Leading directly out of that affair with the Rutan host in Stockbridge, the Doctor and Nyssa find themselves in an exploding time machine (not the TARDIS, mind)
And then ... Doctor John Smith wakes up in bed. It's very peculiar because aside from how he got there the Doctor remembers everything about himself. In Stockbridge.
Where a scorching summer is plaguing the local townsfolk, which has been lasting for as long as they can remember...
Part of a trilogy taking place in Stockbridge, with the first part being Castle of Fear and which concludes in Plague of the Daleks.
- A Fate Worse Than Death: The village of Stockbridge.Harold: This is the price we pay. The price we pay to live forever in heaven.
- Anachronic Order: Several bits of the villagers' timelines happen out of order and, occasionally, at the same time as one another.
- Anachronism Stew: Mostly minor things like cars and people's clothes. The time of day and the date seems to be random as well.
- Bittersweet Ending: Maxwell is left in Stockbridge in an Alternate Timeline where the events never happened and nobody remembers him (though thankfully, also nobody remembers him dying.)
- Call-Back:
- The Doctor notes the Green Dragon in his stroll through the town.
- Nyssa mentions Andrew Harper again.
- The Doctor mentions he was once in a construction of a village made to look like an Earth town before.
- The Doctor mentions Tegan, Adric, the Master and the Cybermen to the Lady of the Manor after she mentions the destruction of Traken.
- In a Temporal Paradox the Lady of the Manor sees the events of Circular Time, The Mutant Phase and Primeval.
- Call-Forward: The TARDIS becomes a regular police box due to temporal hi-jinx just like in "Father's Day".
- Canon Immigrant: Maxwell Edison, a "flying saucer nut" first appeared in the comic series and has met the Fifth and Eighth Doctors before, before appearing in this audio play.
- Cobweb of Disuse: The Doctor describes the decor of the Lord and Lady's manor as "candles and cobwebs".
- Convenient Miscarriage: Jane suffers from one, and she didn't mind because having a baby with Dudley out of wedlock would mean she'd be tied to Stockbridge for the rest of her life. In Dudley's final flashback, it's revealed that she was lying about the miscarriage to gauge Dudley's reaction to it. Both she and her unborn baby die immediately afterwards.
- Cool Old Lady: Lizzie (never Liz) is a witty paranormal investigator who is handy with a cup of tea, up-to-date with technology and can recognize references to The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- Death of a Child: Subverted harshly. Phillip is destined to die, and die again.
- Death Seeker: The villagers turn into these at the end, tired of constantly reliving the most traumatic moments of their lives every single day for hundreds of years.
- Emotion Eater: The Lord and Lady of the Manor devour memories of the people in Stockbridge, along with the emotions attached to them, and eventually all of their past, so that they may relive their events yet again.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Lord and Lady of the Manor. The Lord and Lady in return name the villagers by their roles instead of names, like Innkeeper and Stargazer.
- Evil Laugh: The Lady of the Manor has a witch-like cackle when she eats Harold's past.
- Evil Me Scares Me/Future Me Scares Me: The Lord of the Manor is a possible future version of the current Doctor.
- Fake Memories: Alice and Harold can't remember a time when the Doctor wasn't staying at their inn, and fondly remember him as a guest at their wedding 30 years ago despite the Doctor physically seeming the same age as ever.
- Fun with Acronyms: The Psychic Investigations Group.
- Good Morning, Crono: The Doctor is woken up by Alice, directly after the gigantic explosion, as if he's just spent the night in bed.
- Go-to Alias: The Doctor is known as Doctor John Smith.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: The Doctor suspects he's in one. He seems to be in an inwards folding series of timelines, stuck on a loop.
- Have We Met Yet?: The Doctor meets Maxwell Edison who he describes as someone who "might be from his future".
- I Know Your True Name: Subverted when the Lord of the Manor doesn't remember the Doctor's true name.
- It Never Gets Any Easier: The people remember their deaths and the deaths of their loved ones, stuck in a loop, and the Doctor doesn't get why they aren't insensitive to their suffering.Harold: It Never Gets Any Easier! Every time it hurts anew!
- The Man Behind The Lord and the Lady of the Manor
- Older Than They Look: Invoked by the Doctor he asks if he looks like a 50 year old, because he remembers the Doctor at his wedding. The Reality Subtext is that Peter Davison was in his 50s at the time of recording.
- The Lord and Lady of the Manor are over one hundred and fifty thousand years old. Though it's noted that they do look extremely withered (the Doctor describes the Lady's face as being "like dust") they still don't look anywhere near their true age.
- Percussive Maintenance: The Doctor notes that this never fails to get any machine working in his experience.
- Phlebotinum Analogy:The Doctor: Someone is attempting to puncture the stasis field!
Maxwell: What like sticking a drawing pin through a balloon? - Reset Button: Into an Alternate Timeline where Stockbridge never vanished by the hand of Viridios.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Once the Reset Button is pressed and the world is returned to normal, only Max remembers everything that happened.
- Shout-Out: Maxwell mentions Groundhog Day and having read ever Terry Pratchett book ever. Liz makes a mention of The X-Files, Brigadoon and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
- Shout Out To Shakespeare: The Doctor, upon returning to Stockbridge, remarks that the summer has turned "into a winter of discontent".
- Stable Time Loop: Within a single minute the Doctor both makes a phone call that ends up going to himself in the future and then receiving a phone call where he's talking to his past.
- Viridios later tries to sustain one as well so he can live for millions of years.
- Standard Snippet: The Nokia tune shows up.
- Time Crash: Several time periods and people's own timelines are folding over onto one another.
- Title Drop:Lord of the Manor: The Eternal Summer is over..!
- Vanishing Village: Stockbridge simply vanished off the map on regular Earth, and shows up in foggy images.
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Done deliberately. The author noted that the location of Stockbridge is different every time it gets mentioned, so he avoided mentioning it.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: The townsfolk thing they live forever in heaven. And their price is their recurring deaths.
- Wrap Around: Walk too far away from Stockbridge and you end up on the other end of Stockbridge.
- Year Outside, Hour Inside: Inside Stockbridge the manifestations of the ghosts are daily, outside they see it every few hours. The difference becomes more extreme as the time bubble starts to collapse, until roughly one second of normal time is equivalent to one day in Stockbridge.
