| Big Finish Productions audio play | |
|---|---|
| Frostfire | |
| Series | Doctor Who |
| Release number | 1 |
| Featuring | Vicki |
| Writer | Marc Platt |
| Director | Mark J Thompson |
| Set between | The Time Meddler and The Suffering |
| Release date | 5 February 2007 |
Frostfire is a Big Finish Productions audiobook based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who.
The Companion Chronicles "talking books" are each narrated by one of the Doctor's companions and feature a second, guest-star voice along with music and sound effects.
Contents |
In ancient Carthage, the Lady Cressida tells a story from her youth, when she travelled in the TARDIS: a story of a visit to the frozen London of February 1814, where she, the First Doctor and Steven encountered Jane Austen and the egg of the phoenix.
In the catacombs below the temple of Astarte in Carthage, Cressida (formerly known as Vicki) tells a story to a listener who hungers for warmth. Vicki recalls a journey in which the TARDIS landed on the frozen River Thames, during the frost fair of 1814. The frost fair contains many entertainments and wonders, but none as astonishing and chilling as the egg of the phoenix, brought from Tunis. Both Vicki and Georgiana (wife of Sir Joseph Mallard, Deputy Warden of the Royal Mint) are captivated by the cold fire associated with the phoenix's egg, which is stolen during an altercation in the fair. The travellers meet the novelist Jane Austen, and accompany her to a dinner party at Sir Joseph's home. However, the dinner party is interrupted by the growing cold and the dramatic disappearance of Georgiana.
Georgiana has become enthralled by the phoenix, which is absorbing all the heat in the city — including the heat of human bodies. While Steven and the Doctor pursue a red herring, Vicki and Miss Austen discover the location of the egg — St. Cuthbert's Church, where the entire congregation is frozen. The phoenix's mind-controlled agents — including Georgiana — take it from the church to the Royal Mint, where it hopes to hatch in the smelting furnaces. The Doctor offers to take the phoenix to an uninhabited planet close to a white-hot sun, but it refuses, not wishing to be alone. The Doctor, Vicki, Steven and Miss Austen quench the furnace, killing the phoenix — except for one cinder, which flies into Vicki's eye. There it remained for years.
Vicki parted company with the Doctor and Steven, and married the Trojan prince Troilus, joining Aeneas on his travels and eventually settling in Carthage. There, one day, missing her former life and feeling alone, Vicki cried and found the cinder, still living and able to communicate. She kept the cinder burning in an old oil lamp, and it is the cinder to whom she is relating her story. Vicki has kept it alive because it is the only being besides her which remembers the Doctor, and other times. Someday, centuries later, it will become the egg, and after Carthage has become Tunis the egg will be taken to London: and the cycle will continue.
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