BASIC PLOT
The Myloki, mysterious aliens from beyond Time and Space. Their Target: Earth. The human defenders of PRISM are enmeshed in a doomed interstellar war against an unknowable invader armed with the power to possess, duplicate and destroy from within. Only one man stands in their way. A man destiny has made indestructible. Against all the odds the legendary Indestructible Man saves the Earth but victory comes at the highest price. The world economy collapses, governments crumble and PRISM itself is torn apart by a best-selling expose. AD2096; PRISM has gone underground, becoming the clandestine SILOET, headed by new commander Hal Bishop. Bishop receives an urgent summon to his headquarters. An infiltrator has been unmasked and captured in the heart of SILOET itself. Fatally wounded, the infiltrator makes a miraculous recovery. It appears he is indestructible. The implications are terrifying. The Myloki may just have returned. And who is left to stop them?

DOCTOR
Second.

COMPANIONS
Jamie and Zoe.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
Pg 134 Inside a hangar on the orbital station SKYHOME, 2096.

PREPARATORY READING
None.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 17 "We had defeated a new ice age - a symbol of our power over nature." It's not clear what this is a reference to, but it isn't The Ice Warriors, which was set c 3000.

"Perhaps we drew attention to ourselves" This paraphrases the Brigadier's line in Spearhead from Space.

"After all, we know the Earth has increasingly been seen as ripe fruit for a number of extraterrestrial races and beings we can barely comprehend. PRISM grew out of a number of worldwide security organisations with experience in resisting such "attempts"." One of these was undoubtedly UNIT. Another may have been UNISYC, from Alien Bodies, or UNITATUS, from the comics.

"Hence such novelties as Lunar Base" Presumably an extension of the moonbase, as seen in, erm, The Moonbase.

Pg 37 "I was in charge of the transfer of documents from the old UN taskforce to us." UNIT.

Pg 38 "'What did they call it? The Mondas asteroid?' What else? Something about an Antarctic base." The Tenth Planet.

Pgs 38-39 "Something about the Post Office Tower in London. The rise and fall of International Electromatics. An evacuation of London." The War Machines, The Invasion, Invasion of the Dinosaurs.

Pg 39 References to UNIT and the Brigadier.

Pg 47 "Growing and growing until they were as big as Macra." The Macra Terror.

"He thought he heard pipe music and wondered if Death was calling to him from the hills." Jamie fears the phantom piper when delusional in The Moonbase.

Pg 61 "That Yeti were robots, and Cybermen were nothing but men who had gone wrong was all well and good." The Abominable Snowmen/The Web of Fear, The Moonbase/Tomb of the Cybermen/The Wheel in Space/The Invasion.

Pg 69 Reference to Cybermen.

Pg 70 "They aren't Cybermen or Axons or lizards" The Tenth planet/The Moonbase/The Invasion/Silver Nemesis, The Claws of Axos, Doctor Who and the Silurians.

Pg 75 "Control was important. On the Wheel it had been a matter of honour." The Wheel in Space.

Pg 78 "Despite disastrous UN humanitarian aid decisions (something to do with a failed global teleportation system as far as she could make out), gigantic areas of arable land were largely unaffected by the collapse of the technological society." The failed global teleportation system may be T-mat, as seen in The Seeds of Death.

Pg 82 "She started to innovate, simplify processes using her experiences of statistical analysis gained on the Space Wheel." The Wheel in Space.

Pg 92 "Well, Daleks of course. A junkyard, of sorts. Ian, Barbara. Big insects. Doc Holliday. A base under snow." The Daleks, An Unearthly Child, The Web Planet, The Gunfighters, The Tenth Planet.

Pg 100 Reference to UNIT.

Pg 114 "He had always liked flying, once he had got over his initial terror that first time" The Faceless Ones.

Pg 119 Reference to Victoria (Evil of the Daleks through Fury from the Deep).

Pg 134 Reference to the Space Wheel (The Wheel in Space).

Pg 156 "He smiled, a kind of smile the Doctor had last seen on a Tibetan monk." The Abominable Snowmen.

Pg 167 "His laird Colin McClaren making them fight for a lost cause, heading to Culloden and doom." The Highlanders.

Pg 184 "Mr Mackenzie explaining the pain to him, a Cyberman looming on a space station, seaweed bunching in a tank, Ben and Polly laughing" The Wheel in Space, Fury from the Deep.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
None.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Captain Drake, John Sharon, Anouska, Mrs Craig, Dr Piper.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

• Pg 177 LeBlanc was apparently killed in action ("Captain Taylor grabbed LeBlanc and snapped his spinal column"), but on page 127 Bishop says he outlived the war ("Colonel LeBlanc retired after handing the reins over to me. I had been his 2IC for eighteen months. Two months after I took over, Colonel LeBlanc died. In his sleep.")

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

• Presumably when Captain Taylor snapped LeBlanc's spine, he didn't actually kill him and a paralysed LeBlanc continued running the organisation for some time.

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
Pg 18 The Myloki. They're never seen, but much speculation suggests that they're from a different dimension that's unable to coexist with ours. They can possess and animate corpses and create perfect copies of human beings, except that those copies are indestructible.

Pgs 51-52 The Shiners, human beings who've been possessed by the Myloki and are immortal.

Pg 57 The indestructible men. Copies of human beings who cannot be killed.

Pg 105 SEWARD is a talking computer.

Pg 118 Mr Mackenzie is transformed into a seaweed creature.

Pg 200 A misshapen, gelatine monkey, with oddly distorted teeth.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Pg 1 On the moon (as we find out on page 121), 2068.

Pg 5 London and the surrounding countryside, 2096.

Pgs 21/72 London, 2097 (it's six months later, according to page 21 and Valentine's day on page 72)

Pg 109 Lunar base.

Pg 115 A helicopter.

Pg 129 Another helicopter.

Pg 133 SKYHOME, an orbital platform within the Earth's atmosphere (seen on the cover).

Pg 150 Barbardos.

Pg 168 OCEAN FLOOR, an underwater globe.

Pg 171 A submarine.

Pg 198 A helicopter.

Pgs 199-200 South America, near the border of Brazil and Venezuela.

Pgs 213/224 Sharon Island, somewhere in the South China sea (page 226).

Pg 260 A Learjet.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
The Indestructible Man is a truly excellent novel. Contrary to every expectation, characterisation is exceptionally high, with some really meaty stuff for both Jamie and Zoe and a standout turn for the second Doctor. The plot is perhaps a little less interesting than the backstory, but that's made up for with some astounding writing and individual scenes that grab hold of you and won't let go until you're gasping for air. The Gerry Anderson riffs take this sort of crossover pap and turn it into something haunting and the whole War on Terror allegory is very nicely presented. There are only two downsides, both minor: The Indestructible Man himself only shows up in the last ten percent of the novel, which is a little bizarre, and there's a weird lengthy continuity-dump in the middle of the novel, centering around the Doctor's involvement in UNIT... that goes absolutely nowhere. Other than that, this is one of the better PDAs. Highly recommended.