BASIC PLOT
The city of Hope is an environmental disaster. The air is thick with fog, law and order no longer exist - and the TARDIS is trapped below the toxic sea. While the Doctor hunts for a killer, the most powerful man on the planet is making a very dangerous offer.

DOCTOR
Eighth.

COMPANIONS
Fitz and Anji.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
Ice below the city of Hope, the planet Endpoint.

PREPARATORY READING
The Adventuress of Henrietta Street and a basic knowledge of what happens at the end of Escape Velocity.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 7 "While once two hearts pumped within the Doctor's chest, now only a single pulse beats beneath his ribs." We saw the Doctor lose his second heart in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.

"As he thinks, he rubs his newly shaven chin" The Doctor wore a beard for the past two stories.

Pg 8 "Or at least a better, safer place to wake up than a storm-lashed wasteland in the path of a city-machine or in the attic room where an Ogre's mother had made dresses for several ugly sisters" Dark Progeny and Grimm Reality.

Pg 14 "Anji recognised them as being from the equipment of the humans they had met on the fairy-tale planet" Grimm Reality.

Pgs 15-16 "Perhaps he was feeling the environment more than he was used to, an aftereffect of his recent illness." The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (although the illness was first mentioned in Grimm Reality).

Pg 35 "She recognised a poodle's woollen bootie, [...] what looked like a diamond engagement ring" Mad Dogs and Englishmen, The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.

Pg 53 "But since his illness..." The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.

"He felt unsteady on his feet, his single heartbeat racing to maintain the pace so recently felt by two" The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.

Pg 66 "Hit badly by the war themselves, the empires and the factions had better things to do" Likely a reference to the factions in Father Time, given the setting.

Pgs 67-68 "The Doctor stares at his own hand, the one which fell as he ordered the attack." The Doctor dreams of Gallifrey's destruction (The Ancestor Cell). The Doctor on a ship's prow wearing a brightlybuttoned jacket is likely a reference to Sabbath (The Adventuress of Henrietta Street).

Pg 82 "In one corner, Fitz was singing in what, to Anji's uneducated ear, sounded like Chinese." Revolution Man.

Pg 132 "There are signs of surgery around the chest area" The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.

Pg 148 "I lived among humans for years before I even realised I wasn't one of them." The Earth arc.

Pg 163 "She remembered another storm, on the planet Hitchemus." The Year of Intelligent Tigers.

Pg 192 "'When you put it like that, it is odd,' said Anji. 'To be in the same room as your entire species.'" The Ark in Space.

Pg 216 "Those kids on Ceres Alpha, I saw them die and come back." Dark Progeny.

"You were dying for months, but you pulled through" Grimm Reality and The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.

"I have no idea whether I'll live forever, or a normal human lifespan, or whether my remaining heart will fail and I'll drop dead tomorrow." The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.

Pg 233 "Was it a heart that you lost, Doctor?" The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.

Pg 234 "The Doctor ducked as a large robot arm swung a silver fist at his head." This sentence also appears on page 271 of Father Time, in the Doctor's vision of the future.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
Flashback appearances by Dave Young, Anji's boyfriend from Escape Velocity.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Police chief Powlin, Miraso, Dave II, Richard, Pazon.

Silver, Stephens, the Brotherhood, the Silverati.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

1. Pg 8 "It had only been a matter of months since her boyfriend had died" Except that The Adventuress of Henrietta Street alone took longer than that, let alone many other adventures in between (not counting Fear Itself).
2. Pg 116 "He 0suddenly snapped upright" Say what?

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

1. Anji's just woken up, so she's not thinking coherently.
2. Fitz is so cold he was thinking about saying "Oh" just as the Doctor snapped upright.

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
Pg 25 The Brotherhood, cybernetically enhanced Endpointers.

Pg 26 The Endpointers, hairless humanoids who've adapted to the planet's conditions.

Pgs 45-46 Silver, half man, half machine, enhanced with alien liquid.

Pgs 210/213 The Silverati, humans and Endpointers adapted with Silver's alien liquid.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
The cities of Hope and Persistence, the planet Endpoint.

The ice below Hope.

A submerged bunker on the sea floor beneath Hope.

Various submarines.

The planet A2756, a graveyard planet (see page 241).

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
It's a bit clumsy, plotwise, but it works nonetheless. It's nice to see some examination of the current state of affairs, with a strong role for the Doctor and an amazing examination of Anji. The story is split oddly in half, with little attempt to integrate the two plotlines, but it's definitely worth your time. Not the brilliant novel it might have been, but still very good.