The Kingmaker

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Big Finish Productions audio play
Album cover
The Kingmaker
Series Doctor Who
Release number 81
Featuring Fifth Doctor
Peri Brown
Erimem
Writer Nev Fountain
Director Gary Russell
Producer(s) Gary Russell
Jason Haigh-Ellery
Production code 6QI
Set between The Council of Nicaea and
The Gathering
Release date April 2006

The Kingmaker is a Big Finish Productions audio drama based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The drama was written by Nev Fountain who is better known for his work on the radio and television series Dead Ringers, and also stars Jon Culshaw who in the same programmes is known for his impression of Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor.

[edit] Plot

The Doctor travels to the fifteenth century to investigate the mystery of the Princes in the Tower, to fulfil a contract to write a series of children's books. Is there another time traveller on the loose? And just why is there a robot in the TARDIS?

[edit] Cast

[edit] Trivia

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
  • The "Doctor Who Discovers…" range of books, which in the play were written by the Doctor, were a real range of books published by Target Books in 1977. The five titles were Early Man, Space Travel, Strange and Mysterious Creatures, Prehistoric Animals, and The Conquerors.
  • The publishing company's robot addresses the Doctor as "Doctor Who", as the computer WOTAN does in The War Machines, but the Doctor says that this was due to a typographical error by the publishers. The titles of the books should have been "The Doctor, who discovers...".
  • Jon Culshaw does his famous Tom Baker impression when the Fifth Doctor listens to the Fourth Doctor's dictated notes for the incomplete (and fictional) work "Doctor Who Discovers Historical Mysteries".
  • William Shakespeare appears in this story. Shakespeare was previously glimpsed in the Time/Space Visualiser in The Chase, and a child in The Time of the Daleks was revealed at that play's conclusion to be Shakespeare. Shakespeare also appears in the Virgin Missing Adventures novel The Empire of Glass. In Planet of Evil, the Doctor mentioned having met Shakespeare before, and in City of Death he claimed that he helped transcribe the original manuscript for Hamlet. He also appears in the Doctor Who Magazine Ninth Doctor comic A Groatsworth of Wit. Shakespeare is scheduled to appear as a character in the The Shakespeare Code in the 2007 series.
  • This audio adventure refers tangentially to elements of the 2005 Doctor Who series, even though Big Finish's license technically forbids this. One character mentions that a letter from the Doctor was left by a "Northern chap with big ears", a reference to the Ninth Doctor. Also Richard, played by an actor with a Manchester accent and voice very similar to that of Christopher Eccleston, uses the Ninth Doctor's frequent exclamation of "fantastic!". Later, Shakespeare exclaims, "What the Chaucer?"; this joke is a riff on Charles Dickens saying "What the Shakespeare?" in The Unquiet Dead.


Fifth Doctor audio dramas v • d • e 
The Sirens of Time | Phantasmagoria | The Land of the Dead | Red Dawn | Winter for the Adept
The Mutant Phase | Loups-Garoux | The Eye of the Scorpion | Primeval | Excelis Dawns | Spare Parts
The Church and the Crown | No Place Like Home | Nekromanteia | Creatures of Beauty | Omega | Zagreus
The Axis of Insanity | The Roof of the World | The Game | Three's a Crowd | The Council of Nicaea | Singularity
The Kingmaker | The Gathering | Circular Time | Renaissance of the Daleks
Doctor Who audio plays
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../t/h/e/The_Kingmaker_1cbc.html"