BASIC PLOT
The Doctor is invited to chair the Armageddon Convention, held in Venice, 1609. But it all goes horribly wrong when Vicki is abducted to a flying island, Steven is challenged to a duel and the pope's emissary is accidentally sent in the Doctor's place.

DOCTOR
First.

COMPANIONS
Steven and Vicki.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
A beach on an island in the Venetian lagoon.

PREPARATORY READING
Nothing essential, although Theatre of War might be useful.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 8 "Impotently pacing around his prison cell on Mechanus" The Chase.

"She'd only had Bennett and Sandy the Sand Monster for company on Dido." The Rescue.

There's also a reference to the food machine alcove, first mentioned in The Daleks.

Pg 9 "He appeared to be sitting in a triangular framework and he was frowning at them [...] 'All I can remember is a dandy and a clown.'" The first Doctor has just returned from his role in the Three Doctors, although most of his memory has been wiped.

Pg 14 "The first new thing he had smelt since childhood had been the burning forests during the Dalek attack" The Chase.

Pg 15 "'I love oceans,' she said cheerfully. 'There weren't any on Dido'" The Rescue.

Pg 16 "[Venice] sank beneath the waves centuries before either of you were born" The Stones of Venice also mentions this.

Pg 22 "He still had nightmares about the Mechanoid city crashing in flames to the jungle floor" The Chase.

Pg 29 "Birthplace of my old friend Marco Polo" Marco Polo.

Reference to Ian and Barbara.

Pg 35 Reference to Guy Fawkes. This book takes place chronologically after The Plotters (both in the Doctor's timeline and in Earth history), but was written before. King James also features briefly at the end, but doesn't interact with the Doctor or Vicki.

Pg 37 "It was his most profound desire to have all of the Knowledge of the Universe in one place at one time." This will later become the Braxiatel collection, first mentioned in City of Death, seen previously in Theatre of War and which will go on to play a big role in the Benny books.

Pg 40 "There is a direct line between this moment in time and the spaceship which you were unfortunate enough to crash on the planet Mechanus." The Chase.

Pg 41 "Three hundred or so years ago, Marco Polo described Venice to me as being one of the most repressive states he'd ever known" Marco Polo.

Pgs 47-48 Vicki dreams of Sandy, Bennett, the Didoians and Barbara. The Rescue.

Pg 54 Reference to Ian.

Pg 59 Reference to Mechanus.

Pg 77 "He'd have been better off using Ogrons." Day of the Daleks, Frontier in Space et al.

Pg 88 "That coney-catching mountebank Francis Pearson [...] was a talentless hack who would never amount to anything" Pearson featured a few Missing Adventures previously in Managra.

Pg 91 Reference to Barbara and Ian.

Pg 92 Reference to Sandy.

"She said Susan was your granddaughter and she left the TARDIS to get married." The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

Pg 103 Reference to Mechanus and the Mechanoids.

Pg 120 "Some of my best friends were aliens, before I left Earth for Astra." The Rescue.

Pg 122 "They wiped his memory." The Time Lords, at the end of The Three Doctors.

"It looked like a man wearing green armour" An Ice Lord, Ssarl, also accompanied by an Ice Warrior.

"There was particularly bad blood between them and the blobs of jelly that always referred to themselves in the plural." The Sontarans and Rutans.

Pg 123 "The Daleks too have used disease to massacre entire populations" They do so in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.

Pg 124 "The Chelonians have used these against my people." The Chelonians first appeared in The Highest Science.

Pg 134 "The Daleks and the Cybermen refused even to respond" Probably to avoid litigation.

Pgs 135-136 "The Ice Warriors have a base near the North Pole, the Krargs are in the Sahara, the Vilp are deep underground and so on." The Krargs appeared in Shada.

Pg 137 "It was what he did with the miniscopes that impressed everyone." The Doctor mentions having petitioned for the banning of miniscopes in Carnival of Monsters.

"We met another one recently. He was pretending to be a monk in the time of the Vikings." The Time Meddler. The Monk is also named Mortimus here, as in No Future.

Pg 138 "If they had told me I was talking to a Doctor from a different time stream and that they were going to wipe his mind of everything that had happened during the Omega crisis then I would have chosen a different incarnation." The Three Doctors.

Pg 142 "'Doctor John Dee,' Marlowe replied, 'the Queen's personal astrologer.'" John Dee was one of Jared Khan's aliases in Birthright. He's also mentioned in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.

Pg 153 "Tall, with curled brown hair and as strange a taste in clothes as you. [...] I never knew his name, but he gave me some small assistance with writing out Hamlet when my wrist was sprained." The fourth Doctor refers to this in City of Death.

"I saw your face on the Space-Time Vis - ah -" The Chase.

Pg 155 "Yes, Braxiatel is my... Well, well, well." We find out in Tears of the Oracle that Braxiatel is the Doctor's brother.

Pgs 156-157 Reference to the Daleks and Cybermen.

Pg 157 "'You're very much like the Doctor, you know?' she said. 'I should hope so,' Braxiatel said, affronted, 'after all, we are - '" More hints about the relationship between the two.

Pg 161 "I'll have you know that I am used to dealing with Venusians" Venusian Lullaby.

Pg 165 Reference to Dido.

Pg 183 "'Oh, they allowed me to leave,' Braxiatel replied." We hear more details about this in Tears of the Oracle.

Pg 184 "You were on a mission for them." The Three Doctors.

"You always were over-confident, Braxiatel, even as a child." Yet more hints about the Doctor and Braxiatel's relationship.

Pg 185 Reference to Francis Pearson (Managra).

Pg 213 "In future I'll just stick to collecting." Braxiatel does, but he still manipulates races for the greater good sometimes, as seen in Theatre of War.

Pg 218 "The house was in the alley of St John the Beheaded." Given that Braxiatel goes on to found the library of the same name (seen in All-Consuming Fire and Millennial Rites), it's reasonable to suppose he took the name from the street in Venice where his house was located.

Pg 227 King James and Doctor John Dee are present at the play (The Plotters and Birthright).

Pg 230 "I don't recognise the man in black, but I have a terrible feeling that I should." The Doctor obviously senses something's up with the psionically enhanced Jared Khan in his John Dee persona (Birthright).

Pg 242 A Sontaran delegate makes a cameo appearance.

Pg 245 "I've been building up a little library of suppressed manuscripts" This will become the Library of St John the Beheaded.

Pg 251 "'The Library of St John the Beheaded,' Braxiatel said quietly, 'is dedicated to preserving the works of science, literature and philosophy that would otherwise be lost. Your plays Love's Labours Won, The Birth of Merlin and Sir John Oldcastle might not survive your death if someone does not act to preserve them now." Love's Labours Won is referred to in Theatre of War, as a twin play to the existing Love's Labours Lost.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
Irving Braxiatel.

The Ice Warriors.

The Sontarans and Rutans.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Galileo Galilei, William Shakespeare, Cardinal Bellarmine (although none remember this adventure by the end).

Cremonini, Braxiatel's robot manservant.

Colonel in Chief Tayre, of the Strategic Arm of the Ninth Sontaran Army.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS
None.

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

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
The Greld, flying crab-like aliens with eyes on stalks, from Canopus, who use odd grammar in their sentences (there's a description on page 94).

The Jamarians, who look like a bag of sticks in mottled blue bumpy skin, with a large horn on their heads (described on page 43 and there's an illustration at the front of the book).

A whole host of alien species attending the Armageddon Convention are described on page 113. The turtle-like aliens are probably Chelonians and the metal boxes with lamps might be Arcturans.

Fish headed aliens and stocky aliens with spikes are mentioned on page 124.

More alien species are mentioned on pages 135-136, including The Ice Warriors, the Krargs and the Vilp.

The Ellillian have undulating silver skin (see pages 241 and 244).

A Sontaran appears on pages 241-242.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Roanoke colony, New Albion, United States, July 1587.

Deptford, UK, August 1592.

Venice, 1609.

A ship outside of Venice, 1609.

The flying island of Laputa, on and above Venice, 1609.

Hampton Court palace, UK, 1609.

Shakespeare's house, UK, April 1616.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
A fantastic little story from one of Virgin's best writers. Everyone is exceedingly well drawn, the plot is complex and rewarding and the scenes of Cardinal Bellarmine chairing the Armageddon convention are hilarious. The MAs should all have been like this and it's a great pity that they weren't.