BASIC PLOT
The Doctor must mediate between three warring factions, where things are definitely not as they seem. Benny finds herself stranded, facing the greatest challenge of her life: he's called Jason.

DOCTOR
Seventh.

COMPANIONS
Benny, Chris, Roz and Wolsey.

And introducing Jason Kane.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
Pg 8 In the centre of the Summit, a space-station in the Dagellan clister.

PREPARATORY READING
None.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 11 "The last thing she remembered was that they all had been leaing the colony on yemaya 4 - Roz Forrestor, Chris Cwej, the Doctor and herself." SLEEPY.

Pg 12 "Sometimes you just wish it really was all true, true love and hearts and flowers and knights in shining armour" Sanctuary.

Pg 18 "That particular invitation had been to an interspecieal diplomatic gathering on Luna in 1609 - by the Gregorian calendar - and it had resulted in nothing but trouble." The Empire of Glass. But see Continuity Cock-ups

Pg 19 "Maybe Alistair had the right idea with his prana and Nirvana - or was that the popular beat combo Ace used to like?" The Brigadier (The Web of Fear onwards) and Ace (Dragonfire et al).

Pg 23 "'WE HAVE BEEN WATCHING YOU.' 'Not recently, I trust,' said the Time Lord known as the Doctor. 'I thought I'd sorted out the last problem of that kind several subjective years ago.' Conundrum.

Pg 57 "The truck was driven by a large a furry ursine humanoid that reminded Benny of the Reklonian she had one met, some time before, in a somewhat diminutive, slightly bizarre and on the whole rather silly set of supplementary dimensions." Sky Pirates!

"In this timeframe - save for the very highest levels of Earth government and the classified activities of UNIT - human contact with alien races had been practically nonexistent." UNIT first appeared in The Invasion.

Pg 60 "Then she turned, in an alert crouch, calling on the mindless mind-set she had learnt when drafted briefly into Earth Force Academy during the Dalek Wars" Love and War. You probably know who the Daleks are.

Pg 68 "Sergeant, take a man around the rear!" A memorable line from The Highlanders.

Pg 119 "She realized, later, that she was confusing a culture based upon military lines with that of a truly ferocious basic species like the Daleks" Again, you probably know who they are.

Pg 124 "'This is the Daleks we're talking about?Seriously clunky exo-support, limited vocabulary, can't go down stairs? I mean they can just about have a pop at some backwater little planet like Earth, from what I've heard, but they're total jokes.' 'Those total jokes killed my mother,' Benny said. 'Will kill my mother. First my father, then my mother. I saw it. I was very small.'" Benny's backstory from Love and War, seen in flashback in Parasite and with a resolution to come in Return of the Living Dad.

Pg 125 "She told him of her several even more distinguished archaeological expeditions, ending up on Heaven, the mass-grave planet that had been founded after the Earth-Draconian wars." Love and War. Draconians were first seen in Frontier in Space.

Pg 135 "When she had first encountered the mechanical technology here she had been remined of the first time she and Chris Cwej had travelled with the Doctor, when they had found themselves stranded ina System with its own different and highly ridiculous physical laws." Sky Pirates!

Pg 147 "I mean, my mother was killed by Dalek plasma strafing, but my father was long-since gone." Love and War.

Pg 175 "Something reared up before her, slimy and fungoid and humanoid in appearance - and for a heart-stopping instant her mind sideslipped and she was back on Heaven, years before, coming face to face with someone infested by a detonating Hoothi spore." Love and War.

Pg 201 "I went down that road a little in what you might call an immediately previous life. Grabbing people by the hand and forcing them to press the buttons." The sixth Doctor.

Pg 203 "She had seen battlefields before, from the 1914 Somme to the 2697 Rigel Wastes" Toy Soldiers.

Pg 229 "She remembered Ace during the several times when she had fallen for some faker, only to find subsequently that he regarded her as just a quick and easy shag." Too many instances to mention.

Pg 234 "It seems to be scavanged from acorss the entire galaxy: Cyberman cybernetics, Sontaran living-crystal technology - I think I even saw several items from Earth." The Cybermen first appeared in The Tenth Planet, while the Sontarans first appeared in The Time Warrior.

Pg 278 "The book was The All-Consuming Fire by a 'Dr John Watson' in a limited, hand-printed edition she had found in the unkempt TARDIS library that seemed to go on forever." All-Consuming Fire.

"She really hoped the book wasn't some secondary result int he Dctor's and benny's adventures in the Land of Fiction." Conundrum.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
None.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Sareth, Ravla and Koth, leaders of the three empires.

Makar the Scout.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

1. Pg 18 "That particular invitation had been to an interspecieal diplomatic gathering on Luna in 1609 - by the Gregorian calendar - and it had resulted in nothing but trouble." This is clearly The Empire of Glass... except that that story took palce on Laput, not Luna.
2. Pg 211 "Outside the standing Zone of Illusion that had been maintined for the incursive troops, the landscape of Moriel showed its true and baleful face." Say what?
3. Pg 220 "In contrastto the seamless finish of the conrridor outside, they were finished with rough and mismatched steel plate." Huh? "contrastto" is bad enough, but surely there should be more than one steel plate?
4. Pg 233 "His voice was drowned out by the machine, but the Doctor , standing by it, seemd to hear every word" Wha-?
5. Pg 247 "'And I never noticed,' said the doctor angrily." Why isn't he capitalised?
6. Pg 255 "'Well, obviously, I never denied - ' Sareth began. 'Then he suddenly turned to stare off to one side. 'Doctor? Where are you going?'" Why is there an extra quote mark after Sareth begins?
7. Pgs 264-265 "It's paw hovered over the console" Sould that be "Its paw"?

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

1. It's been a long time for the Doctor, so he's misremembering.
2. The illusion forks your memory into fragments, so it is consequently "maintined". (Sorry.)
3. The number of steel plates is the contrastto. It's a design term, intended to throw you out of your comfort zone.
4. The Doctor has gone all Shakespearean for a moment and thus seem'd to hear every word, only in iambic pentameter.
5. That's how angry he is.
6. Sareth isn't quite sure where he's beginning.
7. The paw isn't possessive. It really is meant to be "It is paw hovered over the console." Must be an alien expression.

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
Pg 6 The Czhans are large bipeds with milk-white skin, jet-black hair and vestigal tusks

The Dakhaari are olive-green-skinned with slitted ears.

Pg 9 Fupi, herbivorous herds of Jaris.

Pg 11 A cross between a friesian cow and a three-toed sloth.

Pg 25 A Medusa-like creature with vipers sprouting from an obloidular body.

Hammerhead, who has slavering jaws.

A red-faced humanoid with elongated rabbit-like ears.

Pg 36 A six-armed arachnid from Glomi IV.

A Darian septilateral gestalt made up of six sacs full of pus and a remote interfacing node.

Pg 57 A large and furry ursine.

Pg 60 Skraks have three eyes, small ragged and furry, half the size of a cat but with similar proportions.

The cops are canines.

Pg 69 Hydraulic bipedal machines with torsos of pistons and gears, simian arms, one ending in a claw, the other with a blaster. (Seen on the front cover.)

Pg 92 A massive, pale and gelid-fleshy insectoid.

Pg 143 A flourescent yellow humanoid with displaced ears.

Pg 175 A Walking Puffball, slimy and fungoid.

Pg 190 Four-winged birds.

Pg 219 Serving automata that roll along on spherical rubber bearings.

Pgs 243/259 The Otherlings, pale creatures of teeth and eyes and claws in a self-enclosed temporal loop.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Pg 1 A space station in the Dagellan cluster.

Pg 9 Jaris.

Pg 123 Jason was transported from 1996 about 15 years earlier and there's no evidence of time travel, so it's around 2011. AHistory makes a good case for placing this before Benny and Jason's 2010 wedding.

Pg 80 Jason's ship.

Pg 137 Moriel.

Pg 143 Makrath.

Pg 163 The Nadir Star.

Pg 167 Kalas.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
This is a frustrating mix of some very nice parts and some very frustrating ones. Dave Stone's inability to use one word where ten will do actively plays against the books strengths, drowning some nice plotting in excess verbiage. Roz and Chris are given absolutely nothing to do, which is criminal. However, Benny and Jason's touching romance is a highlight, while the subtly menacing and everpresent nature of the Doctor is incredible. The reveal of the true villains is well done. And the Doctor's utterly brilliant solution at the end - a three way marriage between the three leaders of the three empires (two male and one female) is wholly unexpected, perfectly apt and downright genius.