Doctor Who and the Brain Drain (audio story)

Doctor Who and the Brain Drain was the story comprising the fifteenth release in The Third Doctor Adventures, produced by Big Finish Productions. It was written by Richard James and Nicholas Briggs.

Publisher's summary

A newly exiled Doctor accompanies Liz Shaw and the Brigadier to a symposium held in an imposing Scottish castle. Professor MacLeod and her son have developed a new treatment for memory loss and a possible cure for dementia.

As the Doctor investigates sightings of strange mythical creatures, and ghosts are unleashed in the castle's corridors, Liz and the Brigadier search for a connection.

Just what is happening to the energy produced by the MacLeods' revolutionary treatment? And what is the strange creature that hides in the castle grounds?

Plot

Part one

Having heard about an increase in sightings of mythical creatures in Scotland, the Doctor works on a machine to detect alien life forms and tests it with the help of Liz, who will soon be leaving with the Brigadier to attend Professor Abigail MacLeod's symposium at Ben Brannon Castle near Edinburgh. The TARDIS catches fire thanks to a phase deflector almost short-circuiting the console and the Doctor decides to join Liz and the Brigadier, being interested in Professor MacLeod's purported treatment for memory loss in dementia patients but also wanting to investigate the mythical creature sightings.

The Doctor, Liz and the Brigadier take a sleeper train to Edinburgh Waverley from Euston and they meet Dr Fiona Lynch and Professor Albert Heber. Whilst Dr Lynch is interested in Professor MacLeod's experiments, Professor Heber believes that the possible side effects border on criminal negligence and is argumentative, behaving in a way that appals Liz and prompts her to secretly order drinks on his tab. The Doctor confides in Liz that he believes that the sightings of mythical creatures could be due to alien life and she shares her suspicion that a rude steward has been eavesdropping on them all night.

On the way to bed, the Doctor's phase deflector detects extra-dimensional activity and he and Liz follow it to Professor Heber's room where they find him dead with no sign of damage. Liz goes to fetch the Brigadier and, in her absence, the steward enters the compartment with an interstitial disruptor and fires, stating that the Doctor must be removed.

Part two

Liz and the Brigadier are unable to find the Doctor anywhere on the train and continue on to Ben Brannon Castle without him. The Brigadier asks Professor MacLeod and her son, Linus, to delay their demonstration, which Linus refuses to do, and Liz makes enquiries about Professor Heber, who was travelling without any luggage, with the University of Cambridge where he purported to be a fellow of the neuropsychopathy faculty. She learns that no such faculty exists.

At the demonstration, a headpiece apparently repairs the neural pathways of dementia patient June Wellesley and she recognises her husband, Andrew, for the first time in years. Linus is keen to avoid questions, but Liz, in Professor Heber's absence, questions the possible dangers and is denied the opportunity to examine the machinery and question Mr Wellesley. She notices the amount of power generated and, afterwards, wonders where it has gone and why the MacLeods have been so secretive.

As it gets dark prematurely and it begins to snow despite it being summer, Liz and the Brigadier spot the unmoving Mrs Wellesley being taken away in a wheelchair and decide to keep quiet for now to avoid ending up like Professor Heber. They get ready for the evening entertainment in their respective rooms and Liz spots a figure near the loch, which Dr Lynch had also seen. Shortly after, the steward from the train enters, claiming to be providing room service, and shoots Liz with his interstitial disruptor.

Part three

Mr Wellesley hears his wife's voice asking him for help through a radio and the steward subsequently shoots him, having been aware that radio waves proved a risk. In the morning, the Brigadier is surprised to find that the weather is sunny and informs Dr Lynch, who has again seen figures by the loch, that he intends to have the castle's moat searched now that Liz is missing. Professor Heber's corpse also disappears following his autopsy, during which no scanning equipment worked on him.

Liz finds herself outside Ben Brannon Castle and meets groundskeeper Mr Crouch. When she asks him about the figures seen by the loch, he says that a selkie has been blamed for multiple disappearances in the area over the years and tells her about various other mythical creatures as well as a haunted bothy. She joins the MacLeods' second demonstration upon returning to the castle at which Linus again disregards her insistence that Mrs Wellesley be questioned and announces that the device will be tested on volunteers.

Linus accepts three volunteers from the audience and announces that he will be sharing his father's secrets regarding the untapped potential of the human brain, something that his mother knows nothing about. Upon activating the machine, objects around the room begin moving and the three volunteers leave their bodies as ghosts, calling for help. Linus declares that this could be the next step in human evolution.

Part four

The Brigadier takes charge as everyone panics and removes the plug for the headsets, restoring the volunteers to their bodies. Professor MacLeod admonishes Linus for ruining their chances at gaining funding tends to the volunteers whilst the Brigadier has everybody confined to the castle. Once everything is under control, Professor MacLeod demands answers from her son and rejects his claims that he is unlocking psychic powers to change the world, describing them as madness that Peter, his late father, would have been appalled by. Linus disagrees, but keep to himself the fact that he has been following the orders of the disembodied voice of his father.

Dr Lynch tells Liz and the Brigadier that she has seen something resembling a griffin near the loch and the two of them catch up once she has gone to bed, with Liz explaining how she was shot by the steward and that Linus seemed surprised to see her at the second demonstration. She takes the Brigadier to investigate the haunted bothy, where they see the steward standing outside and hear Linus speaking to the voice of his father, and Mr Crouch reveals that he is actually the Doctor in disguise. The steward remains there after Linus leaves and presents his mother with data which he claims comes from secret research performed by his father.

The Doctor tells Liz and the Brigadier that the phase deflector protected him when the steward shot him with the displacement gun, dampening the gun's effects and resulting in him being transported only a few miles away just as the emitter in Liz's coat resulted in her being transported onto the grounds. They should, in fact, have been sent into another dimension. As they head to the groundskeeper's cottage to regroup, Linus has his mother use a headset and uses her memories of Peter to make him visible to her. He appears and greets her.

Part five

Peter explains that only Abigail is able to see him and that they can have more time together, but she does not think it is right and rejects him and her son. Whilst the Doctor and Liz return to the bothy, the Brigadier returns to the castle and questions Linus, who claims that what happened during the second demonstration was simply mass hysteria and that the volunteers are resting in their rooms. He and Dr Lynch, who has been feeling cooped up in her room, hear the voices of the volunteers in an inexplicable storm in the library and find their bodies on shelves in the scullery.

The Doctor and Liz, however, find an energy conversion station and interdimensional conduit which funnel energy away from the headsets to another dimension, as well as a number of memory cubes. The Doctor briefly incapacitates the steward when he enters and then runs with Liz, encountering a police sergeant whom the steward shoots before forcing the two of them back to the bothy. The creature who has been using Peter's voice and form appears, flitting between forms, and reveals that the Doctor has defeated him before in what the Doctor realises is a future encounter. Learning that the Doctor is a Time Lord, the creature has the steward put a headset on him to drain his memories.

Part six

Having more control over his synapses than a human, the Doctor drains the creature's psychic energy and makes it fade away, also rendering the steward unconscious. He and Liz escape and return to the castle where the Brigadier introduces him to Professor MacLeod, who tells him that Linus's ideas came to him in a dream and that Peter suffered from dementia before he died. She refuses to hear criticism of the treatment due to her concern for her husband's legacy and leaves, after which the Doctor and Liz update the Brigadier. Whilst Linus gives the creature a cube of memories taken from Professor MacLeod, Liz finds her talking to Peter's voice and starts to see him herself, recognising him as the creature from the bothy.

Professor MacLeod throws herself from the ramparts into the moat and it starts to rain due to psychic feedback. Having heard the scream, the Brigadier goes to inspect her body and runs into Linus, whom he discovers does not know about the bodies of the delegates in the scullery, and the steward, from whom he manages to escape before he can be displaced. The Doctor and Liz see Dr Lynch to learn exactly where the mythical creatures have been appearing and the Doctor realises that there is a camouflaged Treluvian scout ship by the loch, letting supradimensional creatures stick to its outside due to its damaged transdimensional dampeners. This also explains the weather. Inside the ship, they find the still-alive Professor Heber.

Part seven

Heber is actually an undercover transdimensional criminal investigator, explaining why he was not displaced by the steward on the train and is able to fade in and out at will, and is after the psychic creature, which is a Nelophex accused of several genocides. The Nelophex is unable to completely cross the void into this dimension without energy from humans' memory centres and other Nelophex will follow should he do so, something Heber was attempting to prevent by dissuading delegates from attending the symposium. He also explains that the supposed ghosts were psychic projections caught between dimensions.

Linus summons the remaining delegates for a final demonstration and the Nelophex begins to drain all of their memories without the need for headsets thanks to its strengthened powers, instead repurposing a chandelier as a psychic extractor. The Doctor, Liz, the Brigadier, Dr Lynch and Heber arrive and inform Linus of his mother's death, making him realise that the Nelophex cannot be trusted as it promised that his mother would be safe. The Nelophex begins to materialise in the form of a selkie and is shot at when Captain Munro arrives with UNIT soldiers, but it is impervious as it is materialising and it neutralises them by draining them before sending out a signal to the rest of its kind.

The Doctor and Heber are largely unaffected by the Nelophex and Heber produces a stasis prison for them to use to trap it once it manifests. Unwilling to wait until then, the Doctor tasks Heber with using the phase deflector to nullify the dimensional funneling and disrupt the energy, but he drops it and Linus does it instead in his parents' names. Heber is thus able to trap it. Because of the Nelophex, Linus suffers from symptoms similar to dementia and the Doctor and Liz visit him later, confirming from Peter's research notes that the same thing happened to him. The two prepare to return to London with the Brigadier, who informs the Doctor that UNIT HQ have acquired a bright yellow car.

Cast

• The Doctor - Tim Treloar
• Liz Shaw - Daisy Ashford
• Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart - Jon Culshaw
• Linus MacLeod - Callum Pardoe
• Professor Abigail MacLeod - Rosalyn Landor
• Dr Fiona Lynch / June Wellesley - Susan Harrison
• Professor Albert Heber / The Steward / Andrew Wellesley - Glen McCready
• Peter MacLeod / The Nelophex - Mark Elstob
• Crouch - Milo Ratter

Crew

to be added

Worldbuilding

• The train from Euston stops at Watford Junction, Carlisle, Carstairs and Edinburgh Waverley.
• Captain Munro took the Doctor through the Brigadier's latest report.
• White wine is recommended with fish, which Albert Heber eats.
• Fiona Lynch eats haggis with whisky sauce. The Doctor orders the same for himself, Liz and the Brigadier.
• Abigail MacLeod loves the works of Mozart.
• Peter MacLeod proposed to Abigail in the rain in Edinburgh.
• Heber claims to have a fellowship at the neuropsychopathy faculty at the University of Cambridge. No such faculty exists.
• Ben Brannon was the site of a military hospital specialising in cosmetic reconstruction in the First World War.
• Dr Lynch works at the Centre for Mind Studies.
• The Nelophex are congenitally criminal.

Notes

• This story was recorded at Fitzrovia Post from 10-12 June 2024.
• Richard James's script was rewritten by Nicholas Briggs due to it lacking Doctor Who elements such as a constant feeling of danger. (BFX: Doctor Who and the Brain Drain)
• To indicate that this serial is placed earlier in season 7 than the other Third Doctor Adventures with Liz Shaw as the companion, the opening titles are played in full as was the case in Spearhead from Space ^[+]Loading...["Spearhead from Space (TV story)"] and Doctor Who and the Silurians ^[+]Loading...["Doctor Who and the Silurians (TV story)"], the other stories use the The Ambassadors of Death ^[+]Loading...["The Ambassadors of Death (TV story)"] arrangement.

Continuity

• The Doctor was promised a car in TV: Spearhead from Space ^[+]Loading...["Spearhead from Space (TV story)"]. He says he would like one in yellow.
• The Brigadier says that the Yeti are not mythical creatures, having met Robot Yeti in TV: The Web of Fear ^[+]Loading...["The Web of Fear (TV story)"].

Cover gallery

• Standard cover

• Alternate cover

• Textless cover

External links

• Official Doctor Who and the Brain Drain page at bigfinish.com