My biggest problem with this book was the mysterious character helping Ace in the future. I had just about convinced myself it was a future version of the Doctor all the way up until the end.

Does anyone have any idea who this drunken bloke is supposed to be?

No idea, because I couldn't be bothered to read the book. The New Adventures are boring enough even WITH the Doctor. If you recommend it, I'll give it a go, and then I'll be in a position to attack you for thinking for one moment that any 'drunken bloke' might be my hero.

Well, knowing some of your preferences, I don't think you'd enjoy it. It's 97% Benny and Ace, with the Doctor making a totally unneccessary appearance at the end (he was busy appearing in the NA "Iceberg"). Benny's in 1880's London and suffering from a fever for most of it, while Ace is on a desolated planet (which is revealed to be *yawn* future Earth (as if we didn't see that coming)). Also, the TARDIS is bollocksed (is that spelled right?) up for most of the book, too. I love the TARDIS, so when a writer messes with my darling, it just about kills my interest (one reason why I don't really like "Frontios").

I think I read the NA's and MA's mostly out of duty. I haven't outright hated one yet, but I'm still waiting to make a solid connection with their version of the Doctor.

Yes, I plough through them out of a sense of duty as well (though there are some TERRIFIC NAs out there - somewhere). Occasionally I wonder why I don't feel a duty to read something that might actually expand my mind, or at least stop my parents giving me a 'oh my god she's still reading Doctor Who, what did we do to deserve a daughter with a mental age of four' look. It would help if most libraries would stop stocking NAs in the Children's Section - this leads to SEVERE embarrassment.

Luckily they are lumped in with the "series SF" section in the bookstore.

I overstated my position earlier. I did enjoy the Timewyrm books, and there was something about "Transit" I really liked (probably the idea of an interplanetary subway). What I don't like is when the authors start turning the Doctor into a neurotic. Sure it makes him more "human", but if I wanted realism, I'd read John Updike or Philip Roth.

Emily, it doesn't hurt to read an occasional non-Who book. They at least serve to give you a different perspective on the Who genre. I'm reading one of Patric O'Brien's Jack Aubrey sea novels right now. It's so full of naval terminology I had to break down and buy a reader's guide for it. Arhhh!

Mike, I didn't mean to imply I only read Who books. Reading - mostly sf and fantasy - is my life, and if I only had the NAs to keep me going, I'd commit suicide. Everything else I read for the joy of it, whilst with the NAs it's because I feel a compulsion to discover everything possible about the Doctor. (And they haven't exactly been forthcoming.) If I read some Shakespeare or Dickins (or even Patrick O'Brien - my dad is an addict) then at least my parents would be happy, and it couldn't possibly be any more boring than 'Dreamstone Moon'.

I hadn't noticed the Doctor being particularly neurotic - but then I hadn't noticed the Doctor much in any of the NAs.

*snicker* I love Benny, lots, I appear to be one of the few, so those bits of the book were good. However, since I dislike Iceberg in the extreme and most of this book as well.. *sigh*

And, PLEASE.. The aliens.. *shudder*

The mysterious 'drunken bloke' (AKA Muldwych) is a future incarnation of the Doctor and is also in 'Happy Endings' and is referred to in 'Battlefield' (though more extensively in the novelisation then the TV version).
He's also sometimes known as 'Merlin'.

Dude, where's my TARDIS?

I finally surrendered and read this - the only NA that I hadn't so much as glanced at. It was a real exercise in nostalgia, so I managed to enjoy it despite the fact that it's - oh, I'm not allowed to use that word - that it's not very good. At all.

Unsurprisingly, I was not exactly enamoured of the vision of an ammoral future Doctor spending a thousand years on top of a barren mountain getting drunk. (Though I suppose this means that at least he gets his memory back...eventually.) Couldn't he have whipped up a TARDIS or distress beacon or something? He certainly manages to get a steady supply of alcohol from somewhere.

Come to think of it, even the idea of him spending five years in Russia teaching English is just too much to swallow.

The 'manipulative Doctor' and 'embittered TARDIS crew' stuff was taken to ludicrous lengths. The Doctor doesn't lift a finger to prevent the Charrl invasion, but does keep popping back to buy Benny dresses and Margaret funeral flowers? Benny thinks, however briefly, that maybe the Doctor had smashed an eighty-year-old woman's head in (and Victoria's aunt, into the bargain!) just to get her arrested, and therefore away from the East End the night it was dangerous? Puh-lease!

I'm also slightly suspicious of authors who just lurve ripping women to shreds (except Lawrence with Dead Romance, of course). Though I suppose one can only be grateful that this didn't turn out to be another god-awful Jack the Ripper story like Matrix. (Though at least Matrix gave you a feeling of the terror of being alone and penniless in the London of a century or so ago. In Birthright Benny had it waaaaay too easy, with her cosy home and her quarter-of-a-million-pound bank account. Even when she got arrested, the Prime Minister (!) promptly if rather unconvincingly appeared to let her out.)

And then it cut off without a proper ending. What happened to New Dawn, who allegedly controlled every police station in the capital? Popov and Benny ought to at least have got a good-bye scene. And I thought Benny was infected by the Charrl and should be giving birth to little Charrl baby? And how come Benny was mentally taken over by the Charrl infection whilst whatshername who DID duly give birth to a Charrl baby wasn't mentally affected?

And talking of the Charrl, isn't their character transformation a bit much to take? I mean, no doubt there's a good novel to be written about what the desperation to survive might do to a bunch of Ghandhian pacifist insects, but this isn't it. 'We are the most civilised and peace-loving race in the universe, ooh look there's a lovely juicy human, let's rip it to shreds and eat it, it's against our principles, but what the heck.'

And I really, REALLY didn't want to know about Ace's taut thights and pert breasts, thank you.

'The Doctor took the item gingerly from Muldwych's hand, careful not to touch the other man's flesh' - Happy Endings. Yup, does kinda imply he's a future Doctor. Except that future Doctors CAN touch - Ten couldn't keep his hands of Five in Time Crash. (Can anyone think of anything a bit more canonical? Did they shake hands in Five Docs or anything?) Certainly different Amys could touch in Big Bang without Blinovitch getting in a tizzy. (Though this was, of course, post-the destruction of Gallifrey when the Laws of Time could be rewritten...)

There's also a mention in Happy Endings of Brax and Muldwych being 'a couple of Time Lords'.

Hmm. Not sure why anyone bothered adapting Birthright for a Benny audio (other than the obvious fact that removing the Doctor from THIS story isn't exactly rocket-science).

An alien invasion has never felt so...slow.

Benny's proficient in six forms of unarmed combat? Since when?

I can understand Benny's inability NOT to tell the locals they're chauvinistic gits, but could she at least have the sense not to flash all that silver around?

So any old idiot (i.e. Jason Kane) owns a universal translator? But (in a desperate attempt not to reduce the TARDIS's miraculous translation abilities to commonplace) they don't last long for no readily apparent reason.

Benny's an expert on nineteenth-century Spring-Heeled Jack legends?

Benny is extraordinarily sentimental about her relationship (i.e. one-night stand) with John.

No one (even aforementioned chauvinistic gits) bats an eyelid at a FEMALE Professor?

Why is Jason so shocked to find humans in the Charrl larder? Which bit of the Charrl Queen repeatedly telling him that they ate humans and he might be next on the menu did he somehow not grasp?

Did police really do the whole 'may be given in evidence against you' stuff in 1909 or whenever this is?

Why is Benny so astonished that people want her powerful time ring?

'I've just handed over the future of my entire world to a bunch of overgrown grasshoppers' - yeah, that IS a bit stupid of Jason, especially after he did something so similar in Eternity Weeps.

'CHARLIE!' - could Benny yell at her rescuer any louder - before her captor is out of earshot?

'The Charrl must survive!' - it's not quite 'Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without your plum pudding' but it's still bloody repetitive.

'What about mankind?' - MANkind, Benny?

Bit stupid of the Charrl Queen to tell her human stooge that she's going to destroy humanity.

Which part of Benny's playing for time did Jason need telling while Benny was pretending that humans and Charrl could cooperate? How could the Queen NOT have heard their 'You'll never get mankind to compete with a bunch of giant grasshoppers' conversation?

The Charrl AGREE to go to an unpopulated planet?! You have GOT to be kidding me. Earth-invaders NEVER do THAT.

As a novel, it's worthless. As an addition to our sacred Whoniverse, it's worse than worthless. But from a nitpicker's point of view it's gold-dust...

'She knew it was fatal to give voice to her pain and discomfort: that would be seen as a sign of weakness...and her life would be forfeit' - all very well, except that this (THE VERY FIRST PAGE OF THE BOOK!) gives the lie to its later repeated assertions that the Charrl are 'the mightiest Venerators of Life this Universe has ever known'. (What, ASIDE from MURDERING their own Queen whenever she looks a bit tired, you mean? Harriet Jones doesn't know how lucky she was...)

'His lined and ruddy face, which hadn't seen a razor or a bar of soap for several days' - full marks for realising the Doctor needed to shave twelve years before the rest of us achieved this unwelcome knowledge whilst watching The Doctor Dances.

'His untidy grey-brown hair' - I always thought the Merlin Doctor was ginger! WHY did I think that?

'With a horrified detachment Lily felt her bladder and guts tumble, steaming and hot, from out of her belly, and onto the ground' - wow. SHE'S well-versed in biology, for an early-twentieth-century prostitute.

Oh, not Springheel ••••••• Jack, even JACK THE RIPPER would be preferable to Springheel ••••••• Jack, as seen (SO rubbishly) in Benny audios and DWM comics. (Of course, with all these women being so charmingly ripped to pieces, Jack the ••••••• Ripper is repeatedly referred to. In fact, most people seem to be getting the two Jacks muddled up, and who can blame them.)

'Just a shattered old blue box, whose paintwork was peeling, and whose woodwork was long since warped and rotten' - ouch. Parting of the Ways didn't give me the impression Sexy would rot THAT fast.

'"I've given this to few people, Benny," he said sombrely. "One of them was my granddaughter, Susan. Like the other keys I've given you it can be used only by you or another member of the TARDIS crew." He looked back at Ace. "I've given you your freedom, Ace," he said in answer to her unspoken but nevertheless loud complaint. "What more do you want?"' - sorry, WHAT! Why drag Susan into it? Why imply he's given Benny loads of TARDIS keys in the past (what did she DO to them!) Why imply they're semi-isomorphic? Why give one to Benny IN FRONT OF Ace? Why not give one to Ace? Why tell Ace he's 'given' her her 'freedom' like she's a SLAVE he's condescendingly manumitted?

'The Time Lord shrugged: he had more important things to occupy his mind that the vagaries of the female of the human species' - since when! He's ALWAYS liked playing with Earth girls and, let's face it, the Seventh Doctor has precious little independent existence beyond Ace and Benny.

'The young woman from Perivale...the archaeologist from the 25th century' - gods, what a CLUMSY way to refer to Ace and Benny.

'The sharp, unpolluted air, so fresh and different from that of her own dirty and grubby 25th century' - Oh-kay. Firstly, the streets of good old London Town in 1909 MIGHT no longer be running with raw sewage, but I doubt they were particularly wholesome, and secondly...Benny's been on LOADS of different planets in the 25th century. Some were no doubt highly industrialised (though SURELY humanity had invented SOME sort of filter by then to stop the industrialised air poisoning everyone?!) and SOME of them were clean empty alien worlds she was digging up relics in. So why the gross generalisation?

'She found them rather endearing, like minor characters from one of the Agatha Christie novels she'd read on disk in the TARDIS's eclectic library' - ah bless, an attempt to sound all futuristic that inevitably falls flat on its face! A disk? A DISK?! Even before Unicorn n'Wasp and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, we all just KNEW that OF COURSE Sexy's Library would have real live (well, hopefully not LITERALLY Vashta-Nerada-style LIVE)...real DEAD-tree BOOKS.

I don't remember Victoria EVER mentioning an Aunt Margaret Waterfield. Her father doesn't think to entrust her to Margaret instead of A CRAZY ALIEN? Victoria doesn't give her a second thought when deciding to settle down in the 1960s?

'A few trips in the TARDIS to selected points in history, a few pre-written letters posted at intervals from another country, and there might be tears, but there'll be no questions asked' - yeah, cos Troughton could TOTALLY steer that TARDIS. And Troughton TOTALLY got Professor Waterfield to sit down on Skaro to fill in a few postcards to his sister in case of his premature demise. And Old Who Doctors were TOTALLY obsessed with the feelings of their Companions' aunts.

'[Benny] tore off the stamp and slipped it into her pocket: if she ever got back home to the future, at least she'd be able to make some sort of hefty profit at a stamp auction' - since when has Benny EVER thought of leaving the Doctor? Since when has Benny been out to make a PROFIT out of her TARDIS travels? (Who does she think she is, Adam/Anji/Trix?) And PLEASE tell me that by the twenty-fifth century people have GIVEN UP COLLECTING STAMPS.

Since when has Benny announced sniffily that 'I'm a lady, I am'? Who does she think she is, Control?

'What do I do if someone stops me? Did they have credit cards in this century?' - er, hasn't Benny been stranded in this misfortunate time period for MONTHS? And isn't she a specialising-in-the-twentieth-century HISTORIAN?

Since when has Benny been MIND-BOGGLINGLY STUPID enough to flash masses of money around at a lowly tavern?

Since when has Benny regarded her chivalric rescuer (the very bloke she was thinking of settling down with with the benefit of hindsight in Happy Endings) as a 'randy old goat'?

Since when has Benny gone round threatening random passers-by with castration?

'"Vampires," said one of the crow knowledgeably. Cretin! thought Benny' - she doesn't believe in Vampires?! What about her youthful vampire experiences, as seen in BF's The Vampire Curse book?

'I can't read Cyrillic script' - Sexy isn't translating? And Benny CAN read ANCIENT MONDASIAN?!

'"Death approaches, my lady...But the throne is secure. James shall inherit the crown and the Protestant succession is assured..." Elizabeth smiled: that was as it should be. "Then I am content to die, Master Dee."' - you're ••••••• KIDDING me! Liz One meekly accepts DEATH and JAMES? Since WHEN!

'This was the England she'd always heard about, before the wars and the great love plague and the CyberWars' - haaaang on...the WHAT!!

And why would she suspect this England had never really existed, given that all it consists of is some bank clerks being extremely polite to a stinking-rich person using their bank?

'Even the most hardened con Benny had met would have betrayed his real emotions, by an involuntary blink of the eye, or just a slight change in the way he held himself' - really? They don't train people NOT to betray such signs, in a world where people like Benny are trained to spot them?

Benny has only cried TWICE in the past five years?! Someone read all previous Benny (and BF flashback) books IMMEDIATELY to check this!

'What have I done to upset her?' - which bit of 'One thing we don't like here is them what beats up poor defenceless old ladies' did you somehow not grasp?

Benny 'was trembling uncontrollably; her face was ashen with suspicion and doubt. Oh no, he wouldn't have, would he? Not even him. Not Margaret...But...but I don't know him like Ace does: he's an alien after all... Of course, he hadn't, she convinced herself; not even the Time Lord would have engineered a murder to keep Benny safely out of the East End on Saturday night (Would he?)' - Benny SERIOUSLY THINKS the Doctor MIGHT have beaten an innocent old lady (and aunt of his old friend) to death to keep her out of the East End?? Instead of say...LEAVING HER A NOTE?

To be continued...

Even before Unicorn n'Wasp and Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS, we all just KNEW that OF COURSE Sexy's Library would have real live (well, hopefully not LITERALLY Vashta-Nerada-style LIVE)...real DEAD-tree BOOKS.

Sure, but Journey also showed us that this library contains quite exotic items as well. That it has a section reserved to books on disk isn't that much of a stretch.

'Even the most hardened con Benny had met would have betrayed his real emotions, by an involuntary blink of the eye, or just a slight change in the way he held himself' - really? They don't train people NOT to betray such signs, in a world where people like Benny are trained to spot them?

It is virtually impossible to train someone to conceal those reactions. By the time one conciously reacts, the subconcious bits of their brain that handle those twitches have already done their job.

Sure, but Journey also showed us that this library contains quite exotic items as well. That it has a section reserved to books on disk isn't that much of a stretch.

Sure, THEORETICALLY Sexy should have books on EVERY format imaginable, including disks, but a) what crazy society would ever have gone through a disk-book phase? Surely they would (like us) have leapt straight from dead-trees to downloads? and b) Come on! Agatha Christie! The Doctor's a real fanboy, he's read all her stuff, and (even BEFORE he whipped out Death in the Clouds) we JUST KNEW he wouldn't have read it on DISK!

It is virtually impossible to train someone to conceal those reactions. By the time one conciously reacts, the subconcious bits of their brain that handle those twitches have already done their job.

Ah! Thanks.

'The bones of Margaret's only brother, Edward, are rotting on a planet which will someday be known as Skaro' - blimey, what was it known as when Edward Waterfield took his ill-fated trip there, then?

'She was - is - an innocent, Misha. She'd been used all along, when all she wanted to do was to help. And now she's free. And I won't disgrace her memory by wearing black' - why would wearing black disgrace her memory?

Why would Benny need to pay a KID fifty quid to help her break into a shop?

Why is Benny convinced that Khan killed all those girls when it was OBVIOUSLY the giant grasshoppers?

'The gap between our world and Antykhon. It first opened last year, in Russia, enabling the Charrl to come to Earth - ' 'The Siberian meteorite' - oh not that ••••••• Siberian meteorite AGAIN. On top of Wages of Sin AND In The Forest of the Night's determination to press-gang the poor thing into their stupid service.

'If [the Charrl] succeeded now, in 1909, thousand of years of future history would be wiped out. There would be no Hitler...no Benny. And that was impossible. Those things had happened. Benny herself was living proof' - leaving aside the fact Hitler already existed...how stupid IS Benny? Does she feel this fatalistic about EVERY alien invasion of Earth? How can she not have realised that history can be changed?

New Dawn got MARGARET to pretend to be Benny in order to gain access to her safe-deposit box? No wonder she got rumbled. Couldn't they have found an agent who WASN'T several decades older than Benny?

Getting just a little tired of the way Benny is constantly being imprisoned, tied up, groped AND rescued by MEN.

'Just how many people died in the flu epidemic of 1918?' - I thought it was 1919?

'This is simply great. I'm inoculated against every plague known to man, except the one which was finally eradicated in the 24th century' - surely there were plenty of other plagues eradicated BEFORE the twenty-fourth century which she hadn't been inoculated against? Assuming the unusually-well-organised-for-a-Doctor McCoy hadn't made any inoculation attempts on his Companions? Also, which bit of being INFECTED BY THE CHARRL is she too stupid to think of?

'Every single figure of authority in this blasted country seems to be connected with the New Dawn in some way or other' - except, er, the Prime Minister? The Prime Minister who turned up to personally get you out of jail...?!

'The Prime Minister's private secretary and MP for Mummerset West, Mr Edwin Rutherford, informed me that Mr Asquith is on a trip abroad' - and you believed him WHY, exactly? When you know New Dawn have infiltrated everywhere and you also know that PMs don't just nip off on foreign trips at the drop of a hat without anyone noticing in 1909.

'If no one is willing to believe us, then we'll have to bring them some proof. Tonight, Misha, you and I are going Charrl-hunting!' - you do REMEMBER that, er, they disappear into thin air whenever they feel like it, right? And that you were pretty useless at fighting them even BEFORE you got ill?

Since when does ACE giggle nervously?

'There was a curious expression on [Muldwych's] face, as if he recognized [Ace] from somewhere else, but couldn't quite place where' - blimey, THE DOCTOR is just gonna FORGET Ace?

'I know the Charrl find killing abhorrent. I realize how difficult it must be for you to slaughter [humans] for food' - oh, puh-lease! Don't even TRY to put a sticking-plaster over the hideous problem of inventing the ultimate pacifist race and then having 'em spend the entire book slaughtering people.

'She wondered if he knew that she couldn't care less about the life of his brother' - er, given that four pages earlier he was saying 'Tell me, Ace, what's in it for you? You don't care less that Chel was taken from Shantytown, into the Charrl's larder' I'm guessing YES.

'Hey, I know it's corny: I've seen all those movies where the hero escapes through the ventilation system' - it's not corny! Ventilation-shaft escapes are an integral part of the fabric of the universe!

'Three years with the Professor and three more with Spacefleet...' - I'm not NITPICKING this, I'm just saving it for future consideration. (OK, maybe I AM nitpicking it - would Ace REALLY still think of McCoy as 'the Professor' instead of, say, 'That Jan-Murdering Life-Ruining Psycho Git'?)

'But how could anything so evil create something so beautiful?' - jeez, how old is Ace, FIVE?

'Can you two stop apologizing for the feeding habits of our enemies' - Ace isn't apologising, she's ATTACKING said feeding habits.

'I'm really as thick as a brick out-house; I only got two O-levels' - she did? Wasn't she carried off by a time storm PRE-O-levels?

'"You crazy sentimental fool!" Ace screeched' - just because Seeba is rescuing his brother which - hello! - IS the raison d'etre of this stupid little trip?

'Cursing the fact that she'd left her rucksack behind in the TARDIS' - she'd WHAT!

One minute Ace's gun is running out of power, the next...it's not?

Oh my god! THIS DESOLATE FUTURE-PLANET IS...*drumroll*...EARTH! Just IMAGINE my (total and utter lack of) shock and amazement!

To be continued...

'Just how many people died in the flu epidemic of 1918?' - I thought it was 1919?

It lasted from january 1918 to december 2020, peaking at different times in different regions, but it is officially known as the 1918 flu pandemic.

'There was a curious expression on [Muldwych's] face, as if he recognized [Ace] from somewhere else, but couldn't quite place where' - blimey, THE DOCTOR is just gonna FORGET Ace?

I find that hard to believe. He can recognize people he only had a glimpse of when they were children (Love & Monsters)

It lasted from january 1918 to december 2020

Or...not ;)

blimey, THE DOCTOR is just gonna FORGET Ace?

I find that hard to believe. He can recognize people he only had a glimpse of when they were children (Love & Monsters)

That WAS pretty rare, though - he didn't recognise the Master (Five Docs), himself (Day of the Doctor), River (A Good Man Goes To War, Let's Kill Hitler) so I suspect Tennant was on EXCEPTIONALLY good form that day he re-met Elton. Still, I like to think that he'll remember the more, well, memorable Companions and he and Ace WERE so close...once. In fact, it was the first time since the TOM BAKER era that you felt the Doctor and Companion actually gave a •••• about each other.

Of course, Muldwych does eventually give the Doctor Madame Bovary to give to Ace, suggesting that he remembers her and her fate (her NA fate, obviously, rather than her PDA fate (dead!), her comic-book fate (dead!) or her TV fate (god knows)) PERFECTLY WELL...which still leaves the question of WHY he looked as if he couldn't place her...

'Ace noticed instantly that [Muldwych] made no obeisance to the Queen of the Hive. So I was right, she thought. He thinks he's superior to her...' - oh, absolutely. Personally I ALWAYS feel TOTALLY superior to ANYONE I don't curtsey to.

'I think you're using the Charrl for your own ends, just as the Doctor used me until I got wise to him' - !!! You've just spent several months on a scorched dying Earth fighting giant grasshoppers cos the Doctor dumped you and scarpered! And you don't think he's USING YOU FOR HIS OWN ENDS...?!

The policeman has 'several notes' of money in his wallet? In 1909? How much did they get PAID?

So one second Ace 'shimmied seductively up to the police constable, putting a friendly arm around his shoulder', the next she knocks him out on the grounds that he was 'sizing me up like an old lech!' That's...a little unfair. And why would she need a blast from her plasma gun to knock him out, anyway? And I'm no expert, but it sounds like a plasma rifle would be better at killing than stunning people anyway...

'Ask around the pubs and the shops' Ace tells the two cavepeople from 20,000 years hence. How would they even know what a PUB or SHOP was...??

'"Ever since I arrived here, the Doctor's been manipulating things. Leaving little clues, prodding me in some direction or other - and you as well by the sound of it. I feel like a pawn in a blasted chess game, Ace." "I know what you mean," Ace sympathized. "Trouble is, they keep changing the chess player."' - no, the player's the Doctor. And we never DO get an explanation for his frankly ridiculous behaviour. (Especially as he's busy messing around with snow and Cybermen so really shouldn't have the time or the opportunity to send flowers to any funerals.) Or why Ace and Benny let him get away with ruining months of their lives with no 'explanation' other than 'Them that ask no questions...'

'Not that she didn't trust her companion but' - but Ace would still lie through her teeth to Benny for no readily apparent reason? Charming.

If Bellingham's so short of money he's nicking fivers from the till, how can he also be bringing money and influence to the New Dawn?

What a mind-bogglingly pointless bit of fanwank the 'Hand of Omega' mention is.

'I needed them alive, Charlie. Without them we'll never know which women they infected with their seed' 'What will happen if we cannot trace these women down?' 'Alien 4, Popov, that's what...' - and yet they never DO track down any of those women. With the net result that ONE of those injected by the Charrl somehow produces...one ugly baby. Of all the pointless sub-plots...(Plus - Alien is OFFENSIVE, you know!)

'The face of the man they had all thought had finally been destroyed' - four pages earlier, ACE obviously hadn't thought he'd been destroyed - she obviously realised he'd taken over the TARDIS in a surprisingly (given that he hadn't removed Sexy's soul/Matrix first) Doctor's-Wife-style manner.

'"The Doctor! His TARDIS?" sneered Khan/Cagliostro. "Who owns who, I wonder' - my god, this is getting RIDICULOUSLY Doctor's-Wife-ish.

Raphael is DEAD? Since WHEN! Did he not become an ANGEL, wandering amongst the stars...? (OK, I forget the details, cos they were vomit-inducingly rubbish, but given that it was by the SAME AUTHOR...)

Ugg, a Dreamscape! What's the MATTER with these people?! It's all a bit too Trial of a Time Lord-ish, though mercifully less boring than the Dreamscape in Revelation.

'And Benny suddenly remembered someone else who had accepted another sort of Child an unimaginably long time ago. And the Doctor was still living with the consequences of that decision.' - UH?

'Benny watched as the young man grew, pursuing the Doctor and his TARDIS down through the ages. She saw him as a precocious astrologer at the court of Kubilai Khan in China; a mystic at the court of Queen Elizabeth the First; a Scottish piper, an Italian count, a Jewish alchemist in Paris. A quest which had lasted seven hundred years with him always just one step behind the Doctor' - oh-kay. It should be Kublai Khan. And this contradicts the numerous (well, one BF short story at least) other John Dee appearances in Who. And is the Italian Count supposed to be Federico? Is the Scottish Piper supposed to be JAMIE? In short, what the hell do you think you're TALKING about?

Why - the - HELL would Khan relax his hold on Sexy in order to, um, 'embrace' ANOTHER TARDIS?

'No trace of a crater was found' - yeah, cos this is Tungasaku! The MAGIC TREES cleared it all up! Nothing to do with any Charrl!

'A species that kills its own kind has lost all moral right to survive. The Charrl do not kill the Charrl...' - well, unless THEY LOOK A BIT TIRED, anyway...

'Their innate respect for all forms of life stayed their hands' - really? Why? Cos it certainly didn't seem to stay their hands (not that insects HAVE hands, come to think of it) when it came to eating all the Hairies...

For heaven's sake - two hundred pages of pure padding followed by a couple of lightning-fast denouements? Could this thing BE any worse-paced?

Benny knows the Charrl don't have good hearing HOW, exactly?

'The TARDIS had taken control now, and would no longer tolerate Muldwych interfering in her plans' - if Muldwych IS the Doctor that's quite a U-turn...

Say what you like about Birthright, at least it's nice and SHORT. Unconvincing and entirely pointless, of course, but (for some reason) not nearly as dull as it SHOULD be.

It lasted from january 1918 to december 2020

Or...not ;)

Is there a stronger word than "Oops!" I could use here?

I suppose you COULD put on an ominous, Scottish-accented 'I think I may have miscalculated' voice, a la that Delta cliffhanger...

Companion Piece:

'[Benny's] description of the Doctor as "medicus ex machina" has rarely been more accurate, and the reader's uncertainly as to what we are intended to take away from the text rarely more acute' - actually I took away from the text a feeling of outrage over the existence of Muldwych in addition to the usual feelings of boredom and 'Why gods, WHY?'

Re the novel v its audio adaptation: 'The central conflict is no longer "The Doctor vs. himself,"' - well, it only ever WAS that if you accept Muldwych as a future Doctor, and 'Over my dead body' doesn't really cover it - 'but "Bernice Summerfield vs. the universe"; moreover, with the removal of her Doctor-created safety net, Benny is forced to actively work to establish herself in the past timeline' - well, not THAT hard, two minutes in she'd bumped into a helpful urchin AND a helpful policeman, and had a pile of silver that frankly I can't remember how she acquired even though I'm currently in the middle of relistening to said audio.

'While the storyline does not become fundamentally more interesting (it is difficult to accuse any work in which the ravaged alien world turns out to be a far-future Earth of radical originality), it becomes fundamentally more of a story' - not really, but it DOES become shorter, which is MUCH more important.

Bookwyrm:

'In the final epilogue, the Doctor has a conversation with Muldwych - who's almost certainly a future Doctor - and the latter says "Who knows, Doctor? Who knows?" This is almost exactly the same situation, and same conversation, we see between Tom Baker's curator and Matt Smith's eleventh Doctor in The Day of the Doctor' - *wince* This must be how religious people have to feel all the time, that there is a purpose for everything under heaven, even Birthright...

'"Muldwych was disturbed by the Charrl's betrayal of their promise"...doesn't match at all with the fact that he accepts said betrayal completely [on the previous page]' - yeah, well, that's why you shouldn't just ASSUME that Muldwych is a future Doctor...come to think of it, SPOILERS FOR FUGITIVE OF THE JUDOON AND THE TIMELESS CHILDREN maybe he's...one of them. A pre-Doctor Doctor sans the morality. Rude and ginger. Maybe all that almost-recognising-Ace stuff was recognising her from his future not past - the way Adric bizarrely did Tegan in the Logopolis novelisation.

'He's utterly unlikable, and even the TARDIS recognises this and dumps him' - you can't possibly trust Sexy's opinions on such matters! She dumped our darling JODIE! after all. •••••.

'The Manipulative Doctor^TM is far more Manipulative^TM here than he has been before'...and simultaneously with his 'spiritual cleansing' in Iceberg, to boot. I hadn't noticed this, probably because I hadn't noticed Iceberg was supposed to be a spiritual cleansing. It certainly wasn't for ME.

Muldwych's time loop 'is not only unnoticed by the writer, but [is] mathematically incompetent, subtracting 15,000 years from 20,000 and getting 1,000' - yeah, well, as I didn't notice either due to not caring, I'm not gonna knock the writer for that...

Muldwych's time loop 'is not only unnoticed by the writer, but [is] mathematically incompetent, subtracting 15,000 years from 20,000 and getting 1,000'

Timey wimey

Yeah, let's not pretend we have a clue how time-loops work...especially after that Meglos chronic hysteresis fiasco...

Nigel Robinson in The Who Adventures: 'I intend to leave this thing very, very open, but there will be a suggestion (and only a suggestion!) that Muldwych is, in fact, a future incarnation of the Doctor - a Doctor gone wrong, not in the tradition of the Valeyard, but more in that of the Meddling Monk...' - it was a lot more than a SUGGESTION and since when has the Meddling Monk just...sat around doing nothing?