BASIC PLOT
The Doctor returns to Vortis and discovers the Menoptera have been made into slaves.

DOCTOR
Second.

COMPANIONS
Jamie and Victoria.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
The surface of Vortis, many generations after The Web Planet (page 29).

The void inside Vortis (page 243).

The surface again (we don't actually see this, but the Doctor leaves Victoria with a homing beacon and at the end they say farewell to the natives and leave in the TARDIS, so it must have rematerialised there).

PREPARATORY READING
This is a sequel to The Web Planet.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 15 "He had actually worn one himself, he had recounted modestly, when the TARDIS had travelled into the future to the surface of the moon and he'd first encountered the Cybermen." The Moonbase.

Pg 16 "That was before they had fallen under Maxtible's power, and become in turn tools of those terrible Dalek creatures." Evil of the Daleks.

Pg 64 "The evil Animus, part spider part plant, which had tried to absorb all life on Vortis into its planetwide web, was defeated, though at great cost." The Web Planet.

Pg 66 "During the struggle with the Animus a stranger came to Vortis with three companions of his kind." The Web Planet.

Pg 73 "With our TARDIS also released from the Animus's hold, I and my good friends Ian, Barbara and Vicki left to continue our travels once more." The Web Planet.

Pg 76 "'I have a sonic emitter somewhere in the TARDIS that could do this,' he muttered. 'I really must remember to carry it in future...'" The sonic screwdriver, first seen in Fury from the Deep, which this story is set shortly before.

Pg 97 "We built spacecraft many thousand risings ago to settle the moons during the war against the Animus, but gave them up when they were no longer needed." The Web Planet.

Pg 147 "Was it not the Doctor's companion Bar-bara Wright who actually destroyed the Animus those many moons ago?" The Web Planet.

Pg 209 "The last time I was here, they 'd been forced off Vortis for years by the Animus, but were still fighting to regain their world." The Web Planet.

Pg 221 "It's another intelligence, just like in Tibet. The yeti, the Detsen Monastery, remember?" The Abominable Snowmen.

Pg 244 "Remember how it was on the moon? Well you're even lighter here." The Moonbase.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
The Zarbi, the Menoptera, the Optera, the Larvae Guns, the Animus (or rather its progeny, but it has the memories of the original).

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Draga, Shallvar, Krestus, Nallia, Valio, Yostor.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

• Pg 76 "'I have a sonic emitter somewhere in the TARDIS that could do this,' he muttered. 'I really must remember to carry it in future...'" This is contradicted by Dreams of Empire which had the second Doctor already carrying his new sonic screwdriver. However, the mistake is Dreams', since it was published later.

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

• The sonic screwdriver didn't work perfectly in Dreams of Empire, so possibly the Doctor dismantled it, made a bulkier but better version and then returned to the shape he has in Dreams of Empire for Fury from the Deep.

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
The Zarbi, the Menoptera, the Optera, the Larvae Guns, the Animus.

The Rhumons, humanoids with three crests on their head and membranes over their ears (page 43).

Grey monsters, featureless lumbering zombie-like creatures (page 84).

Myripeds, the Vortisan counterpart of a millipede, but fifteen foot long and as high as Victoria's waist (page 117).

The Gods of Light, electromagnetically organized plasma beings a mile across (page 252).

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Vortis, which can move around under its own power and is revealed to be an experiment gone wrong. The events take place many generations after The Web Planet.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
Twilight of the Gods is one of the slowest reads in the history of Doctor Who publishing, which makes it a worthy, if dull, sequel to The Web Planet. Most of that story's peaks are hit (everyone aside from the TARDIS crew is very alien), but when the Zarbi, the Menoptera, the Optera and the Larvae guns have put in their contractually obliged appearances, it's not much of a surprise who the big bad turns out to be. There's some attempt at revisionist history with the nature of Vortis, but it's not particularly interesting and the whole thing collapses under the weight of its glacial pace and the run of sequelitis that almost killed the MAs.