The Stones of Venice (audio story)

 was the eighteenth monthly Doctor Who audio story produced by Big Finish Productions. Written by Paul Magrs, this is his first contribution to audio-based Doctor Who, although not his first time writing for the Eighth Doctor. Magrs had previously written The Scarlet Empress and The Blue Angel (with Jeremy Hoad), two novels in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures range.

Publisher's summary
The Doctor and Charley decide to take a well-deserved break from the monotony of being chased, shot at and generally suffering anti-social behaviour at the hands of others.

And so they end up in Venice, well into Charley's future, as the great city prepares to sink beneath the water for the last time...

Which would be a momentous, if rather dispiriting, event to witness in itself. However, the machinations of a love-sick aristocrat, a proud art historian and a rabid High Priest of a really quite dodgy cult combine to make Venice's swansong a night to remember.

And then there's the rebellion by the web-footed amphibious underclass, the mystery of a disappearing corpse and the truth behind a curse going back further than curses usually do.

The Doctor and Charley are forced to wonder just what they have got themselves involved with this time...

Plot
to be added

Cast

 * The Doctor - Paul McGann
 * Charley Pollard - India Fisher
 * Orsino - Michael Sheard
 * Churchwell - Nick Scovell
 * Pietro - Barnaby Edwards
 * Ms Lavish / Estella - Elaine Ives-Cameron
 * Vincenzo - Mark Gatiss

Culture

 * The Doctor likens the cult worshiping Estella to Liza Minelli being the daughter of Judy Garland, in that the Duke's wife and Liza Minelli's mother were both "taken away" and deified by the populace.

The Doctor

 * The Doctor says the TARDIS is his oldest friend in the world.
 * The Doctor suspects that there is alien life form in Venice because of a painting with volcano and foxes which doesn't belong to Earth.

Continuity

 * The First Doctor previously visited Venice in the company of Steven Taylor and Dodo Chaplet in 1609 (PROSE: The Empire of Glass) whereas the Eleventh Doctor, Amy Pond and Rory Williams would later do so in 1580 (TV: The Vampires of Venice).
 * The artwork in Churchwell's collection of the woman in the jar is most likely a reference to the Empress' predecessors in Paul Magrs' PROSE: The Scarlet Empress.