BASIC PLOT
The Shining Men are everywhere: tall, blank faces, blazing white eyes. Is it a joke that's gone viral?

DOCTOR
Twelfth.

COMPANIONS
Bill Potts.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
Pgs 47/51 In Boggle Woods, Huckensall, UK, 2017.

PREPARATORY READING
None.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 19 "Each lecture was different, covering everything under the sun." The Pilot.

Pg 20 "If you ever get less than a First, it's over..." The Pilot. We get a summary of that story.

Pg 22 "Little Miss Sunshine versus the Sulky Skarasen." Terror of the Zygons.

Pg 23 "Useful things, brollies. Always used to carry one, back when I was Scottish the first time around." The seventh Doctor.

Pg 26 "'Grabbed you?' he repeated, running back up to her, his black and white electric guitar in hand." The guitar first appeared in The Magician's Apprentice.

Pg 50 "He rummaged in his jacket pocket and pulled out a blue and silver device which whined as he swept it in the air, the green flashing at its tip." The sonic screwdriver (Fury From the Deep et al).

Pg 51 "'Which Nessie do you hunt?' 'There's more than one?' 'I should know. I put them there.'" The Skarasen and the Borad (Terror of the Zygons, Timelash).

Pg 55 "I am the President of the World, after all." Death in Heaven.

Pg 63 "He fished a battered leather wallet from his jacket and flashed it in front of the woman's face." The psychic paper (The End of the World et al).

Pg 74 "I had a friend who lived in a double-decker bus. She had a thing about leopard-print curtains and dancing hula girls." Iris Wildthyme (The Scarlet Empress et al).

"I had a car called Bessie once." Doctor Who and the Silurians et al.

"And a TARDIS called Sexy." The Doctor's Wife.

Pg 83 "It's either UNIT or Torchwood." UNIT first appeared in The Invasion, while Torchwood first appeared in Army of Ghosts.

"You're not the Forge are you?" From the DWM Comics.

"What kind of screwdriver doesn't work on wood?" Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead.

Pg 92 "Doctor John Smith. UNIT." Spearhead from Space et al.

Pg 93 "She knew he had his secrets - his mysterious vault back at the university, for one - but this didn't sound like him." The Pilot et al.

Pg 96 "Nardole was the Doctor's factotum back at the university, a funny little man in every sense of the word." The Husbands of River Song et al.

Pg 98 "No, sleep is for tortoises." The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Pg 103 "'What do you take me for?' 'The man who tried to nick a diamond on Saturn?'" Diamond Dogs.

Pg 104 "The first rule is never forget the Wirrn repellant." The Ark in Space.

"Librarians love me. Except for that lot in Alexandria, but the fire wasn't my fault. Ish." The Big Finish audio The Library of Alexandria.

Pg 105 "'Lore of the Land by Amelia Rumford.' She opened it at random, finding a chapter on standing stones." The Stones of Blood.

Pg 106 "'There's one in Harry Potter.' He shot her a grin. 'You wait to see what happens in book ten.'" The Shakespeare Code.

Pg 107 "What about Amelia?" The Stones of Blood.

Pg 110 "I mean, I had trouble believing in humans when I was a Time Tot, and yet here you are." Shada.

"Remind me to ask Vastra if they were around in her day." A Good Man Goes to War et al.

Pg 119 Reference to UNIT.

Pg 155 "Not unless he's secretly a superhero or a Zygon." Terror of the Zygons et al.

Pg 164 "Not everyone gets to wear the sonic sunglasses." The Magician's Apprentice et al.

"Even had sonic lipstick once, althugh it wasn't really my shade. Gave it to a friend." The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Pg 168 "She'd only been a baby when her own mum was taken awat from her. She'd never known her, the only memories the ones she'd made up." The Pilot through The Lie of the Land.

Pgs 168-169 "There hadn't been any photos, until the Doctor changed all that, heading back into the past, armed with a total disregard for the laws of time and a SLR camera." The Pilot.

Pg 180 "'You'e not going to jump.' 'It's either that or fly.'" City of Death.

Pg 184 "Golden thread. John Dee would love that. Instant alchemy." Birthright, The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.

Pg 187 "'That's your name isn't it? John Smith.' [...] 'Not exactly. It's a name I use from time to time.'" Spearhead from Space et al.

Pg 241 "The magic flowed into her. It didn't do her any harm - and thankfully it didn't give her any superpowers. The world's had enough of that kind of thing recently." The Return of Doctor Mysterio.

Pg 253 "Straight on past the boot cupboard and second door to the right." The Masque of Mandragora.

"You know how Nardole likes to fuss around you." The Husbands of River Song et al.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
Pg 218 The Fairies seen here are very likely the same ones that appeared in the Torchwood episode Small Worlds.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Sammy, Maisie, Noah, Hilary, Charlotte, PC Schofield.

The Boggart known as The Lost.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

1. Pg 16 "She rifled through her pockets, putting her phone down on the bookcase in the hall." Shouldn't she have riffled through her pockets instead?
2. Pg 65 "Don't take it personally. He's like it to everyone." Huh?
3. Pg 99 "Marter had perfect clothes, perfect hair and perfect teeth [...] Matter looked at the foreman as if he was dirt" Say what?

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

1. She used a rifle to poke through them, for reasons best known to herself.
2. The Doctor is so like that to everyone that it causes Bill to mix up her words.
3. Marter is absolutely perfect in every way, except for occasionally changing the spelling of his name.

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
Pg 59 The Shining Men. They have skeletal fingers and eyes that shine brightly.

Pg 166 Mushrooms with eyes.

Pgs 167 Boggarts. They have hooked noses, wide mouths and jagged teeth, with skin the colour of mottled cheese and hait in long braids.

Pg 191 A talking tree.

Pg 218 The Fair Folk have blotchy skin, long clawlike fingers, conical heads with tight crimped hair and translucent wings.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Pgs 46/51 Hucksall, 2017.

Pg 165 The Indivisible.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
You know what? That wasn't half bad. It's a decent thriller, although it doesn't quite seem to know whether it wants to be a sub-Stranger Things horror story set in the woods or a treatise on the nature of internet memes. Marrying the two together is awkward, especially the final scene, which needs to have consequences, rather than a cliffhanger. But the Doctor is well done, even if Bill is pretty generic, and the menace is pretty spooky at times. Differentiating between the Fairies, the Boggarts (who are also called fairies at one point) and the Shining Men (who are also Boggarts) will have you scratching your head for no good reason. But, overall, aside from some first novel-itis, this is a decent final book in the Capaldi run, which has been a quantum level of quality above that of any New Series Doctor (excepting the War Doctor). Not half bad at all.