Colin Brake = rubbish

Ed, you're going to have to do better than that.

Nonsense - it's perfectly to the point, if a little harsh. I'll have the review for you by tomorrow.

I'm sensing that the EDA editors are setting up the Whoniverse for a major reboot. What with both the Doctor and Fitz starting to forget their past, I'm willing to bet that the previous distruction of Gallifrey has massively changed the timeline for the Whoniverse; the effects haven't yet settled out.

Look at 'Father Time' - what exactly is Faction Klade's connection to the Daleks? Is it possible that they're an alternate origin for the plunger-waving pepperpots?

If so, does this explain where 'Infinity Doctors' was meant to take place!

This book was doing so well, but the whole thing fell apart once the Doctor and Co. landed on the alien ship. Suddenly we have one character dying of a terminal disease (not that you didn't see it coming from a much earlier comment), Anji develops a strange case of violence, and the whole thing wraps up just a bit too neatly (if you call total destruction of a giant spaceship neat).

Still, it was almost worth it for the scene of the TARDIS resurrection.

Well, I'll admit that a tear almost came to the eye at the sight of the Doctor and Ol' Blue together again at last, but I'd still like to know WHY the TARDIS suddenly transformed from a cupboard into a fully functional space/time machine in two seconds flat, when she'd signally failed to do so for the past hundred-and-something years.

I guess the TARDIS needed exactly that amount of time to "heal" from the trauma it suffered. Or, as I've suggested, something is going on with that timeline and the TARDIS, being a time machine, is sensitive to those changes.

The TARDIS was stuck on Earth for what? 110, 120 years? I know Compassion's a TARDIS herself, but she's a considerably more advanced model, and there's no WAY she could calculate to the nearest 0.003% (or whatever) how long a Type 40 would need to recover. (Especially as she didn't even manage to dump Fitz on the correct day.) How would Compassion know that the TARDIS would encounter a big firey thingy that would speed up its rehabilitation and make it grow from about an inch to about the right size, for example? How could ANY sane person have foreseen it? (How could any author think up such a s t u p i d idea in the first place???)

I'm not convinced by this changes-in-the-timeline stuff either, at least how it pertains to Fitz's suspicious fit of amnesia. I mean, when the Gallifreys were changing rather drastically, Fitz was the only one unaffected by the change, despite the fact that Time Lords are _supposed_ to be sensitive to that sort of thing while mere humans remain in blissful ignorance. Anyway, there's no sign of loss of memory for Fitz in EarthWorld or Vanishing Point (though the Doctor mysteriously works out he's supposed to save planets by the time of VP). I reckon that Brake just threw in that Fitz-starts-forgetting-everything stuff just to try and explain away Fitz's failure to explain anything to the Doctor. Though EarthWorld does that much better. (If still not well enough for my liking. I mean, this is the insatiably curious DOCTOR for heaven's sake, why doesn't he try asking what the **** is going on? A few howls of 'Who AM _I_?????!' and Fitz would be spilling all the beans, regardless of the impact on the Doctor's sanity. (Which I don't think would be _too_ bad, the Doc's well used to blowing up planets by now - didn't turn a hair about it in Remembrance of the Daleks - and it's not as if Gallifrey was a particularly NICE planet. And Earth's his REAL home anyway, even without this half-human nonsense).

I don't think Compassion foresaw the future, as we think of it. Since she is a time machine, she could ACTUALLY see it (similar to the 8th Doctor suddenly knowing future events in the TV movie). So her "prediction" was really just her relating old news. For her, it had already happened.

Now that I've read EarthWorld, I'm less suspiscious of this timeline rewrite. Fitz's memories are a bit better, so he's inability to remember in EV may just be a side affect of his time with Faction Paradox.

OK, so exactly WHEN after the destruction of Gallifrey did Compassion have the chance to flit all around London (with a VERY sick Doctor on board) and discover exactly when and where the TARDIS got back to her old self? Without anyone in London seeing her constant rematerialising, not to mention the future (Escape Velocity) Doctor noticing her visit? Especially as the TARDIS hadn't recovered for more than two minutes before the Doctor scarpered with her - not much of a window of opportunity.

Of course, there's no real point in struggling to make sense of the whole business, it's so flawed from the start. If MY best friend was suffering from shock and trauma and amnesia and gibbering lunacy and god knows what else, you wouldn't get ME dumping him on the streets alone and helpless in nineteeth century England. What did they EXPECT to happen to him? Vanishing Point says he ended up in a LUNATIC hospital for god's sake.

As for Fitz's confusion - he's been a Faction Paradox construct since Interference. Why should that start affecting his memories NOW?

Perhaps I'm missing something, but how is it that Fitz is able to get hold of a passport to travel to Belgium in the space of about an hour? You usually have to wait up to twelve weeks to get one.

An hour's a bit suspicious, but if you're just renewing your passport (and I seem to remember Fitz did have an old one conveniently lying around, albeit with a rather odd date on it) and you queue up at the Passport Agency office and persuade them that it's an emergency AND give them a lot of money then, quote, 'The Passport Service provides a guaranteed same-day service for straightforward properly completed applications for passport renewals, amendments and child extensions'.

There's no mention of Fitz having a passport to renew - he just takes his birth certificate along, and even if he had his old passport, the fact that it would have expired somewhere around 1973 at the latest might have made the officials a bit suspicious.

There are ways of getting a passport in a hurry if you really need to, but going up to the desk and saying "I just booked a trip to Belgium without realising I was leaving the country" isn't one of them.

Sorry, it must have been the birth certificate I was thinking of. (This was NOT a memorable story.) So the only explanation is that the Whoniverse's Britain has a far more lax attitude towards issuing passports. Though it's surprising that a constant influx of illegal aliens had that effect - one would have expected quite the reverse. Hmm...maybe word got around that England was being invaded twice a week by aliens and it never become the magnet for human asylum seekers that it is in this universe? And therefore the country was happy to issue passports to any Tom, Dick or Fitz who turned up claiming to be British?

I'll not even mention the business about the Kulan deciding it would be too difficult to hijack the space shuttle (after all, they didn't have the sonic suitcase to help them as the Doctor did when he hijacked the space shuttle in the EDA published IMMEDIATELY before this one). Though I note that Fray'kon gets back to the fleet in the end by, er, hijacking a shuttle.

The supposedly American "Control" uses English grammer at one point on page 145 with, "This time UNIT wear the red faces." An American would say, "This time UNIT wearS the red faces" since we treat collectives as a single entity.

Though I've never heard anyone in the UK refer to people WEARING red faces - having red faces, maybe.

Control isn't American. He's a Time Lord.

WHAT! Really? Since when?

Not that I should be surprised, I mean, who ISN'T a renegade Time Lord?

Well, its not been stated explicitly but this is certainly Keith Topping and Martin Day's intention (perhaps following the suggestion in the The Discontinuity Guide that the Earthly CIA is a front organisation for the Gallifreyan CIA).

Justin Richards seems to like this idea as he's asked prospective writers to introduce the character into their submissions, which is probably we he crops up here.

Pah. What a s t u p i d idea. Still, I'll remember it in the highly unlikely event of me submitting a proposal to BBC Books. Maybe you ought to resubmit something, rewritten to reveal at a crucial moment that some Control bloke no-one can remember has...gasp...TWO HEARTS!!!! Richards will lap it up. I mean, he's publishing Chris Boucher, David A McIntee et al this year...how fussy can he be?

Last line of p.156: You're design is very... accomplished.

I can barely tolerate net kiddies not having a decent grasp of English and so despair to note that the author and proof-readers are also bereft of it.

Proof-readers are something the BBC seems fairly short on - barely a book goes by without several glaring mistakes. I'd proof-read their wretched books for free, but do they ask?

As would I. People who misuse punctuation should be publicly flogged, unless it's an apostrophe, in which case they should be dumped on Skaro with a sign stuck to their back reading "EXTERMINATE ME".

One other thing I remember is that it's discovered Dave already contains some Kulan DNA from before he was infected at the start of the book. It's then completely ignored for the rest of story.

People who misuse punctuation should be publicly flogged, unless it's an apostrophe, in which case they should be dumped on Skaro with a sign stuck to their back reading "EXTERMINATE ME".

My absolute pet hate is people who use an apostrophe to signify that there's an 's' coming up.

Get your apple's, orange's, grape's and banana's, but not on Saturday's or Sunday's.

I'm willing to bet that the previous distruction of Gallifrey has massively changed the timeline for the Whoniverse; the effects haven't yet settled out.

I'm not convinced by this changes-in-the-timeline stuff

OK so Mike was right and I was wrong, as Adventuress makes it perfectly clear that not only has Gallifrey gone, but it had never existed. That's gonna SERIOUSLY change the shape of the universe, though not as seriously as Christmas on a Rational Planet (they destroyed irrationality) and The Book of the War (they anchored the thread) implied.

A few howls of 'Who AM _I_?????!' and Fitz would be spilling all the beans, regardless of the impact on the Doctor's sanity. (Which I don't think would be _too_ bad, the Doc's well used to blowing up planets by now - didn't turn a hair about it in Remembrance of the Daleks - and it's not as if Gallifrey was a particularly NICE planet.

Well, Gallifrey Chronicles makes it clear that I was right about THAT at least. The Doctor's amnesia had nothing whatsoever to do with his supposed guilt at blowing up his homeworld.

I don't think Compassion foresaw the future, as we think of it. Since she is a time machine, she could ACTUALLY see it (similar to the 8th Doctor suddenly knowing future events in the TV movie).

This makes a LOT more sense since The Doctor's Wife.

DWM: '"Escape Velocity was not terribly well-received," admits range consultant Justin Richards, "but it was the end fo an 'arc', and the readers' expectations were built up to unfair levels. So far as I was concerned, it did the business"' - Justin Richards. Look, even I said it did the business. Unlike Mr Range Consultant, however, I simply don't consider that GOOD ENOUGH.

'I was very aware that it was my first novel, conscious that my prose style was not as smooth as it could be, that parts of it had been written far too quickly and that I was appearing the month after Lance Parkin's latest opus!' - Colin Brake. THAT'S a bit more refreshingly honest, but frankly the prose style wasn't exactly my main problem.

'It was meant to be quite light-hearted and fun, but got weighed down by its position in that arc' - the Doctor getting the hell away from Earth AT LAST shouldn't be weighing down anyone's fun.

'When I realised that the Doctor was going to go up in a space shuttle in Father Time, I was worried that it took a major element out of Escape Velocity, the moment when the Doctor finally "escaped" from Earth' - bloody good point. I never really understood why the Doctor came down again...

If Colin Brake introduced a Doctor Who fan to the cast of EastEnders who was 'a fat, shambolic creep with a long scarf and an anorak...just as it suited Michael Grade to have an aunt-sally of his most organised and intractable critics' (About Time) why the hell did he get commissioned to write THIS?

Well he was (and is) a Doctor Who fan, and even acted (sort of) in an Audio Visual. And Trevor was rather more endearing than About Time description suggests. And he first appeared in 1989, long after Michael Grade had jumped ship to Channel 4.

Well he was (and is) a Doctor Who fan

So am I! And no one has ever asked ME to write a mediocre arc-resolving EDA!

and even acted (sort of) in an Audio Visual

SORT OF...?

And Trevor was rather more endearing than About Time description suggests.

Well, that's a relief. I really shouldn't believe a word Tat says, should I.

And he first appeared in 1989, long after Michael Grade had jumped ship to Channel 4

Ditto.

SORT OF...?

He wasn't much good at it.

That doesn't really help narrow down which character he was, does it...

He was the Draconian Ambassador in 'Maenad'.

Ah. *Hastily nips off to read own review* On the plus side, it looks as if Maenad consistutes appromimately 50% of the Audio-Visuals I actually ALMOST ENJOYED. On the not-so-plus side...'Oh, NOW the Draconian Ambassador starts attempting to sound vaguely Draconian by having pauses in his sentences'...

DWM review: 'Why are Fitz's memories also fading? What is behind the violent streak that the Doctor has developed while he's been trapped on Earth? And why the sudden proliferation of two-hearted aliens? These are left hanging, emphasising that Escape Velocity is part of an ongoing series, compelling you to find out what happens in the next instalment' - except that we never DO find out, do we? (OR about Dave's alien DNA.)

'The previous New Year's Eve...Dave had spent the entire evening pedantically insisting that the new millennium wouldn't actually begin until 1 January 2001 and the next 365 days hadn't been any better' - they must have been a BIT better, Anji wouldn't have the patience to deal with a years-worth of THAT, well, no one would...

'Menhira manipulated a lock-picking device -a semi-intelligent rod of some pliable plastic which, when inserted into a lock, reshaped itself into the exact shape of the key required' - it's LUDICROUS that no Doctor has ever owned such an object.

'He watched, for at least the thousandth time, the flickering black-and-white images that so inspired him...the white spacesuited figure hopped awkwardly down the short ladder of the lunar landing craft and set foot on the moon's surface. A small dust storm erupted' - WHAT ABOUT THE SILENT YOU BLIND HALF-WIT?

'He headed for the press conference, plastering his public face back on to his features as he walked. It was, therefore, a smiling Dudoin who faced the gathered journalists' - well isn't THAT odd, given (four pages earlier) 'Rumour had it that he had been known to smile; estimate averaged it at about ten times in the past fifteen years.'

'If what Sam had told him was true, [the Doctor] may not even look the same' - Sam told Fitz all about regeneration (which she'd never witnessed) but the Doctor didn't? And Fitz never ASKED him? - 'How would Fitz ever recognise him? Maybe he'd have to wander through the entire bar asking every bloke if he had two hearts' - BLOKE? Did Sam not also explain that the Doc can be one of those WOMEN things? (UNIT had once greeted HER appearance from the TARDIS with 'Don't tell me you're a woman now' so she wouldn't even have had to think of it herself...)

Look, you don't get a same-day passport by convincing the authorities that your prehistoric birth certificate says '7' not '3'...

'For once, luck seemed to be with him as he entered the opulent foyer of Hotel Charlemagne: he spotted the couple from the news broadcast coming away from the restaurant' - yeah, that IS stunningly, ridiculously, EMBARRASSINGLY lucky...

DAVE'S got a mobile phone? Why the hell hasn't ANJI, then? His much better-off, much more needing-to-be-connected, girlfriend? (A few hundred pages later it's revealed she DOES have one, raising the alternative nit of WHY THE HELL DOES SHE NEVER USE IT THEN, even when phoning for an emergency service...)

The intruder jumps out of Anji's hotel window and has already disappeared by the time Fitz looks out of said window? What FLOOR is she on!

'Until we get rid of that stupid package we should stick together' - and, er, what happens when you dispose of said package and the bad guys turn up again demanding the package or they'd kill you...?

'A completely bald man looked out of the window and seemed to regard Fitz with interested eyes. He spoke into a small hand-held radio. "Control? I may be on to something"' - hmm. Shouldn't Control's spies be a bit more...subtle about their spying?

'Control was sick and tired of UNIT's attempts to have an exclusive hold on all things alien' - ARE YOU KIDDING ME! What about Torchwood? KVI? MIAOW? MOO? ICIS? The Forge? C19? Etc etc...

'To their amazement, there were no further signs of pursuit' - why the hell NOT!

'The delicate balance of international economics depended on predicted and predictable behaviour patterns of supply and demand, growth and recession. The announcement of an unexpected, unprecedented factor like the arrival in the solar system of an alien invasion force would throw the whole system into disarray' - *glances in direction of New Who* ha ha ha ha ha!

Funny the Doc's so rubbish at running a pub, given he was an ultra-successful capitalist the last time we saw him (Father Time). And he wasn't a 'hollow sketch of a real man' when he was doing it, either.

'Leonie watched her go, a nagging doubt telling her that something was wrong. But the girl couldn't have come to any harm with her uncle, could she?' - er, yes she bloody could, not that you bothered asking for any proof that he WAS her uncle.

'The threat of the Kulan invasion fleet seemed abstract...somebody else's problem. All that mattered to him was to get into space. No price was too high, even if the planet did fall to the Kulan. They were welcome to planet Earth - he would have the stars' - seems like poor motivation, even for a Who villain. I mean, how far towards any stars does he think his ship would GET with no home base left...

'Preliminary scans had indicated a mineral-rich world with a Level 6 technology, not exactly a push-over but relatively easy prey' - whatever would the Shadow Proclamation say?

'It's no good. I just get something vague about cats' - I'm SO HAPPY that amnesiac-McGann at least remembers the felines of Survival! (Even if he forgot HIS OWN feline from Legacy of the Daleks, the unbelievable git.)

Ah yes *sigh* the Alien Intelligence branch of the CIA, run by Control....you'd think this would be A THING in the Whoniverse, but even SOVIET UNIT gets more airtime...(Sniggers in direction of the Acknowledgements thanking Topping n'Day 'who kindly lent me their character Control only to have me give him rather a low-key cameo. No doubt he'll be back on form in a future novel by one of this co-creators!' - mercifully not.)

To be continued...

The delicate balance of international economics depended on predicted and predictable behaviour patterns of supply and demand, growth and recession. The announcement of an unexpected, unprecedented factor like the arrival in the solar system of an alien invasion force would throw the whole system into disarray

I think the last thing I'd worry about if an alien invasion force entered the solar system would be the health of our economic systems. Just sayin.

Oh, I dunno, I'm actually more worried about economic collapse than invading aliens, I just don't think I'm cut out for a Great Depression, what with having to grow your own potatoes and fight off cannibal gangs and suchlike, so I'd probably be happy for the invading aliens to kill me, would be such a Who-y way to go. My last words would almost certainly be the same as Clive's - 'It's true. Everything I read, all the stories. It's all true' - only said with a LOT more excitement.

'The sooner he could get into space and make his report to his superiors, the sooner the invasion could go ahead and this irritating race could be removed from the planet' - removed how and why? Completely genocided, not enslaved or anything? Is that really the best economic decision?

Ah! 'The fleet will launch nuclear strikes at the main population centres' - wouldn't whatever-you-want-out-of-Earth be destroyed or irradiated? Wouldn't there be plenty of people left (for a while, at least)? Isn't PAYING for all those warheads a terrible decision when you could just use ours, a la the Family Slitheen...?

'Are all human females this irrational?' - what's so irrational about not rushing into space with prototypes their INVENTOR doesn't trust?

'Christine was getting nervous: two hours until launch and there was still no sign of her daughter. She went looking for Dudoin, intending to have it out with him once and for all. She was determined to postpone the launch until she had seen Pippa' - how the hell is she intending to single-handedly stop the launch? And why the hell didn't she demand to see her kidnapped daughter first thing?

Why does no one ask Sa'Motta how many planets he'd genocided before he saw the light?

'There's strategic value in this mud ball' - so why bother spending years investigating Earth's economic potential? And surely Mars would be just as strategic as Earth?

Why is the Doctor risking his life when there's a virus that can do the job for him?

'Two humanoid figures who fell like lead weights, bouncing off the higher computer stacks and managing to reach the floor in a dishevelled state but, miraculously, apparently without any broken limbs' - Fitz seems blessed with more serendipity in this book than I've seen since Green Death...

'The great races of the galaxy leave their mark for eternity to view' - hmm. I just keep thinking of SJA's forgotten Milky-Way-ruling Horath...

'The Doctor had been horrified to discover that the net result of their sabotage had been to cause so many deaths' - boy are you ditching the cold-blooded Doctor of the stuck-on-Earth-arc quickly - '"No one could have foreseen that result," Tyler reassured him. "It was an accident"' - I find that hard to believe since said catastrophe involving said sabotage •••• near happened to YOU.

'The Doctor looked at [Sa'Motta] curiously. "Do you know me?" "Only by reputation," replied the alien, mysteriously. It was clear that the Doctor would like to pursue this conversation' - really? If the Doc gives a toss about his lost memories he could have JUST ASKED FITZ. (I mean, he's not to know that Fitz has suddenly just developed some nonsensical amnesia too.)

'"I'd like to travel with you," the Doctor said, simply. "Of course," replied Tyler without hesitation...Fitz...spoke up. "Is there room for one more?"...Tyler agreed that there was room for one other passenger' - um, don't you need some sort of TRAINING to become an astronaut? Admittedly Troughton, Jamie n'Zoe were whizzing off to the moon in Seeds of Death but then EVERYTHING about Seeds of Death was so boringly bad it didn't seem to matter...I seem to remember Ace being at least forced to take a few medical tests in At Childhood's End before her ex leant her his spaceship...

'"Are ordinary humans were [sic] so long-lived?" asked Sa'Motta' - you know we don't live for centuries, you've been on Earth spying on us for years, remember?

'I've not aged a day in over a hundred years' - well most Doctors age SEVERAL days per century AT LEAST. And it's not like McGann's an exception, he'd aged quite a lot by Night of the Doctor...he's even ageing post-death judging by what a Guardian of the Edge he made...

Did it not occur to the alien spies to have some method of COMMUNICATION with their fleet?

'Control's offshoot of the CIA was an international organisation' - it IS? Since WHEN! (And...y'know...WHERE? And why didn't Thatcher's Britain sign up for an American alien-fighting force rather than a UN one?)

To be continued...

'Dave hurried off to try to find Anji and repair the damage. He realised now how much he loved her and he knew that he had to tell her as soon as he could' - *wince* Oh Dave, you are so so dead...

'The fact that Miles Gorman no longer looked much like the photograph on his ID pass went unnoticed' - so much for the claim of good security.

Why bring a seasick guy into SPACE? And isn't, y'know, WEIGHT an issue in space?

Anji n'Dave don't TELL the Doc they're being chased by a homicidal alien?

The spaceship doesn't need mission control?

'I wonder if I should risk opening up radio contact with base' - um, you do know you don't actually have to do what said base tells you, right?

'The Kulan...took heart from the fact that the target planet had obviously reached a sufficient level of technology to have some basic space-travel capability, suggesting a certain level of mineral and economic richness to the planet' - um, aren't you about to NUKE said planet? Dunno what effect that'll have on the minerals but it probably won't do the economy much good.

'Economist Sa'Motta was the first of our party to be viciously murdered by the humans' - and he just hopes to get rid of the proof that he's lying (viz, Sa'Motta's fresh body in the spaceship) before anyone spots it?

Anji's watch stopped when she crossed the TARDIS threshold? Not a nit, just a reminder to keep an eye open for this sort of thing...

McGann's Sexy has a scanner screen? Not an entire bloody ceiling in lieu of a scanner screen?

'Fitz hit him with a double-handed chop to the back of the neck. The unfortunate Kulan went down hard but didn't lose consciousness. In fact, to Anji's horror, he started to get up right way [sic]' - that's not how it works in the Whoniverse! You ALWAYS knock 'em unconscious! With no brain-damage or anything!

'He could have sworn that he had seen the Doctor deliberately ram the alien's head into the wall' - ah, the last gasp of the stuck-on-Earth arc's attempt to sell us the 'Amnesiac Doctor occasionally kills an alien!' like this is in some way a good idea.

Why didn't Fray'kon relieve the Doctor of the data wafer a lot sooner?

'"And tell her I love her. That I always did. Make sure she knows." "She knows," replied the Doctor softly. "She knows"' - and how the hell would YOU know she knows, Doc...

Our Heroes get inside the TARDIS literally 'a moment' before the spaceship they're on collapses? Yet more unnecessarily convenient luck...

'Sa'Motta wouldn't have hurt a fly' - sure, Doc, I'm sure he just joined all those assessing-planets-for-conquest-and-genocide expeditions as a FUN HOBBY.

'If I could have just talked to them...' - er...you did.

'"I'm a little rusty on TARDIS navigation..." confessed the Doctor. The anger was building in Anji's face. "But you managed to get us on board the Kulan spaceship without much trouble," she pointed out. "More by luck than judgement"' - ah yes, the good old insane-amounts-of-luck yet again...

Fitz doesn't tell the Doctor about the fast-return switch...?

The Doc gave up the opportunity to rebuild an entire galaxy at the side of his beloved daughter for THIS?

'Fitz hit him with a double-handed chop to the back of the neck. The unfortunate Kulan went down hard but didn't lose consciousness. In fact, to Anji's horror, he started to get up right way [sic]' - that's not how it works in the Whoniverse! You ALWAYS knock 'em unconscious! With no brain-damage or anything!

Yeah, but a Kulan is not a human, so they very well might react differently, which, according to this, they do.

Though I think it works that way on aliens too in the Whoniverse...seem to remember even an Ogron going down when Jo hits it over the back of the head with a wine bottle...

there's no sign of loss of memory for Fitz in EarthWorld or Vanishing Point

Or in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street, where he recognises GALLIFREY for heaven's sake, you'd think that would be the first to go in a fit of Gallifrey-no-longer-exists-induced amnesia...