Can someone who's read this book tell me if it gives an explanation for Holmes, a fictional character, appearing alongside the Doctor, who is of course real? I did try to read it, but life's too short to deliberately inflict such boredom on myself in order to satisfy my intellectual curiousity.

As any fan of Sherlock Holmes can tell you, A. Conan Doyle was Dr. John Watson's literary agent. Watson was writing up the adventures of his friend and roommate, which appeared in slightly fictionalized form under Doyle's name. The Baker Street Irregulars (the international fan club of Sherlock Holmes) have written volumes of articles on the Holmes Canon, explaining inconsitancies and contradicitons, much in the manner of this bulletin board. I have a copy of "The Annonated Sherlock Holmes", filled with copious side notes on the stories. It's two volumes, about the size of the New York (or London) Yellow Pages.

If you like Holmes, you might like "All Consuming Fire", but you also might be offended at the way Holmes is made fun of.

Thanks for the explanation. I'm not sure you can compare those sad Sherlock Holmes fans with us, though. They are trying to explain contradictions, whilst we (well, me anyway) are trying to find and proudly parade nits. Still - we must not be beaten by these weirdos (presumably including yourself - or do you have Sherlock Holmes volumes merely to use as a doorstop?). Who's volunteering to write a yellow-pages-size proof of the Doctor's existence, resolving all contraditions in the process?

Actually, the Annotated Holmes is a very good book. I've always been a fan, and William S. Baring-Gould's notes are quite entertaining. There is quite a bit of nit-picking (for example, the snake descibed in "The Speckled Band" doesn't match any known species, and does things no snake could possibly do). There's also a lot of speculating about the Holmes "Missing Adventures", like the unwritten "Giant Rat of Sumatra" (possibly one of Magnus Greel's?), or what did Holmes do during the two years between his apparent death at Reichenbach Falls, and his return in "The Mystery of the Empty House."

As to the Who volumes, if you combine the Handbooks and the Decade books, I think you're talking a very substantial reference work right there.

And who's calling who a weirdo? I happen to own both a deerstalker cap AND a 17 foot long multi-colored scarf.

Anyone notice that Holmes and Watson have two huge meals after the other? The maid serves them one, then a tale is recounted, and all of a sudden they're being dished up another three times their own bdoy weight. Think it's about a third of the way in.

That's typical for stories of those time periods. Holmes and Watson often had breakfast, lunch, tea, and dinner, plus a possible late night snack. I think the theory was, eat now, cos you never know when your next meal might be.

I was cross-checking dates with ACF and my Annontated Holmes, and I have a possible nit. The novel is set in the winter of 1887, and features Sherlock's brother Mycroft as an already established figure. However, the date assigned to Mycroft's first appearance (in "The Greek Interpreter") is late 1888. Up to that point, Watson never knew Holmes had a brother (let alone two!).

A lot of Baring-Gould's chronology goes against conventional Holmes scholarship. Most students of the stories give an earlier date to "The Greek Interpreter" than Baring-Gould does, varying from 1882-1886.

I myself do not agree with everything in Baring-Gould's chronology, although I must bow to the intensive detailed work he did in trying to establish the dates. Because of the convuluted nature of the Holmes timeline, anyone who tries to compile a definitive chronology of the series is bound to involve themselves in a storm of controversy.

True; one contracdictory story and the whole dating system collapses. I'm loathe to criticize Baring-Gould's chronology, because he's obviously spent WAY too much time researching it.

Baring-Gould also wrote a biography of Sherlock Holmes called "Sherlock Holmes of Baker Street", whose appendix contains a chronology slightly different from the one that appears in the Annotated Sherlock Holmes. The format Baring-Gould used in this biography apparently appealed to science fiction writer Phillip Jose Farmer, who used the same approach with his biographies of fictional heroes Tarzan ("Tarzan Alive") and Doc Savage ("Doc Savage: His Apocolyptic Life"). The appendices to each of these books contain chronologies just like the Baring-Gould work, incorporating the twenty-four Tarzan novels and the one-hundred-and-eighty-one Doc Savage novels. In the books, Farmer reconciles inconsistincies in the stories by claiming that "literary agents" Edgar Rice Burroughs and Lester Dent changed certain facts and dates to obscufate information they wished to kept concealed, as Watson and Doyle did with Holmes. All of these books make very entertaining reading.

Yeah, I have the Doc Savage biography and I love it. I thought it was hilarious that Farmer managed to have virtually every fictional hero and villian of the last 250 years related to Holmes, Tarzan, and Doc Savage.

For those that haven't read it, it's out of print but worth the search.

Farmer's chronology of the Doc Savage stories is to me, even more impressive than Baring-Gould's Holmes chronology. Baring-Gould had just four novels and 56 short stories to work with. Farmer had 181 novels (most of them a good sized 60,000 words), and not only did he actually read them all, but was able to search out such meticulous clues necessary to a chronology (such as noticing a "fingernail moon" mentioned in one), and did all this apparently in just a few years researching the bio. And this is in addition to the other literary activities which surely must have been occupying his time. Wow! I have all but six of the Doc Savage titles, but I'll probably never get around to reading them all, much less examining them in such detail.

Farmer is a very well read person, of both the great literature and the "good junk", to borrow Ellison's phrase. If you remember from the Savage autobiography, Farmer had read most of the novels in his youth. I'm a fan of Doc Savage, too, and I can tell you from experience that you can read them in about half a day.

Since Farmer had a contract to write the book on Doc Savage, he had the luxury to spend time re-reading them. Sounds like a great job.

Another interesting tidbit about Farmer, then I'll return you to Doctor Who: Farmer has said he's invented a great way to work around writer's block. Whenever he has trouble writer as himself, he uses a pseudonym of a different, fictional writer. He's written as Johnatan Swift Somers III (his own creation), Kilgore Trout (from Vonnegut's "Breakfast of Champions"), Leo Queequeeg Tincrowder (another of his own), and a great pastiche called "The Jungle Rot Kid on the Nod" (what if William Burroughs instead of Edgar Rice Burroughs had written Tarzan?).

Not nearly as boring as I claimed after my first attempt. In fact, the first two-thirds is quite good, but it then falls down badly after they land on the alien planet and either get captured or start walking around without enough air. And it's way too fanwanky - the inclusion of Moriarty is totally unnecessary. And the climax must have been a let-down, because I've forgotten it already. And Ace's reaction to Watson touching her on the arm to get her attention is a bit, um, extreme. And not exactly in keeping with the other Vigin books in which she shags her way through the galaxy.

But I liked the twist. In the normal way, aliens-invading-Earth would NOT exactly qualify as a twist, but I'd actually fallen for the Earth-is-going-to-invade-aliens idea. Well, it would have made a change (OK, not THAT much of a change, given the behaviour of the Earth Empire c2400-3000, but a BIT of a change).

That reminds me, when are we actually going to see a story when the nasty imperialist humans are invading some nice peaceful aliens and the only way for the Doctor to stop them is to blow them sky-high. I.e. when are we going to see Warriors of the Deep in reverse?

Andy Lane in DWM: 'While writing All-Consuming Fire, I was told by Peter Darvill-Evans that Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson would become the new companions. Even when I finished the book it was on the cards - hence the ambiguous ending.'

Hmm. Sherlock and the Doctor might go PERFECTLY together in THAT YouTube clip (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0av4se_430) but not so much here, or in Happy Endings.

So if Conan-Doyle based his tales about the Great Detective on Madam Vastra (The Snowmen) what the hell is going on HERE? Was it really Vastra and Jenny who accompanied the Doctor, Ace and Benny on this particular adventure? That must have entailed some SERIOUS rewriting. Though I suppose it might explain why Ace was so mortally offended when 'Watson' touched her arm. Maybe she's hideously homophobic, as befits a good 80s girl? Or maybe she just found Jenny's accent highly annoying.

Or maybe Dr Simeon was just lying.

Emily, how can you expect a 1994 writer to know about characters that would not be created for nearly two decades?

Well, these people must have SOME basis for their temerity in appointing themselves the Lonely God's official scribes. Presumably access to the Matrix, or something. Though I suppose I should cut them a bit of slack, we all (bar Hartnell) know that history can be rewritten...

There is a difference between saying "how can we reconcile All-Consuming Fire and the new series?" and "who is this fool who couldn't predict exactly what was going to be in the new series 11 years before it even began?"

Though admittedly Emily does sometimes go in for the latter...

I don't see why I can't adopt BOTH approaches. Simultaneously.

In 1994, the idea that Doctor Who would return was probably not even considered.

RTD might have been thinking of it back then, but, at that point, he didn't have the power and influence to make it happen.

In 1994, the Doctor Who world was abuzz with news of the series coming back as a big budget American thang under the auspices of Steven Spielberg's Amblin production company. They were writing scripts and auditoning Doctors. The idea that the programme might come back was very much under consideration.

Did it occur to anyone at the time that this would kill the NAs? Or did they expect a glorious new lease of life...?

In 1994, the Doctor Who world was abuzz with news of the series coming back as a big budget American thang under the auspices of Steven Spielberg's Amblin production company.

And considering how that turned out, they should have said "Yankee go home!" A point that was reinforced when Torchwood: Miracle Day came along (this is one of the few things Kate and I can agree on, this was HORRILE).

Though I'm not sure how much Kate's agreement is WORTH in the circumstances, said circumstances being her refusal to watch Torchwood: Miracle Day AT ALL.

Though I'm not sure how much Kate's agreement is WORTH in the circumstances, said circumstances being her refusal to watch Torchwood: Miracle Day AT ALL.

Lucky her.

I made it, what, four episodes, before I bailed out.

Did it occur to anyone at the time that this would kill the NAs? Or did they expect a glorious new lease of life...?

It wasn't really a consideration and probably wouldn't have been if things had gone ahead as planned. Virgin losing their licence seems to have been an accident of timing and circumstances rather than part of the BBC's game plan.

I made it, what, four episodes, before I bailed out.

Come on...only SIX more episodes of Torchwood EVER (probably)...you can make it! Nitcentral needs you!

Sorry, Emily, but I would rather fight a rabid Ood single handed than subject myself to Miracle Day again.

Fair enough *sigh*.

Audio adaptation:

Bubbles along enjoyably enough, I suppose.

Very handy for an audio, being able to have all that narration from Watson. (Slightly less convincing that Benny should also narrate cos, er, she showed Watson all her private diaries.)

Watson recognises the Pope's crest?

'Like some huge dun-coloured beetle' - since when has Watson referred to Holmes in such terms?

OR admitted to reading 'morally suspect poetry'?

'No fixed abode' 'Oh, I have a fixed abode, but it travels' - ugg, that is RUBBISH in comparison with THAT Talons scene ('I see. Persons of no fixed abode.' 'No, no, no, no. We do have an abode. It's called a Tardis.' 'A Tardis.' 'But it's not fixed.' 'I can give you and the young lady a fixed abode, sir. Quite easily.' 'Flat-footed imbecile.')

Seven stayed with Litefoot?! But the Jago & Litefoot audios have never mentioned such a thing!

'Gallifrey. You were wondering where I came from.' 'That's astounding. How did you know' - a bloke who LIVES WITH SHERLOCK HOLMES shouldn't be THAT impressed by such a deduction.

What are the Doctor and Watson doing in prison, all of a sudden? Were they actually stupid enough to call the police after that woman spontaneously combusted? And then got themselves arrested despite Watson SURELY being well-known to the police as AN INVESTIGATOR? AND get told they'll never see the light of day unless the police start believing in spontaneous human combustion?

'"I'll see you tomorrow" - and with that he walked off into the dark' - sorry, which bit of 'DON'T LET THE DOCTOR OUT OF YOUR SIGHT' did Watson somehow not grasp?

'Gang members had been disappearing for months...the police had no idea' - hang on, GANG MEMBERS reported disappearances to THE POLICE who duly investigated?

Would Holmes and Watson really run away in a cowardly and undignified manner from the criminal who they'd just persuaded NOT to cut their hands off?

Cats fare unusually well in this novel - not only does someone spontaneously combust in the vicinity of the darlings without singeing a hair on their fluffy bodies, but they actually get a trip in the TARDIS, the jammy gits. But several thousand points are deducted for the Doctor asking 'Have you ever read Poe?' It's an unusually subtle way of getting in the twin NA obsessions of feline-hurting and eye-gouging but IT DOEN'T FOOL ME.

'You've obviously never read your Shakespeare. Terrible place to hide' the Doctor lectures a monster vis-a-vis hiding behind the arras - grossly hypocritical in view of the fact HE was hiding behind the arras in the last book/audio (which occurred very recently indeed if the Mexanus mud on his clothes is anything to go by).

'We'd be better off if they'd all stayed in London' - the Doctor SERIOUSLY thinks that SHERLOCK HOLMES is a real drag to have on an investigation?!

Why, when hearing that a suspect is leaving for India tomorrow, does Sherlock declare that he'll follow him all the way to India - instead of attempting to intercept him while he's still in England?

Benny, Holmes and Watson agreed that the only thing they could do was chase the suspect, not, say, the kidnapped-by-a-monster Doctor?

Why inform us that some foreigner had a 'pure Oxford accent' before announcing he went to Cambridge?

Benny claims that 'home' is 'a small room full of cat-hair and underwear' - in the dimensionally-transcendental TARDIS? Pre-Wolsey?

'The missing gang-members, I'll be bound' - why ON EARTH bother to export a few petty thugs all the way from England to India? Surely it would be cheaper and easier to recruit some Indian petty thugs?

'I will be King...I will be God' - but you just said you were invading other worlds for the British Empire. And your battle-cry is 'Fight on! For the Empire! For Victoria!'

'Tell you what, if we get through this, I'll let you buy me dinner' - how sexist of Benny.

Blimey, don't remember any 'Sorry about your brother, whom I watched turn into an alien and then helped kill' vibes coming from Benny when she saw Mycroft Holmes in the Diogenes Damsel audio.

She 'infects men with the power of her thoughts' - er, AND WOMEN, she was infecting Ace two minutes ago.

So the Doctor's running around 1906 San Francisco without noticing that the earthquake's caused by a mad Time Lady's psychic weapon? (Doom Coalition 2.)

The Great Detective didn't notice that his older brother was turning into an alien monstrosity? What a cretin.

Benny practically offers Watson sex if he gets her a really good dinner. When did she become a prostitute? (And does he make her sex-list in Happy Endings, does anyone remember?)

Ace is a bit of a waste of space, isn't she. Mind you, so's Sherlock Holmes. Dunno why the Doc's telling him how brilliant he is, I don't remember him actually DOING anything, and McCoy's no New Who squeeing fanboy.

Where's the eponymous all-consuming fire?

'Gang members had been disappearing for months...the police had no idea' - hang on, GANG MEMBERS reported disappearances to THE POLICE who duly investigated?

They surely would have family and friends outside the gangs who could report their disappearances, and the police would notice their affiliations later during their investigation.

I suspect any friends and family would be sternly warned never to contact the coppers under any circumstances. And any police who did try to investigate would have been met with cries of 'Kill the Rozzer!' the way Sherlock was when he unsuccessfully tried to infltrate these people.

In that case the police could have noticed the disappearances on their own, or they might have been told by informants.

But would they have bothered to investigate without a sobbing family begging them to bring back their breadwinner/breadstealer? Or just shrugged and said 'Good riddance to the scum'? I wouldn't have blamed 'em, Victorian police must have had a LOT on their plates.

Or just shrugged and said 'Good riddance to the scum'?

That probably would be their reaction, unless they get an inkling that this is only the tip of a much more sinister iceberg, which it is. Or there could be some city official putting pressure on them because he wants to build some political capital, or an overzealous reporter smelling a story and breathing down their necks to make a name for himself (I use the masculine form here because, lets face it, female officials or reporters were few and far between in Victorian times)

That probably would be their reaction, unless they get an inkling that this is only the tip of a much more sinister iceberg, which it is

I don't think PC Plod in those days got such inklings unless Holmes, Jago or Litefoot TOLD them to. Which doesn't seem to be the case here.

Or there could be some city official putting pressure on them because he wants to build some political capital

'Save the scum!' would be a pretty dangerous way of trying to make political capital.

or an overzealous reporter smelling a story and breathing down their necks to make a name for himself

Then he ought to have sniffed out himself that they're all being shipped off to India (on account of India having a surprising lack of criminals, apparently) instead of this coming as a surprise to the Doctor, Sherlock Holmes, et al.

Bookwyrm:

'"There's Cthulhu, who we met in Haiti...and the Gods of Ragnarok...and Dagon, who was worshipped by the Sea Devils, and the entity known as Hastur the Unspeakable, who calls himself Fenric...And Yog-Sothoth, who I met in Tibet and again in London, and Lloigor, who settled quite happily on Vortis..." In one fell swoop, the mystery and wonder of the Lovecraft mythos is pointlessly shoehorned into the Doctor Who universe. Very, very badly' - to hell with ruining Lovecraft's universe - Sea Devils have a god? Fenric's real name is Hastur the Unspeakable? The Great Intelligence's real name is Yog-Sothoth? Even the Lethbridge-Stewart novels didn't sink so low as to call him a stupid name like THAT during the fifty-million times they've wheeled him out. Also, we SAW how the Great Intelligence was created (The Snowmen) and he wasn't a Great Old One from a previous universe...

'At one point Bernice casually notes that bisexuality is the norm in her era. These days, that's a fairly throwaway line that you might not even notice, but in 1994 it was hugely controversial. Only a few years out from the TV series, the idea of companions having a sex life at all had been hard to accept for some readers, so the concept of - gasp - some gay loving was utterly terrifying to Doctor Who fans. Which is a very odd sentence to write' - I was just smugly congratulating myself on how far humanity has come in so short a time when I remembered how shocked I was a year or two ago when a male Time Lord casually referred to his husband in the Gallifrey audios. I mean, I'm passionately in favour of gay marriage FOR HUMANS but it was just a jolting little reminder that Time Lords have something as ludicrous as SEX these days. (Though praise be to JODIE! at least the Doctor seems to have given it up for this incarnation...)

'What does not gel at all...is the two world-views. The Doctor's universe is one of unlikely events, strange happenings, wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey inexplicable stuff. Holmes's is the precise opposite: everything is explicable, rational, scientifically correct...in order to tell a (not desperately good) Doctor Who story, All-Consuming Fire tears up the rules that define Holmes's world...[he] now has to include the possibility of alien kidnap, time travel, dimensional transference caused by a song (seriously?!?) and flying Rakshassa...this book invalidates every Holmes story that is apparently set after it, many of which have apparently supernatural elements that end up having rational explanations, however improbable' - ah, no doubt true, but why should we care? We're Who Fans. Holmes was getting above himself, wandering into OUR universe.

Also, we SAW how the Great Intelligence was created (The Snowmen) and he wasn't a Great Old One from a previous universe...

Yeah, how stupid of this 1990's writer, not knowing about something that wouldn't be written for another 20 years.

To be honest, the whole Great Old One from previous/next universe stuff was pretty stupid even before it was comprehensively disproved. (If not as stupid as TennantDoc's refusal to believe in the CONCEPT of a previous universe but that's another issue.)

From December 15 2015:
"Free download of Doctor Who: All-Consuming Fire Part 1 with the code 221b:
http://www.bigfinish.com/offers/v/allconsumingfire

This is an adaptation of the New Adventures novel of the same name in which the Seventh Doctor meets Sherlock Holmes.

Although Holmes and Watson are portrayed by Nick Briggs and Richard Earl respectively who also played them in Big Finish's own Sherlock Holmes range, the adaptation of All-Consuming Fire is not design as a crossover between Big Finish's Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes ranges."

Listened to the whole story.

Incidentally this was released on my birthday on December 9 2015.
The Doctor and Holmes and their cohorts join forces when books from Library of St. John the Beheaded got stolen.
These are not ordinary books as it is dangerous in all of creation.
The villains in this is revealed to be the Azazoth and Sherlock's own brother Sherringford (Hugh Fraser).
A very haunting and superb crossover between Doctor Who and Sherlock Holmes and what a resolution that it delivers.
Somewhat haunting the coda to this that came afterwards.

Interesting the interviews that accompanied this including Nick Briggs saying about playing Sherlock Holmes prior to this crossover.
Also with the interviewees saying what icons the Doctor and Sherlock Holmes have become.