BASIC PLOT
Somebody's interfering with time. The Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack arrive on modern-day Earth to find the culprit and discover a Neanderthal Man, twenty-eight thousand years after his race became extinct. Only a trip back to the primeval dawn of humanity can solve the mystery.

DOCTOR
Ninth.

COMPANIONS
Rose Tyler and Captain Jack Harkness.

Pg 181 Jackie Tyler makes a cameo appearance.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
Pg 17 In the gardens of Bromley's library, 2005.

Pg 29 A street across from Bromley's hospital, 2005.

Pgs 47-48 Back in the Bromley library gardens, 2005.

Pg 62 A plain in prehistoric Bromley, 26,185 BC.

Pg 244 In the forest of prehistoric Bromley, 26,185 BC.

Pg 250 Back to present-day Bromley and then forward a few weeks.

PREPARATORY READING
None.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 35 "'Suppose you know lots of Neanderthals,' teased Rose. 'Met a couple, yeah.'" Nimrod in Ghost Light and Enkidu in Timewyrm: Genesys.

Pg 44 "Rose recalled their first encounter with Jack in 1940s London" The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.

Pg 76 "Well, this is the seventh Dominion of Kraal." The Android Invasion.

Pg 116 "I knew the London Blitz inside out." The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.

"If only he'd shown up on the planet Celation." One of their delegates was in Mission to the Unknown and The Daleks' Master Plan.

Pg 163 "Well, I've got a self-regenerating genetic imprimatur that -" The Two Doctors. But see Continuity Cock-Ups

Pg 192 "She remembered talking with Gwyneth in the nineteenth century and how strange that had seemed." The Unquiet Dead.

Pg 213 "'It is disguised,' said the Doctor, rather wounded." Rose.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
None.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Das Dimitru, Anna Marie O'Grady.

T.P. Quilley, Nan, Jacob, Reddy, Ka, Sakka, Tillun.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

• Pg 163 "Well, I've got a self-regenerating genetic imprimatur that -" Except that The Two Doctors (page 107) spells it "imprimature", which is quite different from "imprimatur". The latter is a licence from the Catholic Church to print a religious book. The former is a classical painting technique.

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

• So was Rassilon a priest or a painter? Probably neither, but we have to go with Robert Holmes' spelling.

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
Pgs 140-141/146 Hy-Bractors, seven foot tall humanoid creatures with grey putty-like skin and a long grey tail.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Pg 7 Earth (presumably), 438,533 AD.

Pg 9 Bromley, Kent, England, 2005.

Pg 57 Bromley, 26,185 BC.

Pg 113 An aeroplane, 2005.

Pg 113 New York, 2005.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
This is exactly what the New Series Adventures should be. Light, kid-friendly and breezy, but with hilarious jokes and an actual theme. Jack and Das get sidelined, but their brief sequences are the funniest in the novel and could have sustained the entire book. The Doctor and Rose in prehistoric Bromley aren't quite as sumptuous, but there's still a mostly worthy plot, with a few good jokes. Chantal cracking the Doctor's biology feels a bit forced, but it's worth the cover price to imagine Christopher Eccleston babbling under a truth serum, accompanied by a decapitated Rose. Basically, it's a fairly ordinary Doctor and Rose two-hander, elevated to greatness by the fact that Captain Jack has to be contractually inserted into the storyline.