Hi Emily, this must be the book you meant (in reply to my post under the Curse of Peladon), in which the Ice Warriors worshipped the Osirians. Funny, the Ice Warriors never struck me as the worshipping type. I think they would resent the Osirians incursion onto their planet. Not that they could really have done anything about it, if the Osirians were powerful enough to defeat the Time Lords (as the Doctor indicated in Pyramids of Mars), then they would have made pretty short work of the Ice Warriors!

I guess this novel must be set sometime in the ten year period that the Daleks controlled Earth, from 2154 to 2164.

Everybody has to have a god at some point in their civilization, Chief.

I don't see WHY they have to. Humanity OBVIOUSLY has some deep-seated need to fall in love with a fictional character (*embarrassed cough* not that I'm speaking from PERSONAL EXPERIENCE or anything here) but other species might evolve differently (however similar to us they usually end up LOOKING). A cat-like species, for example, would be HIGHLY unlikely to invent a Superior Being for themselves...(Well, I'd've THOUGHT so until I met a bunch of Cat-nuns worshipping the Goddess Santori.)

'Six years ago, I wrote a Seventh Doctor novel for Virgin called GodEngine, and spectacularly failed to get a grip on possibly the most enigmatic of Doctors' - Craig Hinton on the Excelis Decays CD sleeve. If only all authors were so accepting of their shortcomings - even I didn't think he'd spectacularly failed. McCoy just seemed to be in a boringly depressing mood.

'With so many of our people dead or departed, we are the spiritual guardians of Mars' - and, er, if so many of your people HADN'T buggered off, who does the ABBOT OF A RELIGIOUS ORDER think would be the spiritual guardians of Mars, exactly?

Why is foul coffee 'the best they could hope for, this far away from civilization'? Surely it's no more expensive to ship GOOD instant coffee to the edge of the solar system than rubbish stuff?

'Julius had heard of the [Black] fleet; they all had...a billion settlers had been exterminated...And then there had been the other fourteen colonies, also obliterated by the mysterious adversaries who came and went and left nothing but destruction in their wake' - and YOU STILL HADN'T WORKED OUT IT WAS THE DALEKS? I realise that, to quote Pertwee, military intelligence is a contradiction in terms, but FIFTEEN WORLDS DOWN and SURELY Earth would have worked out who was wiping out its empire? It's not like Daleks are SUBTLE. (And why were they just genociding everyone, anyway? What's wrong with SLAVE LABOUR and MINING, their favourite things EVER?)

'She sniffed the air: thin, but breathable, with the unmistakable burnt smell that characterized Mars, which put it somewhere between the mid twenty-second and the early twenty-fourth century, if she remembered the start stop timetable of terraforming correctly' - don't remember any of the other books or audios set on Mars mentioning a burnt smell. And how does breathable Martian air in 2157 fit in with the fact people need breathing masks in Fear Itself, set 30-odd years later? (Of course, Fear Itself doesn't really fit in with ANYTHING else.)

'Chris is on Triton?' 'Just a guess. It could just as easily be Vulcan or Cassius. Or Earth, come to that' - why not assume he's on the other side of Mars? And since when has VULCAN been in our solar system? And what's Cassius?

'The TARDIS was more than the Doctor's ship, she knew that. It was his home, his friend, his life...' - but not his wife? (I'm thinking Benny's First Frontier dream here, as well as Doctor's Wife and School Reunion...)

So the Daleks invaded Earth in 2157? Why the HELL did humanity bother producing a calendar for 2164, then?

'And it was Professor Rachel Anders, of course. Never forget that.' - Er...so why, two pages later, is Felice thinking of her as 'Dr Rachel Anders'?

'His physique was obvious, even through the jacket, and Rachel could detect the smiles and glances from the female members of her team' - only the female ones? Men fancy Chris too, as RTG Himself proved in Damaged Goods.

So, with Earth conquered and their Martian colony facing starvation, everyone just swallows the idea that a singer would be flying round the planet to do concerts?

'With a horrible squirming feeling in his stomach, Chris suddenly realized when and where he was. It did nothing to make him feel better' - what, a horrible squirming feeling didn't make him feel better? Who'd've thought it.

'Too many scientists of the Doctor's acquaintance had either become cynical and jaded, or drunk on the power that their discoveries offered; he thought of Maxtible, Kettlewell; even Greel and Davros had once been simple seekers of knowledge' - Kettlewell struck me as more SCARED than anything. And I doubt being a Kaled scientist during a world war made Davros much of a simple seeker of knowledge. (And how would the Doctor KNOW, anyway? He's hardly likely to have popped back to visit Little Davvy and Little Maggy.)

'The archaeologists believe that the Great Death - the curse which had withered the vegetation and wiped out the strange and alien people who had once populated the planet - had also come from the stars, laying waste Mars before heading towards Earth' - um, presumably this is talking about the Fendahl? But why on Earth make up a pre-Ice Warrior Martian race of which we know nothing?

'He was wearing gravity boots, allowing him to enjoy the benefits of a full Earth gravity on Mars' - personally if I was travelling hundreds of kilometres I'd prefer NOT to enjoy a full Earth gravity.

And since when would Roz worry about other people finding it in bad taste if she wanted to 'borrow' a dead man's gravity boots, anyway?

'If Earth had sent me a proper scientist..rather than a girl who doesn't know a Higgs's generator from a quantum resonator' - Rachel's been working with Felice for months but thinks of her as a moron? Yet later one hour's work on the GodEngine together has her proclaiming Felice as a mega-genius?

'It's times like this when I'm really glad of my sonic screwdriver. I'm just thankful I sued the Terileptils for criminal damage' - you KILLED all the Terileptils who murdered the Sacred Screwdriver. And it would be rather unfair to sue the Terileptil race for the crimes of, well, their criminals. And I fail to see how even a successful case would bring the sonic back to life. So just build one yourself. Or if you're feeling REALLY lazy, ask Sexy to grow one.

'[What if]...the descendant of one of the colonists could become a worse tyrant than Hitler, Green and Williams all rolled into one' - SURELY this can't mean dear old General Williams from Frontier in Space...? And who the hell is Green? *Checks TARDIS Wiki* Ooh! Apparently it was a Prime Minister Brian Green who tried to flog those ankle-biters to the 456...

I'm sick to the back teeth of everyone thinking about Benny all the time. SHE'S NOT HERE! GET OVER IT! Why is she getting more coverage than when she was actually AROUND? And as for Roz's belief that Benny would 'kill' to see some Martian hieroglyphs...she couldn't even be bothered to ask her SPACE-AND-TIME-TRAVELLING chum to take her to Mars, during all those years in the TARDIS...

Ah bless, Dortmun's daughter! 'Her father was apparently a renowned scientist back on Earth' - well if he was THAT renowned you'd think he'd have the sense to TEST HIS BOMBS a bit better (or, y'know...AT ALL).

'They were now the undisputed masters of subspace, Earth, the solar system...' - er...except for Mars.

Why does the Doctor give Chris all those explosives in his survival pack but not Roz?

'[The Ice Warriors] were creatures whose passion for warfare was only matched by their passion for beauty' - isn't this extrapolating rather a lot from a few sequins on an Ice Lord's helmet in Seeds of Death? Cos I don't remember any OTHER time aesthetics were an issue with the Ice Warriors.

'In many respects, the physical universe is nothing but a shadow of the Vortex' - since WHEN!

'"After those bastards dropped that asteroid on Paris, they thought that they had a couple of days until we retaliated...Instead, we arrived via Transit beam within hours and..." His face crumpled as the memories surged back, and Rachel felt another part of her soul shrivel and die' - The Thousand-Day War was in the mid-twenty-first century. THIS is the mid-twenty-second century. Why are so many people acting like they have personal memories of it? (And why didn't the Ice Warriors foresee the use of Transit anyway? It was hardly a secret.)

This is acting like everything was fine on Earth until the day the Dalek fleet arrived. Didn't it get BOMBARDED WITH PLAGUE-RIDDEN METEORITES first??

To be continued...(Say what you like about the NAs and MAs, they do tend to produce more nits than the EDAs and PDAs. On the whole, I regard this as A Good Thing.)

Surely it's no more expensive to ship GOOD instant coffee to the edge of the solar system than rubbish stuff?

Maybe it gets damaged in shipping. Cosmic rays and the solar wind will irradiate anything in space without sufficient shielding, which won't do much for the taste of coffee. If radiation shielding is expensive, they might protect the crew and passengers, but not the cargo.

So the Daleks invaded Earth in 2157? Why the HELL did humanity bother producing a calendar for 2164, then?

Maybe because their Dalek slavemasters ordered them to. Having calenders would help the humans keep track of the days, making it easier for them to follow Dalek schedules.

personally if I was travelling hundreds of kilometres I'd prefer NOT to enjoy a full Earth gravity.

There's a good chance you'd get motion sickness. Basically, your genes assume that if the inner ear is claiming gravity has gone weird, or that you're moving when your eyes say otherwise, it's a sign you've been poisoned, so time to vomit up the toxin. In the environment we evolved in, this was sound logic, and our genes haven't caught up with modern technology yet.

I don't recall the lunar astronauts getting motion sickness, but one of the reasons they were picked was because they didn't get motion sick easily.

And since when has VULCAN been in our solar system?

Astronomers used to think their might be a planet inside the orbit of Mercury, and they called this hypothetical planet Vulcan.

In the Doctor's universe, they may have been right, meaning 'Power of the Daleks' happened in our solar system. Is there anything that proves it definitely didn't?

Cosmic rays and the solar wind will irradiate anything in space without sufficient shielding, which won't do much for the taste of coffee.

Ah! Thanks.

Having calenders would help the humans keep track of the days, making it easier for them to follow Dalek schedules.

Human slaves don't need CALENDARS to help them follow Dalek schedules. Being awoken every morning by Roboman whips and shrieks of 'EXTERMINATE!' will do the trick very nicely.

There's a good chance you'd get motion sickness. Basically, your genes assume that if the inner ear is claiming gravity has gone weird, or that you're moving when your eyes say otherwise, it's a sign you've been poisoned, so time to vomit up the toxin. In the environment we evolved in, this was sound logic, and our genes haven't caught up with modern technology yet.

Unfortunately Roz struggled through Mars' gravity without experiencing any such symptoms (so I still don't know what her bloody PROBLEM is) but still...fascinating.

In the Doctor's universe, they may have been right, meaning 'Power of the Daleks' happened in our solar system. Is there anything that proves it definitely didn't?

Hmm. Not according to AHistory: 'The planet Vulcan is only seen in The Power of the Daleks, a story that is almost certainly set in 2020. There is no indication that mankind has developed interstellar travel or faster-than-light drives in this or any other story set at this time. This would seem to suggest that Vulcan is within our own Solar System.'

He then goes on to quote a theory about Vulcan wandering into our solar system and then wandering out again. (And starts name-dropping the Moon, Mondas and Voga in an attempt to make this sound less stupid.)

*Counts carefully on fingers in manner of Davison in Castrovalva* Chris. Rachel. Felice. That's THREE people, right?

So what's with them picking up four plasma rifles? The mention of 'four sleeping figures'? Chris thinking of 'Felice and the others'? 'My personal guard will escort the four of you to somewhere more comfortable'?

Why is no one worried about 'the radiation levels coming from that thing'?

'The longer we draw this out, the more likely it becomes that the murderer will show his hand' 'Or his clamp?' - what about HER hand or HER clamp?

'Two species, held apart by mutual distrust, forced together by a common need' - the humans needed the Ice Warriors to get 'em past Ice Warrior traps, I don't recall the Ice Warriors needing the humans for anything?

'Roz knew that she ought to ask the Doctor about [spotting a ghost TARDIS], but she decided to wait until he was in a better mood. If ever' - er...you don't think it might PUT him in a better mood to learn that SOME of his darling survived?

I'm used to capacious pockets...but the Doctor just happens to have a map of Mars about his person?

McGuire's giving Cleece orders since WHEN!

It takes the Ice Warriors TWO DAYS to get round to brain-racking Felice and Rachel WHY, exactly?

There's a personal force shield in Chris's survival pack in addition to the medicine, explosives, etc etc etc? If the Doctor's being so unDoctorishly well-organised, why provide such packs only when the TARDIS is breaking up? They should have 'em ALL THE TIME.

At least (unlike Judgement of Isskar) this realises that the armour isn't part of an Ice Warrior. Post-Cold-War, I'm not sure how accurate the description is, though: 'Over seven feet of fighting reptile, his leathery skin sparkling in the overhead lighting. Tufts of black fur grew from his elbows, knees and wrists, and around his shoulders...he possessed surprisingly human fingers and toes...the head was quite small in proportion to the rest of his body, and smooth, with tiny flaps for ears. Two cat-like yellow eyes stared at her' - the fingers are wrong for starters. And wasn't it a disgrace for an Ice Warrior to be out of their armour? (Look, Cold War wasn't very memorable. I intend to rewatch ANY MINUTE NOW, but...I've gotta go through Rings of Akhaten first. So when I say 'any minute' it might take a while.)

What a hypocrite the Doctor is. He rips apart the Martians' Osirian-based religion ('Horus never uttered a single word that you attribute to him!') but has never done the same for any Earth religion. (And since when did he meet Horus, anyway? I've HEARD the whole of Horus's tragically brief lifespan in The True History of Faction Paradox. No Doctor.)

So one minute it's 'six months of pilgrimage', the next minute it's 'a year'.

'He had become hooked on Vraxoin just so that he could cope with the agonizing struggle of going from one day to the next' - yet McGuire overcame his addiction? To VRAXOIN? Since when has that been POSSIBLE?

Everyone agrees that 'We've got to destroy that thing before it comes on-line'. Before...er...doing nothing to destroy the GodEngine. Or even to stop Felice completing said GodEngine. The excuse being that the brainwashed Felice would 'turn hysterical; the Martians will find us straight away.' Not if you knock her out and carry her she won't. And as for the claim that 'Once Rachel tells us about this GodEngine, we might have a better chance of saving the Doctor and the others' - UH?

The portrayal of the Doctor as a perpetual sulk AND racist due to the TARDIS's destruction is somewhat unsuccessful. 'Since the rebirth of the TARDIS, something warm and deserving of respect once more burnt within him. It was good to have it back' - you know what? I don't think Our Hero derives his warmth solely from Sexy.

Though I do like the Ice Warriors referring to him as the 'mad mammal'.

'You squandered Mars, Falaxyr. You led your people into bloodshed and lost any claim to it' - the Doctor's hypocrisy gets more breathtaking by the minute. He's never said THAT to humanity.

Bloody hell. The humans on Mars don't KNOW who conquered EARTH? To think I thought they were being a bit slow off the mark not to realise who exterminated all those colonies.

What, after SEVENTY YEARS of hard work, Falaxyr just decides to LEAVE his GodEngine and scarper to Nova Martia where 'we will be heroes' for no readily apparent reason?!

'"I want to find Wolsey - he must have been terrified when the TARDIS was destroyed." Roz smiled, and decided not to ask how the cat could have survived the destruction of the time machine' - well I want to know!

So we never get an explanation for how Felice magically understands an ancient Martian language that even the ICE WARRIORS don't get?

If the Daleks were hollowing out Earth's core solely to stick the GodEngine in it...why do they continue hollowing out Earth's core for the ten years after the GodEngine is destroyed?

Wasn't it an INSANE RISK to tell the Daleks about the human scientists on Charon in the hope that the Daleks arriving to wipe 'em out would inspire them to create a successful subspace tunnel that the Ice Warriors could then hijack? When they had months of failure behind them? The scientists wouldn't even have known the Daleks were coming if a time traveller hadn't unexpectedly dropped in to warn them.

Look...nice attempt at portraying an alien culture, but I'm just SO not convinced by the beauty and grandeur of Martian native life, OK? Also, I could have spent the rest of my life in blissful ignorance of their mating and defecation habits.

After an endless trek ending with a cursory glance at a superweapon, the book stops rather abruptly - the Chris/Felice relationship (did they have sex? Or even just say goodbye?) and indeed all the other rescued scientists (did they stay put? Attempt to leave as ordered when their leaders didn't return?) are completely unresolved - give or take a helpful scene with the Doctor explaining that THEY'RE ALL GONNA DIE.

this realises that the armour isn't part of an Ice Warrior. Post-Cold-War, I'm not sure how accurate the description is, though

They don't match Cold War appearance, but Ice Warriors aren't a clone race, as far as we know. They could easily have more genetic variability than humans.

since when did he meet Horus, anyway?

The Doctor might just be going on what the Tardis data banks say, or on dim memories of galactic history classes at the Academy.

So one minute it's 'six months of pilgrimage', the next minute it's 'a year'.

Martian months, maybe? Our months are based on the Earth's moon, so using them on Mars wouldn't make a lot of sense.

why do they continue hollowing out Earth's core for the ten years after the GodEngine is destroyed?

They thought they could find another super-weapon that would fit nicely there, or even build their own.

Ice Warriors aren't a clone race, as far as we know. They could easily have more genetic variability than humans.

God, that never occurred to me.

I'm obviously some kind of speciesist who assumes that all races look the same.

Despite even Sontarans looking pretty different from story to story.

The Doctor might just be going on what the Tardis data banks say, or on dim memories of galactic history classes at the Academy.

The ones that didn't even mention the Daleks? They certainly wouldn't have mentioned a blatantly-superior-to-themselves race like the Osirians. Admittedly the Doctor did seem unusually well-informed about 'em in Pyramids. (Just not to the extent of apparently knowing EVERY WORD Horus uttered.) But then he IS at about that point in the Doctor's life when his transformation from pig-ignorant improviser to smug know-it-all is pretty much complete.

So one minute it's 'six months of pilgrimage', the next minute it's 'a year'.

Martian months, maybe? Our months are based on the Earth's moon, so using them on Mars wouldn't make a lot of sense.

These are Martian pilgrims talking so I suppose they'd be using Martian months (whatever the hell THEY are) but unless Mars has a six-month year these are some SERIOUSLY CONFUSED pilgrims.

They thought they could find another super-weapon that would fit nicely there, or even build their own.

Hmm.

I suspect they just really enjoy digging.

They thought they could find another super-weapon that would fit nicely there, or even build their own.

Hmm.

I suspect they just really enjoy digging.

There's also a lot of very useful metals in the Earth's core, iron, nickel, cobalt, uranium, etc,. Since they already had access to it, they thought they might as well take out everything of value so the whole project wouldn't be a total loss.

But this is at the beginning of the Dalek invasion. And it apparently takes the poor dears TEN YEARS to dig a big hole (ye gods, even TORCHWOOD are more efficient*).

And why the hell didn't the Daleks just invade Mars to find out what happened to their precious GodEngine?

*Oh. Have just double-checked. OK, so Torchwood bought H C Clements in 1984. Still, THEY had to keep the digging top-secret...

Bookwyrm:

'We're told that Mars has no magnetic field, but that's imply not true; it's Venus that has no magnetic field' - oops.

'The front cover shows two Ice Warriors having a duel with the Sword of Turburr and what is supposed to be a near-perfect copy of the Sword of Turburr. One might have suspected them to look at least vaguely similar' - ah well...

'This act of quite visceral domestic violence is stopped in its tracks when she tells him that the prospective children aren't his, whereupon he sits and stares into space for ages...Domestic violence and in-relationship rape are very real problems, and this cheap sideshow version - in which a vaguely spirited defence and then an admission of apparent adultery serves to stop the perpetrator in his tracks - does no one any favours' - very, very true.

Benny is 'referenced on almost 10% of the book's pages' - ouch.

'The entire plot is a retcon of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, designed to explain why the Daleks decided to hollow out the Earth's magnetic core...they were planning to install the GodEngine in it. Okay, fine, but said GodEngine is destroyed by the end of the novel, a full three years before the Daleks even begin mining the Earth...' - honestly, it's not like the Daleks even needed an excuse for hollowing out the Earth's core in the first place. They just love digging.

The Doctor 'begins this story, despite all his experience, convinced that all "Ice Warriors"...are evil. In short, he is a racist...The Doctor is given the excuse that the TARDIS has been destroyed and that puts him in a bad mood, which is pathetic' - that's just what I said. Except that I didn't notice 'his racist opinion is vindicated by the narrative.'

'We're told that Mars has no magnetic field, but that's imply not true; it's Venus that has no magnetic field' - oops.

Neither planet has a magnetic field.

*Sigh* How is 'magnetic field' defined? Cos Bookwyrm says Mars has a weak but EXISTING one.

Ok, they do not have active global magnetic fields like ours. However, the rocks in Mars' crust do preserve a weak remnant of its vanished global field, its strength varying according to the types of minerals present in various locations. In some places it even forms what could be called magnetic domes that partially shield the planet's suface from cosmic rays and the solar wind, but its really not very effective protection.

Venus also has a weak magnetic field, this one created by the interractions between its dense ionosphere and the solar wind. This is what protects the planet's atmosphere from being stripped away by that same solar wind.

Poor old Bookwyrm. Looks like it could have got away with saying that Mars has no magnetic field just by using a perfectly-reasonable definition thereof...if only it hadn't apparently been using a different definition when suddenly talking about Venus...To be fair, there are some books/audios/episodes one finds oneself absolutely hellbent on extracting the maximum number of nits from and one can hardly blame the authors that GodEngine blatantly fell into this category for them.

give or take a helpful scene with the Doctor explaining that THEY'RE ALL GONNA DIE

Yeah, why was it 'cosmic book-keeping' in GodEngine but 'raw temporal energy' in the shape of mud and nightmares killing 'em in Men and Horrors of War. (Alright, there was a ten-year Dalek Occupation to help in GodEngine but there was a World War to help in aforementioned audios.)

'For a brief second, he wondered whether he should run around the corner and see the young woman who was so very much a part of him. Then he looked down at the discarded key, and shook his head with infinite sadness. "Finished business," he muttered, before stepping into his ship' - finished how? You promised to come back. You didn't bother till you were Eight...

Yeah, why was it 'cosmic book-keeping' in GodEngine but 'raw temporal energy' in the shape of mud and nightmares killing 'em in Men and Horrors of War.

Yeah, it's definitely the former in Graceless - 'There are beings out there who guard against it, but the real danger is Time itself. It's this colossal force, the whole of reality weighing down, flattening out any wrinkles. You make a change, and all of history is against you...'

'For such an uncompromising race, whose evolution had been so militaristic that its young were born into troops, not families' - Waters of Mars novelisation. Not that GodEngine's portrayal of Ice Warrior domesticity/domestic abuse was particularly convincing even BEFORE that...

This was written long before Waters Of Mars was even thought of.

Entirely beside the point! And anyway, at ANY time in Ice Warrior history, being born into troops made LOADS more sense than this nonsense about telling your husband your eggs are some other man's like a particularly bad soap opera...

'"I want to find Wolsey - he must have been terrified when the TARDIS was destroyed."

Or...not.

Christmas on a Rational Planet:

'They paused as a broken balustrade drifted past. Wolsey the cat sat perched on top of it, licking his backside as if the break-up of the TARDIS was unimportant compared to the state of his furry rear end.'

God I love cats.

'Once again, Fate had assembled an entourage of interesting and colourful characters against a historically significant backdrop. I really must have a word with Fate about that.'

Well he doesn't believe in Fate by the time he's Ten:

Wannabes:

'The Doctor, as a rule, did not believe in fate. This might seem like a complicated position for someone who time-travelled. Yes, the future existed, and the past existed and there was a very clear line from one to the other. But that wasn't fate. That was time. Fate was supposed to have an author. A higher power. Time didn't have an author. It just had readers.'

Time is the scroll on which Fate writes her stories.

Hmm.

Tennant didn't particularly help by saying in Star Beast, 'I don't believe in destiny, but if destiny exists, then it is heading for Donna Noble right now.'