TITLE

The Gallifrey Chronicles

AUTHOR

Lance Parkin

PREVIOUS FORM

for the defence: Just War (NA); The Dying Days (NA); Cold Fusion (MA); Father Time (EDA)

for the prosecution: Trading Futures (EDA)

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT ALFIE?

A Timelord called Marnal, stuck on Earth, realises that the Doctor has destroyed Gallifrey, and hunts him down in order to get his revenge. At the same time, an insectoid race, the Vore, attacks Earth, apparently killing indiscriminately.

Believe me, that synopsis doesn't do it justice - just go and read it!

THE 100 WORD REVIEW

OK, it's not at all what I expected, and the things I was sure would happen never do; but as a finale to and as a celebration of the EDAs it fits the bill perfectly. And more than that - by retconning an error in the very first NA, it serves as a climax to the whole era (1991-2005) when full-length novels were the primary source for new adventures. Now it's back on TV, things will never be the same again, and Lance Parkin proudly takes this opportunity to tell the book series, before they go, that they were fantastic. Well said!

Considering that the continuity nods start before you even open the book, with the title itself, I intend to approach the continuity in an ordered and methodical fashion (well, there's a first time for everything). I'll deal with the references and in-jokes first, and then we'll settle down to tackling the outstanding Big Questions. There's a lot to get through, so hold onto your (stovepipe) hats!

The Prologue deals with a dying man, suffering from chronic amnesia, who on his death-bed unexpectedly regenerates. The regeneration restores his memory, and the prologue ends with the name of his homeworld: Gallifrey, of course. The man was an author of cult novels during his very long lifetime, all of which he claimed were based on his real home, and were written in an effort to ensure he didn't forget anything else. During the early stage of the book, various of his books' titles are thrown into the mix, amongst which I spotted "The Kraglon Inheritance" (working title for The Two Doctors), "The Witch Lords" (which, after a regeneration of its own, became State of Decay), "The Time of Neman" (Arc of Infinity), and even "The Beautiful People" (the original name of the Movellans in Destiny of the Daleks). The man's name, incidentally, is Marnal Gate, which I have to assume is some kind of anagram. I've struggled with it, but the best I can come up with is 'Tegan Mara', with an 'l' left over. Any ideas?

Chapter One is called "New and Missing Adventures" in which the Doctor name-drops Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw... and Sherlock Holmes! He quickly dismisses Trix's assertion that Mr Holmes is a fictional character by claiming that "every word of every novel is real, every frame of every movie, every panel of every comic strip" - although he could have just as easily recounted the NAs All-Consuming Fire and Happy Endings to her, in both of which Holmes, and Watson, appeared.

Chapter Two deals with Marnal trying to find out why Gallifrey isn't there any more (he does refrain from telling us that "it's been totally blown away", presumably out of deference to the Dancing Lawyers of George Lucas). He constructs a sort of time & space scanner, key ingredient of which is a common or garden bottle. The use of a bottle for purposes of a more transdimensional nature may be a nod at the mysterious Klimt bottle of Interference, or alternatively a reference to the bizarre fork 'n' cork antics of The Time Monster. On this scanner they appear to glimpse the woodlice like Tractators on Frontios (maybe it's a rip-off of The Chase - Hartnell watches Beatles, Marnal watches woodlice?). Before pinning the blame for Gallifrey's demise on a bloke in a blue box, Marnal lists some possible culprits, among them the Tractites (from very early EDA Genocide) and the Klade - these last we've never met, but they apparently destroyed Miranda's homeworld in the prologue to Father Time. Wait a minute though: K-L-A-D-E, that's an anagram of... How interesting!

Interlude One is called "The Girl Who Was Different" which as Ian Cragg & his Target Guide will soon tell us, was the title of chapter one of "An Unearthly Child" (alongside chapter two's rather shocking titular advice to "Enter the Doctor"). This interlude takes us back to the early 1980s, when the Doctor and Miranda are living together in Greyfrith. More name-dropping here from the Doctor - a mixed bag, containing Graham Greene (The Turing Test), Laurence Olivier (maybe it was the Doctor who talked him out of that Revelation of the Daleks cameo?) and King Priam (The Myth Makers). We also learn that during the 1920s the Doctor attended a couple of seances. Maybe he was bored waiting for the next World War to come along?

Chapter Three steals its title from one of Dave Martin's K9 books of 1980 (what do you mean you don't remember them?!) and is called "The Time Trap". Marnal spends this chapter studying the Doctor's adventures with a passion that borders on the disturbingly obsessive (hmm, am I missing something there?). Amongst the classic moments he views are motorbiking in San Francisco (The TV Movie), an Ice Warrior at the Tower of London (The Dying Days), an arms bazaar on the moon (not sure), and punting down the Cam (the BBCi/BF version of Shada I suppose, although technically speaking the eighth Doctor doesn't do that). We also catch a glimpse of the Doctor & co on Mars, apparently thwarting a Dalek attempt to assassinate the Pope (maybe he blasphemed?), and Fitz makes a reference to having been to Mars before, with Anji. I think this may be another 'missing' adventure, since the last visit to Mars that I can remember was in GodEngine, an NA from 1996, before Anji was even thought of (ah, dark days indeed). Talking of companions, Marnal reels off a list of the (eighth) Doctor's companions. Rather bafflingly it reads: "Lorenzo, Delilah, Frank, Claudia, Deborah, Jemima-Katy, Miranda, Nina, Anji, Beatrice." More dramatically, the TARDIS arrives near to a graveyard, where we discover the grave of the original EDA companion (no, not Lorenzo, concentrate at the back there). Sam Jones' death was hinted at in Sometime Never... and here we learn that she died in 2002. We don't ever discover what caused her death, although in chapter 5 Marnal asserts that without the Doctor's interference in her life, she would have lived to be a hundred.

Chapter Four sees the return of Anji Kapoor!! We learn that Trix has been dropping her a few hints about investments and the like, with the result that they are both, well, loaded (I'm talking financially here). Anji is engaged to be married, to Greg (the guy she met right at the end of Timeless) but since we're supposed to be celebrating the dramatic end to the EDAs, I won't take issue with the following rather harsh sentence: "Anji had changed into a silk evening dress and, for her, looked pretty sexy." Oh, and Trix takes the opportunity to quote Monty Python's "spam, spam, spam".

Chapter Five is called "Deadly Reunion" (as was Barry Letts & Terrance Dicks' jointly-penned 40th Anniversary novel). Fitz & Trix meet Anji & Greg for dinner at a restaurant called The Red Fort, which may (or may not) be named after the abandoned season 1 Terry Nation historical. There is a passing mention of Anji's dearly departed dead Dave, and Fitz rather bizarrely refers to "giant robots and pyramids on Mars" - considering he hails from the 60s I would have thought he was more of a 'base under siege' than a Gothic era man? Meanwhile, the Doctor, having been captured by Marnal, takes the opportunity to sum up his lifestyle: "I'm tied up by some git with a grudge every single week." In a nod to the TV Movie, Freud and transference are mentioned on page 98. And on pages 95 and 96 the Doctor and Marnal appear to share Hartnell's "One day I shall come back..." speech from the end of The Dalek Invasion of Earth for no obvious reason. As the subject of Gallifrey comes up, the Doctor mentions that four people were supposed to have survived its destruction (a fact gleaned in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street), with Marnal now being a fifth. Marnal tries to communicate telepathically with the Doctor (as in The Three Doctors) - he sees "a man with a... small, pointed black beard who wore a blue rosette" (possibly the maybe-Master from The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, based on the rosette - although that character was described as clean-shaven); a blonde woman (Iris Wildthyme?); "a tall man with a bent nose wearing a cravat and holding a pair of dice" (answers on a postcard please); and the Doctor "with close-cropped hair, sitting on an ornate throne, a newborn baby girl in his arms." That presumably refers us to the short-haired, plain-speaking ninth Doctor, although what, or when, or where that scene is supposed to be, well, your guess is as good as mine.

The second Interlude neatly recaps the end to The Ancestor Cell, dealing with the destruction of Gallifrey by the Doctor. The Doctor, during this, recalls his red-haired mother reading to him...

Chapter Six contains the shocking revelation that the Doctor taught the Beatles how to meditate, in Bangor. This probably accounts for the chapter title being "And the Dream I had was True". I'm sure everybody (or at least everybody who like me can type 'and the dream I had was true' into Google) recognises that as a lyric from the Beatles' "Child of Nature" song. It also mentions the film "Shallow Grave" which is probably of no real interest unless you're familiar with the cast-list... And in a dream-sequence on pages 130/132 (and at least passingly similar to a scene in The City of the Dead) the seventh Doctor pops up for a chat. A cryptic one, naturally.

Chapter Seven is called "The Edge of Destruction" (I'm sure none of us needs Google to help identify the source of that one). Fitz gets to play his guitar to a pub-crowd. Trix' past appears to catch up with her when a policeman charges "Patricia Joanne Pullman" with the murder of Anthony Charles Macmillan - however, she and Fitz quickly abscond to America, and very shortly after that the Earth is invaded by killer insects, so this potentially revealing sub-plot isn't pursued any further. Meanwhile, the Doctor is forced to deposit a nuclear device inside the TARDIS to stop it going off and destroying much of the Home Counties - the TARDIS interior is ravaged, becoming effectively a blank canvas (hmm, I wonder what the redecorated ship might look like...). The Doctor then ventures into the power room, where the Eye of Harmony starts to talk to him...

The Eye shows the Doctor events from the far past, in an Interlude featuring Marnal. Marnal is out and about in a TARDIS which apparently operates using a 'vworp drive' - which is part Star Trek pun, part DWM homage.

Chapter Eight makes it more or less explicit that the Master still exists, albeit without a physical form, inside the Eye of Harmony. Having access to all those primal forces has apparently made him almost godlike. He doesn't actually say that when the Doctor struck him down in the TV Movie, he made him more powerful than he could possibly imagine, but again that's probably only an omission on behalf of the Dancing Lawyers of Mr Lucas. How that fits with the notion of 'rosette man' being the Master, I've really no idea. Baffling isn't it?

Chapter Nine is fairly light continuity-wise, although two important things do occur. The first is that Fitz learns Trix' real name. The second is that Fitz is killed.

Chapter Ten has the insectoid Vore continue their killing spree, and make what you will of the fact that they kill Ant, but leave Dec. Far more interesting, though, is that we finally learn what is behind the sealed wall of the TARDIS, what has been back there scratching from time to time (particularly in Lance Parkin's previous book). Place your last bets now, before I reveal that it is...

....1000-1 outsider, K9!!! Rather confusingly Romana sent him on a mission to kill the Doctor, to stop the Doctor destroying Gallifrey - but the TARDIS, whether deliberately or not, built a bloomin' great wall across the little beggar's path, so he couldn't carry out his instructions!

Chapter Eleven revels in the title of "The Vore Games" (Brendan, stop honking). We also learn, and remember you heard it here first folks (unless you've read the book, obviously) that the original owner of the beloved Type 40 that the Doctor >ahem< borrowed all those years ago... is none other than Marnal himself. Marnal is about to spill the beans on the actual, genuine, real reason the Doctor originally fled Gallifrey (on page 242) but is inconveniently interrupted. Darn. Interestingly, the fact that the TARDIS is/was Marnal's, coupled with the description of his earlier incarnation as "white hair... aquiline nose... high forehead" leads me to wonder whether the on-board ghost from The Deadstone Memorial was in fact meant to be him, rather than (as I thought at the time) the spirit of Billy Hartnell.

Another Interlude allows Mr Parkin to reach continuity meltdown. Following on from the previous one, this flashback shows Marnal's return to Gallifrey after his first encounter with the Vorn. There he quickly meets up with two people who, although not explicity identified as such, are clearly intended to be the Doctor's parents. The father is Ulysses (as per various rather alarming potential TV proposals during the 1990s - although it is stated here that Ulysses is not his real name, he has just adopted it for reasons of pretention). The mother is an Earth woman with red hair called Penelope - she hails from the 19th Century, which if nothing else may explain the Doctor's inexplicable passion for frock coats and cravats.

Not only that, but we also finish the almost-forgotten flash-forward sequence from (another Lance Parkin book) Father Time - here we meet the woman with long blonde hair, and the blue-skinned Mr Saldaamir. The latter in particular has no relevancy to the plot, and is just there, one assumes, to 'complete the set' - however, it is interesting to note that he is described as "the last survivor of the Time Wars in the ancient past." The blonde lady, incidentally, goes by the name of the Lady Larna - the Lady Larn was the name given to Susan in Eric Saward's short story for the Radio Times 20th Anniversary Special, although Larna was also a character in EDA Unnatural History. Brain hurting yet folks?

Well let's bash on - these various Gallifreyan inhabitants talk of various futures, where Gallifrey suffers a series of invasions. It is made clear that it is important that Gallifrey is one day destroyed, but that they must ensure it is destroyed by the right people (person?) at the right time - whether this is restricting its scope solely to the books, and therefore means that the Sontarans, for example, must be thwarted when they invade so that one day the Doctor can blow it up himself; or whether, more intriguingly, it means that the whole scenario per The Ancestor Cell should not have happened, and that the Ninth Doctor/Dalek Time War era should have seen Gallifrey destroyed, is not clear. Either way, the author is certainly comprehensive in his listing of would-be invaders, naming (although probably not shaming) Omega (The Three Doctors and Arc of Infinity), the Sontarans (The Invasion of Time), Tannis (webcast Death Comes To Time), Faction Paradox, Varnax (from the most-often touted movie treatment during the 1990s), Catavolcus (from comic strip The Tides of Time) and the Timewyrm (which brings us neatly full circle, back to the very first of the NAs).

Chapter Twelve brings the plot to a head. There is a rather elegant in-joke, with the Doctor quoting something he once told G.K. Chesterton, but referring to him as "G.K. Chetterton"; the location of the TARDIS' first aid kit is lovingly nicked from Shada; and in a similar vein the Doctor tells the dying Marnal that "You were my childhood hero." Make of this what you will, but if nothing else it suggests that the infamously amnesia-stricken Doctor may have somewhere along the line regained some of his memories...

Even more beautifully, the chapter ends with the Doctor apparently resurrecting Fitz before Trix' very eyes, allowing him the not-inaccurate comment that "I brought the dead back to life on my very first day in the job." Although, as we later learn, in this instance Fitz (and many, many others) have not actually been killed, but rather sprayed with an insect scent that somehow makes them invisible to other humans. The Doctor, not being human, can see all the supposedly dead people just milling around.

The final chapter is Chapter Thirteen (would it be too much for me to suggest that this number was chosen since it is the number of lives a Timelord has?) and is called "It's the End..." Oddly enough, it isn't really. The Doctor mentions that he is about to be visited by somebody he doesn't know (called General Lethbridge-Stewart - the promotion having been given to him the last time we were in this sort of situation, back in The Dying Days) and then our heroes go off to the South Americas where the insect Vore have constructed a gigantic nest, like a termite-mound.

The book ends with them atop the mound, debating whether they can save the world from the Vore, and if so, how. There are some vague intimations that this might be where he regenerates - Fitz says that, if the Doctor dies trying, "he'll come back, all-new and better than ever"; Trix suggests maybe he'll come back "with a bit of fashion sense this time"; and the Doctor "tugs at the lapels of his frock coat, perhaps for the last time." But in reality the scene isn't about the end, the potential death of the Doctor, and an 'end of mankind' scenario - in fact it's quite the reverse, an uplifting affirmation of what the Doctor is and what he does, and perched atop the ventilation holes, the way into the termite nest, the book ends with a glorious image to end the eighth Doctor's reign: "he leaps..."

SO IS THAT EVERYTHING TIED UP NEATLY THEN?

Oddly enough, the very things I expected this book to do (restore the Doctor's memory, and Gallifrey) are the two things it doesn't actually do. However, we do get enough hints to see how Gallifrey, or at least a new Gallifrey, might be created.

The Doctor's empty mind at the start of The Burning - this turns out not to have been simply post-traumatic amnesia, an attempt to keep the truth of what he'd done from himself. Rather, he and Compassion had quickly emptied the Doctor's mind so that he could download the entire Matrix (the repository of the experiences of all the Timelords) into his mind.

There are various comments during the later stages of the book, that what is needed is something into which those memories can be downloaded - the Doctor can't access them from where they are, he is only the carrier. Think of a zip file, that is compressed for storage purposes, ready to be 'inflated' for use later on. The suggestion is that perhaps the very thing for the job would be Compassion...

....and a comment at the end of the book, that K9 has been sent off to Espero (see Half Life) to act as a bloodhound, leads me to the conclusion that the enigmatic Madame Xing from that book was none other than Compassion herself. Looking back at Half Life, there are possible clues that I didn't pick up on at the time - not only does Madam Xing and her entire chamber appear before the Doctor's very eyes, the chamber has SIX walls, and reminds the Doctor of a similar place he'd once known. Xing also says, in answer to the Doctor's asking whether they have met before, that "When you REMEMBER me, then we will have met." Of course, I may just be a typical human, seeing patterns in things that aren't there.

That's Gallifrey's fate and future sorted, also the mystery of who Madam Xing might have been. The only question mark I still have is who the four (five, if we include Marnal) remaining Timelords are/were. The Doctor, of course, and Iris Wildthyme (we've seen her since The Ancestor Cell remember). The man with the rosette is another, but it seems now that he is NOT The Master - the Master figures here, imprisoned within the Eye of Harmony (by the way, the Doctor defeats him by dropping a bloody great moon on him - don't ask). Arguably it doesn't matter who the other two are, and yet The Adventuress of Henrietta Street seemed at great pains to make the rosetted man significant. Maybe I'm missing the obvious?

Finally, finally, in this section, what happens to Fitz and Trix? Most significantly, at the very start of the book, they get together, as an item. Fitz the stud, remember? They intend to leave the Doctor, Trix's dealings with Anji in the... futures market, meaning that there is quite a nice little nest egg for them to fall back on. Trix trusts Fitz with her real name, and he gives his life for her (albeit he ends up not actually dying, but he doesn't know he'll survive when he does it), and they seem set...

....except, with a last-minute twist, the lyrics to one of Fitz' original songs (sung during the course of the book) are printed in full after the last page of the story, and they suggest that sooner or later Fitz and Trix will split up. They suggest, in fact, that he already knows that. Maybe that is the over-riding theme of the novel, in terms of the regulars at least - nothing does ever actually come to a neat, all-tied-up, happy-ever-after, ending. We leave the eighth Doctor without Gallifrey having been restored, and without his having fully thwarted the Vore invasion; in fact we literally leave him hanging, mid-jump, in mid-air. Similarly, we leave Fitz and Trix in a relationship, which becomes not the ending, but the beginning of their story.

I - AM - THE - DOCTOR!

We've mentioned most of this already I think, but, yes, it is a good book for the eighth Doctor's character. He learns the truth about his past, and he learns to live with it. He 'resurrects' Fitz, which is a nice symmetry with the TV Movie; and he ends the book setting out to save the world again.

The eighth Doctor has been a bizarre hybrid creation. The TV Movie sketched him as a noble, human soul, full of a real zest and passion for life. Whether, if a TV series had spun off from that, Paul McGann's characterisation would have changed (as all the other Doctors have over time) we'll never know - the Big Finish audio range gives, I suppose, some pointers, although of the three I've listened to, neither The Twilight Kingdom nor Faith Stealer really develops the Doctor very much, and the third (the wonderful The Chimes of Midnight) pretty much sticks to the 'joie de vivre' of the TV Movie.

The EDA range, though, has given us almost two versions of the eighth Doctor. As well as the lover of life mentioned above, there has been another side to the book series which has taken the Doctor in a darker direction, more like the seventh Doctor in some of the NAs. Personally I don't think this has worked all that well - at its worst, this more dour Doctor has resulted in some fairly grim and unsatisfying books. When the eighth Doctor has been allowed to be the flamboyant, exuberant, grinning hero of his 1996 adventure, coat tails a-flapping, full of energy and life, it has worked better - and perhaps that's simply because it's far easier then to picture him as the Paul McGann eighth Doctor rather than just a faceless 'the Doctor' character in a book. I suppose it comes down to a matter of taste, and as an unashamed fan of the TV Movie, I prefer the books when the Doctor has been like he was when he first turned back death and emerged from the San Francisco mortuary on New Year's Eve 1999.

So, goodbye Doctor number eight - as the incarnation with the shortest on-screen life, but with the most literary adventures, you're going to take some beating. You really were... fantastic!

MONEY IN THE BANK ZILDA!

This Book: I was offered this one, quite out of the blue, by our very own 'Logo Polish', for £3.00 all in. Brand, spanking new, that's a saving of £2.99. Thanks Iain!!

Final Score: I make that a grand total of £121.40 saved against RRP. Tt, five billion years and it still comes down to money.