BASIC PLOT
In the far future, humans discover the location of the last Phaeron road - and the Doctor and Clara join the mission to see where the road leads. Each member of the research team knows exactly what they're looking for - but only the Doctor knows exactly what they'll find.

DOCTOR
Twelfth.

COMPANIONS
Clara Oswald.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
Pg 13 Coal Hill School, present day.

Pg 14 The Alexandria, the far future (offscreen).

Pg 228 Inside the ruins of the Carthage on the Phaeron planet, many millennia in the past.

Pg 250 On the main concourse of Far Station, the far future.

PREPARATORY READING
Royal Blood.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 9 "Tibby guessed he probably had shares in Spectrox" The Caves of Androzani.

Pg 31 "In fact I'm an expert in everything from Venusian aikido to yo-yos." Inferno, The Ark in Space.

Pg 37 "We flew the major supply routes between Earth Central and the Draconian Front and never got caught once." Frontier in Space.

Pg 55 "Its powers of attraction and attention can be malignant. You saw what it did to Lancelot's knights." Royal Blood.

Pg 66 "Never... felt... better... Sarah." Sarah Jane Smith (The Time Warrior, et al).

Pg 76 "He has several different multi-billion credit accounts at the Bank of Karabraxos alone." Time Heist.

Pg 87 "He tossed the tool over to Hobbo and she caught it. 'Sonic screwdriver.'" Fury From the Deep et al.

Pg 111 "The air was foggy with smoke, the ground hard and rocky and grey as ashes. It reminded her of the Moon" Kill the Moon.

Pg 114 "I once auditioned for an Ogron choir." Day of the Daleks et al.

Pg 118 "Jem looked hollowed out. Her eyes were dark. Clara knew that feeling, knew it only too well and she did not offer any words of comfort or condolence because she knew it was pointless." Reference to Danny Pink's death in Dark Water.

Pg 136 "Unless I'd set the Hostile Action Displacement System, but I don't recall doing that." The Krotons.

Pg 141 "The sight also brought back discomforting memories of a trip on the Orient Express, and a different kind of mummy that was anything but dead." Mummy on the Orient Express.

Pg 169 ""When I say run...' said the Doctor quietly" The second Doctor.

Pg 183 "Clara tried to remember what Danny had once told her about basic self-defence but her mind had blanked." Into the Dalek et al.

Pg 201 "'That's the spirit,' nodded the Doctor. 'Never mind the years, keep battling on.'" The Doctor insulting Clara harkens back to Into the Dalek and The Caretaker.

Pg 205 "Is this your mummy?" The Empty Child.

Pg 231 "The Doctor tapped a knuckle on the TARDIS console. And then, with sudden and explosive fury, he smashed his fist down on the metal." Much as he does at the end of Death in Heaven.

Pg 244 "The Doctor had his hands out towards Jem, his fingers splayed wide, as if he could somehow control her like a puppeteer." The publicity shot of Peter Capaldi. You know the one.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
The Glamour (from Royal Blood and Big Bang Generation, though you don't need the latter for this).

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Ray Balfour, Tibby, Hobbo.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

• Pg 66 "Then she saw the faint glow of the control consoles all the others looking around in horrified relief and knew they had experienced exactly the same sensation." Say what?

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

• Thanks to a strange marketing feature, the control consoles have eyes and feelings.

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
Pg 9 A servitor robot.

Pg 20 Jem is an augmented clone, with white skin and eyes that are completely white.

Pgs 118/126 Avian creature, impervious to acid. They have fibrous wingspans a metre long and look like a cross between bats and dragonflies.

Pg 167 Predator insects.

Pgs 168/216 The Phaeron, ancient telepathic beings who mostly appear as ghosts. They have long birdlike faces with large eyes.

Pgs 168-169 A creature with long skittering legs, multiple eyes and distendible hooked jaws.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Pg 7 Far Station, the far future (page 14).

Pg 17 The Alexandria.

Pg 111 An alien planet.

Pgs 132-133 The same planet, several thousand years earlier.

Pg 158 Another time jump, several million years back in time.

Pg 185 A final time jump, although it's unclear how far back this one goes.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
Is this the second or third book in the Glamour trilogy? Your guess is as good as mine, because neither the narrative nor the publicity gives any indication. In fact, a trilogy that could be read in any order would be a neat idea, but this clearly takes place after Royal Blood, but less clearly might be the final outing for the Glamour. Or it might not. Why should anyone care, when the editorial team clearly doesn't? Okay, that aside... this is a stupendous New Series Adventure. Going for hard SF was a masterstroke, so it has a sense of wonder and awe that almost no Doctor Who in the 21st century has managed, in any format. The Doctor is fairly recycled, but if you're going to have 60% new dialogue, that's probably better than the alternative would have been. The standalone characters aren't too bad, except for Marco, who is a ridiculously black-hatted villain. We're supposed to believe he expends enormous time and energy searching for his mother... which would be a fine motivation for him to be otherwise awful, except that then he's nyah-ha-ha-ing about having a reckoning with her as well (Pages 47-48). But if you can put the weak characterisations aside, this is great.