Brilliant prologue! And then downhill all the way. If you're going to reuse all this Doctor-has-to-destroy-another-universe-to-save-ours business, then you ought at least to make it interesting. And I love seeing old companions return, but Jo is completely unrecognisable. The only thing that rings true is the divorce.

She doesn't even get a proper fairwell at the end of the book, nor is she able to enjoy her meeting with the Doctor. After all, they were pretty cozy when he was in his Third persona.
Personally, I feel sorry for the TARDIS, sitting around for a million years with nothing to do. She really is 'the old girl' now!!!

Well, I saw it all as a judgement on Jo - let it be a lesson to her not to abandon space/time travel in favour of getting married and - ugg - having kids.

But I have to agree about the poor TARDIS.

This features yet another ex-companion whose life has gone downhill after meeting the Doctor. I just don't buy it. Sure, life outside the TARDIS is going to be less exciting. But doesn't any of them have the wit to go out and have a good life?

Bit nit: The Doctor discovers that the loony UNIT guy has infected the two Earth women with prions. Prions can't be destroyed, and are passed on when the bodies of infected people are eaten, eventually killing the eaters, and so on. So what happened to the wild dogs that ate Rowenna and Julie?

The loony UNIT guy (I've forgotten his name) made no sense at all? What was his motivation? Why was he so obsessed with saving the Earth? And how did he meet the Tractite? Also, what happened to that Tractite?

It's the 1990's and Benton is still an NCO? And working a desk? At least in "The Tenth Planet" novelization he's made Lieutenant, and leading an investigation of a Cybership.

When I first read the name Tractites, I immediately thought of Tractators.

Ian and Barbara have a good life. So does Leela, however implausibly. Benny has a pretty adventurous time. And maybe Sarah's happy, though I don't see her Black Seed Movement being much of a success ('Yes, I went whizzing about the universe with this alien, and now I'm trying to save the planet - join me today!') But on the whole, they don't have good lives and they don't DESERVE good lives. Just plodding along one day after another when they could have the freedom of all space and time? Huh.

Novelisations aren't canon. And after taking years off to sell used cars, it's not surprising that Benton is still an NCO. Whatever a NCO is.

Non-commissioned officer.

I thought the loony UNIT guy could have been done better, when he was introduced I thought, 'yeah, he makes a pretty cool villain', but then Leonard took in a whole other, wrong direction. Ah well.

I haven't read Revolution Man but I hear it fits in with Leonard's obsession with unexplained gifted low-level lifeforms (the time tree, the dreamstones)

Just to save you the unpleasantness of reading Revolution Man - yes, it's got magic, sorry, alien, flowers in it.

BTW, The Turing Test is a vast improvement on these- don't skip it because of them.

I actually liked Genocide, so I don't think I'd skip any Leonard books.
I still gotta get 'Revolution Man'.

*Sigh* Some people have just got to learn the hard way...you're not planning on reading Speed of Flight as well, I hope

Actually, I've got it sitting on my shelf with a bunch of other MAs I recently bought but have yet to read. Nevertheless, it *is* probably last on the list of 'to-reads'.

I never did read Speed of Flight

GOOD! Not that it wouldn't be great for a third party to settle the argument Mike and I had about what actually HAPPENED in that book, but it wouldn't be worth your suffering.

Where are the Time Lords in all this? Think the Matrix would warn them a time tree was going to destroy everything, eh? And surely it's not unique? What about other plants? No one else going to bump into one and find themselves in the past or future?

You know, I forgot all about the 20th Century Tractite until Mike mentioned it.

The Time Lords are a bit useless when it comes to universal destruction (and most other things, come to think of it). Where were they in Logopolis, or Terminus, or Psi-ence Fiction or Instruments of Darkness? And why didn't the Doctor go begging for their help THEN rather than saving it for the petty little problems of The War Games and Unnatural History?

When the three women arrive two million years in the past they see lions and antelopes and make no further comment on them. Wouldn't those animals have been a bit different all that time ago?

It's a standard Paul Leonard book - rather dull and nowhere near as clever at it thinks it is.

It depends how familiar they are with contemporary lions and antelopes. Neither Jo nor Sam are science whizzes, so it's possible it escaped their notice.

Aren't the Prions also still in Sam's body? And I don't recall the Doctor helping the habiline tribe before the end of the book... aren't they also affected?

Or do we just assume that all happened "off-screen" (so to speak), along with the Doctor dropping Jo back to her own time?

Why isn't the stuff happening with the Doctor and Mauvril etc, affecting the time period Sam and Jo are in? If the Tractites have started their plan, surely the future Earth can't exist as it's now on its way to becoming Paratractis?

Benton mentions the UNIT Captain Jacob Hynes has no record before 1981... OK... so who was he then? The Meddling Monk in a new incarnation?

Jo's son is called Matthew. Her married name is Jones. So her son is Matthew Jones. Which I seem to recall is the name of a New Adventures author... or is it just a coincidence?

Given this was the fourth EDA, I'm surprised any NA references crept in as they were being rather strict about it at the time... yet the Chelonians get a namecheck.

I don't know why but when I first read the description of the Tractites, before they were named, I kept thinking they were the Nimon....

So her son is Matthew Jones. Which I seem to recall is the name of a New Adventures author...

He's not just a NA author any more. He has the incredible cheek to write for the new series of the new series!!!!!!!!!!!

(Um...I really have got to find another way to refer to it. But 'season two' involves denying twenty-six years of happiness (or televised Who, anyway) and 'season twenty-eight' always involves me counting from twenty-six on my fingers.)

Given this was the fourth EDA, I'm surprised any NA references crept in as they were being rather strict about it at the time...

Ha! They can't spot 'em all. Vampire Science got away with a 'Yamaya'.

Why not call it "the new 10th Doctor series"?

Matthew Jones also wrote a column called Fluid Links in Doctor Who Magazine for a while.

I'm surprised Sam doesn't cotton to the fact the TARDIS must be still around, given she can still understand the habilines. Reminds me of a similar scene in the NA Set Piece with Ace.

Sam's young and a bit thick and relatively new at the Companion game and, at least until the new series, the Doctor wasn't prone to spelling out the TARDIS's translation role...so it's just about understandable, unlike Ace, who'd had YEARS to work out this particular TARDIS function (especially when the TARDIS meanly withdrew it the moment Ace left the Doctor in Love and War).

Of course, the fact that otherwise intelligent Companions like Barbara don't once question their understanding of historical, foreign, and alien languages, and that when Sarah DOES actually ask about it, this is proof that her brain's been interfered with, does suggest that the Time Lord Gift/TARDIS Telepathic Translation (delete as appropriate) actually messes with your mind to the extent of suppressing curiousity about itself.

The only thing that rings true is the divorce.

Ah! It's official: I'm wrong. And, more importantly, so's Genocide.

Still, I rather wish Jo HAD got a divorce after producing only ONE sprog...

RTG in DWM 427:

'Gary Russell...told me that there's a lot of fan fiction, or fan theories, that would have us believe Jo's divorced, or that she ended up all alone in a cottage in North Wales, that sort of thing. All of which was utterly unfaithful to her character...The Green Death does not end with a woman heading for bitterness and loneliness, don't be ridiculous! That would be violating the past.'

Quite apart from RTG dismissing Genocide, and by extension ALL the PDAs (just because HE didn't write for them!) as 'fan fiction'...I remember Katy Manning saying in an interview that she thought Jo and Cliff would split up soon (as SHE did with the actor who played him).

And OF COURSE no one feels on their ENGAGEMENT day that they're heading for bitterness and loneliness! It's just that 50% of marriages DO.

Why does the blurb say 2109 when the text says 2108?

'It will create a rift in the vortex so huge that the whole fabric of reality will collapse' - have I mentioned how much I hate it when bog-standard stories start screaming that the ENTIRE UNIVERSE!! is at stake in an effort to seem less pointless?

Also, if rewriting one planet's history destroys the universe then the universe should have been a goner eons ago.

'Those stupid Daleks you go on about' - oh gods, what a stupid line and remind me to look out for the Doctor going on about stupid Daleks when I can face the reread of the early EDAs.

'Regimental Sergeant Major John Benton' - USED CARS, people!

And since when has Jo kept calling him 'John'? He didn't even HAVE a first name for the duration of the Pertwee era.

Benton thinks Jo might be lying about the Doctor asking her for help. But doesn't bother to ask for any DETAILS - which he should have done even if he didn't suspect her of lying, doesn't he care how the Old Boy is or if he's changed his face or why he no longer bothers to help UNIT save the world or ANYTHING?

'Did she and the Doctor have the right to destroy them? What right did either of them have to start unpicking the threads of the new history that had formed around them?' - Why is there endless waffle about the feelings of Sam Jones, the Companion no one gives a toss about, and which bit of this being a totally fake dilemma, it's not a choice between a Human Timeline or a Tractite one, it's a choice between a Human Timeline or the end of the UNIVERSE, also, why does the self-centred little ••••• not give a single thought to her FRIENDS AND FAMILY who'd be wiped out of existence? Why does she assume she'd spend the rest of her life in a Tractite universe instead of blinking out of existence even before - HELLO!! - the entire cosmos went up?

Gods, when you have to make someone THIS stupid so they'll sabotage the Doctor's plans to SAVE THE UNIVERSE you might want to nip back in time and revise your entire plot.

'I'm Jo Grant. I've been on the UNIT books since 1971' - you can't just go round lobbing words like NINETEEN SEVENTY-ONE at innocent Fans! That might mean Season Seven was set in the late 60s! We made it to MARS in the SIXTIES?!

Sexy just lets aliens in without keys (or finger-snapping) if they're carrying the Doctor? (And how would Sam know about this never-seen-before-or-since feature anyway?)

'The whole multiverse could fall into the vortex, Sam, just dissolve as if it had never been there' - a) surely there's a difference between 'dissolving' and 'falling into the Vortex' (you can survive a tumble into the Vortex, River recently did in The Lifeboat and the Deathboat, for example), b) have I mentioned I'm kinda allergic to the word 'multiverse', it gives me flashbacks to Coming of the Terraphiles, c) suddenly it's EVERY UNIVERSE EVER not merely one that you're trying to pep up your wafer-thin waffle of a novel with? Have you not given some THOUGHT to the implications of having multiple universes with multiple Doctors, especially when a bit of history-rewriting in ANY of them could destroy ALL of them? (Alright, so your hideous carelessness in the abundance-of-multiple-universes regard was later canonised by Rise of the Cybermen but that's not the POINT it's a bloody TERRIBLE idea.)

One minute it's two and a half million years, the next it's two million years ago.

Blimey, between this, SJA: Enemy of the Bane, SJA: Death of the Doctor, Brimmicombe-Wood in the UNIT audios etc, UNIT is just chock-full of mad traitors, isn't it.

'Who's the Doctor?' - OK, this fits in with Battlefield but Benton's still working for UNIT, you'd think HE might have mentioned THE DOCTOR occasionally...

'Timely rescues were never his strongest point' says Sam...OF THE DOCTOR!!

To be continued...

'Jo closed her eyes for a moment, suddenly aware that she was thirsty. Very, very thirsty. Had she been infected too?' - she didn't think to wonder SOONER if she'd been infected by the friends she TOUCHED when they had the INCREDIBLY INFECTIOUS FATAL HUMANITY-DESTROYING DISEASE?

'Jo knew that Julie was still thinking about a hospital, about treatment for whatever nightmare disease Hynes's alien friends had given her. But Jo had seen too often what happened to people infected by alien viruses: she didn't have much confidence in the ability of twentieth-century hospitals to save Julie's life' - OK, WHEN did Jo see all these alien viruses at work (and in view of UNIT's grotesque incompetence during the Silurians fiasco, how in hell's name did humanity not get wiped out)? And why isn't she worried about Julie n'chum infecting the twentieth century...?

'Hope that the Doctor can find us. Or that we can somehow make the time tree go back' - you could always...ASK YOUR PRISONER how to operate his time tree? Just a thought.

'Our ancestors...maybe they'll look after us if we get sick, I don't know. We'll survive longer if we can get them to help us' - aaand we'll infect said ancestors but who the hell cares, eh?

'If she didn't do it, she wasn't going to live until morning' - says WHO!

'"Can you save her?" "I can hold off the virus," muttered the Doctor. "Standard antiviral. But no, it won't save her. The virus contains prions - five different kinds. They're virtually indestructible, once they're in your system."' - Rather tactless of him to say that IN FRONT OF ROWENA, to then ignore her 'You mean we're gonna die anyway?' in favour of waffling about the time tree's 'chronon-wave asynchronous transmission' and to then wait some more time before announcing 'When we get back to the TARDIS I can give you something to rebalance your body chemistry. You'll live as long as you ever would have done.' And to then let Rowena and Julie die.

'If we get back, I can arrange for them to be buried at home' - wouldn't their indestructible prions contaminate the soil or something?

'The human race is simply so important to everything that happens in this sector for the next few thousand -' blimey the Doctor's future-history is rubbish. We're the only species standing in THE UNIVERSE in ONE HUNDRED TRILLION years, you moron.

'I'm Jo Grant. The Doctor's mentioned me, I expect' - how the •••• did Jo know that, whilst generally pretending all his other Companions had never existed, the Doc went round showing photos of HER to his latest Strays?

Why - the - •••• - should Axeman be 'eager to please' the woman who attacked his tribe?

I'd love to complain about the stupidity of getting Sexy to work by hitting her central column with an axe but after the Doc's hammer days...

Aren't the Prions also still in Sam's body? And I don't recall the Doctor helping the habiline tribe before the end of the book... aren't they also affected?

Or do we just assume that all happened "off-screen" (so to speak), along with the Doctor dropping Jo back to her own time?

Nah, the author probably just assumes that after reading Genocide we just won't care whether or not humanity got wiped out a few million years ago and you know, he's absolutely right...