SnowGlobe 7
by Mike Tucker


Publisher: BBC
ISBN: 1 846 07421 9

     

    BASIC PLOT
    The Doctor and Martha arrive in Snowglobe 7 in the Middle East, hoping for peace and relaxation. But they soon discover that it's not only ice and snow that has been preserved beneath the Dome.

    DOCTOR
    Tenth.

    COMPANIONS
    Martha Jones.

    MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
    Pg 20 SnowGlobe 7, the Persian Gulf late twenty-first century.

    PREPARATORY READING
    None.

    CONTINUITY REFERENCES
    Pg 10 "There had been alien contact before, sure enough, but they had always been transitory encounters: sometimes unfirnedly like the Sycorax or the Slitheen" The Christmas Invasion, Aliens of London.

    Pg 19 "Were all the rage in 2050, bloke in Weston-super-Mare found the recipe in the wreck of an Androgum space hopper that crashed in the Bristol Channel." The Two Doctors.

    Pg 21 "'The Rose Tower.' 'It would be called that,' Martha muttered under her breath." Reference to the Doctor's former companion, first seen in Rose.

    Pg 23 The sonic screwdriver makes an appearance (Fury From the Deep onwards).

    Pg 34 "Thin polycarbide struts criss-crossed the blue of the sky" The Daleks' outer shells are made of bonded polycarbide armour (Remembrance of the Daleks).

    Pg 84 "The ward could easily have been one of the private wards back at the Royal Hope hospital." Smith and Jones.

    Pg 137 "The Doctor knew that scenario only too well. To know that the only way to win was to destroy everything. To be the last of his kind." The Time War.

    Pg 191 The psychic paper makes an appearance (The End of the World onwards).

    OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
    None.

    NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
    Marisha, Twelve, Ku'ra, Roberts, Hassam

    CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

    1. Title and back cover: It should be "SnowGlobe 7", not "Snowglobe", as both the text and the title page makes clear.
    2. Pg 19 "bloke in Weston-super-Mare" doesn't square with page 255 "Ever heard of Western-super-Mare?"
    3. Pg 173 "Rabley hoisted his back onto his shoulder and scrambled up the ladder peer cautiously into the ventilator shaft." Say what?

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

    1. The title of a book is apparently what's on the title page, regardless of what's on the cover.
    2. They're different places.
    3. Rabley's terrified and it's playing havoc with his mental syntax.

    FEATURED ALIEN RACES
    Pg 16 Robots.

    Pgs 10-11 The Flisk, telepathic refugee aliens with mottle-blue skin and an innate genius for all forms of computing.

    Pgs 61/211 The Gappa. Part spider, part monkey and part bat, they're covered in a thin layer of fur, with eight stick-like limbs, a squat torso, a fleshy nose and a long tail tipped with barbs.

    FEATURED LOCATIONS
    Pg 36 Dubai, 2099 (according to the back cover).

    Pg 254 Prehistoric Earth. The TARDIS lands on a hill and also in a valley.

    IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
    SnowGlobe 7 is emblematic of the NSAs as a whole: a reasonably enjoyable story that's utterly forgettable once it's done. It features all the stock Doctor Who cliches: monsters buried in the ice, an unstable director, a mysterious infection, possession and a large, talking robot with more personality than the entire supporting cast put together. It's a bit like being chloroformed, but then the followup assault doesn't actually happen. The NSAs in a nutshell, then.