Emily- Doesn't he hear about the outbreak of psychic powers, rather than the destruction of the colony?

No, I'm pretty sure that it was all-out destruction he heard about - I'll try to remember which library I got SLEEPY out of, and check. There's a passage in So Vile A Sin where Roz remembers smoking Yamaya cigarettes in her youth, and then thinks 'wait a minute, Yamaya was destroyed centuries before I was born, I smoked some other brand, but the Doctor's interference means that everyone's memories have been altered to incorporate a live Yamaya, and I'm the only one that notices because I'm a time traveller.' So maybe YOUR memories have also been altered by the Web of Time???

I should know since I've just read it. I'll try and look it up when I can be bothered to take it down from the shelf...

On my copy the pages started to crack away from the spine but everything still held together. That indicates a book with some small bits of merit but nowhere near great. Which is SLEEPY all over. The problem is that once the Doctor takes over from White the book becomes comatose. It's like all those six episode stories which should have finished in four but they padded it out by adding a new enemy late in the story.

Overall : zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Overall : zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Yeah, there's a phrase - 'nominative determinism' - which pretty much sums it up...

'Anyway, you could never move or run in nightmares' - you couldn't? But he's THE DOCTOR! And wasn't the Fendahl nightmare so unusual precisely because you couldn't move?

'The breakfast things had been tidied away...There was intelligent life around somewhere, then' - not necessarily, could be a dumb robot.

'As nightmares went, this one was very calm and simple. Tedious, even' - QUITE. Dream sequences are ALWAYS boring and this one's worse than most.

If you really HAVE to refer to Chris as 'the tall blonde' at least spell 'blond' right.

So, it's 2257. We certainly have come a long way since Earth was all-but destroyed in the Dalek Invasion a century earlier. Tying in a lot better with Fear Itself's high-tech interplanetary societies than Legacy of the Daleks' medieval throwbacks. (And completely ignoring the audios' another-identical-Dalek-invasion-twenty-years-later cos it's stupid.)

'I didn't think anyone still lived in Sydney. Not in this epoch' - isn't 'epoch' quite a long time? The Doctor knew that people had been living in Sydney a mere hundred or two hundred years earlier, surely?

'We should keep this between the two of us for as long as we can' says the Doctor to Byerley. Even though it was Chris who suggested the idea to him in the first place. And even though he promptly tells Benny all about it. And even though there's a public announcement about it the next day.

'There's no way they'd allow colonists on the planet if there was evidence of an alien civilization. Even just remains' - yeah, cos OBVIOUSLY the expanding Earth Empire has the utmost respect for all other species...(This later claims that 'Earthlike planets are a dime a dozen' which may not be convincing but does help explain...a bit. Though the question of why not a single colonist is worried they'll be pulled out now the ruins HAVE been noticed is unanswered. Or why they weren't spotted when THIS PLANET WAS SURVEYED.)

'The Doctor had been awake all night, but that was normal for him. One good night's sleep could last him a couple of weeks' - hmm. OK. Whatever.

'This design's very common in Earth's part of the galaxy. There's probably some Exxilon or Osirian influence' - didn't Osirians tend to DESTROY any planet they swept through (except Earth and Mars, rather oddly as they were the site of the final Sutekh/Osirian battle) - not teach people how to draw patterns?

Benny has to TRANSLATE the symbols? Sexy feeling lazy today?

'It's just that it's an odd coincidence. Someone has done this to us. The virus, I mean. And you folks showed up...' - which bit of Benny explaining to her ten seconds earlier 'We heard a rumour about the infections, and we wanted to come and see what really happened' does Zaniwe somehow not understand?

'Thing is, the disaster ['INFANT COLONY UP IN FLAMES'] should've happened two days ago. They'd already diverted the river of history' - and if it's so easy and so consequence-free to do so, why don't they do it ALL THE TIME? Why not render every adventure meaningless by nipping back to change any unwanted outcomes - if you'll do it for boring Yamaya?

And wouldn't this cause a paradox? They only came here because of a news report that now won't be written because they came here...The Reapers should be massing at the borders and the Time Lords mobilising to stop them...

(Though frankly what any of Our Heroes have DONE to stop the colony burning to the ground is anyone's guess.)

So one minute the telepaths can only hear loud thoughts, the next it's EVERYTHING?

Tegan had told the Doc about getting a moth caught inside her ear that they'd had to get out at the hospital? Can moths DO that?!

The TARDIS can regrow EYEBROWS?

'"On my planet," said the Doctor, "we have a saying. Panic about one thing at a time." - I find it hard to picture ANY Time Lord admitting to panicking, let alone to inventing a SAYING about it.

'He'd been reading her mind, for weeks, and he hadn't told her' - it's been DAYS, surely? However long said days feel due to our mutual boredom...

'She knows I'm an extraterrestrial - a handful of them do' - I thought ALL the colonists discovered it after he blew Dot's mind? Why would the Doctor bother lying about this, especially as the invader-telepaths will see it in the colonists' minds anyway?

Dot miraculously recovered HOW exactly?

'She shouted when someone shone a light in her face' - and NONE of the kids woke up? And none of the fifty 1-13-year-olds ripped away from their parents was wailing its little head off during the night?

'Wolsey hopped up onto the side of the tub and dipped into the water, drinking tiny pawfuls of the warm stuff, luxuriating. His previous owner hadn't let him do this' - OWNER? LET him?! This would be INSANE AND OFFENSIVE even if Oh No It Isn't! hadn't conclusively proved that Wolsey thinks of Benny as Human Servant Woman...

Plus what sort of Precious likes drinking warm soapy bath-water anyway?

The TARDIS has a WEAPONS ROOM since WHEN! Well, OK, so Hartnell bizarrely mentioned his gun collection in Gunfighters. And there IS an attempt to claim 'It was all junk, the kind of things the Doctor picked up on his travels the way other people picked up coffee mugs' which wasn't enormously convincing even before the CANNON was mentioned.

'It was set to stun. But the Doctor had caught the charge point-blank. How had he managed to get up and knock her over?' - er, yes. HOW? Usually when he gets stunned (Arc of Infinity, Dark Water) he STAYS stunned.

'They wanted to create a computer that could think like a human, so what do they do? They install a cat's brain into an Imbani mainframe. And what do they get? A computer that wants to play with string and sit on your newspaper' - I can't quite add this to the list of Who Novels' Crimes Against Oochies (said cat seems to be having fun) but still...I'm NOT HAPPY.

(Plus - they still have NEWSPAPERS?)

So, America's dirt poor these days, and Africa is rich? I seem to remember America being dirt poor in Lucifer Rising too (not to mention barely EXISTING in the future according to About Time). But didn't the whole of Africa get wiped out in the Dalek Invasion?

'How many Sontarans does it take to change a light-bulb? None, the bulb died a glorious death!' - that's just RACIST. If YOU'D ever seen a dying Sontaran realising that this sort of thing isn't much fun...

'A telepathic machine, for Goddess; sake. A telepathic machine!' - QUITE. I find telepathic humans quite enough for my suspension of disbelief to cope with, thanks.

'Foamasi, for instance. Their language consists of clicks intended to stimulate the visual cortex; they see the words as they leave the speaker's mouth. The way language is actually processed in the Foamasi brain is unique' - valiant if somewhat irrelevant attempt to explain why THE DOCTOR needed things translated for him in Leisure Hive...

'The Time Lord was going to win this bet if it killed him' - but he's already lost. He bet that no one would die, and Professor Whatshisname has already burnt to death. (Plus, if the Doctor died he wouldn't have won anyway...)

With the Doctor talking in terms of 'plot' and 'villains' and Benny in terms of 'exposition'...it's all a bit fourth-wall-breaking.

'It was a birthday. Measured in Earth years, not the years of - Gallifrey' - why should the Doc measure his birthdays in Earth years (at least when he's not talking to Victoria and making it plain he's speaking in HER years)? HOW would he measure them in ANYONE'S years, given all that time-travel? And I thought the NAs hinted that there was some unspecified link between Earth and Gallifrey, not least the fact they had the same length year...? (Presumably disproved when that whacking great orange thing appeared in our skies in End of Time, though obviously I wouldn't know how size affects orbit times.)

Time Lords are known as 'They who walk in the shadows'? Surely if any Time Lord has been noticed it's Our Hero, and HE doesn't walk in any shadows.

'So, let me guess: you want to see if any craft were reported lost here, right?' - and you didn't think to ask DAYS ago?!

What's the 'obvious possibility' that's 'too gross to even think about'?

'He was called the Doctor but his Gallifreyan name had thirty-eight syllables' - the HELL it did! Does River LOOK like she was reciting THIRTY-EIGHT SYLLABLES in Silence in the Library or Name of the Doctor?

'He had destroyed a fleet of Chelonian ships to kill an entire species' - ooh, when?

'The light flared, its brilliance finding every inch of this skin, glittering in every drop of his blood...He knew this game from long practice. The light was a ferocious potential energy, crammed into every cell. It promised to wash it all away...' - hang on, things are so bad the Doctor has to suppress a REGENERATION? And, what's more, he's had a lot of PRACTICE at suppressing regenerations...?

'It was an argument I had once. With a madman. I did very badly. He asked me to give him...a reason why it would be wrong to kill me' - nice as it is to see references to other people's books rather than your own for a change...that particular 'debate' really WAS Original Sin's nadir.

'I've set the Hostile Action Displacement System. If the warship does attack, it'll take them back to Earth' - leaving the Doctor and chums stranded? Great idea.

'Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe' - since when has the Doctor believed in a Creation? Which bit of ANTI-MATTER-ENGINES has slipped his mind? And since when has he wanted an ordered universe?

Madhanagopal's disappearance is 'a loose end. I'll have to tie it off eventually.' But he doesn't, does he? Even when he starts tangling with that psi-powers-obsessed Brotherhood the bloke was presumably part of.

'She was onto her third cup of the homemade hooch....She downed the cupful at a gulp, feeling her eyeballs trying to melt' - YOU CAME SO CLOSE! So close to NOT doing something horrible to someone's eyeballs! But you just couldn't help yourself, could you...on the penultimate page, too...

And wouldn't this cause a paradox? They only came here because of a news report that now won't be written because they came here...

Or, as the Twelfth Doctor puts it in Dark Water: 'If I change the events that brought you here, you will never come here and ask me to change those events. Paradox loop. The timeline disintegrates. YOUR timeline.'

So why no disintegrating timelines? The worst that happens is Roz 'remembering' getting her ciggies from Yamaya rather than some other planet.

Which, come to think of it, is YET ANOTHER reason not to save these colonists. If they're just gonna use their lives to grow cancer-inducing tobacco...

'He had destroyed a fleet of Chelonian ships to kill an entire species' - ooh, when?

Oh, OK, that was Zamper. And there was nothing wrong with THAT, it's just the lying-to-said-Chelonians-about-it that I had the problem with...

'The light flared, its brilliance finding every inch of this skin, glittering in every drop of his blood...He knew this game from long practice. The light was a ferocious potential energy, crammed into every cell. It promised to wash it all away...' - hang on, things are so bad the Doctor has to suppress a REGENERATION? And, what's more, he's had a lot of PRACTICE at suppressing regenerations...?

OK, this is looking less stupid post-Twice Upon a Time...

'Had I been present at the Creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the universe'

And yet, when you actually DID reboot the universe the only useful hints for the better ordering of the universe was to Amy vis-a-vis getting her parents back. The parents she never bothered seeing after her wedding...(Give or take Borrowed Time.)

Bookwyrm:

'On rec.ars.drwho at the time, there was a lengthy debate about "frocks" versus "guns". This stemmed from...Gareth Roberts...saying that the New Adventures should have "less guns, more frocks"...it evolved...into political alignments, with the "gun" side seen as stodgy and conservative and the "frock" side seen as fun and progressive. Unfortunately, it meant that authors who excelled at tight plotting and searing emotions suddenly wanted to be on the "frock" side of the line...this novel...starts with the...Doctor being apparently kidnapped, strapped down and abused by his friends, moves on to having him psychologically abused and then bleeding from the eye...culminates in a suicide....yet...also ends on this note: "Benny grinned at her. 'My dear Roslyn, frocks are the purpose of life.' She twirled"...The whiplash you just felt isn't from being pistol-whipped; it's from being slapped in the face with a truly fabulous frock.' - Oh. Doesn't THAT explain a lot.

Madhanagopal's disappearance is 'a loose end. I'll have to tie it off eventually.' But he doesn't, does he?

To be fair, he makes herculean efforts to tie up SLEEPY-related loose ends in Christmas on a Rational Planet. It's just that none of 'em entail this Madhanagopal person...