According to the latest DWM, Lawrence Miles will be writing the 50th BBC Eighth Doctor novel.
The working title is The Napoleon of Beasts, and it'll be set in an alternate 18th century London.

The title is actually 'The Adventuress of Henrietta Street', currently.

Omigawd. I knew he was dropping 'Napoleon of Beasts' because it was originally supposed to be set in 1799 like Christmas on a Rational Planet, and Napoleon was going to appear (in fact as Steve Cole hasn't even read CoaRP (and what more proof do you need of his bad taste?) Lawrence said he was tempted to just submit a proposal for CoaRP again ) But now it's been shifted forward by quite a few years and Napoleon is out. Plus the fact that Lawrence says there are quite enough animal titles this year already (Eater of Wasps, Year of Intelligent Tigers). And I think he's gone off the animal idea altogether - he seems thoroughly depressed about being contractually bound to provide monkeys. But...The Adventuress of Henrietta Street! What an awful title. I suppose I should be grateful that it indicates a strong female role, but somehow I really hate the word 'Adventuress'. It kind of implies that a REAL adventurer has to be male, and there's a special subsection for females (rather in the way I've always found 'authoress' insulting, though that seems to have gone out of fashion - women are permitted to be authors these days). OK, maybe I'm just being grossly oversensitive. I mean, LAWRENCE MILES IS WRITING ANOTHER BOOK!!! That's all that matters.

Ed, if you want the latest news, instead of waiting for DWM you should go to Outpost Gallifrey at:

http://www.gallifreyone.com/

Better still - you're British aren't you? - you should get to London on the first Thursday of the month and come to the Fitzroy Tavern and actually meet God Himself, i.e. Lawrence Miles.

I am British, but I live in Hull and I don't drive, so popping down to London isn't that simple. Perhaps next time I visit the family down in Tunbridge Wells I'll be able to arrange something.
On the subject of Lawrence Miles, would 'Dead Romance' be comprehensible to someone who hasn't read any other books in the late NA plot arc?

Yes! Absolutely! In fact, it's a lot MORE comprehensible if you haven't read any of the rest of the gods arc, because it doesn't fit in with it at all.

In fact, I've recommended it (i.e. ceaselessly nagged until they read it just to shut me up) to people whose last experience of Who was around the time of Earthshock, and they understood it fine. Of course, it's a lot richer if you can guess who the Evil Renegade, the machine creatures and the time travellers are, but as it's all seen through the eyes of an outsider, it doesn't really matter if you've never even HEARD of Who.

Dead Romance is just the BEST - read at once!

I'll have to find a copy first. I just wanted to find out if I'd have to buy a load of books I'm not so keen to read in order to make sense of it, assuming I can track it down.
Still, thanks for letting me know. That's one less dilemma for me to face if/when it does turn up.

I heard that Miles' book was never going to be called 'Napoleon of Beasts' and that he simply wanted to keep feeding out false titles like this to put everyone off. Note the initials of this title: N.O.B.

I like the new title though - it's unexpected and hopefully shows that Miles' is doing what he does best - innovating and pushing the boundaries.

Isn't there a Henrietta Street near the Fitzroy Tavern? Since Emily is one of the few women to actually grace the Tavern, then maybe - just maybe - the Adventuress herself is none other than our own Emily. Who fans in the Whoniverse? Lummy!

Ed, 'Dead Romance' is recommended, and although I left the book range circa 'Original Sin' way back when, there really was no trouble in following it. In fact, it was nice to pick a Who book up and not have to have to worry too much about arcs and threads etc. It was just nice to have a relatively self-contained adventure.

To bring me back to the Tavern again, since meeting Craig Hinton I was duty bound to read 'The Quantum Archangel' and have done so. The review ought to be appearing soon. Having recently met Daniel O'Mahoney, (look at me, name-dropping like a whore), I am now obliged to sample 'Falls the Shadow'. That's one thing the Tavern does to you. It makes you feel obliged an awful lot!

NOW he tells me! Oh well, I'm only about 50 pages into The Quantum Archangel, and despite a strong feeling that I've been reading 'Divided Loyalties II: The Sequel' it hasn't actually irreparably damaged my brain - you've probably rescued me just in time. Of course, it's all my own fault for not believing that you'd ever make it past page 10, but you have to admit that your manner at the last Tavern did not inspire confidence.

Nice thought, but I don't really think I can take credit for being The Adventuress of Henrietta Street. Lawrence prefers to have female main characters because he claims he's 'c r a p' at writing men.

Luke - I find that highly unlikely. I mean, everyone's going to be highly excited about a Lawrence Miles book anyway, so why bother making up a constant string of titles, changing from Napoleon of Beasts to Black Coffee to Adventuress of Henrietta Street, not to mention 12 other titles rejected by bloody Justin Richards? He does seem to go in for this sort of thing - Dead Romance went through several transformations, including 'Living Space', 'Space', and 'Love and Dead Things'.

Anyway, only extreme difficulty in thinking up a title could explain why we've ended up with such an dreadful one.

Trouble thinking up a title does at least show that he comes up with the story before the title, unlike Gary Russell.

Why can't a title be the seed of inspiration?

It's been known to happen, Chris (Philip Jose Farmer often writes stories after thinking up odd titles), but it's the exception, not the rule.

Yes, a title can be a good starting-off point, but it can also prove too restrictive. Especially if chapter titles are chosen beforehand as well.

And anyway, we're talking about Gary Russell here. He wouldn't know what inspiration was if it punched him on the nose.

He was inspired to turn the Bernice adventures into audios, which in turn led to the new Doctor Who audios.

...and look at them.

Emily - As for the N.O.B. thing, I'm only going by what Miles' website-people have relayed to the Lawrence Miles mailing list, which I assumed you would have been a member of.

According the Craig Hinton, and I quote, "I like to start with a title... and hang the rest of the book off it".

Having a title on-hand is, for a writer, useful for those people who almost always ask a writer engaged in a project: "So, what's it called?". It's a conversational cert. Guaranteed, that's one of the first questions that gets asked, and if a writer can reply with something that sounds half-decent, it does give the impression you've at least got something in the works which might actually have potential. Just in case it doesn't inspire complete faith, you always end up saying something along the lines of "Um... it's a working title and I'll probably change it". I go through potential titles like wildfire!

Luke - no I wasn't a member, but I am now! It was always one of those things that I meant join (like Jade Pagoda) but never quite got round to. Anyway, I'm working my way through the archives and OK, so you're right *shrugs*. I still don't see why Lawrence would do a s t u p i d thing like that but a) he's a genius far beyond my comprehension, and b) he's nuts. I'll ask him about it at the next Tavern.

There's good and bad in everything, Luke - there are good BBC Books, Virgin ones, audios, TV Doctor Who etc - and bad ones as well.

It has to be said that, offhand, I can't think of a single Missing Adventure that's worth the paper it's written on...

(OK, I confess Cold Fusion has got some great stuff in it. But ONE MA out of 33...not a good record.)

I happen to like the MAs better than the PDAs so far.

Wow. Have you just been reading the Boucher PDAs, by any chance?

I thought Juliette was 16?

Nope. Definitely 13. Lawrence deliberately didn't mention her age outright, or write THE DOCTOR IS A PAEDOPHILE all over the book, but as it's set in 1782, and it says she was born in 1769...

oh yeah, that's right.

good book though.

Good? GOOD??? *Becoming ever more Colin Baker-like* GGGOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It's bloody brilliant. What more could you ask for? (Except a Doctor who didn't spend the entire time dribbling black bile over his beard, that is.) To complete its perfections, I even had the pleasure of finding a nit. Scarlette's funeral being 'next week' instead of 'tomorrow'.

Fiding a nit? How 'bout this - the year is 1782 but mention is made of the colony in Australia. There was no colony in Australia until six years later! Hello? First Fleet anyone?

Well, Australia was OBVIOUSLY settled earlier in the Whoniverse. All the alien technology helped them build boats quicker. Or something.

What did you make of Dr Who? That was weird.

Hilarious. Especially the mention at the end that 'the name "Dr Who" later entered twentieth-century culture in a suitably exotic context: it was the name given to the mad scientist in the 1967 Japanese movie, King Kong Escapes' And that Chinese 'no-time' business made perfect sense. At least, I had the feeling it would make perfect sense if I had the kind of brain capable of comprehending it.

I'm afraid that I'm bored to tears with this long, rambling, text book. I'm only as far as page 54 (started reading it yesterday), and it's like walking through mollases for me.
How did you guys stand it to the last page?

Funnily enough I found it very easy to read. It's very dense but also well-written and it just flows. I suppose it's a fine test case for the Who fan-as-reader.

Emily - Lawrence forgot the 1960s King Kong cartoon series in which Dr Who is a recurring villain. I wonder if he exists in the Land of Fiction? Perhaps he regenerated into William Hartnell before going on to meet John and Gillian in 'The Klepton Parasites'?

Made it to the end, but some things are starting to bother me;
1. They've destroyed Gallifrey and the Time Lords.
2. They made the Doctor forget his entire life.
3. His second heart has been removed.
Doesn't this sound like the editors are re-writing the character to the extremes, and making him less and less the character we're all used to?

Have patience, Will. I suspect that this, like the Doctor's exile to Earth, is mere a temporary state.

BTW, the destruction of Gallifrey, and subsequent loss of the Doctor'w memory, occurred in The Ancestor Cell.

I'm still in, even if this direction is trying my patience.
I've never been great with book reviews, and because of that I'm going to quote a couple lines of reviews from Gallifrey One that speak for me. Bear in mind, I'm not slamming anybody here; this is just how the book comes across for me, personally.
From Todd Green;
"'Adventuress' is a difficult book. Half way through I was irritated beyond belief."
I became less and less entertained, and things dragged on to the point that I felt like I was 16 again reading a book that I couldn't stand, but had to if I wanted to pass a test.
From Evan Waters;
"Though Miles is a writer of considerable skill, he misses out on a key element of what Doctor Who is, namely, fun. The Adventuress Of Henrietta Street reads like a dry intellectual exercise, with little to no attention paid to the visceral elements of storytelling. It is very smart, very well-researched, and very uninvolving."
"The historian's overbearing analyttical tone results in an inevitable detachment of the reader from the actual action."
"Instead of vibrant prose and vivid atmospheric description, we are given bland recitation of fact after fact, pages of conjecture that tell us the symbolism of each and every event, and all sorts of equivocation and 'well, maybe it wasn't like this'."
I didn't feel close to any characters, and Fitz and Anji couldn't have been more removed and invisible to the plot.
I kept thinking that Miles, whose creativity and imagination are not disputed by me, wrote an extremely long synopsis of a novel, and skipped over lots of characterization, and submitted it as the book we've read, coming across (to me, at least), as being too lazy to write the story and as story and not a text book.
Emily will probably eat me alive for these thoughts, but it's just how I feel, now that it's over. Miles (let alone every author in existence) can't please all the people all the time.

*Attempts to restrain gnashings of teeth and thoughts of what a tasty snack Will would make with ketchup* What can I say? You didn't like it. Well, that’s not unexpected, Lawrence thought EVERYONE would find it unreadable. The fact that only a minority are incapable of recognising its brilliance is quite encouraging, really. To take a few of your problems:

'Fitz and Anji couldn't have been more removed and invisible to the plot'
I've nothing against Companions getting a break from a book – what’s the loss? And considering that Lawrence desperately wanted to tattoo 'I AM HUMAN FILTH PLEASE KILL ME' on Anji's forehead, it's just as well she didn't appear much. Never let it be said, however, that Fitz's character didn’t manage to come across very well during his brief appearances. 'Fitz's reaction to being surrounded by prostitutes isn’t known', ha ha.

'I didn't feel close to any characters'
Yup, I’m in agreement with this – with the very obvious exception of the Doctor. I was especially sorry not to get more emotionally involved with Scarlette - given the title, I was hoping for a Dead Romance-style main female character who came across more strongly than anyone I've met in 'real life'. But as Lawrence said, 'she's an elemental force, and one of Earth's Doctor-substitutes. You're not supposed to be able to get into her head.'

'It's very uninvolving'
Please don't tell me the Doctor getting his heart ripped out was uninvolving. OR him lying there dying and coughing up black bile *starts sobbing pitifully*, or getting married *starts sobbing even more pitifully*, or Juliette running off with Sabbath, or the Master turning up, or the Doctor hacking the babewyn king's head off, or even the threat to the brothel's existence (never mind the universe). Blimey - what DOES it take to involve you?

'bland recitation of fact'
Come off it! Yes, it's written in a factual manner (which is utterly fascinating and completely unbland in its own right) but there are more than enough first person extracts and contradictory accounts to disprove the idea that it's a 'recitation of fact' (hence the 'all sorts of equivocation' which personally I love. It's nice getting your brain working and trying to put the pieces together to work out the 'truth' instead of just being spoon-fed it by an omniscient narrator, for a change.)

'wrote an extremely long synopsis...too lazy to write the story'
For a start, Lawrence didn't write a long synopsis - on the day he started the book he told me that 'I've got a wedding and a submarine in the middle and I've no idea how to get there.' And don't even THINK of accusing him of laziness. Any fool – even Keith Topping, for god's sake – can write a normal book, this was a hell of a lot harder, as evinced by the fact that Lawrence was a month over the deadline, and had to get drunk for the last third of it.

I think I've gone deaf in one ear.
Okay, uninvolving EXCEPT for the big, big scenes, which seemed to me to be separated by pages and pages and pages of lecturing and lecturing and lecturing.
'Had to get drunk for the last third of it'?????? Are you being serious or was this really true? How can you admire someone like that? I'll pass on the next Miles novel or history book or pamphlet or whatever he's planning after this experiment.

I also think your friendship with him and having a character named after you, has rendered him, in your eyes, capable of doing no wrong. You're hardly an objection reviewer.

Emily, do you realize how obnoxiously elitist it sounds to say that the author wrote the book, knowing that "only a minority are incapable of recognising its brilliance"? Come on! It's a Doctor Who novel, not James Joyce!

And the idea that someone would write a book for a small minority is arrogant, if not downright mastabatory. The next time Mr. Miles gets an idea for such a daringly opaque work, perhaps he should just save himself the aggravation and mail it to his close associates, rather than waste the time of the rest of us feeble-minded rabble.

Hey, Lawrence didn't say that - he thought EVERYONE would find it unreadable. _I_ was the one who was making (admittedly slightly sarcastic) comments about some people (i.e. Will. And you.) being incapable of comprehending it. Incidentally, he did start off trying to write it the 'normal' way, before realising that it wasn't working.

Personally, I don't see what's wrong with pushing the boundaries a bit. Especially in those *sigh* long-ago days when there were a whole 22 books a year. 21 of them could be written in the traditional manner, ranging from a wonderful Lance Parkin to a few piles of mediocrity by churn 'em out authors like Christopher Bulis and Gary Russell. ONE book - 4.5% of the total - could be daring, experimental, unprecented. For a lot of people (including the editor - Justin Richards regards it as Lawrence's best book) the risk paid off, I'm sorry that for you it didn't. But surely, however boring you find it, you have to admit it's not as mind-blowingly tedious as Dreamstone Moon, Longest Day, Vanderdecken's Children, Parasite, Sanctuary, Oblivion, anything by Chris Boucher, History 101...you get the picture...

Will - yes, the book was so hard to write that Lawrence had recourse to alcohol for a large portion of it. This is mentioned in one of his on-line interviews. I fail to see why you regard it with such horror. I regret that this particular Emily was not named after me - she is, after all, Emma Hamilton. As Daniel can testify, being friends with me does not in any way guarantee your books an easy ride. And I can assure you that I worshipped the ground Lawrence trod on long before I met him. Not that this influenced my reviews in any way - take a look at the 'Down' one sometime.

Lawrence's latest work - as you are so interested - is (with eight other authors) The Book of the War, an A-Z of the first 50 years of the Enemy/Time Lord/Faction Paradox War. Available now at all good bookshops, well, all good Doctor Who bookshops anyway.

Personally I too prefer a more traditional style of writing - however much I love Adventuress, it's not a patch on Dead Romance - and I very much hope Lawrence's next work won't be a history-style book. But given his 'prose is overrated' remark I'm not holding my breath.

I have no problems with pushing the boundaries, either. But the primary purpose of writing is, and always should be, to tell a story.

I'll probably be able to comment more intelligently on this book once I finish reading it.

I was reminded of a comment by guitarist Robert Fripp about perceptions of his work: "It seems unfair that audiences can choose their performers but performers have little choice in their audiences." Which you can view as a reprimand to myself, if you wich...

I can confirm that, while I think of Emily as a friend, she has tried to kill me at numerous Taverns because I wrote 'The Man in the Velvet Mask'. Last time she had a spring knife concealed in a copy of 'The Also People'. We fought like the bear and the wolf, etc.

However, Lawrence didn't name a character after her in 'Henrietta Street'. Emily Harte was a real person though she's better known under the title she acquired later in life.

As for telling a story, I think Henrietta Street does this marvellously.

I liked this novel.

Well, that's something. I suppose.

During the Doctor and Scarlette's attempts to save the Brothel from bankruptcy (and therefore stop the other prostitutes - Earth's Doctor-appointed defenders - from leaving) I wonder why neither of them thought of flogging off anything from the TARDIS? Presumably it'll have plenty of exotic stuff that wouldn't irrevocably alter the course of Earth's history if it ended up in the Eighteenth Century. That's assuming it didn't still have a few bags of gold dust lying around, in case of Cybermen encounters.

I've been watching Georgian Underworld on Channel 4 and am very disappointed that forthcoming episodes won't be including an expose of the brothel and indoor zoo of Henrietta Street, nor an account of the remarkable wedding of Mistress Scarlette in 1783.

I'm wondering...is the Doctor automatically a widower every time he visits, say, the Twentieth Century? Or is he still one of these 'husband' creatures until he actually SEES Scarlette die (or maybe sees her grave?) I'm rather hoping he'll believe the latter - should keep him away from the shameless hussies like Grace, I M Foreman, the Queen of the Elves, etc...

Don't forget whatsername from 'The Queen of Eros'...

I was TRYING to forget her, thank you. Along with Benny, Karl, Fitz, Mrs Flood, Dark Sam, Blonde Sam...you name 'em. Something went BADLY wrong with this regeneration, that's for sure.

And do you think the 9th Doctor will fare any better...?

One can but hope. And if not, we can always announce that Richard E Grant isn't canon, owing to the fact he's not on television, OR in a proper book.

Well, he is an official Doctor... though admittedly anything that has the BBC stamp of approval is 'official' on some level.

Now, here's my idea for an updated 'Three Doctors' - the 8th and 9th Doctors go to stay at a country cottage owned by the almost 5th/alternative 8th [DWM No. 255] Doctor...

And what's the DWM almost 5th/alternative 8th Doctor when s/he's at home?

OH MY GOD. You're talking Uncle Monty aren't you...?

We must be thankful that Bruce Robinson didn't call him Uncle Vernon as that would make the Harry Potter films a very unusual prospect...

An interesting experiment in narrative which, for the most part, works well. It has a (*dons flak jacket*) few dull moment (*removes flak jacket*) but does form a cohesive story and explains everything as well. None of this 'hint a lot and say nothing' that seems to afflict a lot of the books; this leaves you with a very clear idea of what has happened (even if the multiple points of view don't provide a definitive statement).

Fuseli's Nightmare gets mentioned a few times. Here it is: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/f/fussli/fuseli_nightmare.jpg

The best line is on p.211: The TARDIS, incidentally, had by this point acquired a special significance for just about everybody on the island. Fitz had said that it was a pity there wouldn't be room for it in the vault during the wedding, as it would have qualified as old, new, borrowed and blue.

It has a (*dons flak jacket*) few dull moment (*removes flak jacket*)

*Cunningly awaits removal of flak jacket before producing machine gun*

but does form a cohesive story and explains everything as well

Though I still have no idea why or how the Doctor suddenly turned up minus his TARDIS (and, as far as I remember, his Companions?) but what the hell, things are always going hideously wrong with that machine.

it would have qualified as old, new, borrowed and blue.

Yes, isn't that adorable! Though it's just as well the TARDIS didn't turn up for the wedding, the Doc would probably have married HER instead of Scarlette (they're much better suited, and at least the TARDIS never faked death to get away from him*).

Ooh, maybe you can tell me - didn't the Doc write a book in this one? (I need the info for the extraordinarily long list of Gallifrey Chronicles mistakes I'm compiling.)

*Unless THAT was what Frontios was all about...?

I think the Doctor ("kindly refrain from calling me 'Doc', young lady") did write a book - but I can't find the page number. There was a section from it quoting a few paragraphs alluding to the Time Lords having never existed and it ended (from fallible memory here) with the line that it was a fairly involved thought seeing he was writing about pigeons at the time.

And for those of us familiar with Australian slang reading about the characters who were frequently rooted did bring a wry smile.

"kindly refrain from calling me 'Doc', young lady"

I will indeed kindly refrain from addressing the First Doctor (or any vague facsimilies thereof) as 'Doc'.

Fitz had said that it was a pity there wouldn't be room for [the TARDIS] in the vault during the wedding, as it would have qualified as old, new, borrowed and blue.'

Oh.

Guess we now know where Moffat nicked his greatest moment from...

DWM review: 'The breakdown of reality, the threat of invasion from another dimension and identity crises all loom large, as they have done in all of his Doctor Who (and Professor Bernice Summerfield) books' - blimey, do they? I hadn't noticed.

So. Guess if the Doctor's been married four times (Death in Heaven) Scarlette's been thoroughly decanonised? What with Marilyn, Liz One, River and Susan's Granny...

Plus she wasn't exactly on the list of people McGann was bidding a fond farewell to in Night of the Doctor...

DWM preview: 'I can't stand Hollywood, and what are the two big films of the summer? Planet of the Apes and Moulin Rouge. What have I written? A book about a load of monkeys attacking a brothel. Nobody's going to believe it's a coincidence' - pah! Who cares what idiot Hollywooders were plagiarising?

'I didn't write a story about the Doctor staying in a brothel because I wanted to be "controversial" or because I wanted to "push the envelope". I did it because...Actually, why did I do it? I can't remember...' - bless!

'Doctor Who has never really done history as well as it could. Even aprt from the fact that bleeding great monsters keep turning up in the middle of World War Two, the show's version of history was always a bit...Victorian...the Doctor spends years hanging around little English triumphs like Magna Carta, but it takes him 27 years to bother visiting the birth of human civilisation in Mesopotamia' - yeah, and anyone who actually read Timewyrm: Genesys wishes it had taken him a LOT longer.

'I wanted to do a book that was about history, which is the same thing I wanted to do with Christmas on a Rational Planet, but I was rubbish then so it didn't work' - I wish people would STOP slagging off CoaRP!

'Actually, that's probably why I thought I'd be nice to use the brothel. Huge chunks of history have been decided by things that happen in brothels, but because we're so Victorianised we gloss over it all. Like those 19th century biographies of Nelson that cut out...Lady Hamilton...oh, to hell with it, I'll admit it: I'm just obsessed with 18th-century prostitutes' - why aren't more writers like this?

Hmm. Turns out that menstrual synchronisation is probably an urban myth. Well, maybe things are different in the Whoniverse. What with the moon being a giant-chicken-dragon-foetus-egg, and all.

Still a great book but I'm not LOVING it the way I did the first couple of times. I'm pretty sure this is an indication of my own deteriorating mental faculties rather than any reflection on the novel itself. I just don't have the patience and concentration I used to.

'She couldn't see its eyes, as if they'd been poked out, or as if they were simply reflecting the darkness around them' - well, I s'pose that still counts as doing your eye-gouging duties...

'That final, crushing acknowledgement that the American colonists had won proved once and for all that the King's power was no longer as absolute as history had believed' - history didn't believe that for a moment, not even BEFORE Charles I got his head chopped off.

The (Eighth) Doctor has 'dark, spidery handwriting'? Later 'almost unreadable'? (Not a nit, just a reminder to keep my eyes open. Though the Docs tend to do even less writing than they do reading. Are some of 'em perhaps ILLITERATE?)

'He always made an effort to judge people by their own standards' - the last time I can remember the Doc attempting to judge people by their own standards was, like, THE AZTECS.

'It's hard not to think of Lisa-Beth's claim, that during the fencing practice with Scarlette the Doctor's blade "hung in the air" as if suspended by its own private kind of time' - *sigh* OK, that makes Ambassadors of Death, Greatest Show in the Galaxy, Adventuress of Henrietta Street and (very probably) Just War in which the Doctor demonstrates the magic powers s/he keeps VERY quiet the rest of the time...

So when Lisa-Beth uses sex to get the Service agents' sacred names out of 'em for blackmail purposes, the Doctor 'confessed Lisa-Beth's methods left him rather puzzled' - he knows he's living in a brothel. He knows about sex (he was having it with an eyeball-less water-spirit a couple of books ago, for heaven's sake). And he knows about the power of magic words, or at least their SYMBOLIC power, THIS entire book is him spending a year preparing to symbolically bind himself to the Earth to save the planet and his own skin. ('Both of them [Sabbath and the Doctor] realising it was all part of a greater game in which symbols were their most effective weapons.' (Even if his marriage spectacularly failed to do any such thing. Should've just got everyone to proclaim him President of Earth or something.))

'The occult "hot zone" of Westminster Abbey, whose western towers had after all been designed by the architect Hawksmoor as a monstrous satanic joke' - BLIMEY. I seem to remember Lawrence saying something similar about St Paul's, only obviously that involved a dome rather than towers...

'Scarlette was a relic of the old days, when women of surprising virtue had kept orderly disorderly Houses and thus became some of the wealthiest landowners in England' - they DID?

'If the initiate succeeded in escaping the trap, he would become part of the organisation. If not, he would very rarely survive and the integrity of the Service would remain intact' - 'very rarely' doesn't mean NEVER, what happened to the survivors?

The Master is the Doctor's FAMILY? Well, I s'pose if there are only four members of your species left...

'There was a sense that Juliette, Scarlette and their kind were taking on the mantle of his own people, the mantle of the Doctor himself. In short, he was beginning to think of Juliette as the next generation of elemental, the inheritor of a legacy with which he no longer felt comfortable' - a) the Doc's NEVER felt comfortable with his Time Lord legacy even BEFORE he wiped 'em out and got amnesia, which isn't surprising when you consider the Timeless Children stuff and b) it's quite annoying that Scarlette and Juliette are never mentioned again whilst Sabbath - the mere MAN - overruns the EDAs like a plague even if he never really fulfils his purpose of being a better Guardian of Time than the Doctor in a Gallifrey-less universe. Oh, and c) whatever happened to the Ood, who New Who subtly hint are the Whoniverse's Time-Lord-replacements (before one of 'em decides to wipe out said Whoniverse cos the Doctor's Mummy told it to, anyway).

The Doctor 'was busy trying to find a priest who'd agree to the wedding ceremony - it was quite vital that the marriage should be legally binding, as well as symbolic' - WAS it, though? The wedding ceremony Eleven goes through with River isn't particularly legal but it does its universe-saving job...

'If Sabbath was now capable of summoning and binding the demons, then anybody was' - well, THAT'S not true is it. Sabbath is...special in a number of ways.

'Magical theory states that a person is inseparable from his or her place of power. Scarlette was her House, or at least connected to it; the Doctor obviously believed he was his TARDIS (though later events would prove him slightly mistaken)' - why would he believe THAT after a century sans proper TARDIS? Sure, he's currently dying without it but it turns out he's dying WITH it too...

Sabbath got the Mayakai's wedding invitation because 'one of the two Mayakai known to survive was in Sabbath's employ'? You couldn't've asked one of 'em direct you snob? (Given that the not-employed and not-dead-by-that-time one also turns up...yes you obviously CAN.)

'It's interesting to think what might have happened if the Doctor and Number Six had compared notes' - given that what happened is pretty much The Man in the Velvet Mask...not so much.

'Without death there would be no change. The society of such a people would be a dreary and stagnant one...in an effort to allow at least some development in their society these immortal folk might mix the [Philosopher's] Stone with other compounds... to ensure that when a man of their number was re-born, he would become a new man' - nice attempt to explain why the Time Lords shifted from 'living forever barring accidents' to regenerating but has been rather overtaken by Timeless Children-related events...

...'And all this is in a section of the book that's supposed to be abut the habits of pigeons' - BLESS so like darling Capaldi! ('Poetry, physics, same thing.')

To be continued...

'These "immortals"...could use the "Philosopher's Stone" to re-birth themselves in any number of new forms, "from great three-headed things to bodies made of pure heat"' - ah. THAT'S where Eccy got his 'I might never make sense again. I might have two heads, or no head. Imagine me with no head. And don't say that's an improvement. But it's a bit dodgy, this process. You never know what you're going to end up with' from...and to think some losers wailed and gnashed their teeth when he just turned into a WOMAN....

'It was as if the Doctor had suddenly realised that the Philosopher's Stone was his, and that there were no others of his kind to limit the way in which it was used' - aaaand THAT'S where Waters of Mars is born...

'Of course, 1780 was also the year in which Sabbath had tried to seduce Scarlette, and very nearly succeeded' - that's IT? That's what the prostitute is holding such a bitter grudge over?

'Everywhere is the smell of animals. Apes, so that the smell isn't quite far enough from that of the traveller's own body to make it seem truly alien' - why the hell would THE EIGHTH DOCTOR talk about the smell of his body when he smells of honey (Seasons of Fear)...

'The Doctor, with his almost childlike optimism and his insistence on making friends with everybody while holding grudges against nobody' - since WHEN!

'Sabbath also wanted to become rooted....he knew that to travel into the deeper realms (other times, or other worlds?) he'd first have to connect himself to the Earth...On the one occasion when he tried to pilot the Jonah outside of his normal territories..."my own world no longer acknowledged me and as a consequence I was ceasing to be"' - yeah, well, plenty of humans manage to whizz round space n'time without the protection of a TARDIS and/or that Rassilon Imprimatur, no matter what Two Docs claims...

'He'd been suffering twinges for over a hundred years' - that's an AWFUL LOT of EDAs who never bothered to mention this...

It is WRONG to be laughing gleefully at the line 'Everybody knew that Australia was just a rationalist version of hell'?

'It was inevitable that the Doctor would make a will' - since WHEN! And why no mention of a Confession Dial? - 'His TARDIS was said to be overflowing with the things he'd collected on his travels, many of them valuable' - and none of them he (or Scarlette) thought to flog off to save her vital-for-the-future-of-humanity House?

'Sabbath himself once noted that being a creature who depended only on his "place of power" for food and shelter, the Doctor had no understanding of money even as a concept' - well he spent a century stuck on Earth without a functional TARDIS and he was Thatcherism personified in the 1980s (Father Time) so...no.

It's deeply weird that the Master doesn't mind the Doctor marrying someone-who-isn't-him - even 'especial satisfaction' that they made it to the altar - but still, Missy even offered her condolences on River's death (Extremis) so maybe I'm just WRONG in thinking s/he'd be driven into a foaming frenzy at the very thought.

How does Sexy qualify as 'new'?

'The Doctor seems to imply that there's no difference between "magic" and "fiction": both are collections of words designed to alter the state of the human mind. Anyone who believes there was really a conflict between "science" and "superstition" during the Age of Reason may be missing the point' - nice ideas but pretty unWhoish.

'It's easy to get the impression that he simply didn't want to disappoint Scarlette by turning up to his own wedding as a vegetable' - more likely that he didn't want to disappoint Juliette, given that he still thought she was the bride.

'While our kind still walked tall, we had the whole of space and time as our battlefield. These days, I'm afraid our little duels would be utterly meaningless' - well, that doesn't REMOTELY fit in with New Who's depiction of the Doctor/Master relationship post-Gallifrey's destruction (twice).

To be continued...

'When the Doctor and Scarlette had kissed, the Doctor had bound himself to the Earth and "officially" declared himself to be the planet's champion' - it really was an over-elaborate way of doing things, compare n'contrast with, say, The Christmas Invasion:

SYCORAX: You stand as this world's champion.
DOCTOR: Thank you. I've no idea who I am, but you just summed me up.

'His (mythical?) link to his homeworld gone, replaced by his bond to Scarlette and the Earth' - not according to New Who, or at least to Eccy's (and the Simm Master's) belief he'd SENSE it if there were any Time Lords out there. (Admittedly slightly undermined by JODIE!'s failure to notice 'em all going splat. Again.)

'He went on to speculate that he might well just go back to sleep, if he couldn't find something to alleviate the terrible boredom' - I s'pose hibernation might explain why the Master's hearts are just fine...?

'Fitz and Anji realised early on that they were virtually useless in close combat' - Anji was astonishingly good at close combat in Escape Velocity, though admittedly she displayed no such abilities in her subsequent years of adventures...

'The still dark-eyed Doctor' - but you said a couple of pages earlier that 'the Doctor's eyes cleared of their black vapour'.

Pack-leaders never walk?

No written record mentions the great eye?!

So the Doctor's keeping his wedding ring on? Yet it's never mentioned in any other EDA I can think of...

'He may not have loved Scarlette, as human beings understood the term - could a creature such as himself even appreciate such an idea?' - *glances in direction of New Who* Unfortunately and unexpectedly...yes.

'He also expressed an interest in discovering the nature of the black-eyed sun...Indeed, this was a quest that was to eventually obsess him' - obsess him REALLY SUBTLY given it's never mentioned again...

'I had to [pretend to be dead]. So that you could leave his place. This Earth...How could you ever fulfil your purpose, knowing that the two of us were bound together? How could you ever leave?' - REALLY REALLY EASILY, given the way he merrily abandons his OTHER wives, River Song (in prison for a crime she didn't commit!), Liz One, Marilyn Monroe etc etc...

'It's impossible to give a definite account of the Doctor's travels after 1783...anybody could impersonate him with impunity' - and yet they hardly-ever did, and the attempts in Dominion (the audios not the book) and The One Doctor ended pretty fast.

'There is a record of one of them dying in the twenty-first century' - should be both, as Fitz and Anji both (apparently) settled down there.

'The strange black-clad man had returned "in a most unexpected capacity"' - well THAT'S spot-on, Prime Minister Harold Saxon, Missy and O were all, in their own ways, very unexpected indeed.