My hunch is that Professor Joyce is actually Chronotis from "Shada", only now he's teaching at Berkely. The hints of a mysterious tatoo made me think of his prison ID.

Great local color! The authors really got San Francisco right, with the possible exception of the plane's approach into San Francisco (wouldn't a plane from England be coming from the East?).

This may interest the women on this board, details from OG:

Women Writing Who: Doctor Who novelist Kate Orman ("Unnatural History") will be hosting an online via-email DW writing workshop for "hopeful women Who writers" over the week of July 1-7, 2000. Says Orman: "Although female fans are prodigious producers of fan fiction, few have broken into the Virgin or BBC novels or anthologies. I'd like to lend a hand to female hopefuls by running a short workshop in email. To join the workshop, you will need to have a completed short story, or a novel proposal (synopsis plus sample chapter), which you plan to submit to the BBC, and which you'll send to me at least one week before the workshop starts. At the beginning of the workshop, everyone's work will be posted to our mailing list. I'll provide a substantial critique of everyone's work, and other participants will also be free to comment. There'll also be a question-and-answer session. I will moderate the mailing list. Only constructive comments will be posted. Off-topic chat will be sent on in private email. Only members of the mailing list will be able to read the messages posted, and they won't be archived. This is the first time I've done this! If this workshop is successful, I may hold more (for men as well as women). The workshop will be strictly unofficial, of course, and any comments I make will be my own opinion and not that of the BBC. Please contact me if you're interested in participating!" Email Kate Orman at korman@zip.com.au for more details.

Professor Joyce is the Doctor's dad.
And Salyavin.

Wrong, wrong wrong! The Doctor doesn't have a dad! He just has a bunch of rather nasty Cousins. The 'father' he refered to watching the Gallifreyan night sky with was obviously his hermit mentor. Well, obviously to me, anyway.

Ner, the Doctor isn't loomed. Would be far too obvious. My money's still on his family faking a looming. Not that I ever want to see this revealed in the novels.

Personally, with all the contradictions, I'm starting to think the 8th Doctor isn't the same Doctor as the 7th Doctor (duh, I hear you say, I mean that they are seperate Time Lords both called the Doctor)

That would be shite.

Care to elaborate?
(and yes, it would be shite, but since when has shiteness stopped something from being true in Doctor Who? I wish it did, then we might not have 'The Ancestor Cell').

And Ed never called back...

*Sniff* No, Ed has abandoned us all...he can very occasionally be seen on Jade Pagoda, though, so he's obviously still a) alive, and b) a Who fan.

What's a Jade Pagoda?

It's that thingamajig that the Doctor uses as an TARDIS escape capsule or somthing during Sanctuary (naturally, due to Santuary's excessively boring nature I'm a bit vague on the details). Or is it that thing in Iceberg? Anyway, it's also a discussion forum for Who books, to be found at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Jade_Pagoda/

It's in both actually. What I was asking about was the discussion group, which you answered nicely. Think I'll check it out.

Still the same BlumOrman problems where a few sickly sweet pieces of prose give annoying breaks to the flow of the text. Yes, we know the Doctor is this wonderful person so no need to keep trowelling it on from every other character all the time.

Credit for being the only DW ¤book to use the word "clitoris", though.

Yes, we know the Doctor is this wonderful person so no need to keep trowelling it on from every other character all the time.

Stuff and nonsense! It's so seldom that people are wonderful that when someone like the Doctor comes along it's quite understandable that everyone around him should comment on this fact. Repeatedly. (If anything, there isn't enough of this going round. How many times have people even bothered saying THANKS after he saved their wretched planet?) Plus (and I'll admit slightly contradictorily) the Doctor is a bit of a git - what with all that planet-destroying and stuff - so a few reminders that really, he is totally and utterly marvellous and those planets should be GRATEFUL for the honour of being destroyed by him never comes amiss.

My hunch is that Professor Joyce is actually Chronotis from "Shada", only now he's teaching at Berkely. The hints of a mysterious tatoo made me think of his prison ID.

Not according to Jon Blum:

'Oh, and about the Chronotis connection -- the only connection between Professor Joyce and Chronotis is that Robert DeLaurentiis, who heavily influenced Joyce's character, was in turn inspired by "Shada". Other than the surface connection of the university, though, I don't think there's many other similarities... Joyce is much more connected to the world outside the university than the dried-up old don.'

Professor Joyce is the Doctor's dad.
And Salyavin.

http://tardis.wikia.com/wiki/Daniel_Joyce certainly claims he's the Doctor's dad. I didn't exactly spot it, myself.

The Doctor doesn't have a dad!

Yup, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Personally, with all the contradictions, I'm starting to think the 8th Doctor isn't the same Doctor as the 7th Doctor (duh, I hear you say, I mean that they are seperate Time Lords both called the Doctor)

No no absolutely not, haven't you SEEN those faces in The Eleventh Hour...

How many times have people even bothered saying THANKS after he saved their wretched planet?

None whatsoever, according to Jackson Lake. Of course, what does HE know.

'He was dry, she saw, as though he'd walked between the raindrops...it was coming down in buckets' - why do the NA writers (yeah, I know it's an EDA, but Kate Orman is basically very much of the NA-writer ilk) give the Doctor these silly little magic powers? JODIE! sure as hell didn't look like she'd been walking through raindrops in Villa Diodati.

'Around the Mars '97 mission...People were willing to believe anything for a while' - aww, you're canonising The Dying Days? And thinking that people would actually notice/remember an alien invasion? (I s'pose a recoronation would help in this regard, people are terrible at noticing alien invasions but obsessed with the royal family for some reason I've never fathomed. Though admittedly Liz Two is considerably cooler in the Whoniverse.)

'"And she was a blonde, right?" "That's right, a natural blonde," said the Doctor. "Oh?" said Sam, raising an eyebrow. "So she told me," said the Doctor hastily.' - The Doctor should DEFINITELY not have immediately realised what Dark-Sam's raised eyebrow meant.

'So this was the Future....in all its hi-tech, remixed-and-sampled glory. Oh, he'd had a taste of it for a day or two, back in Sweden' - so...NO missing adventures for Fitz involving modern-day Earth? Well, I s'pose this WAS pre-New-Who when modern-day Earth became compulsory every other adventure.

'"Oh, and would you believe Lombard Street has gone straight?" "Well," laughed the Doctor, "as long as Castro Street hasn't gone straight..."' - Hilarious. The Doctor makes gay jokes. Since WHEN.

'What's happening here is both too large and too small for UNIT' - I've heard some pretty pathetic excuses for a lack of UNIT involvement in my time, but...

'If I don't have a bath this instant, I'll perish' - I find it harder to picture the Doctor (ANY Doctor) saying that than I do him making gay jokes.

'The entire Earth was forced through an opening the size of a bathtub' - THAT'S what happened in the telemovie?

Most aliens drawn here are harmless? When has that EVER been the case?

'"Not that you would have minded me getting killed, though...You wanted me to fall into the scar." But that wasn't true, was it? He had a great chance to throw her in, and he didn't. "You wouldn't have cared if I had. You'd have got your Sam back." "I didn't think of it as dying," said the Doctor softly. "Just being put back, ah, the way you should be..."' - in that case why the hell DIDN'T you just chuck her in?

'The Doctor shook his head. "I don't want to be anywhere near you when the laws of time catch up with you," he said raggedly..."You couldn't be there to free yourself, because you hadn't been freed yet. That's -" "A paradox, huh?" smirked the first boy' - You're such a hypocrite Doc, you weren't complaining when Rory sonicked you out of the Pandorica...

'I keep a very close eye on my biochemistry - if there was anything mind-altering in my system, I could probably tell you what it was right down to a molecular level' - you DO? You CAN? Since WHEN! You didn't notice your second heart was ROTTING INSIDE YOU for an awfully long time...

'Time Lords are deeply, uniquely, connected to the vortex. Regeneration is the moment when our biodata is rewoven in the fabric of space-time' - again...it IS? Since WHEN!

'He'd never learned to read Chinese, not properly, even after months in the Collective' - I thought it was years? Of course you can't learn to read Chinese in a few months!

'They'd spent weeks doing nothing more strenuous than tracking down and gathering the flotsam they'd lost into the vortex when she'd been ripped open' - you're JOKING! Since when has the Doc given a •••• about, say, TWENTY-FIVE PER CENT!!! of Sexy being ejected into the Vortex? And has he...security-marked all his property against this eventuality? If so, why the hell would he do something so utterly uncharacteristic and if not, how the hell did he find ANY of his stuff?

'The thing about the Doctor is, he's got that unique ability to look you in the eye and lie like a dog' - I hardly think that's UNIQUE. Also, haven't really noticed THAT being a skill of McGann's. Or any Doctor's, really, even the ones whose unofficial motto is 'Rule One: The Doctor Lies.'

Why didn't the Doctor approach Joyce first to whip him up some goo instead of panicking and (trying to) call in the Time Lords?

'God only knew how they were going to get back. That was the Doctor's problem, she decided. Let him pull off another throwaway miracle. That was what he was there for' - truly, finding a taxi in San Francisco is a miracle worthy of the Supreme Authority In The Universe.

To be continued...

SPOILERS FOR SEASON 12/38 OF BLESSED MEMORY:

'As for the chance of this version [Dark Sam] happening to turn back into her [Blonde Sam], well, it's abut as likely as her turning into Margaret Thatcher, really...' - Um, why the hell should Sam's biodata turn her into MARGARET THATCHER?

Gods, the Grey Men feel like filler. Actually, EVERYTHING feels like filler. The Wild Hunt is stupid. The Kraken is stupid. The Doctor is stupid AND useless. The Unnaturalist is...a good idea that somehow manages to be really stupid and tedious, no doubt due to his stupid and tedious insistence that everything in the universe be tedious.

Why is the Doctor so shaken about becoming colour-blind vis-a-vis violet when he was completely colourblind for his entire first two regenerations? (Day of the Doctor novelisation.)

The Doctor's biodata is strewn all over San Francisco and no one notices any Timeless Children stuff in it...?

I thought it was YEARS Fitz spent in Chinese communes, not 'eight months'?

'He would have to start from scratch, his books and his equipment and his centuries of souvenirs all destroyed with the TARDIS' - WHAT souvenirs? Has ANYONE, EVER, seen ANY Doctor PICK UP A SOUVENIR?

Also, shouldn't he be a bit more concerned about Sexy herself? Especially after Dominion claimed he's reduced to a shambling half-wit without her. Or is he ALREADY such a shambling half-wit in this book that it won't make much difference?

The Doctor 'just couldn't seem to handle the concept of staying in one place...Ah well, the Doctor made that sort of life impossible for himself, just by being who he was. No place would dare stay the same around him' - did Joyce somehow not notice THE PERTWEE YEARS? Or, indeed, Hartnell's first few centuries? (He really should have noticed the latter, if he IS the Doctor's Dad. Which he isn't, of course, regardless of what the actual writers say. Sure, he calls the Doctor 'son' a lot, but then he calls other people 'son' too. Neither seem remotely emotional to see each other after all these centuries. And the Doctor completely fails to ask after his seven grannies or his mum/stepmum (Joyce mentions a 'wife'.))

'It's still warm. You ran this last night, didn't you' - why should a spiky glass alien thingummy heat up whenever it's used? I thought heating up was an unwanted by-product of pathetic human technology?

'I've still got spots of blood on my shirt cuff. See? From a few weeks ago, the last time I had to do what was necessary' - Jeez, Sexy doesn't have a good laundry service to get Ed's blood off his sleeves?

'I wish we could have given you a bit of warning, but you're very difficult to keep track of' - jeez, if you're a Time Lord (and the DOCTOR'S DAD), you should have been able to make telepathic contact, no problem. JODIE!'s complete rubbish at this telepathy lark (she didn't even notice EVERY OTHER TIME LORD IN THE UNIVERSE GETTING WIPED OUT) but SHE managed to locate the Master for a nice chat, no problem.

'And I certainly can't allow you to go on imprisoning and experimenting on sentient beings. It's against every galactic law' - WHAT galactic laws? Bet he hadn't even HEARD of the Shadow Proclamation in those days. Also, you're misusing 'sentient' as per usual. Also, why does the Doc never tell HUMANS when they're imprisoning other humans, that they're breaking galactic laws? Also, how can it be against EVERY galactic law? Surely SOME of 'em deal with other matters instead of just repeating themselves about experimenting on 'sentient' beings...

The Doctor...pours some beer on the ground as a memorial service for the woman he got killed? WTF?

'But he supposed she was busy right now, somewhere, in a birthing centre, or a warm cardboard box filled with mewing and purring' - NO DOCTOR SHE'S DEAD AND THERE ISN'T A KITTEN-FILLED AFTERLIFE YOU MORON.

'If you could put in a good word for me..." he murmured. "I think I'm going to need it."' - YOU GOT HER KILLED DOCTOR WHY EXACTLY WOULD SHE PUT IN A GOOD WORD FOR YOU TO AFTERLIFE-HIGHER-POWERS WHICH - HELLO! - DON'T EXIST!!

'Even this young, you're good. You know, I'm a big fan of your early stuff' - Eight is hardly an early Doctor, the War's due to kill him in the not-too-distant future, at the very least he's well over half the Doctors' lifespans. (Excluding Timeless Children stuff. Well, the whole of New Who obviously since the Doc didn't die in ITS Time War.)

There's an obscure verse in Leviticus about cleaning fungus off walls?

'Jeez. OK, granddad' - hmm. Kudos for foreseeing The Ancestor Cell's (spectacularly rubbish) claim that the Doctor is Grandfather Paradox...

'"The games you've already started playing with time. Leaving notes for yourself." "That was a bad habit, long abandoned"' - *glances adoringly at JODIE! laminating instructions* - "The way you tricked the Dalek Empire into tangling their timeline so bad that their history collapsed under the weight of the paradoxes"' - well, that's one way of looking at it, I suppose.

'You've ridden the Ouroboros in the Emindian war' - he's WHAT?

'The boy wasn't casting a shadow, the Doctor saw. All of the Faction's agents had lost theirs, or so the legend went; it was a reflection of their liberation from cause and effect' - are you mad, of course the Faction keep their shadows, what else d'you think they bond their shadow-weapons to! Justine losing hers in an explosion is RARE, it's why she ended up acquiring the Grandfather's Shadow!

'If you're curious about my past, I want there to be as many wrong answers as possible' - well THAT'S prophetic...

'Maybe [the Time Lords] all left. Or maybe the whole planet's being destroyed, and undestroyed, and destroyed, and you just caught them at the wrong moment' - and that's even MORE prophetic...

'"Flapdoodle," snapped the Doctor. "You're a menace to space-time. The Time Lords are more likely to quietly erase you from history than do a deal"' - Well, unlike the rest of the book, that's actually in keeping with the Faction as portrayed in Alien Bodies (and indeed The Faction Paradox Protocol audios). Unfortunately it's drastically at odds with The Ancestor Cell where they embarrassingly conquer Gallifrey...

'He murmured, "When I was born this time around, for a time, I had no idea at all who I was. What I was spuposed to do." He drew a ragged breath. "And I was happy." - Seriously? When? Are we talking Eight Doctors, here? Cos that sure as hell didn't make ANYONE happy...

To be continued...

'It's still warm. You ran this last night, didn't you' - why should a spiky glass alien thingummy heat up whenever it's used? I thought heating up was an unwanted by-product of pathetic human technology?

Nope, it's entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. Of course, alien tech could be more efficient, but it would still have to deal with some irreducible amount of waste heat

There's an obscure verse in Leviticus about cleaning fungus off walls?

Leviticus 14:33-53, if you are curious.

Nope, it's entropy and the second law of thermodynamics. Of course, alien tech could be more efficient, but it would still have to deal with some irreducible amount of waste heat

Great. I thought I'd almost got the hang of the whole entropy thing - thanks for that IF NOTHING ELSE, Logopolis - and now it heats up my lightbulbs as well? Yeah, physics is never gonna be my thing, is it.

There's an obscure verse in Leviticus about cleaning fungus off walls?

Leviticus 14:33-53, if you are curious.

Brilliant! Obviously as an atheist I've been wronging the Bible all these years, just concentrating on those bits that tell you to sell your daughter to a rapist for 50 silver shekels and suchlike, I didn't realise it had helpful household hints -

- Hang on a sec, I'm supposed to kill a ••••••• bird?!

Even going to the cops was right out - the only two people who'd ever believe her story were the ones who were trapped in there' - what on Earth makes Dark Sam feel she had to tell the cops THE TRUTH (which in this book's case is pretty silly even by the standards of a hardened Who Fan)? Can she not just ask them to retrieve her belongings from the hotel cos she was scared of an abusive boyfriend, or something?

(Also, why didn't Fitz's very noisy and definitely-noticed kidnapping have any repercussions?)

'My TARDIS's sometimes infuriating tendency towards self-preservation' - •••• YOU, Doc. Obviously the SERIOUSLY ABUSIVE relationship didn't start with New Who Docs wielding a hammer. No wonder she hurled poor innocent JODIE! to certain death in retaliation for the •••• all these MEN had been pulling on her, all these centuries...

(And then she noticed the XX chromosomes and atoned for her mistake with custard creams.)

'"Oh yes, I see," said the Doctor in a mocking upper-class lisp. "As I was just telling Tubby Rowlands down at the club, those rebels have got to know their place"' - trouble with the Doctor taking the •••• out of such people...THAT WAS YOU WHEN YOU WERE PERTWEE.

'"He's the one foretold in the ancient prophecies of his world...Well he's a hybrid, you know that...the one who unites the two races..." "What is he on his father's side?" "A Time Lord of course." "Is that all?"' - to think Sam thought she nicked all this •••• from Babylon 5...

'"So what's number seven, then?" "Oh, that's frying an electronic brain with the Epimenides paradox, or the square root of two, or something," said the Doctor..."Never works."' - a) it TOTALLY DOES WORK in the Whoniverse (even BOSS was temporarily discombobulated, whilst the robots in KALDOR CITY guarding a NUCLEAR POWER STATION were completely screwed by it) and b) why's it so high up on your list of defeating-the-enemy plans if it never works?

'I've got precise control over my blood-brain barrier, so usually nothing affects me in way I don't want it to' - REALLY, Doc? *Boggles in direction of Tom toppling over whenever the poor guy tries an alcoholic beverage that some git has inevitably drugged*

Larna? Larna from The Gallifrey Chronicles is Joyce's assistant on Earth? Great, fine, why not, join the fifty billion other Time Lords who've gone Renegade and developed an obsession with Earth, why don't you.

'It's funny. I only used to be able to have this sort of conversation with cats' - when did you (as Seven) ever have in-depth conversations with darling Wolsey? You'd abandon him in the TARDIS to go off and have adventures for WEEKS and to add insult to injury, Sexy had a real habit of blowing up in those days. (To be fair, Wolsey was never harmed in said explosions, but that's not entirely the POINT.) And when did you (as Eight) do ANYTHING with the kitten you were blessed with but ABANDON AND FORGET it?

Joyce to the unnaturalist: 'You know it's a good idea to listen to us. You'll earn your place in the next life that way' - UH?

'The Doctor was on his feet, stomping towards the unnaturalist with an out-of-control anger on his face. "Oh, go away!" he shouted. "The sheer gall of it, expecting me to devote some of my precious time to stopping you... Why should I even have to bother? Don't you have anything better to do with your life? Just go away!' - see, that's EXACTLY how I feel about this WHOLE BOOK.

Um, why is the unnaturalist standing round meekly when no one's actually aiming the stabiliser at him at the moment?

'I don't believe this. You're risking our lives - you're risking thousands of people. And what for? Just 'cause you don't want to give up the freedom of having a TARDIS' - why does EVERYONE throughout this book assume that the Doc will be stuck here FOREVER if he loses Sexy? There are plenty of other TARDISes he can nick.

'The Kraken was coming up out of the water...The impression of something rising - the sense of a tentacle, streatching itself against the sky. You couldn't see it with your eyes, not really...Any impressions your brain attached to it - huge, dark, threat - were just an accident, your mind trying to get a handle on something it couldn't imagine...It was the A-bomb. It was Godzilla...The Kraken was the city killer. It was going to smash buildings, gouge up roads, flood streets...' at this point, I'm having two thoughts, neither of which do me much credit: a) KROLL! KROLL! KROLL! and b) yeah, fine, get on with it, whatever.

Why doesn't that Faction Paradox brat recognise Fitz as, y'know, Father Kreiner, the legend who puts Time Lord heads on sticks?

'I could hardly like it if I had to be here, could I?' - yes you could, you did when you were Pertwee. And the Curator. And Season Ten/Thirty-Seven Capaldi. (OK, so Matt obviously bloody HATED Trenzalore.)

'The TARDIS stood there contented in the winter sunlight' - CONTENTED? She should have PTSD!

'"The unicorns have all left the park...There's no room for them anywhere here...Ah well. Maybe there'll be room in the next universe" "Well, I'll see if I can put a word in," said Professor Joyce' - um...what?

'And wake up in your bed again, convinced we'd indulged in carnal lust and debauchery?' - I thought she was suspicious he'd raped her while unconscious, but whatever.

'One very irritated dodo' - how can you tell?

OK, let's have a look at Dr Stupid...:

He's tagged like an animal, repeatedly captured, gets his friends tagged, gets his friends captured (even aside from getting Sam wiped out of history before the book even STARTS), gets himself stabbed (and collapses), gets people's hands inside his wound (and collapses), gets captured AGAIN ('He could just about bear being extradimensionally nailed to the rack again' - well bully for you Doc), gets his friends very traumatically captured AGAIN ('Take that knife out of Fitz's head, Griffin' - hint: he doesn't, he shuts Fitz in a drawer instead) after leaving them alone and defenceless, gets the villain's motivation wrong ('You're going to try to capture a Kraken, aren't you!' - um, no; 'You kill them' - um, no) gets the TARDIS relentlessly tortured and •••• near killed, gets his brand new chum Kyra killed, goes squealing to the Time Lords for help cos he just can't cope on his poor old lonesome and doesn't even manage to get his message cube to reach them, goes squealing to Daddy for help - that's dead easy for Joyce but totally beyond the Doctor - goes squealing to Faction Paradox for help and gives them memories and biodata, even goes squealing to non-existent higher powers - he's so pathetic he even starts believing in a ••••••• kitten-filled afterlife...

'"I wasn't expecting that," said the Doctor. "You tried to stare out a crazy kid with a knife and you didn't think he might...You're a frigging headcase!"' - well, QUITE. Since when has the Doctor been slow and stupid enough to get knifed, let alone by a kid?

'To be honest, Sam, I was surprised you hadn't taken care of him yourself' - the Doc's just got knifed by the kid so he's got a helluvacheek criticising anyone ELSE for not 'dealing with' him, least of all some random girl who works in a video shop, which - hello! - is who THIS Sam IS.

'"Sam," whispered the Doctor, "number fifteen"' - is he really too stupid to remember THIS ISN'T THE REAL SAM? I'm not expecting him to punch a wall for four and a half billion years but remembering that his Best Chum has got swallowed by a dimensional scar for like, TEN MINUTES would be nice. Alright, so he acquired a spare, but CapaldiDoc had THOUSANDS of Clara-spares lying around and did he go fetch one of THEM? *Pause* Why the hell didn't he go fetch one of them!

'He reached through the invisible wall and killed Kyra' - that's the invisible wall THE DOCTOR set up, confident that it would contain the unnaturalist. As Fitz said, it was a joke.

'His voice was shaking' when he noticed the Faction had intercepted his hypercube. And is 'feeling small in the face of what he didn't know.' And 'felt his toes cramping with fear' etc etc etc.

'The Doctor ducked under Griffin's grasp. The unnaturalist reached out to trip him, casually, and the Doctor tumbled on to the ground...The Doctor's back arched as the unnaturalist twisted his body. He grabbed at Griffin, but couldn't reach...the cut in his side. Griffin has opened it up..The silent air of the alley echoed with the Doctor's muffled cries' - God, the Doc can't even DODGE now? And he screams while being tortured? (Screaming because your torturer has cold hands is a completely different matter, of course.)

Well, at least he finally gets round to saving Sexy. Albeit after spending days wailing that he can't save Sexy. Which is, frankly, annoying.

Well. That took me over five weeks. OF LOCKDOWN. Ah well, at least it was a great cure for insomnia - a few pages and I was out like a light, every night...

Professor Joyce is the Doctor's dad.
And Salyavin.

Wrong, wrong wrong! The Doctor doesn't have a dad!

OK *scowls* I s'pose this ridiculous assertion makes a BIT more sense given Infinity Doctors' 'his father's name wasn't Ulysses, and he was a professor at Berkeley'...