Has anyone read this thing? I'm totally unable to get hold of a copy, and would be very grateful for info on all those revelations it's supposed to have on Gallifrey, the Pythia, etc.

Yes, I read it back in 1992 so it's all very vague now. I had a lot of trouble figuring out what was going on.
The main things that stick out though are the Pythia - some sort of spiritual Gallifreyan woman who could see into the future (I think)
There was Rassilon, who came back from hunting rare creatures like the sphinx.
There were time travel experiements using a time scaphe and they were controlled by mind power. I think it was one of these missions going wrong and colliding with the TARDIS in the vortex which caused it to explode and form some sort of planet which had an array of different timezones, which confuses Ace a lot as she looks for the Doctor.
Don't remember much else - the TARDIS is in crisis at the beginning, the Doctor and Ace eat baked alaska, Ace sort of meets her mum and the Doctor gets frustrated at not being able to find out important things from the past.
It's quite boring in sections and drags, although I felt the most humorous bits was when he is holding a cable of the TARDIS on the planet and gives it instructions,nothing happens and he then realises he forgot to say "Send" (the equivalent of pressing Enter).
I can't say I'd ever want to read it again in a hurry. There's not a huge amount of Gallifrey stuff, it's more of the backstory. The main story is on this strange planet that is created.

Thanks, Chris. You've made me feel better about not being able to read it.

*shudder* Count your blessings. While there ARE good parts to it, I found the Gallifrey bits not at all well thought out, and terribly confusing.
The different time zone thing was neat, though.

*shuddersmore* I dislike books that do the whole 'future perception' thing, as it is..

All that has been said about this story is true but there is also a lot of little details about Gallifrey that are expanded on throughout the NAs.
Aas far forward as 'The Ancestor Cell' and 'Time's Crucible' is still being used as reference for the earliest days of Gallifrey.
In 'Time's Crucible':
We learn about Prydonius, the founder of the Prydonian chapter, and, in a parallel with the Doctor in 'The Infinity Doctors', how he was sent to oversee a brewing dispute between the Sontarans and Rutan after he challenged the Pythia.
There are mentions of other Gallifreyan heroes such as Ao, who led campaigns in the Gallifreyan wars of conquest. (It was either he or Prydonius who did battle with the mirror-faced Sphinx of Thule [evokes an image very much akin to the Spinxs in Dead Romance, hmmm?])
We first learn Time Lords are sterile here and the reasons for this (the Pythia's banishment)
The Time Scaphe is the first Gallifreyan time machine, one that is powered by mental energy (a reflection of the Pythia-reigned Gallifrey, I get the impression that this is *before* Rassilon and Omega forge the Eye of Harmony)
There are allusions to the early Gallifreyans being completely telepathic and only the most *special* being able to block their thoughts from others.
There's also a mention of the Aubert Cluster as one of Gallifrey's underling territories in it's Empire (among others). This is presumably where the Aubertides from 'Human Nature' come from, and the reason why they know about Time Lords.
There's lots of other stuff as well, but I can't remember it off the top of my head right now.

Hey, there's plenty of stuff in the book, sure, it's just such an effort to get through it, let alone pick up all those references.

Actually, my overriding memory of the book is the word "miehrrve" which I think Ace heard on Iceworld and describes this strange new world perfectly, she seems to think.

isn;t that the sound General Melchett makes in Blackadder Goes Forth?

When he does what, in particular?

nothing, he just makes that sound 'merhhhhh'

Another Blackadder Goes Forth connection (possibly)? Go look at The War Games board...

Hey, there's a reference to Blackadder in 'Man in the Velvet Mask', too.

What is also interesting about Time's Crucible
is that the Gallifreyans Ace meets know nothing of
TARDISes,Time Lords or for that matter even,Regeneration.It seems that prior to Rassilon the pre-Time Lord Gallifreyans had something similiar to Reincarnation.

The Infinity Doctors implied that pre-TL Gallifreyans were simply immortal. Seems pretty s t u p i d to swap that for a mere 13 lives.

I think it's more complex than that.

Yeah - I suppose developing entirely new personalities and bodies every few centuries helped prevent stagnation. But I'd still prefer immortality, thanks. I just wouldn't feel like ME, anyway, after a regeneration. I'd have the memories, but that would be about it. I could turn into ANYONE! Even Colin Baker. Why take the risk when you could live forever (barring accidents, which would be inevitable sooner or later, so you wouldn't have to worry about become as bored as an Eternal).

Hahaha, yeah that too.

I meant more complex in terms that I don't think it was as simple as all TLs being immortal, implications don't always pan out as expected.

DWM: 'The trilogy idea came quite late in the day, so the three of us only really had time to pop in the odd cross-reference. We did actually get together to discuss what themes and images could link our three books, but we didn't get very much further than cracking open a bottle of wine and deciding to make do with a silver cat!' - well, it's always nice to have one's suspicions confirmed...

The cat was the spirit of the TARDIS?! Well, that's...sweet. Of course, the TARDIS's spirit SHOULD be a cat. Well, EVERYONE's spirit should be a cat.

'I also wanted to write Time's Crucible to fulfil the TARDIS's potential. I don't think the TARDIS hadn't [sic] been used properly since the very first season. I absolutely adore Inside the Spaceship'...well, the book being based on THAT particular piece of excruciating tedium and utter illogicality certainly explains a lot.

'I'd be surprised if anyone understood it' - quite. And you think it's a GOOD IDEA to write a book you know no one will understand...?

Yeah, as excruciatingly boring as I remembered it. And the lumps of Ancient-Gallifreyan history haven't aged well, even if they're a bit more imaginative than New Who's sex-and-natural-childbirth planet. Why the hell couldn't Sexy just have kept the stupid slug out in the first place and spared us all this? (And if it ate the TARDIS manuals why was Matt claiming he threw 'em into a supernova or something?) It might actually have been bearable (if ludicrously expensive) on television, given how bloody VISUAL it all is.

'The most powerful civilization in the cosmos would have been better off staying in the Dark Time; the time of Chaos and superstition' - really? Er...why? Just because they're wasting their potential by passively observing instead of KIDNAPPING and ENSLAVING and KILLING other species?

'He attended academic parades only on pain of expulsion, guessing that the Court of Principals would never carry out such a threat for they knew that he was an Individual' - well, if the threat was obviously empty why attend the parades then?

'Her aversion to cats, especially black ones, had only recently developed' - Ace has no aversion to oochies! The Cheetah planet lives on inside her!

'She prayed her time with him would never, ever end' - that's not the impression I got from Nightshade shortly hereafter, y'know, where she tries to ditch the Doc to settle down in the 1950s (or somesuch benighted era) with some guy she's only just met. (Admittedly this is MUCH more Nightshade's nit.)

Also, Ace doesn't PRAY. Even when in front of a firing-squad she shrieks to the mother she hates rather than address any sort of deity.

'Prydonius lifted a glass case in a victory salute. Inside, the gnarled feline, feminine head of the Sphinx gazed out over the throng' - cat-murdering GITS!

'What did you expect of Perivale? Ace knew it had been a mistake to come back' - so why the hell DID you come back then. You certainly don't seem interested in reconnecting with friends/mummy.

'Ace hadn't seen [her mother] for three years' - that's awfully exact for a time-traveller, especially one who's telling the Doctor on the next page that she doesn't know how long she's been travelling with him.

'The rusty surface of Gallifrey, blotched with brown lakes and dust-grey clouds' - I don't think that contradicts the sight of that bloated bully in Earth's skies in End of Time too badly?

'It was an illusion. No one alive had seen or could imagine the vortex real' - THANK you! I've always (or at least since Season 5/31's godawful clouds-and-lightning Vortex) suspected that we were just seeing an illusion.

'"They didn't forecast rain, did they?" the policeman asked' - I seem to remember weather forecasts being so grotesquely inaccurate in those days this would have been an incredibly stupid question.

Seven seems every bit as startled as Nine by the ringing - and very existence - of the phone in Sexy's exterior. Well, maybe this 'adventure' was so boring as to have been totally wiped from the Doc's mind by the time s/he's Eccy.

'But you must know how to work it. You built it' - why the •••• should Ace think THAT? The Doc is FAR beyond her/his Hartnell days of pathetically pretending to have built the thing. (Actually, did even Hartnell do that? Or am I misremembering due to Susan's bizarre claim to have named the TARDIS?)

Also, compare n'contrast with the later 'On previous solo trips into the TARDIS's depths, she had begun to get more than an inkling that the ship had had several previous owners before the Doctor' (what, did she think he'd RENTED HER OUT after building her?!).

AND the even-later '"Ace, you're the first person to see [Sexy's blueprints] since the TARDIS was in neural construction dock on Gallifrey." Ace exclaimed, "But I thought you built..." "Not exactly."' - Not EXACTLY my arse.

The Doctor hated decorating? Well, he enjoyed it well enough when he was TOM.

There's an overhead trapdoor in the TARDIS. Ace asks the Doc about it and 'he had looked a bit furtive and mumbled something incomprehensible, so Ace had called it the loft and had forgotten about it' - oh come OFF it, like ANY Companion - let alone Ace - wouldn't have reacted to the Doctor's furtiveness by getting through that trapdoor if it killed them...

Ace's dad sent his ex-wife (and/or daughter?) a Christmas card every year? Saying what, exactly? 'Me and the son I kidnapped from you are just fine, Sweetie'? (Of course, I really shouldn't retroactively impose the lunacies of The Rapture audio on innocent previous-novels but...)

Why are the Chronauts risking their lives to save collaborator Vael's miserable life?

To be continued...

'The rusty surface of Gallifrey, blotched with brown lakes and dust-grey clouds' - I don't think that contradicts the sight of that bloated bully in Earth's skies in End of Time too badly?

That planet looked like it had been devastated, burned and covered with lakes of molten lava, so it's hard to compare.

Oh! I didn't quite register that, I just vaguely thought that Gallifrey was a bit less pretty-and-orange-and-silver than Susan claimed in The Sensorites all those years ago.

I know the Capitol was hit but it never occurred to me the Daleks managed to blast the hell out of the WHOLE planet, not just the Capitol and Arcadia. Hmm. That must have been one pretty-ruined Gallifrey the Doctor shut in that time bubble.

The surface was scorched in the Time War.

Yeah, I get that NOW...does the timing work? The freezing-in-a-bubble stuff in Day of the Doctor must have happened after the ill-fated little trip to visit Earth in End of Time...yet the 'Last Day' Day-of-the-Doc DVD prequel had everyone terribly shocked that anything Dalek could penetrate Gallifrey's defences, which wouldn't make an awful lot of sense if they'd already bombed the •••• out of the planet.

'Ace saw the red weal on his cheek and an eye like a blank white marble in its socket' - and the great and unique thing about THIS eye-gouging (and, with EVERY Who novel gouging out SOMEONE'S eye, you've gotta stand out from the crowd, even so early in this disgusting and inexplicable tradition) is that you can relive it over and over again in the different time-streams! ('The weal on his cheek stood out strongly, and his glazed white eye stared from its torn socket'.) Well, at least this means eye-gouging honour is satisfied with only ONE person having to go through it...

...'Clinging to the wicker of her cage, [the Pythia] gouged out her own eye and inserted the eye of the Sphinx in its place'...

Silly me.

Why do the Chronauts have legends of the 'cruel Doctor'? Especially when Shonnzi regards him as the 'daft old goik' who gave him his hat...

'The cerulean blue of the sky' - the WHAAAAAAAT! Gallifrey's sky is BURNT ORANGE...(or is that just at night...?)

The Doctor 'normally had a fondness for paradoxes' since WHEN!

'You've destroyed my ship and a good friend of mine!' - but the Doc doesn't believe Ace is dead!

'He'd try anything once' - no he wouldn't. When he was Five he told Peri he'd try anything once except folk dancing or incest (Warmonger. Obviously).

'"She's a liar," said Reogus. "Am I?" she retaliated' - er...YES? You told the Chronauts you didn't know the Doctor, FFS.

'She had spent months trapped in Iceworld, picking up pidgin Galaxpeke and pigbin Orculqui' - credit where it's due, it never occurred to me that Ace should have had post-timestorm language difficulties. I guess I just assumed Iceworld was a human colony that spoke English...

'A jagged blood-red rainbow, a pair of God's compasses measuring out the world' - I'm sorry, did THE DOCTOR just think in terms of 'GOD'??

'Time and Space and thirty-five other dimensions were turned inside out' - THIRTY-FIVE OTHER DIMENSIONS!! Susan sure as hell didn't mention THAT during her five-dimensional outburst in Unearthly Child...

'Worse than walking down an Osirian's spiral spine' - well I didn't notice a SPIRAL SPINE on Sutekh in Pyramids of Mars or any of his relatives in the various spin-offs...

'You're the Doctor again, Professor' Ace announces, rather bewilderingly in view of the fact that by the VERY NEXT PAGE she's lecturing him about the (incorrect!) fact that he can't remember a •••• thing.

'I still think my trap would have worked' - er...which bit of 'these boards will never hold the Process on their own. It'll rip them apart like tissue paper' did you somehow not understand?

Omega and Rassilon 'were both relics - no longer compatible in the modern universe' - yeah, well, RASSILON seems to manage in the modern universe JUST FINE. (Don't tell me he waited more than FIVE MINUTES after Capaldi abandoned Gallifrey to return and execute all the Doctor's supporters...)

'Vael was more dangerous, more potentially deadly, than anyone the Doctor had ever met' - come OFF it, the Doc's met Sutekh, the Black Guardian, Davros, the Master...Vael's a just selfish little traitor who can conjure up a bit of fire. No biggie.

'On my world, it wouldn't even make the Ealing Gazette' - REALLY, Ace? Young female destroys world-ruling monster? I think it probably WOULD.

The Doc doubts he could survive without his TARDIS? The EDAs suggest he'd do JUST FINE providing another TARDIS materialised/forced itself out of the body of his Companion.

'And the green forests' - and the WHAT! forests? Susan said in Sensorites that those trees were SILVER!

'For the first time in her life, [Ace] really thought she was going to scream' - I'm fairly sure she screamed in Battlefield. Along with everyone else. When the pub lights went out.

OK, I'm fairly sure this book gets hopelessly confused about who's in the first cocoon and who's in the second but I'm not gonna reread YET AGAIN in the hope this little confusion will resolve itself.

'He allowed his venom a free rein. He had never loathed a creature more than this, or taken its struggle for survival in the Darwinian universe so personally' - again...WHY? Why try to set your bog-standard slug up among the gods?

The moon is an egg? Just when you think you can't despise a book any more deeply it turns out to have possibly inspired Kill the Moon...

'"Don't you ever care?" said Ace, pushing away her tears. "I'm a Doctor. Call it professional detachment"' - er, why is Ace crying for Vael instead of jumping up and down on his ashes crying 'So long, Bilgebag!'? And why is she accusing the Doc of never-caring when he cares A LOT, and McCoy frequently had embarrassing outbursts of shouting to prove it?

'The others can cope without you' - what makes Ace think she's such an expert on Ancient Gallifreyan time-technology?

Peinforte was descended from the Pythia like the Sisterhood of Karn? HOW?

'His ship was still a marvel. It travelled by artron power, not by its crew's will' - that sounds suspiciously like artron energy is a well-established (if as yet unharnessed) fact not a recent discovery by Rassilon's great engineer Artron, as implied in the Eighth Doctor Ravenous 4 audios.

Jeez, you get used to Ace falling for grossly unsuitable men on TV, never mind in the relentless tide of NAs, but this is a ginger-haired kid for heaven's sake.

So the Other (aka a previous reincarnation of the Doctor) 'radiated dark and calculated power'. Not sounding very Doctorish, frankly.

Hahaha! Love the way the back-cover blurb refers to Platt writing 'one of the most recently televised adventures of the Doctor and Ace' - rather than claiming it was any GOOD...

DWM: 'The trilogy idea came quite late in the day, so the three of us only really had time to pop in the odd cross-reference. We did actually get together to discuss what themes and images could link our three books, but we didn't get very much further than cracking open a bottle of wine and deciding to make do with a silver cat!'

Bookwrym points out that all three books were set in a bleak and depressing world on the brink of collapse, featuring a key division between magic and science and a young boy/girl with astonishing mental powers that he/she can't fully control - 'a bit too subtle for all the readers who complained that the three books were nothing like each other' - well it's not just the READERS is it...

'In the later writers' guidelines for the NAs, the editors used this novel as a punching bag for why prospective writers shouldn't make their novels overly complex' - which would be unfair if they were really worried about complexity, but I suspect it was a euphemism for not making your novel EXCRUCIATINGLY TEDIOUS.

But I'd still prefer immortality, thanks. I just wouldn't feel like ME, anyway, after a regeneration. I'd have the memories, but that would be about it.

And according to Heart of TARDIS, I wouldn't even have the memories: 'The problem with the occasional forced regeneration is that it leaves you with little time to pick and choose. You sometimes forget to take things along.'

Also according to Heart of TARDIS, experimental Gallifreyan timeships contained beasties not PEOPLE...(It's not that I find ANYTHING about said novel remotely plausible, it's just that woprats are less BORING than Chronauts.)

The Who Adventures: THIS was the only NA blessed with a translation in the 1990s: it's named 'In the Capacity of Time' in Hungarian.

'Despite the number "1" appearing with the Doctor Who logo on the spine, no further Hungarian editions were published.'

Well, THERE'S a surprise.