BASIC PLOT
Nobody visits Heritage. Why would they? Dry, dusty and hot, it's nothing but a failed mining colony too stupid to realise that it's actually dead. No-one wants to visit, least of all Ace. But the Doctor's got his hearts set on a flying visit, just while they're in the neighbourhood. That's when he finds out that Heritage wants visitors just as much as visitors want them.

DOCTOR
Seventh.

COMPANIONS
Ace.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
None. The Doctor and Ace arrive by shuttle from an unknown location.

PREPARATORY READING
Prime Time.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 17 "My gran fought in the last Cyberwar." Not clear which one this was.

Pg 32 "The last dolphin I met couldn't bend her legs in the right direction to get in a chair." Storm Harvest.

Pg 44 "The little man was an investigator - maybe an Adjudicator" First mentioned in Colony in Space, then frequenting the New Adventures.

Pg 46 "she wasn't a little girl any more." The Curse of Fenric.

Pg 57 "Just getting a clone to last a few days would be remarkable, these days." In The Invisible Enemy, clones can only last a few minutes.

Pg 65 "The wasn't the man who walked unheeding into ground zero to protect the innocent." Possible reference to Ground Zero, the DWM comic strip.

Pg 68 "He had a double headed Drachma that was just begging to be of use." The second Doctor has this coin in the novelisation of The Three Doctors.

Pg 77 "'Come on Ace,' she told herself. 'We've got work to do.'" Survival.

Pg 100 "The Doctor had been promising her a futuristic pair of shades with in-built vision enhancements" Ace gets these later in the NAs.

Pg 104 "When she was younger she would have earthed the electricity in the air with explosives, tearing the whole atmosphere apart." Ghost Light.

Pg 107 "Tharil proverb." Warriors' Gate.

Pg 112 "Pictures of Mel's chirpy grin, bouncing around the planet" Dragonfire.

Pg 113 "If I see you die, Ace. If I hold your body in my arms..." Prime Time and foreshadowing for Loving the Alien.

Pg 141 "But then, it had been her fate to meet the Doctor. It had been all planned out centuries before she was even born." The Curse of Fenric.

Pg 162 "'Sugar?' The Doctor shook his head sadly. 'Don't get me started,' he muttered softly." Remembrance of the Daleks.

Pg 185 "There was something in Ace, some animal part, that didn't like being trapped in the dark. It longed to be free, out on the savannah chasing down some prey until she could taste its blood in her mouth." Survival. (With thanks to Tim Snelling.)

Pg 229 "Sometimes all I want to do is play spoons in a jazz band, and pull ferrets from my trousers to make children smile." As well as being part of Sylvester McCoy's stage act, this ties in with the Doctor's desire to be a children's entertainer, as stated in The Also People.

Pg 233 "She could see the Doctor, centre stage, giving it his best 'Unlimited rice pudding!' speech." Remembrance of the Daleks.

Pg 249 "She had seen burnt-out houses before. Had caused some of them." Ghost Light.

Pg 267 "So free will is an illusion" Inferno.

Pg 279 "Fragment of a letter found buried in a desecrated grave" The Doctor dug up Ace's body in Prime Time. This is also foreshadowing for Loving the Alien.

Reference to UNIT.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
Mel's body appears in flashbacks.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Sweetness, Cole, Bernard, Lee Marks, Billy the engineer, Doc Butler.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

• None from the book itself, although the cover is atrocious. There's no mouth with teeth in the novel (it's a "cave with teeth-like rocks") and the dust is supposed to be red, not grey.

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

• The rocks are very teeth-like and the colour is washed out, as evidenced by Sweetness's hair, which is also red.

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
Pg 28 The Fussies, small mechanical vaccuum cleaners.

Pg 30 Bernard is a Cetacean (a talking dolphin).

Pg 55 Arabella is a cloned raven.

Pg 222 The shuttle pilot is an eagle-like alien.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Heritage, August 6048.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
Heritage is sublime. Every word of this novel breathes quality. There's not a single thing out of place, from the characters, the slow unearthing of the past, the revelations of crimes committed and the Doctor's post-Prime Time mood, which pervades every scene he's in. This might be the most perfect Doctor Who novel ever written. Read it, then read it again. It's that good.