The problem I have with this story is not the depression, it's the - for want of a better word - romance. Even assuming Ace managed to fall in love with Robin Yeaton, why did she decide to stay with him? Of all the places in the universe, this little English village in the 50s (?) must be the boringist. In 'Love and War' she's madly in love with Jan (at least, I thought she was until Deceit ruined it all) but after much agonising she decides she still won't leave the Doctor - Jan'll have to come with her.

And I'd also like an explanation for the Doctor kidnapping her.

I always thought the Doctor took her because he knew her destony and she *had* to be on Heaven.
As for this village in 1968, even the Doctor has said "Love has never been known for its rationality" - and maybe it's the first place Ace has ever really felt loved and not betrayed by the man, so that's why she wanted to hold on to it.
Maybe the Doctor realised this and knew it wouldn't last so rather leave her trapped in this time, he took her with him.

Thanks for concocting a plausible explanation, Chris, but I'd have preferred it if Gatiss (or, if he was desperate to end on a cliff-hanger, then Cornell) had been bothered to explain. Not that I'm that keen on endings where the author/Doctor spells out the plot in words of one syllable, but I'll make an exception in this case.

Since the author isn't here for me to attack, I'm afraid I'm going to pull holes in your arguments instead. I don't remember the Doctor ever knowing people's destinies (except, all of a sudden, in the telemovie). Why did Ace 'have' to be on Heaven? I got the impression that the Doctor was rather surprised and alarmed by what happened to her there. If he DID know what would befall Ace, then it would have been a lot kinder to leave her being bored out of her skull with Robin, than to drag her off round the universe losing the men she loved and turning into a killer.

However much she loved Robin (not that she spares him a single thought in 'Love and War'), why didn't they even discuss the possibility of him accompanying her in the TARDIS? Why did she show no guilt at abandoning the Doctor? I don't think she's ever been betrayed by a man before (except maybe by the Doctor in Curse of Fenric and Ghostlight) so I don't see that she's THAT desperate for a nice man yet.

As for the Doctor not wanting to leave her trapped with a love that wouldn't last...I didn't notice him caring when it was Susan - who probably faced thousands of years of being trapped. Unlike Hartnell, the Seventh Doctor could easily have hopped forward a couple of years and picked Ace up when she got sick of Robin.

The only explanation I could find for Ace's behavior was extreme horniness. Not to be crude, but she is a young woman cooped up with no company but an uninterested older man. Ace's thoughts in "Nightshade" reflected nothing more than strong physical attraction. Which, by the way, was all I noticed going on between her and the boyfriend in "Love and War."

I can't quite come to grips with the Doctor suddenly "knowing" so much about destiny. My theory is that previous Doctor's had mental blocks placed on them by the Time Lords ("Trial of a Time Lord" says as much) that the 7th Doctor has circumvented. The blocks may also be broadcast from the TARDIS, and since it is destroyed and rebuilt several times in the NA, this could account for loosening of the Time Lords controls on the Doctor.

Emily, you have deeply wounded me. Are you so harsh with all the men you deal with?

Okay Emily a couple of days have passed. I haven't read Nightshade or Heaven since 1992 and only have a general recollection of them. The explanations I came up with I thought of in five minutes - not bad, considering - but let me crawl back under my rock and I'll weigh up the holes you have so craftily have punched in my theory.
And remember it's just that - a theory. It's one thing to find a nit, something more to be able to explain it. You don't have to like the answer - I'd love to hear an alternative, credible theory.
I don't dismiss things because I don't like them (such as the telemovie, which I sort of liked in some ways).
Although, may I ask in all humbleness, do you like Doctor Who? Some of your posts are quite vitriolic.

Chris - you doubt my love for Doctor Who? Horror, horror! Just for the record, I think it's the best program in the history of the human race, in fact I think it's one of the few justifications for the EXISTENCE of the human race. (I even loved the telemovie. I even spent five hours listening to a scratchy audio recording of The Dalek Masterplan. I ALMOST managed not to fall asleep during a 24 hour Doctor Who marathon...you still doubt my dedication?)

I'd better apologise for trampling all over your theory - I should have made it clear that I'm grateful to you for coming up with any explanation at all, given the material you had to work with. It was more than I could manage. And I totally agree that it's far easier to find nits than to explain them - but I took Mike's introductory statement of 'let's nitpick!' as giving me carte blanche to indulge in my favourite activity.

To answer your earlier query...yes, I am so harsh with all the men I deal with. But as a believer in equal rights, I am just as harsh with women. (I was about to comment on the fragility of the male ego, but I'd better restrain myself.) By the way, does anyone know why about 90% of dedicated Doctor Who fans are men?

It's not just Who fans; 90% of science fiction fans are men. My "theory" is that the early SF stories (1920's and 30's) were adventure stories written for little boys. A lot little boys grew up and became SF writers themselves, but the only thing they knew how to write were adventure stories for little boys.

The SF literary field has gradually changed over the years to a more mature universe view (thanks to pioneering female SF writers like Joanna Russ, Judith Merrill, Ursula K. Le Guin, and so on), but that hard core of male-dominated fandom still exists. I think it survives on a diet of Terminator movies, DOOM video games, and page 3 girls.

Thanks for that hideously depressing glimpse into the sf male's psyche.

Thankyou Emily I feel much better now. I can't speak for other men but I do have have a terribly fragile ego, more fragile than a glass Dalek. But it deserves everything coming to it I should imagine.
Okay - I understand your "tough love" approach now.

"more fragile than a glass Dalek"--I like that!

I don't know if this will be of any interest, but I discussed the discrepancies between the ending of Nightshade and the beginnings of Love and War with Paul Cornell a few years ago - around the time both books came out.

I pointed out that Ace was not at all happy with the Doctor at the end of Nightshade, and Paul admitted that this was not commensurate with the easy affection displayed at the beginning of his own work, nor with the lack of reference in Love and War to the 'romance' (inverted commas definitely appropriate there, Emily!) with Robin. From what I remember (we were probably drinking at the time) Paul's response was along the lines that there hadn't been sufficient communication as the two books were developed.

I find the relationship with Jan more believable than its predecessor because Jan is exactly the kind of bloke I can see the teenage Ace being impressed by. I can also believe that, years later, she is able to put the relationship in perspective.

But Robin, on a push-bike, in the middle of nowhere in the 1950's?

Nahhhhh ....

I liked the monsters in this story, though.

You have SPOKEN to Paul Cornell?? You have DRUNK with Paul Cornell?!!! Tell me all! This is like meeting someone who communicates with God, only far more important, because a) I don't believe in God, and b) This man has held the fate of the Doctor in his hands. Are you still in touch? If so, I'm sure I could come up with a brief list of queries (say, fifty or so) that I'd love you to put to him.

I could just about take Ace getting over Jan by the time of Deceit, if it wasn't for the fact she's still pining for him in 'No Future'. Darville-Evans should have respected another author's wishes, i.e. Ace was IN LOVE with Jan. And the fact that his head explodes within a few days of their meeting means she can never get disillusioned.

And by the way, Ace isn't a teenager when she falls for Jan - Warhead gives her age as 22. Though Benny, looking back, describes Ace as a 'teenager in love'.

Cornell is not God and is extremely over-rated.

I didn't mean Cornell is any GOOD! (Though Human Nature is, at least.) I just meant that what Cornell writes, the Doctor does. That's power!

Emily, feel free to e-mail me at SMacIntosh@compuserve.com.

I stand corrected on the 'teenage' reference, though the difference of a few years doesn't alter my opinion that Paul got the character of Jan exactly right, if Ace was going to really fall for somebody.

I see your point about the relationship remaining an ideal, with none of the disillusionment and boring mundane stuff that normally comes when you've been with someone a while. However, the events of Ace's life leading up to Deceit probably cast a different light over this fleeting affair. I love the bit in Love and War where Ace dreams of the Doctor bargaining for her life and awakes completely enamoured of 'her two loves'. In Deceit, I imagine she feels pretty distanced from this contentment and can't believe it happened to the same woman who has spent the last few years in full-on destruction mode.

"Cornell is not God".
Well, if there is a God, I'm sure it wouldn't be Paul. Yes, definitely pretty convinced of that.

".. extremely over-rated."
Dunno. Haven't spoken to enough people about his work. But I've read it and enjoyed it very much, so personally I applaud him and his writing. If I were to go home today and begin to re-read a NA, it would probably be one of his.

Was just thinking about the bit where the Doctor laments the fact there was no time to talk to Susan during The Five Doctors - what about when the Dalek blew a hole in the wall and they had to walk all that way to the TARDIS? And what about when the TARDIS underwent to temporal fission at the end? Surely there was time for a bit of a catch up on the journey back to their rightful places in time and space?

I always find it a bit fascinating that Paul Cornell is arguably considered the best fan writer out there and has gained a fair degree of infamy/notoriety.

I still remember him as an over earnest but pleasant member of my Dr Who local group in the mid 80's. We all took it in turns to host meetings where we all got together to discuss the show and if we were lucky watch very murky copies of early 70's era shows (this was well before BBC video started releasing a story a month).

That must be so weird. I'd really love to know what is it is about the brain that allows some Who fans to become famous authors, and others (i.e. ME) to be incapable of writing so much as a page of fan-fiction.

Practice, Emily, practice. Every great writer started out writing ••••; they just kept at it.

Was just thinking about the bit where the Doctor laments the fact there was no time to talk to Susan during The Five Doctors - what about when the Dalek blew a hole in the wall and they had to walk all that way to the TARDIS? And what about when the TARDIS underwent to temporal fission at the end? Surely there was time for a bit of a catch up on the journey back to their rightful places in time and space?

Or Susan could have even - gosh, unthinkable! - invited granddad in for a cup of tea when they got back to Earth. And, of course, there's ALWAYS the chance to go back to see Susan IN HIS TIME AND SPACE MACHINE whenever he wishes. As he PROMISED to do. And then didn't. (Unless you count Legacy of the Daleks and a Legacy-contradicting bunch of recent Eighth Doctor audios.)

I found this a hard read, because of the Doctor's bout of depression.

You and Ace both ('You know I made sure the TARDIS didn't have a gas oven, just in case you thought of putting your head in it?' - of course, exactly HOW you'd make sure the TARDIS didn't have a gas oven is another question.)

Deceit kindly explains that said depression is all due to the 'fact' that 'The proto-plasm from Tir-na-n-Og must have contained a small fragment of one of Goibhnie's experiments...It infected the TARDIS...And that meant it was in my mind, too'.

So did some cretin REALLY THINK 'Hey, let's make the Doctor suicidally depressed with no explanation for several books, it'll be fun!' or was it a heroic retcon to excuse Mark Gatiss's peculiar decision to have a miserable-as-hell hero for no readily-apparent reason?

Deceit kindly explains that said depression is all due to the 'fact' that 'The proto-plasm from Tir-na-n-Og must have contained a small fragment of one of Goibhnie's experiments...It infected the TARDIS...And that meant it was in my mind, too'.

Whereas Sophie Aldred claims in DWM that 'He's come to a sort of mid-life crisis...He's going through a questioning period, and he's actually contemplating giving it all up and retiring.'

Plus she makes a valiant attempt to explain the Robin Yeaton fiasco - 'For Ace, the implications are that she's not going to be in the TARDIS any more - so what happens to her?'

Audio adaptation:

That care home worker just FORGETS to tell a resident that, oh yeah, the BBC rang and want to interview him, he's famous all over again...?

People keep disappearing from the village but one smashed window and the police are happy to be on watch outside an old folks home for several nights?

'You don't think it's time to put down a few roots?' BLIMEY the Doc's unsubtle in his attempts to ditch poor Ace, after all these long and faithful years...

'Have I ever talked to you about Susan? My granddaughter' - Why isn't Ace shrieking with shock and outrage at the concept of the Doctor having a granddaughter? - 'We were from the same planet' – well, DUH.

'Not a day passes that I don't think of her' – a likely story.

When the Doctor announces his hitherto-unsuspected and never-explained ambition to retire to Gallifrey for a few centuries, 'You're always telling me what a dreary hole it is. All those fat old Time Lords swanning around' is Ace's rather odd reaction. FAT? And wasn't the (unmade-except-by-Big-Finish) original Season Twenty-Seven supposed to claim that the Doctor had been steering Ace towards attending the Academy on Gallifrey all along? Cos that would be a funny way of going about it.

'Good places to think, monasteries' – don't they ring bells at weird hours of the night to rob you of your Geneva-Convention-right to sleep and make you get up and grovel to their unpleasant fictional character? I mean, even I, when I suggest we should ALL spend our lives in worshipful contemplation of our Lonely God, draw the line at getting up at three every morning to prostrate myself in front of my DVD collection.

'You don't think its time to put down a few roots' – what, HERE? Are you MAD! (Of course, Ace DOES promptly and inexplicably attempt to put down some roots in the dreary 1950s - did he HYPNOTISE her?)

'The whole world's in your debt, a hundred times over – the UNIVERSE not just the world, surely.

So after hours of explaining to Ace that he needs time to consider retiring so she should •••• off and make herself scarce...the Doctor says 'Meet you in a couple of hours'!

'Try not to think about Alf' Robin helpfully tells Laurence. Who promptly and extremely predictably starts having hysterics about Alf.

Robin is a 'spotty youth'? Blimey, as if it wasn't ALREADY ridiculous enough for Ace to contemplate abandoning the Doctor and the TARDIS for him...

'Do you like living in Perivale?' 'Depends what century you're in' – yeah, cos Ace had SUCH FUN visiting Perivale in the nineteenth century...

Nice of Robin to be so upset about his mentally unbalanced stepdad dying, most of us would have been breathing a quiet sigh of relief (or maybe that's just me).

'You're not alone and you never will be, I'm here for you' – of all the reckless things Ace has done, making THAT promise surely takes the biscuit.

'The Doctor will fix everything, he always does' – er, does he usually bring people back from the dead?

Jill hasn't been in a church since her wedding, but as her husband died a few months after said wedding, did she not go back to the church to bury him or anything?

'Invaders from Mars' – boy Gatiss likes quoting his own episode titles, what with 'Phantasmagoria' in Unquiet Dead and 'Sleep No More' in Empress of Mars...

Earth formed around this ancient intelligence - what, ANOTHER one?!

Doctor: 'The Elizabethans thought nostalgia was a diagnosable disease' - they DID? Admittedly Liz One could be seen as trying to surgically remove her Tennant-nostalgia...

The Seventh Doctor has re-acquired a sonic screwdriver by now? When exactly did THAT happen? I hope there was a ceremony...

'I'm sure our paths will cross again some day Ace' - jeez, every farewell's gonna feel a bit lacking after the lengths Twelve went to for Clara, isn't it. (Plus, Old Who Docs DIDN'T tend to cross paths with ex-Companions, well unless they were the Brigadier obviously.)

'I don't know if I can go through with this...never thought...I want to be with [Robin] but my place is the TARDIS, with you, exploring the universe blah blah' - alright, so you HAD to replace the grotesque and inexplicable ending of the Nightshade novel (the Doctor inexplicably* kidnaps Ace after she decides to stay with Robin), especially as BF have audio-ised Love and War (the subsequent story in which this is mysteriously not mentioned) but, let's face it, this waffle isn't MUCH of an improvement, especially as it signally fails to spot the OBVIOUS (aka crazy-feminist) solution that Robin could join Ace in the TARDIS.

*Sorry to keep reusing this word but honestly, it's the most suitable one for the job.

'Not a day passes that I don't think of her' – a likely story.

He did put her picture on his desk at the university where he guards Missy's vault.

'Good places to think, monasteries' – don't they ring bells at weird hours of the night to rob you of your Geneva-Convention-right to sleep and make you get up and grovel to their unpleasant fictional character?

Only the monks have to do that. Visitors can remain in their beds.

He did put her picture on his desk at the university where he guards Missy's vault.

Yeah, and if CAPALDI had said that not a day passed without him thinking of Susan I might even have swallowed it, but SEVEN doesn't have any photos, Vaults to sacredly guard, memories of Eight's audio and novel encounters with Susan, convenient all-my-relatives-died-in-the-Time-War-honest excuses or basically ANYTHING to explain why, now that he's FINALLY learnt how to drive Sexy, he completely fails to fulfil his promise that one day he'll come back and, indeed, never appears to give the poor girl a moment's thought except when he's suddenly claiming to be unhealthily obsessed by her...

Only the monks have to do that. Visitors can remain in their beds.

Well, I hope the monks supply ear-plugs.

I guess the best compliment I can make is I could imagine this novel being filmed as an Doctor Who serial

That WAS the intention: Gatiss in DWM: 'I felt, at the time, unjustly I think, that the show had gone off the rails, and this was the version I wanted it to be.'

On the other hand, he didn't deliberately write the entire thing as a script first, as he did with The Roundheads.

The problem, though, is this is obviously an intermediate novel in a big story arc.

Except that it ISN'T. It's the first NA not to be part of a stupid story-arc and then it TOTALLY MESSES UP by having the Doctor kidnap Ace at the end and then...not get this resolved in Love and War or anything else.

'The book is full of cross things like [the Doctor calling Ace a stupid girl for calling him Professor], but it was a good idea, about a thing that feeds on nostalgia, which is a very dangerous thing. It's a story that resonates, the older you get' - well not for ME it doesn't.

When the Doctor announces his hitherto-unsuspected and never-explained ambition to retire to Gallifrey for a few centuries

Ah. Bookwyrm helpfully points out that he's about to become Time's Champion, 'he clearly knows that this change is coming...and he is having his doubts: "Have I the right to take it upon myself? To act as self-appointed judge and jury?" Instead of going out into the universe to become what we will know as Time's Champion, he is considering simply stopping, finding somewhere to settle down' - OK, fair enough, except shouldn't he be weighing up the likely outcome of his inaction? The stars going out, or something? And why GALLIFREY to settle down on, we all know it would be Earth...

'When [Gatiss's] novel The Vesuvius Club was released in 2004, that did state on the back cover "this is his first novel", which it patently wasn't. It's almost as if he wanted to pretend that he hadn't written anything to do with Doctor Who ever' - tut. Tut. Tut.

Even assuming Ace managed to fall in love with Robin Yeaton, why did she decide to stay with him? Of all the places in the universe, this little English village in the 50s (?) must be the boringist

Especially as Algebra of Ice - specifically set shortly before Timewyrm: Genesys (and therefore, what, a few months before Nightshade) has a better solution to Ace needing a shag:

'Ace and Ethan said many intimate goodbyes. She promised to visit him often and she did, always the same while he grew older, always acting as if she'd seen him only yesterday, which was sometimes the case. Their friendship went on for one of her years and four of his, until the day he collapsed.'

ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to abandon Our Living God and All Of Space And Time, then...