Daniel Hopkins thought he knew what he was letting himself in for when he joined the top-secret UNIT organisation as its latest Medical Officer.
Racing about the countryside, chasing strange lights in the sky? Defending the realm against extraterrestrial incursion? Frequent ear-bashings from UNIT’s UK CO, the famously no-nonsense Lt-Col Lewis Price? Close encounters of the First, Second and even Third kind? It all checks out.
But he had no idea what alien beings were really like. Until the day of the Fallen Kestrel. Until the day he met the Doctor.
This story is the first of a trilogy featuring a new UNIT team and companion Daniel Hopkins. The characters and plot threads carry through into "Hour of the Cybermen" and the trilogy concludes with "Warlock's Cross'.
The Helliax Rift contains examples of:
- Actor Allusion: When the Doctor is very interested in a passing woman's dog (believing it to be an alien), she asks if he is a veterinaran.
- Ambiguous Time Period: Not the story itself, which is confirmed in "Warlock's Cross" to be 1984, but for the Doctor's personal timeline. Big Finish usually take care to establish exactly when in the Fifth Doctor's life his few solo travels take place, because he never did so on TV, but here he is just alone, no explanation given.
- Bigger on the Inside: The Doctor prompts Daniel to say the ubiquitous line upon entering the TARDIS, but Daniel declines, pointing out that it doesn't really need saying.
- Blessed with Suck: As a half-human, half-Helliax, Adam has incredible psionic abilities. However, Helliax and human DNA doesn't mix particularly well, and the environments of either of his parent's home planets make him sick and can eventually kill him.
- Call-Back:
- In the end, the Doctor offers to take the human-Helliax family to the Eye of Orion to live.
- When joining minds with Adam, the Doctor says "Contact".
- Disappeared Dad: The Helliax took off before Adam was born. Anabel theorizes this is because it figured out she was pregnant (even before she did), but this is never actually confirmed, nor is it explained why the Helliax decided to come back for Adam all those years later.
- Double Standard: Rape, Sci-Fi: The Helliax used its empathic shapeshifting powers to make Anabel believe it was her late husband and not only had sex with her, but it's implied they had a relationship for a few weeks at least. Though Anabel is still shell-shocked by this, the
Unfortunate Implications are not delved into, nor does anybody call the Helliax out for it when it turns up again. - Easily Forgiven:
- Typically, the Doctor is very quick to forget about the fact that Anabel was perfectly willing to perform a vivisection on him, and takes her side for the rest of the story.
- Anabel herself takes almost no time at all to get over any resentment she might have for how the Helliax treated her, and the ending makes it seem like they become a family together.
- Expy: Daniel has a lot in common with Fourth Doctor companion Harry Sullivan, down to having the same job at UNIT, though Daniel doesn't share Harry's old-fashioned way of speaking. This is even lampshaded at the end, when Daniel name-drops Harry as his "predecessor".
- Fantastic Racism: Colonel Price is disgusted by aliens in general, can barely stand the Doctor, and is very eager to start gunning other races down as soon as they do something he doesn't like the look of.
- For Science!: This is what Dr Harrison's motivations for all the alien experiments boil down to. She even tries to use it as a defense when one of the aliens breaks out and attacks her.
- Half-Human Hybrid: Adam, Anabel's son by the Helliax.
- The Medic: Daniel, as UNIT's new Chief Medical Officer.
- No Antagonist: Despite appearances, there is no alien invasion or mass genocide in the works, and the real conflict of the story is the Doctor attempting to stop Anabel and Jennifer, the Helliax and UNIT from killing each other over various misunderstandings.
- No Name Given: The Helliax never gives its name, or even implies it has one. Since it's the name of not only the species (both singular and plural) but also their home planet, things get a bit confusing.
- Psychic Powers: A genetic gift of the Helliax, strong enough to read minds across galaxies and stop bullets.
- Red Herring: The decoy alien life signal placed on a dog's collar to throw people off the real alien's scent.
- Refusal of the Call: The Doctor offers for Daniel to join up as a companion at the end, but he politely declines, feeling that life with the Doctor would be a bit much for him, and he has a pregnant wife at home.
- Saying Too Much: Poor Daniel is simply too green to have learned to measure his words around dangerous lunatics, and ends up revealing that he and the Doctor have come to the "spa" alone, without backup. The Doctor tries and fails to stop him, and just barely manages to prevent him from spilling the beans about the TARDIS, too.
- Sickening "Crunch!": Jennifer's manner of death is not made explicit, but it does sound really unpleasant.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Price really doesn't like having to need the Doctor's help.
- Token Good Teammate: Daniel for the new UNIT team. Though they are hardly the bad guys, Daniel is the only one out of them all to show any compassion for other forms of life, and doesn't instinctively treat the Doctor like the enemy. At the end, he offers to be the Doctor's "man on the inside" for the team.
- Trigger-Happy: Putting "that old UNIT hospitality" on full display, Colonel Price is very eager to use his gun to solve any problem, including at one point shooting a wall in order to loosen a panel.The Doctor: Was that... entirely necessary?
- Trojan Prisoner: The Helliax faked its own spaceship crash so that Anabel and Jennifer would capture it and it would be able to track its son down.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Jennifer and Anabel's alien experiments were ghastly, but Anabel was doing everything she could to save her son's life, and Jennifer was completely dedicated to using her findings to help humanity.
- Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Anabel and Doctor Harrison faked distress calls to lure in hundreds of aliens to experiment on.
