Whatever happened to the echo of Sarah Kingdom?
In Big Finish Audio's last Companion Chronicles episode to star Jean Marsh, Home Truths, they found an intriguing way to bring back the TARDIS passenger who lived and died in The Daleks' Master Plan. A high tech house has the capacity to grant wishes, but lacks judgement. As a consequence, tragedy struck once and threatens to do so again to the Doctor, Steven and Kingdom. Only Kingdom figures out a solution and, as a consequence, exists as an "echo," an imprint of consciousness on the technological marvel.
A thousand years later, humanity has descended once again into a dark age. In this time, such an edifice can easily be seen as sorcery. An investigator, equipped with reinvented wax cylinders, questions this apparent ghost in an effort to determine whether or not the house should be demolished by the authorities. This dilemma reaches a fevered pitch in The Drowned World, when our investigator must gather evidence to justify the existence of the house. The council must be convinced of its intrinsic value as a living being, not merely as an affront to nature or a instrument to exploit. The evidence may lie in one of Kingdom's most harrowing stories.
The Doctor, Steven and Kingdom - still on the run from Mavic Chen and the Daleks - have materialized in a room askew. They manage to clamber out of the TARDIS just before it slides into the water at the foot of the room. Steven is ready to dive in after it, but the Doctor stops him. He knows that something is amiss but refuses to say anything. Exploring this asteroid space base, the trio rescue a group of trapped miners and hear their story. It seems that, somehow, the water is alive... And carnivorous.
While the Doctor and Steven attempt to repair the life support systems, it falls on Kingdom to busy herself with trying to retrieve the TARDIS. Roiling waters trap her and several of the miners, leading to escapes and re-entrapments before Kingdom is prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to save them. What happens next, in many ways, reverse engineers some justification for the events of Home Truths.
The flashback scenes are only dressing to the unfolding story of the investigator and the house. After Kingdom undermines his attempts to provide evidence to the council, he wishes that she dissolve her consciousness. Later on, when the plague strikes, a desperate investigator returns to the house to wish her back into existence. His appeal is that, like her willingness to die for the sake of others, she do the right thing and extend the reach of her powers to cure the plague. Maybe she can, maybe she can't, but she is willing to try only with an ultimatum attached. Before the credits roll on The Drowned World, she exclaims that the real Sara Kingdom has never returned, nor Steven nor the Doctor, nor anyone who has ever set foot in the house. She is lonely and needs a companion of her own.
The story of Sara Kingdom is set to end, finally, in the next Companion Chronicle: Guardian of the Solar System.
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