BASIC PLOT
Aboard ring of ice and steel turning around a moon of Saturn, the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe find a critical situation - and they are suspected by some as the source of the sabotage. They soon find themselves caught in a mystery that goes right back to the creation of the solar system. A mystery that could kill them all.

DOCTOR
Second.

COMPANIONS
Jamie and Zoe.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
Pg 6/19 The Wheel of Ice, an orbital space station orbiting Saturn.

PREPARATORY READING
It'd be good to be familiar with The Tenth Planet and The Wheel in Space.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Main page references are to the Hardback edition. (Parenthetical page references are to the Paperback edition. With thanks to Tim Snelling.)

Pg 3(7) "In the vortex that lies beyond time and space tumbled a police box that was not a police box." Very much a homage to the Terrance Dicks novelisations.

Pg 13(20) "The mercury fluid links, for example." The Dead Planet.

Pg 16(23) "Look, we ought to get you out of there before MMAC's meson gun runs out of juice." The Two Doctors.

Pg 26(35) "Unlike your own Station Three, you mean." The Wheel in Space.

Pg 27(36) "Better than the old Eldred ion-jet scows that used to limp out here." The Seeds of Death.

"Isn't that one of the old Mars probes, the early English ones?" The Ambassadors of Death.

Pg 28(37) "That's an XK5 - or what's left of it." The Android Invasion.

"And next to - are those Demeters, MMAC?" The Tenth Planet.

Pgs 28-29(38) "Some of them still had warheads - Z-bomb planetbusters - and I had to amke sure they were disarmed and cleaned out." The Tenth Planet.

Pg 29(38) "Oh, I've seen many museum exbihits in my time. I've beenan exhibit more than once..." The Space Museum.

Pg 31(42) "'This is a solar stack,' said the Doctor. 'A suncatcher system.'" The Ark in Space, The Enemy of the World.

Pg 36(48) "Rather reminds me of a caravan holiday I once had in Wales -" Uncertain reference.

Pg 37(49) "Sixth panet of the solar system - well, it used to be the seventh,but that's another story." The Tenth Planet.

Pg 38(51) "Yes. Us and the Cybermen. Well, we helped wake her curiosity, didn't we? And so she stowed away on the TARDIS, and came with us." The Wheel in Space.

Pg 39(51) "One day there'll be flower gardens in the clouds of Saturn, you know." The Taking of Chelsea 426.

"And in the very far future, people will even be able to live on far Pluto, the furthest planet, in the warmth and the light." The Sunmakers.

Pg 62(77) "You certaintly couldn't have a conversation with the servo-robots on the Station where I worked." The Wheel in Space.

Pg 76(84) "I'm well aware that the International Space Command has full access to UNIT's records, which bulge with evidence of alien incursions of various kinds into the solar system and on Earth itself going back centuries." This describes much of the seventies. Or was it eighties? International Space Command featured in The Tenth Planet.

Pg 83(103) "But he had seen skiing in Tibet once, though he and the Doctor had been too busy running from robot yeti for him to take much notice." The Abominable Snowmen.

Pg 89(109) "But somehow Josephine couldn't believe even the famous Li H'sen Chang could fabricate this piece." The Talons of Weng-Chiang.

Pg 91(111) "Apparently they're thinking of adapting Black Orchid next, if this works. You know, dear, that Cranleigh book -" Black Orchid.

Pg 94(115) "He worked for UNIT." The Invasion et al.

Pg 104(126) "Mmph... mm... wassa? Victoria?" The Evil of the Daleks et al.

Pg 110(132) "There may have been a strain of intelligent reptilians who survived the main dinosaur extinction event" Doctor Who and the Silurians et al.

Pg 129(154) "What would Leo Ryan and Gemma Corwyn and the rest of them on Station Three have said if they saw her throw up like an earthling on a sub-orbital hop?" The Wheel in Space.

Pg 148(174) "Jamie was reminded of the Land of Fiction, one of the strangest places he had visited with the Doctor, a place beyond space and time where everything ha dbeen jumbled up and reversed, just like this." The Mind Robber.

Pg 162(190) "An exhibit rather overshadowed by displays of the worlds of the Great Vampires, and so forth..." State of Decay.

Pg 171(203) "Then he joined an international consortium that developed a technology called the Travel-Mat Relay." The Seeds of Death.

Pg 172(203) "'The T-Mat!' Zoe said." The Seeds of Death.

Pg 172(204)"Of course what crashed the T-Mat was aliens. The Ice Warriors." The Seeds of Death.

Pg 191(223) "Jamie had seen volcanoes before, in his travels with the Doctor." The Dominators/The Mind Robber.

Pg 197(231) "Like the inhuman, machine-like stomping of the Cybermen." The Wheel in Space, The Invasion.

Pg 199(233) "And, yes, their blank, almost featureless faces had something of the cold inhuman chill of the Cybermen." The Wheel in Space, The Invasion.

Pg 220(256) "This isn't a UNIT base we're sneaking into." The Invasion.

Pg 234(273) "Mirrors reflect light, after all, and light is integral to the theory of time travel. Indeed, travelling faster than light is equivalent to travelling in time! And then if you cross-wire that, so to speak, to a generator of static electricity - if like poles repel, Zoe, perhaps like images can be made to repel, and then sent off to wherever you want them to go..." An effective summary of the pseudoscience behind The Evil of the Daleks.

Pg 235(274) "You may not succeed in making a time machine, but you might manage to hook a flaw in time you your gadget, and I've seen that done before, by two gentlemen of the Victorian era, one misguided, the other a greedy fool. And their reward was a visit from a Dalek!" The Evil of the Daleks. But see Continuity Cock-Ups.

Pg 248(290) "It wasn't a topic that came up in astrophysics classes in the City. Or, indeed, while fighting Cybermen or Ice Warriors with the Doctor." The Wheel in Space/The Invasion, The Seeds of Death.

Pg 258(300) "There was intelligence in the system now, a reptilian race that swarmed upon the surface of the third world from the central star." Doctor Who and the Silurians et al.

Pg 259(301) "A rogue planet was swimming towards the Earth. Already the reptilian race was withdraweing into the great hibernation caverns that they hoped would protect it from the calamity." Doctor Who and the Silurians.

Pg 265(307) "The Demeters were armed with Z-bombs, weren't they?" The Tenth Planet.

Pg 274(317) "That in the Z-bomb." The Tenth Planet.

"Creag an tuire!" The Highlanders et al.

Pg 276(320) "When suddenly the Karkus burst in!" The Mind Robber.

Pg 282(327) "How do ye defuse a Z-bomb?" The Tenth Planet.

Pgs 291-292(338) "After the alien intervention that wrecked my father's T-Mat, I dug into some of the old records, clumsily concealed by governments, and agencies like UNIT." The Seeds of Death, The Invasion et al.

Pg 297(343) "Respiratory bypass system. Does come in handy from time to time." Pyramids of Mars.

Pg 301(347) "Oh, you mean Casey. Or rather, the Karkus!" The Mind Robber.

Pg 302(348) "MMAC, have you ever heard of a substance called taranium?" The Daleks' Master Plan.

Pg 304(350) "But what's the point of this taranium then?" The Daleks' Master Plan.

Pg 308(355) "That's the insignia of the International Space Command." The Tenth Planet.

Pg 308(356) "Been whizzed here aboard a brand new Delta-class interplanetary freighter, I'm told." The Delta-class freighters were mentioned in the novelisation of The Space Pirates, replacing the C-class freighters from the TV show.

Pg 311(359) "In the vortex that lies beyond time and space tumbled a police box that was not a police box." Back to the novelisations again.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
None.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Jo Laws, Phee, Casey, Sam, MMAC, Luis Reyes, Arkive, Karen, Sonia Daley, Florian Hart, Dai, Sanjay.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

1. Pg 128 Mnemosyne is said to be a moon (of Saturn), but in reality 57 Mnemosyne is an asteroid in the main belt, between Mars and Jupiter. That's a long way from Saturn, which has no moon by that name.
2. Pg 235 "You may not succeed in making a time machine, but you might manage to hook a flaw in time you your gadget, and I've seen that done before, by two gentlemen of the Victorian era, one misguided, the other a greedy fool. And their reward was a visit from a Dalek!" Yes, yes... but why is the Doctor explaining this to Zoe? She's also seen it, when the Doctor showed her the episode at the end of Fury From the Deep. And it's not as though she'd have forgotten, what with her eidetic memory and all...

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

1. Presumably a new moon was discovered by the time they got there and shares a name with an asteroid in the main belt for some reason.
2. Zoe has travelled with the Doctor for long enough to simply be resigned and not interrupt when he tells her things she already knows.

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
Pg 60 MMAC is a sentient computer who grew up believing it was human.

Pg 70 The blue dolls have synthetic flesh, with needle-like teeth and black eyes.

Pg 154 A T-shark, a native of Titan, resembling an Earth shark except that it doesn't breathe oxygen.

Pg 259 The Silurians.

Pg 260 A dinosaur.

FEATURED LOCATIONS
Pg 19 Menmosyne Cincture, aka The Wheel of Ice.

Pg 79 The moon Enceladus.

Pg 87 London, 1890.

Pg 91 England, 1930

Pg 93 England, 1970.

Pg 97 A flying car, the future.

Pg 110 The moon Mnemosyne. But see Continuity Cock-Ups

Pg 145 The moon Titan.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
This is really fun. The ultra-sciencey style is great, especially for this era of Doctor Who, giving the book a depth that's sadly lacking these days. The TARDIS crew are fun, even if Baxter can't capture the second Doctor much better than anyone else who's tried. I'm not quite sure what's up with the overly Scottish dialects for both Jamie and MMAC, but it's loopy enough in the latter case that it works. Zoe is also great, if a bit histrionic at times. But the original characters really shine, with the highlight being the rebellion and relocation of the teenagers. It's a bit odd that this happens in the middle of the book before being put back the way things were, but it's excellent social commentary. Overall, this is excellent.