BASIC PLOT
The Doctor, Harry and Sarah Jane Smith arrive at a remote Scottish island, when their holiday is cut short by the appearance of strange creatures: hideous scarecrows, who are preying on the local population. The islanders are living in fear, and the Doctor vows to save them all. But it doesn't go to plan: the time travellers have fallen into a trap, and Scratchman is coming for them.

DOCTOR
Fourth. Thanks to Scratchman's dimension, there are also cameo appearances by some others:

Pg 181 The tenth Doctor.

Pg 182 The thirteenth Doctor.

Pg 257 The first, second and third Doctors.

COMPANIONS
Sarah Jane Smith and Harry Sullivan.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
Pg 7 In a field on the Scilly Isles, 1964.

Pgs 145/148 On blasted heath, in Scratchman's dimension.

Pg 280 In Scratchman's boardroom in his dimension.

PREPARATORY READING
None.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 20 "Sarah stuck her tongue out at me" Just as she does in Terror of the Zygons.

Pg 53 "An Artron Incubator!" Artron energy was first mentioned in The Deadly Assassin.

Pg 56 "Why, in order for an Artron Incubator to incubate, we need some Artrons." The Deadly Assassin. Artron energy is mention several more times. I haven't noted every instance.

Pg 70 "We need it to be airtight. Find something to block it. A tea tray should do." The Moonbase.

Pg 71 "Superb - how idiotic of me to suggest plugging a gap with a tea tray." Poke at one of the more idiotic things about The Moonbase.

Pg 89 "We;;, Harry, have you noticed how many of our adventures recently - they've been about things fiddling with humanity, producing abominations. Professors and giant wasps and militant potatoes and mad scientists and shapeshifters and androids and so on..." Robot, The Ark in Space, The Sontaran Experiment, Genesis of the Daleks, Terror of the Zygons, The Android Invasion. (Incidentally, there are multiple clues to suggest that this is a post-Zygons adventure with Harry, so we've taken the liberty of placing it after Managra.)

Pg 91 "There were her poor, dear parents." We saw Sarah's parents in flashback in The Sarah Jane Adventures episode The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith.

"Her dungaree phase - well, her first of many dungaree phases." Most memorably in The Hand of Fear.

"Her cluttered desk at Metropolitan magazine" First mentioned in Planet of the Spiders.

Pgs 91-92 "She and Aunt Lavinia eating ice cream." Mentioned in The Time Warrior and seen in K9 and Company.

Pg 92 "There she was in a medieval tapestry, then in a mug shot, glimpsed through security cameras on several worlds, standing next to a naughty-looking octopus at a peace conference" The Time Warrior, Invasion of the Dinosaurs, The Monster of Peladon.

"There she was running through a space station, across an exploding minefield, carried in the arms of an Egyptian mummy, and posing while happily hitting her android duplicate with a lump hammer." The Ark in Space, Genesis of the Daleks, Pyramids of Mars, The Android Invasion.

"There she was on a street corner with a stuffed owl; there she was in a garden centre (looking a little older, but then she'd have to be if she was in a garden centre); older still, running from an exploding school; running from an exploding quarry; and there she was, holding a young boy's hand, looking even older and still running." The Hand of Fear, either K9 and Company or The Five Doctors, School Reunion, The Hand of Fear, Invasion of the Bane.

Pg 106 "Ah yes, wasn't that after your last trial? Weren't you exiled there to learn the error of your ways?" The War Games, Spearhead from Space.

Pg 126 "I dragged my feet a little more and started to whistle 'Colonel Bogey'." As he does in The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Pg 133 "Once, long ago, on the planet Mondas, the people had begin to die out, and had sought to prolong their existence by replacing their rotting flesh." The Tenth Planet.

Pg 142 "You packed me off to that dreadful chalk pit of a world to save everyone from the Master and his Doomsday Weapon." Colony in Space.

Pg 154 "Your predecessor had a lovely doze, one knee up, talking about daisies." The third Doctor often slept with a knee in the air, as seen in Planet of the Spiders. He talked about daisies in The Time Monster.

Pg 156 "Had a Martian Warlord in here the other day, in a right state he was." Martian Warlords were first seen in The Seeds of Death.

"Some other chap's stepped into your shoes already. [...] Lovely young feller." The fifth Doctor.

Pg 166 "Some thumped their perigosto sticks on the floor." The Green Death.

Pg 170 "'Ginger pop,' he announced, sipping it. 'Some days it really is all that keeps me going.' 'Oh, I do agree,' I said sincerely." The Android Invasion.

Pg 185 "I produced my sonic screwdriver." Fury From the Deep et al.

Pg 188 "Why, ask the Daleks about the catastrophes they've unleashed on the universe and they'll swear it's all my fault! They may even say that we're the villains in their drama." Given that the Doctor's talking to the Time Lords, this has echoes of the Time War.

Pg 191 "Then I shall have a ginger beer!" The Android Invasion.

Pg 193 "I'm imagining the Master's face right now." Terror of the Autons et al.

Pg 202 "Imprisoned in Gubbage Cone light prisons." Novelisation of The Chase.

Pg 205 "I considered giving Harry a lecture on how many human representations of the Devil were actually race memories inspired by entirely different species of wandering scientists who just so happened to have horns, and gargoyles for lab assistants." The Daemons.

Pg 209 "She'd run from Daleks, Sontarans, no end of robots, even the Loch Ness Monster." Death to the Daleks/Genesis of the Daleks, The Time Warrior/The Sontaran Experiment, Robot/The Android Invasion, Terror of the Zygons.

Pg 210 "Then she'd met me and away we'd gone, giving up any thoughts of pinball in favour of the far more interesting challenges of ancient cities that were trying to kill you, or the gentle art of befriending alien squid." Death to the Daleks, The Monster of Peladon.

Pg 232 "It was very warm here. And he was wearing a duffel coat. His good old friend on several unpromisingly misty planets" The Sontaran Experiment, Genesis of the Daleks.

Pg 241 "You really are an imbecile, Harry Sullivan" Revenge of the Cybermen.

Pg 242 "He hasn't even tapped into the neutron flow" The Sea Devils et al.

Pg 247 "We progress from one series of bodies to the next and ultimately pass into the Matrix, where our souls can observe the infinity of our race." The Deadly Assassin.

Pg 255 "'I say, Doctor!' shouted Harry. 'Giant spiders!'" Likely the same ones from Planet of the Spiders, reconstituted here, as Scratchman in plundering the Doctor's memories.

Pg 256 A robot described as "a strange pile of bramble hexagons" might be a scarecrow-ified Mechonoid, from The Chase.

"A crawling tree-stump crab." Possibly a Macra (The Macra Terror)

"Horrid things like wetsuits made out of liver flopped towards us." Possibly Voord (The Keys of Marinus).

"'Is that a giant robot?' asked Harry. 'Should it be covered with maggots?'" Robot, The Green Death.

Pg 259 "Harry had only met one of my past selves briefly, and it was really just a nodding acquaintance" We never see this on screen, although Harry is mentioned in Planet of the Spiders.

Pg 263 A large alien wasp might be a Wirrn (The Ark in Space).

Pg 268 "A clubbed tail smashed three villagers to matchwood." Possibly a dinosaur (Invasion of the Dinosaurs).

Pg 271 "Two giant brains in jars blocked his path" Possibly the brains of Morphoton (The Keys of Marinus) or else one of them might be Morbius (The Brain of Morbius).

Pg "An entire city of metal" Possibly the Exxilon city (Death to the Daleks) or else the Dalek city on Skaro (The Daleks).

Pg 273 "'Put us together and we just bicker,' the Third tutted." The Three Doctors.

"Good lord - is that a Birostrop?" The Brain of Morbius.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
None.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
None surviving.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

1. Pg 63 "She opened the bureau, rifled through some unpaid bills and a startling offer from the Reader's Digest, and located a hidden drawer, covered with old pencil shavings." This should be riffled, not rifled. (The later is sometimes used to search things but only with intent to steal.)
2. Pg 166 "'Because you're afraid that you'll find out that it's all true.' I grinned at them all. 'And that would be far more comforting to you, far less frightening than knowing it's all real.'" Wait, so finding out that it's true is terrifying, but also comforting because they might find out it's all real? Huh?

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

1. Sarah found a rifle on the desk and used that to flip through the unpaid bills.
2. The Time Lords take their comfort where they can.

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
Pg 29 Scarecrows from another dimension that can transmogrify people.

Pg 132 Cybermen.

Pg 161 Sallows, beetle-like creatures with human faces but long beaks. They used to be humanoid.

Pg 167 A cross between an ape and a lobster that's been ground under heel.

Pg 163 Sentient stone heads.

Pg 168 A giant sentient playing card.

Pg 170 A bipedal lizard with green claws wearing pyjamas.

A sentient chair.

Pg 180 Mask-wearing, sawdust-filled creatures.

Pg 189 Scratchman is the Devil and has a burning of pure fire globe for a head, as do members of his board.

Pg 236 Giant crabs.

Pg 256 Giant scarecrow spiders.

Monstrous wicker slugs.

Robots of woven thorns.

A pile of bramble hexagons.

Something grown out of leftover organs.

Things like wetsuits made out of liver.

Giant tumours.

Maggots.

Pg 263 Large wasps.

Pg 268 Something with a clubbed tail.

Something with a claw (possibly one of the crabs).

Something with a tentacle.

Pg 269 A creature that is entirely mouth.

A grey nothing.

Pg 271 Brains in jars.

An apparently sentient metal city.

"An endless army of stainless steel and hate." Daleks.

Pg 273 A Birostrop.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Pg 4 Gallifrey.

Pgs 8/38 The Scilly Isles, 1964.

Pg 191 Scratchman's dimension.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
Yay, it's a book written by Tom Baker! This should be the maddest, most fun thing ever. Only... the first half really drags, being a bog-standard haunted island with undead scarecrows yadda yadda. There's a ridiculous amount of soft continuity. The book promises the true meaning of fear, which is a bold gambit that you'd think would require deliverance. And the first person narration never once sounds like the fourth Doctor, which is quite the accomplishment in this particular case. But then we move to Scratchman's dimension and things go absolutely bonkers. The continuity overload is just bizarre but you somehow go with it. There are cameos from the tenth and thirteenth Doctors! And the twist on the true meaning of fear is excellent. So, basically, yeah, it's the maddest, most fun thing ever.