Personally, I found Transit rather difficult to read--I couldn't even make it past the first fufty pages.

It was choppy, dumb, and really badly interlinked. Please, if you're going to have fifty different characters, try and make me WANT to read about them..

Since it doesn't look as if I'll ever get my hands on Transit, can someone tell me exactly how Katiatu is descended from the Brigadier?

I read the book a few years ago, and I don't have it in front of me, but I believe she's descended from a brief affair the Brig had when he was in Africa. After the Brig became a hero, the descendants took his name. Kadiatu is the Brig's great-great-granddaughter (I think).

Oh, and one other thing. Kadiatu is a genetically enchanced test-tube baby, made from the cells of one of the Brig's etc.etc. In other words, her relation to the Brig is very faint.

I checked my copy of the book last night and I have a few corrections. Kadiatu is Alistair's great-granddaughter. Lt. AG L-S was lost near the village of Kadiatu's great-grandmother, who helped L-S find his way back. L-S was forced/coereced into taking Kadiatu's g-grandmother as a serving girl. Apparently the young Lt. was a much randier fellow, because the woman came back 8 years later with a boy.

Kadiatu's father, who was a cybernetically enhanced soldier for UNIT (22nd century), found Kadiatu in an lab engaged in illegal genetic enhancement experiments. It's not clear, but I got the impression that his genes were used to develop Kadiatu.

This stuff from Broadsword http://modjadji.anu.edu.au/steve/broadsword/faq/namafaq.html#s2q6 might help. Or maybe not:

Who is Kadiatu Lethbridge Stewart and is she related to Brigadier A.G. Lethbridge Stewart?

Kadiatu is a genetically engineered human from the several thousand DNA sequences of first generation Ubersoldaten. Because of this Kadiatu is related to the Brigadier as Kadiatu's father Yembe was an Ubersoldaten. Yembe rescued her from the Imogen laboratory in Leipzig. Yembe is the great grandson of the Brigadier, Kadiatu is named after her grandmother who is featured in the novelisation of "Remembrance of the Daleks". Kadiatu first appeared in "Transit" and also appears in "Set Piece", "The Also People", "Happy Endings" and "So Vile a Sin".

I had problems with the glossary at the back. It gives meanings for new words used in the book, which is fine. But often I'd come across a piece of jargon or slang specific to the book and would look in the glossary, only to find no listing.

Well, this is obviously a brilliant book because a) Lawrence Miles says it's the best sf novel of the last 10 years and b) it gives us an explanation for the Atlantis business ('I've visited all three Atlantises' - brilliant! Why didn't I think of that???) but if it wasn't for these compelling reasons to worship Transit I might have found all that messing around in cyberspace and tunnels just a little...er...boring.

Did anyone else find the bit with the minature Aces a bit... I dunno, odd...

Well, now you mention it...still, it was nice that the Doctor hadn't forgotten Ace already, and that he still thought of her as being on his side.

I found the reference to Adric in the book's prologue bit a little, well, distasteful in a way. Or possibly I mean disrespectful.

Some may find ANY reference to Adric distasteful...but not me ;) Actually I don't know what you're talking about...I only read this a couple of months ago but it was so confusing that great chunks of it have already detached themselves from my memory like melting icebergs...

In the prologue, the Doctor is talking to creature evolving from a lungfish to an amphibian to a reptile to a mammal...

"...From the forest ahead came the crash and roar of gigantic lizards... There was a sudden scream in the stratosphere and the earth bucked under their feet.
"'Did that sound like a ship full of Cybermen to you?' asked the Doctor. The sky went black with dust, the temperature dropped, the forest echoed with the meaty thump of collapsing species.
"'I was there, you know,' said the Doctor. 'I lost a good friend. Not that you care.'"

When I first read the the bit about the ship of Cybermen I thought "That's a bit off" and it wasn't until I turned the page was there "I lost a good friend" justification.
Doesn't seem quite as bad as I remember, looking back. Guess it's the distance of eight years since I read it.

A 'good friend'??? Adric was HONOURED!

I always found the constant references goat curry (IIRC) available at all those takeaway places connecting the mass transit system a bit odd. Takeaway curry might be a phenomenom in England but it's certainly not a global thing in the way, say, McDonald's is. Then again, this *is* the future and, who knows, goat curries might be the next big global/solar system franchise a few hundred years from now.

I think this is just the author's way of showing that we're in the FUTURE! Remember, it was only 50 years ago that McDonald's begin to blight the countryside; who knows what the fast food phenomenon will be?

It was also a way of showing how the current geopolitical powers will not be quite so dominant in the future, and how the Third World will be more of a world player.

Finally, it's not too far off from the present, either. Walk around downtown Philadelphia PA (near me), and you'll see a lot of food carts offering Chinese, Middle Eastern, Latin America and other ethnic foods.

I guess you're right - I was amazed at the amount of takeaway curry places in Sydney, 'cos there's nothing like that in Perth (pizza, Chinese, everything else, though)...

I wish the Doctor had dumped Benny and kept Kadiatu; K L-S was a much more interesting character.

I trust you're now repenting of your blasphemous ways, Mike? I doubt Katiatu could have sustained SEVERAL HUNDRED audios, novels, novellas and short stories...

Well, that's a shame. I was prepared to give this another go. I was prepared to think that the boredom was all my fault and that there was some wonderful Also-People-like novel that I'd be able to see clearly this time round...but there wasn't. It was a terrifically detailed portrait of a society with no plot to go with it.

'"What about love?" said the Doctor.
"Sex and death are pretty close, I guess," said Kadiatu.
"Only in humans," said the Doctor.' - Since when?! I'm guessing all those species our Captain 'danced' with had pretty similar attitudes to love and sex.

How long is it before the Doctor even remembers that Benny EXISTS? She walks out into the middle of this explosion, and HE promptly goes joy-riding with Kadiatu.

'A figure standing at a console. It too was transdimensional - something monstrous crammed down into a parody of human flesh' - firstly, Oi! That's my Doctor you're talking about! And secondly, is it the first time THIS particular idea was aired? I remember it most clearly from Death and Diplomacy, but this obviously predated it by years.

BERNIE? She's NEVER called Bernie! Except in those hilariously inaccurate pulp rip-offs of her adventures mentioned in The Mary-Sue Extrusion.

I guess the Doctor getting drunk fits in with Twin Dilemma, if not with later books claims that he metabolises the alcohol so he never gets drunk.

'Benny knew it well from cheap hostels and ratty billets on hundreds of worlds' - blimey, how many planets has she BEEN to, pre-Doctor?

'Many of them were about the first grandfather and his adventures with the Shirl...the Shirl was like Mr Spider, facing danger with guile and cunning and always outsmarting his enemies. When Kadiatu grew up she wanted to be like the Shirl but her father said no, only the Shirl was like the Shirl.' - Firstly, this was the PERTWEE Shirl we're talking about, not the McCoy one, 'guile' and 'cunning' weren't exactly his main characteristics, and secondly, how can you say that Anansi's like the Doctor and then that NO ONE's like the Doctor?

'And then there's me, thought the Doctor, dropping into human history with all the subtly of a road accident. Someone was bound to notice, sooner or later' - yeah. Her name was Queen Victoria.

'The human race wasn't due time travel until the botched sigma experiments of the late thirtieth century' - they WHAT! A couple of Victorian gents whipped up some time travel with a few bloody MIRRORS!

So why does the Doctor consider it a stark choice between letting Kadiatu perfect her time machine and sending her up a blind alley? Why didn't it occur to him that there was a third option - ensuring that the time travel she invented was environmentally friendly? Cos according to The Also People she punched holes in the UNIVERSE with that thing.

'He's got maybe fifty per cent of the DNA he was born with, tops' - is that even POSSIBLE?

'Intuition, the data-processing of his unconscious mind that he had learnt to follow but never trusted, drove him on. In his darker moments he often considered the possibility that his subconscious was in some respect not his own. That it belonged to some other, vaster, more complex personality. As if he was just a dream in the mind of a god.' - OK, is this all about that Other nonsense or what?

'Travelling on the underground always made him morbid' - well not in City of Death it didn't.

The TARDIS is not an 'immovable object', Doctor. Or if it is, someone forgot to tell the Marshmen.

The TARDIS feels 'organic like elephant skin' since WHEN?!

Half a metre shouldn't be out of umbrella range.

'He was used to being underestimated, in fact it was almost impossible for him to be overestimated' - oh, come on. This IS just Seven we're talking about, he hasn't started the Second Big Bang or ANYTHING.

The Doctor can tell something's chocolate milk just by sticking his gloved finger in it?

'Alistair Gorden' - Gordon, you moron.

'I'm getting far too well known on this planet, thought the Doctor. He might have to do something about that soon, real soon.' - like what? (It's not like giving Mickey that Doctor-wiping disk did much good.) And WHY?

Later he tells Kadiatu that if he doesn't come back she should destroy all records of him (including one rather adorable-sounding opera) because 'If I'm killed, it's better that I never existed at all.' Not quite getting the logic, here.

And later still he uses a friendly computer and a laser torch to remove all records of himself. He's alive, what's the excuse?

'He is Shango, god of lightning' - OK, I can live with that.

'There are no gods. I should know, I've met a few' - ahh, THAT'S what he should have said in Satan Pit! Not all that agnostic waffle.

'Your planet just seems to be a major space-time nexus' - that's IT?! FINALLY someone addresses the Earth-shaped elephant-in-the-room and can't actually give us an explanation of why we're so bloody important?

Aha! Later we get the suggestion that the Pythia's curse of sterility on Gallifrey 'streamed across the gaps between stars...fell from the sky and into the primeval ocean. The waters suddenly boiled with life' - did WE get Gallifrey's lifeforce? It's a pretty neat idea, even though we've had MORE than enough alien interference in our evolution, thanks.

Ah bless, it expects people to get their news from FAXES.

'She had her own doubts about the things she had done' - that's IT? Benny's gone round under alien possession murdering people and, um, invading Earth or whatever exactly was going on in this book, but her feelings about it are dismissed in one line?

Oh god, FLORANCE. I thought all those annoying sentient computers with the capital letters were an Orman invention.

The 'about the author' thing on the back cover is a bit weird. Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield are 'two of the most highly regarded Doctor Who stories of recent years' (I thought I was the only person who loved Battlefield!) and 'his novelization of Remembrance of the Daleks was rapturously received.' (An exaggeration for ANY novelisation, surely?)

Firstly, this was the PERTWEE Shirl we're talking about, not the McCoy one, 'guile' and 'cunning' weren't exactly his main characteristics

Depends who you're comparing him with. Next to the UNIT soldiers, or the obstructive idiots in Whitehall, the Doctor may have seemed liked a paragon of guile and cunning to the Brigadier.

they WHAT! A couple of Victorian gents whipped up some time travel with a few bloody MIRRORS!

Apparently, but was that a natural part of history or did they get help from outside?

'He's got maybe fifty per cent of the DNA he was born with, tops' - is that even POSSIBLE?

Possible, but improbable.

This IS just Seven we're talking about, he hasn't started the Second Big Bang or ANYTHING.

Not when the BBC were looking, but that doesn't prove anything, nor are the novels exhaustive. He could have created half a dozen universes while his companions, and we readers, weren't watching, in the gaps between books, or even inside them.

Normally, Occam's razor lets us dismiss this, but if the writers deliberately hint there's stuff we don't know, the razor grows blunt.

The Doctor can tell something's chocolate milk just by sticking his gloved finger in it?

He can feel the way it flows round his finger as he inserts it, and how quickly it stops. From that he can deduce its viscosity. Combined with colour and temperature, this is enough to make a probable identification.

later still he uses a friendly computer and a laser torch to remove all records of himself. He's alive, what's the excuse?

Seven enjoys being mysterious, hence the question marks.

Firstly, this was the PERTWEE Shirl we're talking about, not the McCoy one, 'guile' and 'cunning' weren't exactly his main characteristics

Depends who you're comparing him with. Next to the UNIT soldiers, or the obstructive idiots in Whitehall, the Doctor may have seemed liked a paragon of guile and cunning to the Brigadier.

True, but Katiatu's dad is hardly gonna tell her tales of centuries-dead Whitehall civil servants.

A couple of Victorian gents whipped up some time travel with a few bloody MIRRORS!

Apparently, but was that a natural part of history or did they get help from outside?

I know we're SUPPOSED to believe it was all Dalek-engineered, but since when have Daleks been any good with time-travel (give or take their short-lived DARDIS, for which they mysteriously forgot to save any plans), let alone with MIRRORS?

This IS just Seven we're talking about, he hasn't started the Second Big Bang or ANYTHING.

Not when the BBC were looking, but that doesn't prove anything, nor are the novels exhaustive. He could have created half a dozen universes while his companions, and we readers, weren't watching, in the gaps between books, or even inside them.

I doubt it, given that the Blood Heat NA had him WIPE OUT an entire alternative universe on the grounds that there could be only one. (Though how THAT fits with Inferno or Rise of the Cybermen is anyone's guess. Plus, he acquired an Ace-replacement from an alt-uni in Loving the Alien. Though of course Eight wiped out A LOT of universes in that stupid alt-universe EDA arc...or was it Sabbath? Dammit, that's really the sort of detail one SHOULD remember...)

Normally, Occam's razor lets us dismiss this, but if the writers deliberately hint there's stuff we don't know, the razor grows blunt.

Nice way of putting it.

The Doctor can tell something's chocolate milk just by sticking his gloved finger in it?

He can feel the way it flows round his finger as he inserts it, and how quickly it stops. From that he can deduce its viscosity. Combined with colour and temperature, this is enough to make a probable identification.

Whereas poor Tom is always knocking back sleeping-draughts in his booze without noticing a thing (Androids of Tara, Brain of Morbius). I guess SOME Doctors are better at some things than others. Still, if the Doctors are, generally speaking, getting progressively BETTER at most things (a premise hard to deny when looking at Hartnell and then Eccy, though admittedly this...evolution...suffered a bit of a dip straight after Tom) then Tennant shouldn't have to LICK things to work out what they are all the time.

Seven enjoys being mysterious, hence the question marks.

*Sigh* I live in hope that one day SOMEONE will give us a better explanation for those question-marks than 'wants to be mysterious'. If you REALLY want to be mysterious, then basically jumping up and down shrieking 'Look how mysterious I am!' doesn't really hack it.

True, but Katiatu's dad is hardly gonna tell her tales of centuries-dead Whitehall civil servants.

When the Brigadier was telling stories, he'll have been comparing the Doctor with the civil servants, even though he didn't bother mentioning the idiots.

I know we're SUPPOSED to believe it was all Dalek-engineered, but since when have Daleks been any good with time-travel

Well, they must have been pretty good to fight a Time War, but they aren't the only possible suspects. There are several beings like Fenris, the Trickster and the Black Guardian capable of meddling with time who might enjoy unleashing Daleks on Victorian London.

Though how THAT fits with Inferno or Rise of the Cybermen is anyone's guess.

Different kind of alternate - and he could always have destroyed the universes he accidentally created.

Tennant shouldn't have to LICK things to work out what they are all the time.

Perhaps he just enjoys the impact of licking things on his companions.

If you REALLY want to be mysterious, then basically jumping up and down shrieking 'Look how mysterious I am!' doesn't really hack it.

He picked that outfit while still suffering post-regeneration trauma, before he'd got the hang of being mysterious. It;s just that, like Amy, it seared itself on his hearts.

When the Brigadier was telling stories, he'll have been comparing the Doctor with the civil servants, even though he didn't bother mentioning the idiots.

Ah, but the 'First Grandather', aka the Brig, didn't tell any stories to his illegitimate offspring by his African housegirl - he just abandoned 'em long before he met the Doc (the Shirl. Whatever).

Well, they must have been pretty good to fight a Time War

They were only fighting the TIME LORDS, for heaven's sake.

There are several beings like Fenris, the Trickster and the Black Guardian capable of meddling with time who might enjoy unleashing Daleks on Victorian London.

THAT'S a point...and magical mirrors ARE the sort of thing a more metaphorical monster than the Daleks would enjoy messing around with.

and he could always have destroyed the universes he accidentally created.

Except that according to bloody Rise of the Cybermen, EVERY SINGLE ACTION ANYONE EVER MAKES creates an alternative universe. The Doc would have to wipe out a universe every time he scratched his nose (AND every time he DIDN'T scratch his nose...).

Perhaps he just enjoys the impact of licking things on his companions.

And not just his companions...*Blissfully nostalgic sigh at the memory of Idiot's Lantern's radio-licking...*

He picked that outfit while still suffering post-regeneration trauma, before he'd got the hang of being mysterious. It;s just that, like Amy, it seared itself on his hearts.

OK, fair enough.

Well, they must have been pretty good to fight a Time War

They were only fighting the TIME LORDS, for heaven's sake.

And their leader was RASSILON. With him at the helm, the Time Lords were once again a formidable power. Which is probably the reason they brought him back.

'Formidable' is certainly the word, but in the long run, it's a really bad idea to conduct a war (or anything else) by vaporising anyone who disagrees with you (or, at best, forcing 'em to stand with their hands in front of their faces for the rest of their lives).

or, at best, forcing 'em to stand with their hands in front of their faces for the rest of their lives

You don't suppose that's where the Weeping Angels came from, do you?

Mmmmmm.....

Nah!

The Doctor's Mum is a Weeping Angel!!

OK, probably not.

We don't know she's his mum. My money's on Chancellor Flavia.

'Formidable' is certainly the word, but in the long run, it's a really bad idea to conduct a war (or anything else) by vaporising anyone who disagrees with you

Davros and the Emperor Dalek will have been equally keen on vaporising everyone who disagreed with them, so this was no handicap for Rassilon.

We don't know she's his mum.

If RTG says she's his mum, she's his - oh wait, I don't believe it either. Quite apart from the BLATANTLY OBVIOUS FACT that the Doctor doesn't have a mum, there's the fact that NO ONE, let alone Our Hero, would have looked QUITE so gleeful straight after sending Mummy to hell.

Davros and the Emperor Dalek will have been equally keen on vaporising everyone who disagreed with them,

Lies and slander of innocent Dalek Emperors! Did he not specifically create the Cult of Skaro to think outside the box?

Lies and slander of innocent Dalek Emperors! Did he not specifically create the Cult of Skaro to think outside the box?

To think outside the box on command. Any cult member who told the Emperor something he didn't want to hear would have had a pretty short life expectancy.

Nope, have just checked Doomsday (GODS, DOOMSDAY IS FANTASTIC!) and they're 'A secret order, above and beyond the emperor himself.' Even an insane Dalek god realised there'd be no point in telling 'em to think the unthinkable and then shooting 'em when they did. Whereas Rassilon's genius idea was to send the one person who could challenge him, the one person who could have won the Time War in five minutes flat, the one person who never carried guns, to fight on the front line. Cretin.

The Doctor will have wanted to fight on the front lines. The idea of sitting safely on Gallifrey while people die to implement his grand plans would be repugnant to him.

What does the Cult being above the Emperor actually mean? If they could give him orders, they'd be co-Emperors. For that matter, who are they being kept secret from? They don't need to be hidden from the other Daleks, since if the Emperor says they're off limits, no lesser Dalek will dare touch them.

No, it is clear that, since the Cult had enough individuality to be personally proud of their own status (unlike other daleks), the Emperor fed them a flattering lie to keep them happy.

The Doctor will have wanted to fight on the front lines. The idea of sitting safely on Gallifrey while people die to implement his grand plans would be repugnant to him.

So was blowing Gallifrey to smithereens, but he did it. He'd've realised he could do so much more, save so many more lives, running the war from Gallifrey (which didn't LOOK particularly safe, what with the crashed Dalek saucers, and all) and maybe making the occasional dangerous raid on the enemy to soothe his conscience, than in spending years on the frontline barricades/in the frontline trenches.

And how good WAS the Doctor (and the Eighth Doctor to boot - if anyone's a flop-haired wuss it's him not Eleven) as an actual warrior? All we know is that he was there at the Fall of Arcadia, which doesn't exactly make it sound like he's another Alexander the Great. Just look at Eccy in Bad Wolf - the most savage, bitter, battle-scarred Doctor of them all, facing with a dirty great gun the scum who killed thousands of people a day and had just reduced the Love Of His Lives to a pile of ashes. He tossed them his gun and said 'Yeah, like I was ever gonna use it'!!! THAT sort of attitude is NOT gonna get you very far in a battle, I can tell you.

Continued in the Monsters: Daleks section...

A 'good friend'??? Adric was HONOURED!

Especially as Tegan's just pretty-much forced Five to admit that he didn't really like Adric...(Warzone/Conversion.)

The human race wasn't due time travel until the botched sigma experiments of the late thirtieth century' - they WHAT! A couple of Victorian gents whipped up some time travel with a few bloody MIRRORS!

Oh, and then there's Dr Stone in Lady of Mercia, and Orson Pink in Listen, and Mariah Learman in Time of the Daleks, and Hila from Hide and so on and so forth...

'Intuition, the data-processing of his unconscious mind that he had learnt to follow but never trusted, drove him on. In his darker moments he often considered the possibility that his subconscious was in some respect not his own. That it belonged to some other, vaster, more complex personality. As if he was just a dream in the mind of a god.' - OK, is this all about that Other nonsense or what?

Or is it all a bit...Timeless Children-y?

Bookwyrm:

Those fat-men-singing was...an OPERA of BATTLEFIELD?

'The idea that an artificial intelligence only needs 10 gigabytes of space to exist is hilarious' - I'll take your word for it, I don't get such things, hell, I don't even get why Mel's gasp of 'A megabyte modem!' is so hilarious.

'The tabloids...were so upset at the sex in Transit that they included a naked picture of Sylvester McCoy, who had a nude scene in a play at this time' - well, it's good that JODIE!'s not the only Doctor who has to put up with such things. I suppose.

I guess the Doctor getting drunk fits in with Twin Dilemma, if not with later books claims that he metabolises the alcohol so he never gets drunk.

To be fair, Year of Intelligent Tigers claims he only gets drunk if he wants to. And frankly who WOULDN'T feel the need to get rat-arsed to survive Transit?

I guess the Doctor getting drunk fits in with Twin Dilemma, if not with later books claims that he metabolises the alcohol so he never gets drunk.

To be fair, Year of Intelligent Tigers claims he only gets drunk if he wants to. And frankly who WOULDN'T feel the need to get rat-arsed to survive Transit?

Susan says the exact same thing in The Sorcerer's Apprentice so I guess it's as close to consistent as Who can manage.