BASIC PLOT
The world's population is slowly being converted to a new path, a new way of thinking. Something is coming to Earth, an ancient force from the Dark Times. Something powerful, angry, and all-consuming...

DOCTOR
Tenth.

COMPANIONS
Donna, Wilf and Sylvia Noble.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
Pgs 23-24 CHiswick High Road, May 15 2009.

PREPARATORY READING
The Masque of Mandragora, The Runaway Bride, Partners in Crime, The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, Journey's End.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 7 "That awful, awful day when he had come to the house, bringing Donna with him. Unconscious, unable to remember anything." Journey's End.

Pg 8 "From the spaceships in the sky, from the Christmas star, from that huge great Titanic, from the Adipose, the Sontarans and the Daleks." The Christmas Invasion, The Runaway Bride, Voyage of the Damned, Partners in Crime, The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, The Stolen Earth/Journey's End.

Pgs 8-9 "And he also told Donna that she had been so traumatised by Lance's death, that she'd gone to Egypt to get over the shock." The Runaway Bride, Partners in Crime.

Pg 9 Reference to Geoff Noble (The Runaway Bride).

Pg 10 "Then he unscrewed the thermos and offered it to his daughter. She shook her head. 'Donna used to do this,' he muttered." Partners in Crime.

Pg 13 "One month after the skies had burned..." The Poison Sky.

Pg 25 Adipose. Pyroviles. Oods with brains in their hands. Even Sontaran probic vents, Hath and talking skeletons all seemed simple in comparison with what was going to happen this afternoon." Partners in Crime, The Fires of Pompeii, Planet of the Ood, The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, The Doctor's Daughter, Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead.

Pg 30 Reference to the Shadow Proclamation (Rose et al).

Pg 34 "Wasn't someone who'd think saving Oods, stopping generational wars or ensuring Charlemagne met the Pope actually equated with a 'good' job typing up notes or placing stationary orders." Planet of the Ood, The Doctor's Daughter, The Lonely Computer (short story from the BBC website). Charlemagne is also mentioned in The Unicorn and the Wasp. But see Continuity Cock-Ups.

"After her disastrous wedding and slightly less disastrous trip to Egypt, her parents had moved from their terraced house where Donna had grown up into this new semi." The Runaway Bride, Partners in Crime.

Pg 35 Reference to Geoff Noble's death (The Runaway Bride, Turn Left).

"Would it have been better if she had got married to Lance?" The Runaway Bride.

Pg 37"One minute the air's choking with exhaust fumes, the next the sky's on fire, and that's it." The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky.

Pg 39 "The Doctor drew his psychic paper out of his inner jacket pocket and showed it to Lukas." The End of the World et al.

Pg 66 Sylvia slaps the Doctor, just as Jackie did in Aliens of London.

Pg 73 "Then I saw you after that fat business, flying through the sky" Partners in Crime.

Pg 84 "Some mothers he could win over by sheer charm (ah Jackie Tyler, what are you doing these days?), orby proving that their daughter's faith in him was justified (still got a good right hook, Francine Jones, bless you)." Rose's and Martha's mothers, respectively.

Pg 85 "Of course, it couldn't be easy losing Geoff. The Doctor had only met him once, at Donna's wedding" The Runaway Bride.

Pg 87 "You can talk. Mister Ood." Planet of the Ood.

Pg 92 "Wolf told me everything Doctor. About you. About that ATMOS stuff." The Sontaram Stratagem/The Poison Sky.

Pg 106 "Well, we have had a few spaceships and Sontarans and stuff over the years." The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky.

"Nobody took Galileo or Copernicus or Organon seriously in their own times." The Creature From The Pit.

Pg 107 "Last time it was here in force, a lot of people died. But it was trying to stop the Italian Renaissance, to stop science reaching the state it's in now." The Masque of Mandragora.

"You lot just plod on for a century or so. Getting out to Mars." The Waters of Mars.

"'Spoilers,' the Doctor winked." River's catchphrase (The Silence in the Library et al).

Pg 128 The sonic screwdriver makes an appearance.

Pgs 136-137 "Perhaps she could track down Martha Jones and her mates at UNIT" The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky.

Pg 140 "Oh my God, not again, not the sky on fire again." The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky.

Pg 159 "I first encountered it in the fifteenth century in Italy." The Masque of Mandragora.

Pg 167 "Fifteenth-century Italy. San Martino, perhaps?" The Masque of Mandragora.

Pg 168 "I accidentally brought a fragment of the Helix energy to a small Italian principality called San Martino." We get a potted history of The Masque of Mandragora.

Pg 172 "'I know lots of prime ministers,' the Doctor said. 'But in this century they come and go annually, I think." The Christmas Invasion, The Sound of Drums, Torchwood: Children of Earth.

Pg 187 "It's not the first time since 1492 that the Mandragora Helix ahs been to Earth, you know." The Masque of Mandragora.

Pg 188 "Oh and the Mandrake nightclub stuff, now that was pretty good, I have to say." The DWM comic The Mark of Mandragora.

Pg 209 "In twenty years, I could have humanity building farms on Mars. In a hundred years' time, we could colonise Alpha Centauri." The Waters of Mars, The Curse of Peladon et al.

Pg 211 "How many years did the Carrionite-Eterals war rage? Where is the home world of the Judoon? What's the Twenty-Third Convention of the Shadow Proclamation?" The Shakespeare Code, Enlightenment, Smith and Jones, Rose et al.

Pg 218 "Thought you didn't like cats much?" New Earth/Fear Her.

Pg 219 "You've stared down Sontarans, Pyroviles and the Fishmen of Kandalinga." The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, The Fires of Pompeii, The Fishmen of Kandalinga (a story in the annual).

Pg 221 Reference to UNIT.

Pg 226 "All them memories you'll have." Journey's End.

230 "I didn't know about Sontarans and Mandragora and Daleks." The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky, The Stone Earth/Journey's End.

Pg 232 "Thank God I took that job at H.C. Clements. Thank God I let you nag me into it (even if it wasn't actually the job you wanted me to do)" The Runaway Bride, Turn Left.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
The Mandragora Helix.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Netty Goodhart.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

1. Pg 34 "Wasn't someone who'd think saving Oods, stopping generational wars or ensuring Charlemagne met the Pope actually equated with a 'good' job typing up notes or placing stationary orders." The plural of "Ood" is "Ood", not "Oods". Or did Gary Russell believe only one Ood lived on the Planet of the Ood?
2. Pg 103 "I wrote 'em a letter about the Triple Conjunction! Jupiter and Neptune!" Why does the triple conjunction only involve two planets?
3. Pg 117 "Because without your signature on the bottom of that form, what I'm about to do and what you're about to hear would have us both in jail for the rest of our lives if you haven't." Haven't what? Huh?

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

1. Grammar was never Donna's strong point. Much like Gary Russell, we suspect.
2. Wilf can't count. Much like the author, we suspect.
3. Professor Melville is losing it. Much like... oh, you can probably see where we're going with this.

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
Pg 99 The Mandragora Helix.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Pg 7 The prologue occurs some time after Journey's End.

Pg 13 London, May 2009.

Pg 44 New York.

Pg 68 Greece.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
Actually, this isn't too bad! We haven't had continuity-overloading fanwank in a while, so Gary Russell is just the man for the job. With a New Series spin, this works quite nicely, because exploring the dynamics of the companion's family has always been the bread and butter of the Davies era. And it's great to have a focus on Wilf. The downside, of course, is that we have to have the Mandragora Helix inserted into the mix, which makes things far more pedestrian than they were up until this point. Sigh.