfante Terrible's rampage during the climax, complete with an incredibly disturbing tearing sound.
