Demon Quest Explained
| Serial Name: | Demon Quest |
| Show: | DW |
| Type: | audio play |
| Doctor: | Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor) |
| Companions: |
|
| Producer: | Kate Thomas |
| Series: | 2 |
| Length: | 5 episodes
60 minutes each |
| Date: | 2 September –
2 December 2010
(CD release) |
| Preceding: | Hornets' Nest |
| Following: | Serpent Crest |
Demon Quest is an audio play in five episodes based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It is written by Paul Magrs, and stars Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor and Richard Franklin as Captain Mike Yates. It was released on five CDs by BBC Audiobooks between September and December 2010 and is a sequel to 2009's Hornets' Nest. They feature multiple actors, but all five episodes contain some degree of narration by different characters. It was first broadcast in 10 half-hour episodes on BBC Radio 4 Extra from 19 to 30 December 2016.[1]
Demon Quest
The Relics of Time
(released 2 September 2010)
- The Doctor returns to Nest Cottage in Sussex a year after defeating the alien Hornets. But while doing some maintenance on the TARDIS, his housekeeper, Mrs Wibbsey takes four pieces of the ship's spatial geometer and trades them to a mysterious figure for four paper items that seem to have some relation to the Doctor. Now they must travel throughout time to learn their significance and find the missing components. The first item is a page from a history book discussing a Mosaic that depicts the Doctor's face. So he and Wibbsey go back to Ancient Britain, c. 43 AD, shortly before Emperor Claudius' Roman invasion. There they find two warring tribes, one of which is being aided by a wise wizard.
Cast
The Demon of Paris
(released 7 October 2010)
- The Doctor takes Mrs Wibbsey to Paris in 1894 to discover why his face is on a famous Aristide Bruant poster by Toulouse-Lautrec. But a spate of disappearances has sent the city into a panic, and some suspect the famous diminutive artist. While the Doctor finds himself performing at the Moulin Rouge, Mrs Wibbsey becomes Lautrec's newest muse. Finally they all come together in a deadly showdown in Montmartre Cemetery with the Demon of Paris.
Cast
A Shard of Ice
(released 4 November 2010)
- Page 407 of an old, leather-bound book of fairy tales features an illustration of a horned monster battling both the Doctor and Retired Captain Mike Yates. So the Doctor reunites with his old UNIT colleague and takes him to a snow blind Germanic landscape in 1847. The first person they meet is the very man listed as the book's author, Albert Tiermann, storyteller to the King. Together the three men confront the Ice Queen, resplendent upon her diamond throne.
Cast
Starfall
(released 2 December 2010)
- The final item, the cover of a comic book featuring all their likenesses, brings the Doctor, Yates and Wibbsey to New York City in July 1976. While walking through Central Park with her boyfriend, a girl named Alice touches a strange meteorite. This immediately gives her superpowers, transforming her into Miss Starfall. As she enjoys flying over the city and fighting crime, her employer, a washed up old actress named Mimsy Loyne, impatiently waits in her room at the Dakota Building. And on the Dakota's top floor, a cult of men in long, multi-coloured scarves are worshiping an alien artefact.
Cast
- The Doctor – Tom Baker
- Mrs Wibbsey – Susan Jameson
- Captain Mike Yates – Richard Franklin
- Mimsy Loyne – Lorelei King
- Buddy Hudson – Trevor White
- Alice Trefusis – Laurel Lefkow
- Cultist – John Chancer
- Cop – Rupert Holliday-Evans
Sepulchre
(released 2 December 2010)
- The Demon has absconded with Mrs Wibbsey. Yates and the Doctor put together the final given clues to track them down to the very edge of the universe: Sepulchre.
Cast
- The Doctor – Tom Baker
- Mrs Wibbsey – Susan Jameson
- Captain Mike Yates – Richard Franklin
- The Demon – Nigel Anthony
- Elderly Ernestina – Carole Boyd
Crew
- Writer – Paul Magrs
- Producer & Director – Kate Thomas
- Script Editor & Executive Producer – Michael Stevens
- Cover Illustrators – Ben Willsher, Anthony Dry, Vince McIndoe (The Demon of Paris)[2] and June Hudson (A Shard of Ice)[3]
Continuity
- This story is a sequel to Hornets' Nest, with the Fourth Doctor, Yates and Mrs Wibbsey reunited one year later.
- Ernestina Stott was in the second Hornets' Nest story, The Dead Shoes.
- The end of Demon Quest leads directly into the sequel, Serpent Crest.
- Mrs Wibbsey's friend, Deirdre "Whatsit", is heard in the last two episodes of Serpent Crest.
Notes
- Rupert Holliday-Evans played Colonel Mace in "The Sontaran Stratagem" / "The Poison Sky".
- Samuel West played Cyrian, the Rani's sidekick, in the 1993 Doctor Who charity special Dimensions in Time.
- The Fourth Doctor's trademark scarf was inspired by Lautrec's Bruant paintings.[4]
- The cover of A Shard of Ice was illustrated by June Hudson, costume designer for Doctor Who in Tom Baker's final years.
External links
Notes and References
- Web site: BBC Radio 4 Extra – Doctor Who, Demon Quest – Episode guide.
- Web site: The Demon of Paris / Doctor Who – Vince McIndoe – Illustrators & Artists Agents – Début Art . debutart.com . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20111005174957/http://www.debutart.com/illustration/vince-mcindoe/the-demon-of-paris-doctor-who . 2011-10-05.
- Web site: Cover Reveal: Demon Quest 3 – A Shard of Ice « Paul Magrs . 20 August 2011 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120330075819/http://paulmagrs.com/blogs/?p=928 . 30 March 2012 . dead .
- https://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/classic/news/briefhistory/tbaker.shtml BBC Page on Tom Baker's Doctor
