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| Faithful Unto Death | |
| Season: | "Trip Of A Lifetime" |
| Story Number: | 2 |
| Doctor: | Aron Toman Doctor |
| Companions: | Astra, The Computer, Death, Frobisher |
| Writer: | Aron Toman (with material from Terry Pratchett) |
| Producer: | Crossover Adventure Productions |
| Release Date: | ?? July 2000, 19 August 2000, 18 December 2000 |
| Running Time: | |
| No. Episodes: | 3 Epysodes |
| Previous Story: | A TARDIS Christmas |
| Following Story: | A Cause for Carolling |
Story[]
Synopsis[]
"I'm a Time Lord, not an anthropomorphic personification!"
Feeling incredibly homesick, Astra has left the TARDIS to return for a holiday on her home planet, Pendor. Leaving the Doctor to travel alone through the universe. Alone, except for Astra's Computer of course.
The TARDIS soon drifts to the edges of the universe, where the Powers that Be appear to have become bored with the very fabric of creation. Either that, or became drunk on the day they invented a planet made up of a disc sitting on the back of four elephants that stand on a giant turtle (sex unknown) swimming through space in an orbit no one's very sure about.
However, all is not well on the Discworld. Death has gone missing - again - and his position is dying to be filled. For some reason, whoever is in charge of this place has decided the Doctor seems a the perfect shape to take Death's place. Reluctantly, the Time Lord takes the scythe and does the duty.
In an adventure full of wizards, witches, dwarfs, trolls and a penguin, can the Doctor find the real Death before he's trapped in this job forever?
Plot[]
to be added
Continuity[]
to be added
Production[]
Featuring Terry Pratchett's Discworld, this story also introduces Corey Klemow as Frobisher, the Doctor's new companion.
Cast[]
to be added
Crew[]
to be added
Production Notes[]
Epysode One[]
Well, this was certainly a fun episode to work on - for the very first time, ladies and gentlemen, we've decided to make an episode completely in Stereo - and it sounds great, even if we do say so ourselves. There was two reasons for this sudden change. The first was that this story is going to be run parallel with our spin-off story "The Wrath Of The God" which, since it has an orginal cast, was going to be done in stereo anyway, but also because the Discworld videos we got the sounds from was done in Surround Sound. Besides, it was a challenge to see if we could actually do something that could sit beside FloorTen Audio and Season 27 in quality - and I think we've almost got it (this is our first try, so there may be some hiccups). Of course, one of the sad things about stereo is that all the files are twice as big (which is why this file is about 7 meg). That's the reason we're about to go the way of Floorten and include lower-quality mono recordings of these episodes. Hey, we have unlimited space, so why not make the most of it?
We want to let all those Astra fans out there (that doesn't consist of Cori :P) that she hasn't gone for good - she will be back in the next story. As for all those expectant fans hoping for Frobisher to make his big (re)entrance in this episode, well, the story will have three episodes and he could turn up in any one of them.
So, next episode: will the Doctor take Death's role and do the Duty (putting a whole new spin on the "Death is based on the Doctor" debate)? Will Death ever find the secret of existance? Will that blasted Computer ever shut up? Will we feature the Patrician in our Discworld crossover? Those answers and more (or probably less) in the next episode of FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH. Stay tuned!
Aron and Coren,
July 2000.
Epysode Two[]
And now it's time for the second installment of Faithful Unto Death - will the Doctor survive Death? Will Frobisher ever make an appearance? Will this writer ever get out of the phase of asking stupid questions? Find out, and download (which we guess you probably have).
This story actually gave us a few problems (well Aron, at least, since he had to do the editing). For one, the new stereo format is a bit tricky to work with since all the Discworld voices have their own background music and sound effects, so it makes it glaringly obvious when a new voice, such as the Doctor's, is added in. Hopefully, most of these bloopers have been ironed out, but please forgive the odd slip. However, due to the problems with doing the Crossovers this way, after Faithful Unto Death we shall be discontinuing the stereo idea except for stories where most of the audio is original (and yes, we shall be doing stories like that).
Also, this story is in a way a throwback to the original setup in the Crossovers - the Doctor travelling solo with a distinct absence of
companions (excluding Frobisher's entrance at the end). Hopefully, this won't mean the second episode of this story will start to resemble
Dimensions of the Doctors, otherwise we may have a suicidal Doctor on our hands (having had to listen to it recently, Aron got very irate over that story)
So, we hope you actually enjoy this story (please, Aron's standing on a ledge out here) and send us all lots of e-mails. Oh, and before we finish, acknowledgement must be made to FloorTen Audio, of which we've borrowed musical tunes for this episode. Keep up the great work, guys!
Aron
August 2000.
Epysode Three[]
Ah, we certainly had fun with this episode, with so many problems that would make Shada look like a walk in the park (well, almost anyway). After hearing this episode, you're probably thinking it's not a very good ending to the story, and personally I agree with you. There's a lot of build-up in the first two episode, then everything stops at the end. I'm sure you're probably wondering why. Well, believe it or not, it's all because of Astra.
"Faithful Unto Death" was originally supposed to be the Crossover that ran simultaneously with the Astra story "The Wrath of the God". In fact, this episode was supposedly supposed to feature Mort, Astra's companion in the other story, as he made the transition from Pendor to Discworld with the help of the Computer. However, here we ran into problems. Coren Idle, our lovely actress who plays Astra, recently became ill, far to sick to record her lines necessary for "The Wrath of the God" part 2 which would connect this story and that one. This also meant the Computer was out of action also, who had a major part in this episode. We had a choice of two things - sit about and wait for Coren to get better and do nothing, or rewrite the script and let Astra rejoin the TARDIS sometime in the future (she was originally supposed to join in the next story "Tale of Infinity" which has now been pushed back). As a result, most of the ending of this story got chopped about, which is rather sad in a way, as it was supposed to lead into "Tale of Infinity" which has been described as "Illusia without the music" and was to be a great story. However, every cloud has a silver lining and Coren's untimely leave has allowed us to do a rather interesting extended story arc that would work a lot better than the one we previously had.
For those that are interested, the original version of "Faithful Unto Death 3" went like this (spoilers for the rest of "The Wrath of the God"): Everything is the same in both versions up to the point where the Doctor ends up in Ankh Morpork. There The Computer says she's been giving out free concerts to the locals using upbeat music, thus weakening Discworld's stability. A vortex opens up, in which Mort is thrown out of, thanks to the Computer saving him from Rabane's attempt to kill him. The Doctor learns that Rabane is using a link between Discworld and Pendor to break the barrier between Reality and Fantasy thus wiping out both universes so he can recreate them in his own image. Frobisher meanwhile finds Death in the tavern as normal and after a fight between Death and the Doctor, Death suddenly decides not to kill him and puts the Doctor, Mort and Frobisher into the TARDIS just before it's Time Rammed by Astra in the Telstra, hence throwing them all into the world of dreams and imagination. Perhaps, if you're all nice, the original version may be made and uploaded as an extra of how this episode could have been.
On another note, this is the (re)introductory story of Frobisher, the shape-changing penguin, who will be played magnificently by Corey Klemow (all bow to Corey). Frobisher should prove to be an entertaining companion, hopefully not as irritating as the Computer nor as sulky as Astra. Lots of fun for everyone ;-)
So, look forward to our next episode, the first part of A Cause for Carolling, our very own Christmas Crossover with an old enemy, a new companion and a few guest appearances that should help us to get Back To Reality (hint hint). As always, stay tuned!
Aron Toman
December 2000.
Links[]
Downloadable audio page @ Crossover Adventure Productions