BASIC PLOT
On a lonely stretch of Welsh coastline, a fisherman is killed by a hideous creature from beneath the waves. When the Doctor and Rose arrive, they discover a village where the children are plagued by nightmares, and the nights are ruled by monsters. Bronwyn Ceredig, the old woman of the village, suspects that ailing industrialist Nathaniel Morton is to blame, but the Doctor has suspicions of his own.

DOCTOR
Tenth.

COMPANIONS
Rose Tyler.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
Pg 21 A clifftop, near Ynys Du.

PREPARATORY READING
None.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 28 "I took you to New Earth! Apple grass, remember?" New Earth.

Pg 30 "'Everlasting matches?' she asked." First seen in Doctor Who in an exciting adventure with the Daleks.

Pg 44 "The Doctor's psychic paper had helped as well, of course." The End of the World et al.

Pg 63 Another appearance by the psychic paper.

Pg 74 "Bob Perry, the harbour master" Robert Perry was Mike Tucker's writing partner for a number of BBC Books (Illegal Alien et al). Although one wonders if Tucker thought this namedrop was so subtle we wouldn't notice?

Pgs 79-80 Another appearance by the everlasting matches.

Pg 120 "You'd get on well with the Slitheen." Aliens of London et al.

Pg 128 "So have you locked them out or us in?" Given that they're currently in a lighthouse, this is a reference to The Horror of Fang Rock.

Pgs 137-138 "The TARDIS had its own telepathic circuits - that was how it translated languages for him and Rose whenever they landed on an alien world." Mentioned most recently in The End of the World.

Pg 141 "The Doctor dodged to one side as the beak snapped next to his head with a loud kklak!" See the front cover of Doctor Who and the Invasion of the Dinosaurs.

Pg 146 "Seek! Locate! Exterminate!" Destiny of the Daleks.

Pg 154 "Well, he's an expert on monsters. [...] He gives them nightmares." Love and War.

Pg 155 [Time Lords] "are meant to be extinct, casualties of a war they started." The last great Time War, started (according to Russell T Davies) by the Time Lords in Genesis of the Daleks.

Pg 198 "I'm not a little girl anymore." The Curse of Fenric. (Although, given that this is said by a 12 year old, this continuity reference to Ace's burgeoning sexuality makes one a little worried for Mr Tucker's mental state.)

Pg 221 Reference to the Time War (the 2005 season).

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
Pg 145 The Nestene consciousness (as revealed on pg 147; as with most of the other monsters here, they're images drawn from a dream).

Pgs 145-146 The Slitheen (really images of them, summoned from Rose's nightmares.)

Pg 146 Daleks (again from Rose's nightmares; we only hear their voices, however.)

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Ali, Beth, Mervyn, Bronwyn, Dai, Billy, Bob Perry.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS
None.

PLUGGING THE HOLES [Fan-wank theorizing of how to fix continuity cock-ups]
N/A

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
Pg 12 A water creature two metres tall, with barnacled plates, iridescent scales and spines emerging from its shoulders.

Pg 31 A huge grey creature with jutting fangs, eight tentacles covered in suckers and with 14 eyes (pg 30).

Pg 33 A huge centipede, two metres long.

Pg 36 An oversized mosquito.

Pg 36 A squat lizard with claws that drag along the floor.

Pgs 119-120 The Cynrog, dark green aliens with wrinkled and ridged skin, tufts of greasy hair, a pug-like nose and a ridge of transparent spines running over the tops of their heads. [In fact, these and Balor are the only true aliens, as the other monsters are all generated by children's nightmares and this aren't real.]

Pg 125-127 A whole variety of monsters, from spider to dinosaur shapes, an array of fangs and claws, and nursery-school colours.

Pg 139 A pterodactyl.

Pgs 227-228 Balor, a real monster. It has hard, chitinous plates covering its back and arms, studded with spines. Its neck is full of tentacles, the head flat and elongated, with a bony plate that opens in a frill. It has six insect-like legs and a scorpion tail, with poisonous spines.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Pgs 8-9 Ynys Du, west Wales.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
The idea of using children to create nightmarish monsters is a pretty good one. Unfortunately, that plotline disappears almost entirely once the Doctor and Rose actually arrive in the village and instead we're left with a sub-Richards conspiracy cabal. Bizarrely, a theme emerges towards the end, which claims that only children have sufficient imagination and that the entirety of adult conversation consists of meaningless platitudes. There might have been some mileage in this, had it been properly worked into the narrative, but as it sits it suggests that the author needs to get himself invited to a better class of dinner party.