BASIC PLOT
Escaping from one battle and straight into another, the Doctor and his companion, Catherine, find themselves on a far flung world where time travellers are persecuted as witches and warlocks by the Papal Inquisition.

DOCTOR
Seventh.

COMPANIONS
Cat. Her full name is Catherine Broome.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
Pg 17 The TARDIS is in the hold of a Weirdarbi battleship when the action begins.

Pg 23 A marketplace on the planet Haven, the 28th century.

PREPARATORY READING
None.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 19 "Refilling these fluid links really is going to be the death of me one day." It nearly was in The Daleks, as well.

Pg 51 "The Sublime and Venerable Patriarch of the Spinward Clusters." The Spinward Corporation was seen in Deceit and evolved out of the Butler Institute from Cat's Cradle: Warhead.

Pg 52 "Behind him a voice whispered. 'Puccini...' Future memories." The telemovie.

Pg 72 "Have you ever heard of the Cybermen? [...] They took out their hearts and lungs and organs and replaced them with machines. They replaced their brains with computers. They gave up their emotions..." Spare Parts.

Pg 75 "Doctor, Celestine VI is a highly evolved dolphin from beyond the Rakash Nebula!" Presumably the same dolphin race seen in Storm Harvest and Heritage.

Pgs 80-81 "He thought of Adric, dead for being a hero, an onstinate intellectual to the end." Earthshock.

Pg 81 "Katarina, so frightened and so brave..." The Daleks' Masterplan.

"He thought of Jo Grant's wedding." The Green Death.

"He thought of Tegan, fiery, brave, but always appalled by the destruction, always torn, whether to stay or whether to go." Resurrection of the Daleks.

"And of course, Ace. [...] He'd once performed an autopsy on her corpse." Loving the Alien.

"But the loneliness when she'd left him - he could not have believed the loneliness." Set Piece.

"Once, in a previous invarnation, he had been happy to travel alone" The Deadly Assassin.

Pg 100 Cat as a robot is very similar to Death Comes to Time, so it's possible Antimony was a later incarnation of Cat.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
None.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Father Julian, Father Agatho.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS
None.

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

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
Pg 13 Kreekgs, hoofed beasts of burden.

Pg 17 The Weirdarbi, augmented insects with giant tentacles and artificial compound eyes.

Pg 19 Tiny robots.

Pg 21 Pa-arteks, domestic animals.

Pg 23 Redaara, domestic animals.

Pg 87 Scarthians, huge, scarred, semi-humanoid alien clad in modern battle-armour surmounted with furs (page 75 reveals the name of their race).

Pg 89 Robot priests.

Pg 100 Cat is a robot too.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Pg 11 The Saint Augustine, the 28th century (page 74 confirms the century).

Pg 11 Haven.

Pg 17 A Weridarbi battleship, the future.

Pg 22 Haven, sixteen months after the Saint Augustine crashed.

Pgs 35/63 The Holy Inquisition's cross-shaped ship.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
Reading this book is like experiencing blunt force trauma in slow motion. "Heavy-handed" doesn't even begin to describe the sledgehammer allegory that's beaten into us here. Doubtless the authors wanted to bravely state their case, regardless of offending anyone who's religious. Sadly they also didn't mind offending anyone with a taste for subtlety or cleverness. That aside, Cat is an excellent companion, the saving grace of the novella. The revelation that she's an android is a great one, sadly guessable if you've heard Death Comes to Time, although that's not the authors' fault. However, it's the height of editorial oddness to have a new companion invented for the seventh Doctor in the Telos novellas when a) there were only two more to go and b) neither of those featured the seventh Doctor or Cat. Fortunately, Cat's so good that you end up hoping she may appear elsewhere, as unlikely as that probably is.