The Sixth Doctor has been travelling with Mel for a while, when one day, she asks to see this Dr. Evelyn Smythe she's heard so much about. The Doctor reluctanty takes her to Világ, where Evelyn has been married to Justice Rossiter (now Principal Triumvir) for two years.
In flashbacks, it's revealed that Evelyn returned to Világ a year after meeting Rossiter. He was astonished to see her again, not knowing what had happened to her in the war against the Killorans, and immediately asked her to stay with him for a while. Six was tremendously sad to see Evelyn go, and put on a Jerkass act that left them both unsatisfied with their goodbye.
Evelyn has become a key speaker for scientific research into Killoran technology. This causes a lot of public tension between her and Rossiter's daughter, medical doctor Sophia Rossiter, who (together with her ex-boyfriend and colleague Dr. Sebastian Lawrence) has been opposing both her father and Evelyn. Evelyn has also been suffering from headaches and mood swings, although her heart condition was cured through surgery.
The Doctor and Mel land in the middle of a memorial ceremony for the Killoran war, where the reunion with Evelyn is promptly interrupted by an attack on Rossiter's life. Evelyn and Mel are both abducted in the confusion, and the Doctor and Rossiter team up to find them, trying to cope with the idea that Sophia may be behind the bombing.
The abductor is Dr. Lawrence, who seems to be communicating with his boss. He's very nervous and mostly just wants to impress Sophia, ignoring Mel's and Evelyn's protests. Sophia and her bodyguard, Jenner, track him down, but the result is Dr. Lawrence being shot and Evelyn suffering a seizure. Sophia rushes them both to her hospital, where she begs her supervisor, Dr. Andrew Szabó, to save them.
A flashback shows Evelyn and Rossiter on their wedding day, hoping the Doctor might show up. He didn't.
The Doctor and Rossiter, meanwhile, have traced the signal of Dr. Lawrence's communications and vworps the TARDIS into the ancient undercity. They're immediately beset by zombies. Deciding to deal with one crisis at a time, they discover that they're underneath Sophia's hospital and begin to search the patients' medical files for clues. Six also asks Rossiter if Evelyn hates him for his Jerkass behaviour during their goodbye. Rossiter quietly reveals that Evelyn waited for Six on her wedding day, hoping that he'd give her away at the altar. Six is tremendously moved, and tells Rossiter that he deliberately stayed away from the wedding, because he wasn't sure if he'd be welcome.
Continuing through the patient files, the Doctor is absolutely horrified to discover that someone in the hospital has been experimenting not only on coma patients, but also on Killoran survivors of the war, and that Sophia's signature is on many of the files. And Evelyn's file shows that she's been genetically altered with Killoran DNA, explaining her violent mood swings as well as the rise in domestic violence in the entire population.
While Dr. Andrew Szabó and Sophia prep Evelyn for emergency brain surgery to remove a blood clot, Mel begins to suspect that Szabó may be the Magnificent Bastard behind it all. Sophia slaps her in the face when Mel brings up that possibility, explaining that Szabó is a thoroughly apolitical man who simply wants to be a good doctor. What's more, he's been like a father to Sophia. Mel trusts her, and teams up with Szabó, who promptly throws her down an elevator shaft. In the middle of all that, Dr. Lawrence dies from his gunshot wound.
Luckily, the Doctor was just trying to find a way to get up the elevator shaft, and catches Mel. While they debrief each other, the Doctor realises that Evelyn's Killoran DNA would kill her if she would have brain surgery. He rushes into her emergency room, stops Sophia from beginning the surgery and instead injects some of Evelyn's blood into his own system, where his Time Lord physiology can fight it off. He donates his blood to Evelyn, who recovers quite quickly. But the Doctor finds out about Evelyn's heart condition in the process, and is shocked to find out that she kept it hidden from him.
While Rossiter tries to explain things to Sophia, Mel and the Doctor go confront Szabó with The Denouement. Szabó is quite happy to let Mel talk to him, calmly sipping wine while she explans her theories. After Evelyn became Sophia's stepmother, Szabó preyed on Sophia's jealousy and feelings of inadequacy, becoming a Parental Substitute to her. His experiments were meant to awaken coma patients by using the strength and resilience of Killorans. When it killed them instead, he began experimenting on the less ill, resulting in mindless and violent zombies. When he finally broadened his experiments to include almost healthy people, including (by coincidence) Evelyn, they did become healthier, but also more prone to mood swings and domestic violence. His tests were simply meant to eventually improve the population and eleminate disease. The fact that it gave him a chance to torture some Killorans was just a nice bonus. He'd been caught by Dr. Lawrence once, who — seeing a chance to impress Sophia and win her back — gladly helped out. Together, they won Sophia's trust and manipulated her into signing patient forms without realising what was being done. The political debate over scientific research was simply a distraction.
Sophia, standing on the doorway, hears all that and vows to avenge Dr. Lawrence. She's too late, since the wine Szabó was so calmly drinking was poison.
Meanwhile, Evelyn wakes up and gets a surprise visitor... the Seventh Doctor. With her veins full of Time Lord blood, she's intrigued to find that she can sense him, and their reunion is a very happy one. Seven popped by to tell Evelyn some very good news: he's travelling with a young man named Thomas Hector Schofield... who's Cassie's son, Tommy.
In the aftermath, Evelyn and Rossiter decide to renew their vows, this time with Six by their side. Sophia and Rossiter set aside their differences. And Evelyn has to live with the fact that she still has a serious heart condition after the sham surgery, but as long as she has her new life on Világ, she can cope. Mel and the Doctor leave after a few weeks, with Evelyn handing Mel a recipe for chocolate cake and making her promise she'll let Six have some every once in a while.
Tropes
- Anguished Declaration of Love: A very sweet platonic one from Evelyn to Six.
- Said to be Like A Father To Her.
- Body Horror: The people treated with Killoran genetics.
- The Bus Came Back: In theory, if one listened to Big Finish in chronological order, we wouldn't have seen Evelyn in quite some time.
- Call-Back: The Doctor mentions having used a fire extinguisher in an escape attempt from human mutants, which he'd done before in Inferno (And likely other stories as well).
- Call-Forward: Hex and Ace are off doing something which won't make sense until far later.
- Continuity Nod: Evelyn mentions Daleks, Mutant vampire hunters and an attempt to go to Elizabeth's court
- The Doctor mentions having had Regeneration issues.
- Continuity Snarl: This audio is treated as the first meeting between Mel and Evelyn, and also discusses Evelyn's departure from the Doctor, both of which featured heavily in the Past Doctor Adventures novel Instruments of Darkness under very different circumstances.
- That said, it is not impossible to reconcile the two storylines; it just requires Mel to lose her memory of the events of Instruments in a manner that means the Doctor and Evelyn feel it 'safer' not to tell her the truth.
- Dance Party Ending: A very happy one.
- Deadly Gas
- E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi: Well it's in progress, and drives the plot forward.
- Faux Affably Evil: Dr. Andrew Szabó.
- Happily Married: Evelyn and Dr. Rossiter.
- Just a Flesh Wound
- Karma Houdini: Szabo commits suicide by poison wine rather than facing justice.
- Kid from the Future: The Doctor tells Evelyn about her future.
- LEGO Genetics: Killorian DNA is being added to the local population as a haphazard medical treatment with unpredictable side-effects.
- Medical Horror: All over the episode.
- No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: Szabó calmly drinks wine during The Denouement.
- Our Zombies Are Different
- Playing with Syringes: Szabó.
- Sequel Episode: To Arrangements for War.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The Doctor starts off this adventure throwing some fancy words around, like Egregious.
- Shout-Out: Mel calls someone 007 at one point.
- Superhuman Transfusion: Evelyn's blood is run through the Doctor, so it can adapt and combat the Killorian DNA.
- Sympathetic P.O.V.: The Always Chaotic Evil aliens from Arrangements of War are being tortured and experimented upon, whining like sick dogs.
- The Reveal: Cassie's son, Tommy... is revealed to be Hex.
- Translation Convention: Mel wonders why the Killorans can't understand her through the TARDIS' translation circuits. The poor Killorans are too emotionally broken to do anything but bark and yelp.
- Trap Door
- Under City
- Would Hit a Girl: Dr. Lawrence.
