It's possible that the Absolute has encountered time travellers before, but they don't Sabbath's snazzy Absolute-spotting specs, which I think is the real cause of the problem.

And the book is part of the TARDIS, so I think it's fair enough.

WHAT! Are you crazy? It is NOT fair enough! If you could travel by book, not to mention telephone, or anything else vaguely related to the TARDIS, how come this has never happened before? EVERY TIME the Doctor or a Companion got captured, they could just remove an item of clothing (from the TARDIS wardrobe), cut it up, wave it around, and hey presto! Instant transportation to wherever they want. Of course, given the TARDIS's equally unprecended (except for that Ace-rescuing bit in Left-Handed Hummingbird) ability to just sweep down and pick up the Doc whenever he's in a bit of trouble, they needn't even bother. Grrr. I haven't been so infuriated since that ludicrous 'Anything the Doctor writes in blood comes true' bit in Managra.

As for the Absolute, I thought it had exactly the same problem when it saw the Doctor and co flickering in and out of history. In fact, the Doctor was specifically threatening it - 'I'm all over Earth this century, try getting away from me, ner ner nyer ner' or words to that effect.

In fairness to this pile of - er, to this book, it did have ONE good moment, i.e. after spending half of it wondering whether Sasha or Jueves was Sabbath's agent, they turned out to be the same person. Oh, and there was that very interesting stuff about Fitz's handwriting not matching (what was THAT all about???) but presumably she'd been told to put that in as part of some future plot thread.

You mean the way the Doctor used part of the Monk's TARDIS to get back to Earth in "No Future"?

Emily. you've struck on an ideal way to incorporate 'Professor Prune and His Electric Time Trousers' into the official canon. (Presumably this is an interim regeneration during season 6b?)

Mike - how was I to know the Doctor had done something similar with the Monk's TARDIS? I encountered No Future in those happy, long ago days when I was just starting off as a Who reader, and therefore hadn't realised that the only excuse for not finishing a Who book was death - that one's enjoyment, or otherwise, of a novel was supremely irrelevant. So I never bothered finishing it.

I'm not sure that 'unoriginal rubbish idea' is much of an improvement on just plain 'rubbish idea'. (OK, it probably is. You don't have to get the blame for introducing such an abomination to the Whoniverse.) Anyway, the Monk's TARDIS was a more advanced model than the Doctor's, who knows what it could get up to, what little extras were built in as safeguards, especially during those years he spent repairing it after his unpleasant encounter with the Doctor in 1066. I mean, it's not as if we've spent 39 (or 700, whichever way you want to count it) years following the MONK around the universe, is it.

Daniel, I will ignore that remark.

Oh, forgot to mention another thing I really loathe about this book - the way Anji and Fitz decide the Doctor is dead. I'm the first to admit that there IS a precedent for such behaviour (i.e. Sarah Jane, about four times per story) but for heaven's sake! The conversation runs LITERALLY like:

Fitz: The Doctor's gone to Guernica.
Anji: Well, he must be dead then.
Fitz: Yeah.
Anji: We're stuck here, then.
Fitz: ••••.

Did I miss something? Why on Earth would they think he was dead? Plenty of people survived, and frankly the Doctor would be guaranteed to get out in one piece even if the entire population of Guernica had perished.

They're unaware that Professor Prune had his time trousers warming up nicely on the radiator, just ready to leap into them and rescue his later incarnation from mortal peril!

"EVERY TIME the Doctor or a Companion got captured, they could just remove an item of clothing (from the TARDIS wardrobe), cut it up, wave it around, and hey presto!"

Did Peri ever try this? We need to be told.

Of course she didn't! Did I not say that this was unprecendented, for the Doctor and his Companions and his humble Type 40?

You need to listen to Nekromanteia. Or take a cold shower. Or possibly both.

Nekromanteia eh? Is there a version available with Flash animation?

If my incredibly bad Spanish is correct, all the chapter titles are the titles of Clash songs translated into Spanish. The tip off to me was the chapter "Bombes Espanyole." This must be a new record in attempts to continue the trend of using song titles as Who chapter titles.

Three years ago I got so disappointed by the quality of the books that I decided to re-read all the Virgins followed by the EDAs again. Having gone through them this was the first 'new' EDA I've read for ages.

This was not the best of books. It felt one-paced throughout and I kept losing track of the different characters. Then again I wasn't that worried as I didn't care about any of them. The Orwell stuff seemed tacked on for the sake of having him appear and could the (Richard) Burton scene in Room 101 have been any less interesting? The entire book suffered from the problem which afflicts a lot of first-time writers (and a lot more supposedly experienced ones it must be said) which is trying to show their tricks and homages and forgetting about little things like plot and characterisation. Let's not even go into the confusing ending which would have had me going WTF? had I not just wanted to get the book over and done with.

*Nods agreement* Still, you can tell that Mags is intelligent and could write a good book with a decent editor. As of course she did with the infinitely superior 'Faction Paradox: Warring States'.

Oh, and there was that very interesting stuff about Fitz's handwriting not matching (what was THAT all about???)

Oh. It turns out not to be interesting at all. It turns out (see Time Zero) that COMPASSION wrote the note to the Doctor (for no readily apparent reason) and signed it 'Fitz' (for no readily apparent reason). Ah well.

'It was a chilly spring morning and the clock was striking thirteen. It had been hit by a stray bullet in the initial fighting the previous year and now ran to its own internal theory of time. Sabbath found it amusingly appropriate' - I'm not sure why he SHOULD, The entire POINT of Sabbath is that he understands how time works in THIS universe - where Gallifrey never-existed after being blown up - it's THE DOCTOR who doesn't have a clue. Admittedly the books never really make this clear but Lawrence is quite happy to explain it and given that he was dating Mags when this was being written...

'I'll never understand this human desire to gloat. Although, when I think about it, quite a few alien species -' oh, like YOU aren't gonna be gloating your head off at the Master when you become President of Earth...

'Oh bloody hell! It's another alternative history thingy, isn't it?' - OMG even the CHARACTERS are commenting on the rubbishness of the alternative history arc...

...No, hang on a sec, the alternative history arc hasn't STARTED yet, so what exactly is Fitz complaining about?

So, um, any particular reason the Absolute is obsessed with Earth? Or are we just supposed to accept it as the natural order of the Whoniverse?

'He's not that kind of...' - well, not THIS week, anyway.

'The main room in the TARDIS still looked like a corporate office' - um, no. Sexy has had many interiors, none of which remotely resemble corporate offices.

'You can go where you like' - Sasha is a REALLY WEIRD kind of kidnapper.

Who saves dozens of used matches?

The Doctor's still carries Fitz's note around with him even though, for example, his jacket (presumably with said note as he carries it everywhere with him) was floating down a German river on a corpse in Turing Test...

The Doctor has never seen Fitz's handwriting in all their years together?

'You've only been disconnected from the TARDIS for a few days, not the months we've been here. You can see the different versions more clearly than we can' - even though the Doctor's A TIME LORD and Fitz...isn't? Whatever happened to, say, 'that's how I see the universe. Every waking second, I can see what is, what was, what could be, what must not. That's the burden of a Time Lord, Donna'?

'The Doctor looked much the same as always' - if Fitz thinks that why the hell was he saying 'You look a right state' a few paragraphs ago?

'Maybe a bit smelly' is a terrible way to describe someone you're trying to find. Surely EVERYONE in the 1930s (never mind in the middle of a 1930s civil war) was a bit smelly? It's not exactly gonna help anyone narrow it down.

'The way [Sasha] had known a song from 1940' - no he hadn't.

The Doctor takes SEVERAL MONTHS to work out that Sexy shut down to protect herself when she found something in the phone system he'd told her to check? Has he had a LOBOTOMY perchance?

'It was tempting, always, just to lash out in pain. He knew he had done it in his past, succumbed to that desire for swift revenge, the kick or the shaking that expressed that hurt' - that's a rather euphemistic way of describing MURDERING PEOPLE in, say, The Burning or The Turing Test.

'His insanity was infecting the world, changing the way people perceived events, ordering history into a neat causal line' - um, except that he seems to be splintering events into mutually-incompatible repeats.

'The Doctor swore under his breath, a word he wasn't even sure of the meaning of' - ah yes, that weird novel habit of swearing in Ancient Gallifreyan...

'My friends are very good at looking after themselves' - don't the Eighth Doctors Companions all DIE (Sometime Never, To the Death)?

'Refugi'?

Like Orphan 55, this appears to have a completely contradictory and rather rubbish idea of how history WORKS in the Whoniverse.

forgetting about little things like plot and characterisation.

Also Orwell's wife...