A markedly Darker and Edgier audio than most Big Finish stories. "Nekromanteia" is notable for garnering almost exclusively negative reviews, both for its script and for its production. Due to very iffy sexual themes and inscrutable sound mixing, it's considered the Audience-Alienating Era of Big Finish, and its author was, at Peter Davison's request, never hired to write for Doctor Who ever again.
The Fifth Doctor, Peri and Erimem (and Erimem's pet cat Antranak) attend a bazaar on an alien planet, on Erimem's first trip into outer space. Whilst the Doctor is off meeting old friends of his, Erimem and Peri meet a sculptor who's being posessed to lure them into Nekromanteia.
Meanwhile The Corporation is suffering heavy damages from a cult of technically superior Witches, who cannibalize the survivors. The two survivors, Harlon and Cochrane, set out to finish their mission, and wipe out the planet's inhabitants, so that their family might live.
The TARDIS falls into a time distortion, and the Doctor and his companions stumble out of Nekromanteia. Harlon and Cochrane stumble upon them, mistake them for the Witches, and shoot Erimem and Peri. An emergency Transmat system takes the Doctor and Erimem to the Corporation's vessel, and Peri is considered dead.
In reality Peri's been taken by the Witches and being groomed to join their ranks. The Doctor and Harlon do a bit of recon, before the Doctor stumbles off and Harlon retreats to the vessel.
The Doctor encounters the source of the time distortion, a massive lodestone for psychic energies that came from sacrifice. He also encounters the Witches.They kill him.
As Peri gets rescued by an Adventurer Archaeologist, stark naked, Erimem comes to and fights off Harlon who tries to molest her. In an extremely uncomfortable cutaway we learn from Peri, who catches up with her, that he failed, and Erimem only suffered some bruises. It is then not mentioned again.
The Doctor, Only Mostly Dead, meets up with the entity who's driving the plot. Shara, a creature of pure thought, with mastery over time and space. He tries to entice the Doctor with his version of heaven; a cricket match from 2060, the first Olympic cricket match ever. The Witches catch Peri, Erimem and the archaeologist, and cut out the man's tongue.
In the meantime the head of the MegaCorp, Marr, arrives on the planet and has his right hand shoot at the witches, and kill Cochrane. This destroys the lodestone which focusses all of the psychic energies obtained from the blood sacrifice, and threatens to wipe out the cosmos in a sea of chaos. Shara puts the Doctor back in his body before he died, and the Doctor talks his way out of being eaten for a second time. As Marr loses everything he's sacrificed his men for, Tallis promptly shoots him. Making Harlon the new executive.
The Doctor goes through a guidebook of the energy converter that was the lodestone, and finds out that if someone stands in it's place he can act as a host for Shara. The Doctor immediately offers himself, but gets interrupted by Erimem who sees this as her destiny, because she met the Doctor.
Her cat, Antranak, jumps in front of the energy and becomes Shara.
With everybody but Harlon and Tallis dead and the universe safe, the Doctor and his companions go back to the TARDIS, where Peri pressures the Doctor in getting Erimem a new cat.
Tropes
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The Doctor becomes a being of pure thought.
- As the Good Book Says...: The Doctor quotes Jonah.
- Attempted Rape: Erimem is almost raped, and manages to fight off her attacker (somehow). She's badly beaten up by him instead.
- Continuity Nod: Packers are mentioned.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Marr takes this about as far as it can go, murdering his own employees and/or their families if it will make him richer.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Erimem understands much better than Peri why someone's tongue being cut out would constitute proper punishment.
- The Dog Bites Back: Both Harlon and Tallis drop their boss when he's screwed up beyond belief.
- Fanservice: The story features a naked Peri at one point, although the audio format does rather dampen the fanservice somewhat.
- Heroic Sacrifice: The Doctor tries to pull one. Then Erimem in his stead. They get saved by her cat.
- Karma Houdini: Harlon isn't the villain of the story only by virtue of not being quite as relentlessly awful as Marr, but even then, he's still pretty disgusting. Not only does he suffer no consequences for his actions, he's in a far better position in the end than where he started out.
- Ms. Fanservice: Peri gets completely naked.
- Revenge by Proxy: Marr has people's families killed if they have failed him.
- Shout-Out: "We'll do a
Beam Me Up, Scotty!."
