Flashpoint

A number of the Short Trips I’ve listened to were rather heady pieces exploring a particular idea or character or situation; this one is actually an entire adventure – just (obviously) a short one.

The 8th Doctor and Lucie are on an orbital platform looking down at a storm planet at the height of its electrical storm season.  The beautiful colors and flashes of light draw thousands of spectators every decade.  In the crowd is a young boy with a rough body guard.  The station is attacked, the gallery is opened to space, a few people lose their lives including the bodyguard, and Lucie and the boy are scooped up by an automated life pod right before they black out in the vacuum.  They make it to the surface safely, barely escaping another round of attacks.  It turns out the boy is the son of a judge who has been prosecuting an interplanetary gang, and there’s a hit out for his family; the boy is supposed to be in hiding.

On the surface they have to survive the lightning, are picked up by a hermit, and have a final confrontation with the hit men, SPOILER ALERT, resulting in Lucie electrocuting the last opponent.  Within her narration she’s actively trying to justify herself – he’d killed the hermit, he was going to kill her and the boy, there was no other way.  She seems to convince herself better than I expected.  Certainly better than the 8th Doctor would have, at that point.

I have a few nit-picks: they wouldn’t have been able to hang on to a pillar while air was escaping from the gallery, a planet “always” covered in storms probably wouldn’t have trees growing on it, and Lucie seemed a bit too at peace with her violent decision.

As for continuity, I’m going to assume that this took place late in her travels with the Doctor, say, at the end of series 3 of the Big Finish Eighth Doctor Adventures.  This I assume because 1) she was able to get away with murder in self defense and 2) she mentions her decisions to travel with the Doctor (remembering that in her first series she and the Doctor were stuck together).