The Gathering is a Big Finish Productions audio drama based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who.
The Fifth Doctor encounters an enthusiastic fan who has found traces of the Doctor's various visits to Earth in his archives. Many of the visits are accompanied by a characteristic energy signature which the Doctor does not recognise and sets off to investigate. He travels to 1984 Baltimore, but hears a police report with a search out for the Doctor and realises a future incarnation is already there, so instead decides to visit Australia in 2006.
There he is to meet Tegan, an old companion, still trying to reconcile her everyday life with the adventures she had with the Doctor, and Katherine Chambers, a woman dealing with a legacy of events in the Doctor's future…
The Doctor — Peter Davison
Tegan Jovanka — Janet Fielding
Michael Tanaka — Dait Abuchi
Eve Morris — Janie Booth
Alan Fitzgerald — Nicholas Briggs
James Clarke — Richard Grieve
Waiter — Jef Higgins
Rosemary Stark — Belinda Hoare
Jodi Boyd — Zehra Naqvi
Katherine Chambers — Jane Perry
The companion-less Doctor says he has left Peri and Erimem in Monte Carlo, a reference to the Doctor-less audio adventure The Veiled Leopard.
Among the incidents Alan Fitzgerald questions the Doctor about are the Great Fire of London (The Visitation) and the Mary Celeste (The Chase).
It is heavily implied that James Clarke is working for the Forge. This is confirmed in the short story "Twilight's End", which features in Short Trips: Defining Patterns.
The technology that is spirited away at the end of this story previously appeared (in a chronologically later story) in The Harvest, including System, voiced by the same actress.
The story is set on Tegan's birthday, September 22.
Doctor Who actress and singer Billie Piper (Rose Tyler) shares that birthday, a fact subtly acknowledged by the story when it is mentioned during an in-story radio broadcast.
This was the first audio drama in the main Doctor Who range in which Janet Fielding (Tegan Jovanka) appears, although she has confirmed that she will be reprising the role of Tegan in more audios in the future. Fielding has since reprised her role as Tegan alongside Vislor Turlough and Nyssa since 2010.
The author Joseph Lidster features on the cover as a figure mid-way through the cyber-process
