Apart from the sheer implausibility of a man turning into a black hole (why? exactly?) there's also the problem of his victims being reduced to little black spheres that no-one can move. Why can no-one move them? Presumably they still have the same mass as a normal human body.

And isn't this just a re-run of 'The Taking of Planet 5', relocated to Siberia and with most of the interesting stuff taken out. The psychopathic American special forces kill everyone who doesn't have a role in the plot (all the action is fairly arbitrary), suggesting a subtext of authorial collaboration. And Sabbath is here a second rate version of the Master who can't possibly be right even though he has just as much expertise in time travel as the amnesiac Doctor.

It's actually quite a fun read for the first 200 pages, but suffers massively from the EDA disease - a plot that collapses comprehensively in its third act. One question remains: why didn't 'The Burning' happen in Siberia then?

Didn't the book have one of the scientists claiming that anyone might naturally get some black hole material inside their head? Due to getting aforementioned scientist getting his/her brains blown out a few moments later, this was, sadly, never expanded on. I suppose we're just supposed to believe that Curtis is the unlucky, billions-to-one winner of the 'Become a Black Hole!' evolutionary competition.

I don't know why you're surprised about Justin Richards' homicidal nature. Not only is his obsession with zombies pretty obvious, but this is the man who commissioned Mick Lewis. Twice.

The Burning monster may not have been up to much (in fact, in my opinion it's right down there with the Royal Beast of Tara, the Giant Rat, the Myrka, etc) but at least it just about had the sense to know that alien monsters invade England, not Siberia.

As for Sabbath - I was quite amused to dig out a year-old e-mail from Lawrence recently:

'I think the overall idea - not just of ADVENTURESS, but of the whole Sabbath Cycle - is that the Doctor's out of his league in the "new"
universe, or at least out of his natural environment. Now the Time Lords are gone, Sabbath (instinctively) understands the way things work better than the Doctor does. The Doctor's got the experience, but it's experience of a different kind of continuum.'

Do you want to break the news to him that the 'overall idea' has been slightly misunderstood by the writers, or should I?

How many years did Sabbath spend pretending to be Curtis's butler or whatever he was? Or did he just pop back every now and then to see how Curtis was getting on?

Why didn't the time traveller-sensing machine pick up Sam, Sarah, Tegan, Ian, Barbara etc - any ex-Companions who'd be around in the early twenty-first century?

Why didn't Anji think of saying something - like 'No' - when a suspicious-looking character appeared out of nowhere and informed her she was off to Siberia for six months at an ungodly hour the following morning?

What is all this 'Fitz didn't die because Anji and the Doctor refused to accept he'd died' rubbish? And does it apply to other Companions? (In which case we must be thankful for Tegan's extremely decisive 'Adric's dead' at the beginning of Timeflight.)

And, given that the Doctor got Anji home three weeks after she left - i.e. she completely vanished off the face of the Earth for three weeks just after her boyfriend got murdered - why wasn't there a bit of suspicion from the police? Or at least Dave's parents demanding to know why she hadn't bothered turning up for the funeral?

I wonder how much offence this will cause in the US? Maybe Justin Richards is keeping his fingers crossed that the distribution problems will prevent Americans from seeing this book. I wouldn't mind the unsubtle 'The US Army is a bunch of raving psychopaths' message (no offence, Mandy) if the British SAS weren't portrayed as such heroes. I mean, the SAS did help train the Khmer Rouge, for god's sake.

Hmmm... I think the phrase we're looking for (particularly as regards Anji not saying 'no') is 'Idiot Plotting'.

I'm gonna go into full geek-mode here, and comment on the black holes. Again, I haven't read the book, so sorry if some if this is not germaine.

Generally speaking, a black hole is formed when a stellar object of a certain mass collapses upon itself and forms a singularity. For a star to become a black hole, it would have to weigh in excess of 10 times the mass of the Sun.

Objects of smallers masses can become black holes if they're subjected to incredible pressure. The smaller the mass, the more pressure required. Some physicists have theorized that quantum black holes, the size of atoms, could have been formed during the Big Bang. Larry Niven used these ultra-small holes to great effect in his short story "The Hole Man."

I haven't the faintest idea how a human could suddenly be compressed into a black hole, nor how this wouldn't immediately result in the destruction the Earth. I would also assume that the human black hole would be incredibly small. Finally, anyone trying to pick up a black hole would immediately find their hands destroyed by the incredibly strong G force near the surface of the singularity.

But surely a human black hole would look just like a normal human except for a vague blurry blackness instead of a face? (he asked innocently)

I wouldn't think so. The gravitational forces would compress it into a perfectly spherical shape. There are some time elements, too. The closer you get to the event horizon of a black hole, the slower time moves. From your point of view, you'd never reach the surface.

And why did Compassion write the 'Meet you in St Louis' note for the Doctor - and sign it Fitz? Is Fitz perhaps illiterate?

Okay, now that I've read it, I can speak (somewhat) more intelligently.

I think the reason no one could move the black golf balls is that they were so dense. It would be like trying to lift a 175 pound person with just your fingertips.

Of course, if Curtis really was a black hole, the people he encountered would have been crushed to objects about the size of an atom, not a golf ball.

Curtis reminded me of Chunk, from the 1980's "Flash" comic books.

Why didn't Fitz's expedition use dog or horse sleds?

I'm relieved to know that, if I don't see someone die and I don't believe they're dead, they'll remain alive. Now all my relatives and overseas friends will live forever!

It's interesting that the Doctor points out that Schroedinger's Cat is an inaccurate way to describe quantam theory, then procedes to use it to explain everything that happens in the novel.

Why did the military use such an implausible story to fool Anji into joining their expedition, then let her wander around and find out the truth? Wouldn't it have been easier to kidnap and keep her tied up?

As to Emily's question about the US opinion of the US Army, the people in this book weren't US Army. They're some sort of black ops/CIA thingy, which is shorthand for the bad guys. After all, they're the rotten people in every episode of "The X-Files."

The golf ball problem remains. The objects would still have the same mass as a human body, so they would be difficult - but not impossible - to shift.

I thought about that, and I recall that nobody said they were impossible to move. You would just see someone try to pick them up with their bare hands and their fingers would slip off. This fits because an ultra-dense object would be very smooth, and you couldn't pick up a 180 pound with just your fingertips.

Itt's rather implausible for characters to keep trying to pick up the golfballs with their finger tips then concluding that they couldn't be moved. Why does no-one think of giving them a shove or a kick to see if they really are as immovable as they seem?

They're probably worried about hurting their toes.

When everyone in the plane thought Anji had jumped did they leave the rest of the equipment in the plane when it crashed? I'm sure she was still hiding behind some palettes at the time so why take them all that way just to let them blow up?

Fairly good until five chapters to go and then it went all incomprehensible.

Sabbath is here a second rate version of the Master who can't possibly be right even though he has just as much expertise in time travel as the amnesiac Doctor.

Considerably MORE, actually. Sabbath invented a time machine FROM SCRATCH...in the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY to boot...whereas Our Hero only ever nicked one (and couldn't even control THAT for centuries). Plus, Sabbath was born into this Time-Lords-have-never-existed society and instinctively understands it in a way the Elemental relic simply CAN'T.

What is all this 'Fitz didn't die because Anji and the Doctor refused to accept he'd died' rubbish?

Though to be fair, it worked for Amy. On the other hand, neither Anji or the Doctor had a crack-in-space-and-time running through their skulls.

Generally speaking, a black hole is formed when a stellar object of a certain mass collapses upon itself and forms a singularity. For a star to become a black hole, it would have to weigh in excess of 10 times the mass of the Sun.

Ah. In other words, a HUMAN BEING is...fairly unlikely to TURN INTO A BLACK HOLE.

I haven't the faintest idea how a human could suddenly be compressed into a black hole, nor how this wouldn't immediately result in the destruction the Earth.

Well, maybe if the Legions of Light set up an impossible orbit...though since they perished before this universe began, probably not.

Why did the military use such an implausible story to fool Anji into joining their expedition, then let her wander around and find out the truth? Wouldn't it have been easier to kidnap and keep her tied up?

They may have been sexist n'racist and assumed that an Asian female wouldn't have noticed anything wrong. Which she DIDN'T at first, despite years of training with the Doctor...

'Fitz had embarked on a suicidal mission to excavate mammoths in nineteenth century Siberia' - DWM review. He wasn't to KNOW it was suicidal (as opposed to merely STUPID and POINTLESS) - the dinsosaurs from another universe were definitely unforeseeable.

'What the book is notably lacking is the sort of shock twist that would revitalise the ongoing storyline' - you're right THERE.

'Not only does Sabbath pop up - under an appallingly oblique pseudonym that would baffle even the Master' - what, HOLIDAY? Well, it's baffling ME - 'but so does The King of Terror's Control' - WHO? - 'We even learn the origins of the living fire seen in The Burning' - what, Justin Richards actually thinks we CARE?

I haven't the faintest idea how a human could suddenly be compressed into a black hole, nor how this wouldn't immediately result in the destruction the Earth.

Compressing a human into a black hole is possible, but it requires pressures that have not existed in this universe since the Big Bang. However, a human mass black hole would not destroy the Earth. All black holes evaporate, the less massive they are, the faster they do. A human mass black hole would evaporate so fast that it would simply explode, converting all of its mass into energy in a blink of an eye. Your average human has a mass of around 70 kg, converting that into energy would produce an explosion of about 1500 megatons. That's nowhere near enough to destroy a planet like Earth, although it WOULD cause a LOT of damage in a radius of hundreds of kilometers.

People actually WORK THIS STUFF OUT?!

Sadly this means that Time Zero COULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED just as much as if human-black-holes were impossible, but still...very interesting.

People actually WORK THIS STUFF OUT?!

Yes they do, and that's pretty tame compared to some of the stuff physicists are trying to wrap their minds around these days.

But what do they DO to test their competing hyphothesises, if two physicists disagree on exactly how much of a megaton-explosion would result from a human-black-hole going up...?

They do experiments, of course.

Everyone in Britain can remember where they were when Fluppy died - look, if the Blue Peter pet dawg got its skull caved in on live TV, why the hell did Faction Paradox need to traumatise a generation of kids by vandalising the Blue Peter Garden (Interference)?

'There was no steam-breath from his mouth, Anji noted' - the Doctor has super-powers in cold weather since WHEN!

'Anji knew there was no point in searching for the Doctor. There might be traces of him, second-hand data, e-footprints through the information on the internet. But the Doctor himself would be careful not to be there' - he would? Since when? Give or take Eccy inexplicably giving Mickey-the-Idiot an (obviously grossly ineffective) disc to wipe him off the Net?

'Katerin Street, it seemed to be called, if he had deciphered the Cyrillic correctly. Usually he a hopeless at it' - Sexy REALLY not bothering to translate the written word, then.

'However much you might want to change something, you can't' - how would this amnesiac mockery of a Doctor know, anyway? (And didn't Adventuress make it plain that he does at least realise that when Gallfrey was destroyed, it had suddenly never existed. I.e. you really CAN change history.)

OK, just remind me who this 'Control' guy is...?

'There was, he decided, cold and Cold. And he was Cold' - a former Faction member REALLY SHOULD remember what the Cold actually IS.

'Nobody but Graul could speak his language' - now Sexy has cut Fitz off from SPOKEN communication as well? That's just MEAN. He hasn't LEFT the Doctor, he's just, um, taken a temporary leave of absence. On a certain-death mission. Cos he thinks that'll be more MEANINGFUL than saving planets as a career.

'"Because he was shot in a cellar in Yekaterinburg in 1918 when he was only thirteen years old...Or was it fourteen?" The Doctor was counting on his fingers. "Did I miss his birthday?" he wondered aloud, his tone a mixture of surprise and regret' - Sorry, is this implying that Amnesiac Eight, stranded on the slow path, popped over to Tsarist Russia every year (including during World War One) to pay homage to the Tsar's haemophiliac male heir? Or what?

'He paid off the cab and gave Albert a generous tip' - whatever happened to 'I don't actually have any cash on me'? Speaking of which, has the guy never heard of CREDIT or DEBIT cards?

Galloway has a wooden tent peg through his skull? Is that physically possible? And how can everyone pass it off as an accident? Without at least checking to see if anyone had bloody hands? And why all blame Fitz before the 'accident' nonsense? 'You did attack him with a tent peg this evening' - why didn't Fitz point out that actually he just chucked a peg at Galloway so HE could put up the tent, and misjudged his throw?

'They were carrying guns - big guns. Machine guns or assault rifles, mean-looking' - to hunt one civilian woman? Who they needed alive? On a PLANE? Wouldn't firing 'em fatally damage the plane or something?

So our intrepid explorers haul along a gun and a pile of grenades...but only enough food that they HOPE they won't die of starvation?

The grenades are 'to blast the rock away so your friend can find his precious fossils' - I'm no archaeologist, but...

The Institute was just supposed to NOT NOTICE the plane blowing up?

Why are so many scientists happy to come to Siberia to do experiments? When they don't even know what said experiments are FOR? When Putin (or whoever his Whoniverse replacement is) will reap the benefits?

Why does Fitz decide to stay with the guy who's suicidally covering their retreat? When exactly did he develop an active death-wish - and why?

Nice of the ruthless shoot-you-as-soon-as-look-at-you killers to fetch Trix's trunk for her.

'Should we barricade ourselves in?' 'What would be the point?' - er, so that the monsters wouldn't stroll up and eat you in your sleep?

So when Anji hugs the Doctor, 'The look on his face made her think for a second that he was going to leap to his feet with a cry of "Unhand me, Madam,"...But he endured it and even managed a tight smile afterwards' - I thought Eight was a TACTILE Doctor! Doesn't he kiss Fitz sometime? Or maybe he has a hitherto unsuspected dislike of Anji?

'But even if Fitz is dead in this universe, there are countless others where he survived. In fact, this may be one of the few times where it is actually a comfort to realise that a fraction of an infinite number is still, by definition, infinite' - and yet shortly afterwards you're announcing that 'Since you could, in theory....work out every possible decision point and potential change in our own universe to date, that means that there's only a finite number of possible histories'.

Look, I'm used to baddies seeing the error of their ways and atoning in an act of noble self-sacrifice but I'm STILL a bit confused about why Hartford jumps into a black hole because he thinks the USA is a poem.

This whole 'George is a human time machine!' thing is a bit of a damp squib after Compassion.

Sabbath ALREADY KNOWS the Doctor's heart regrew itself, like, FIVE MINUTES earlier? HOW! (Also: why HAS this link with a dead Gallifrey regrown itself? And how?)

'"This isn't Fitz," he said. He was right, and Anji felt a wave of disappointment flow over her' - what, that the body in the ice for the past century wasn't her friend? (She sure as hell wasn't expecting it to be ALIVE.)

'I need the TARDIS to make a proper assessment' - and you didn't think of that sooner? You didn't get the TARDIS out of your mysteriously-not-blown-to-Kingdom-Come-after-all plane and use it to go to the cave in the first place?

Ah! The penny has finally dropped for Fitz: George is the murderer. SURELY he couldn't have spent quite so long with the Doctor and not had his wits sharpened a BIT? And THIS is the guy who Fitz ABANDONED the Doctor to go trekking in Siberia with?

The Doctor unnecessarily TELLS the bad guys who've come looking for time-travel equipment and slaughtered loads of people in the process that he has time-travel equipment? And they don't even ask about it, they just swallow his line about the cave being a time machine too?

'Fitz is dead. He died in here.' 'I know. I feel it too. But I already knew. I've had a while to come to terms with it. Since we were in Spain' - what the hell happened in Spain? And...er...aren't you telling Fitz a few minutes later that 'I think you survived because neither Anji nor I would admit you were definitely dead'? Not only is that a REALLY STUPID reason for anyone to be alive, it's also A LIE.

Why are the American nutters so happy to shoot scientists? Isn't it a rather counter-productive means of getting scientific information out of them?

So the SAS's rules of engagement 'take account of possible incursions from enemy powers, non-aligned countries, friendly powers with an axe to grind - even the French, trying to get one over on NATO.' 'But not US special forces.' 'You're sure that's who they are?' ''They have standard equipment, clothing, transport. They act and move by the book' - OK, let me get this straight. 'Being a mass-murdering lunatic' is BY THE BOOK? Yet the British are too busy training to fight imaginary French people to worry about what happens if their paths cross with THESE MASS-MURDERING LUNATICS?

'If the TARDIS really did spilt reality, nothing I did would ever have any meaning or consequence. There would be no point' - surely the point of this alt-uni •••• is that the TARDIS, and, indeed, every time any of us so much as bats an eyelid, DOES split reality so everything IS pointless?

'Time will preserve the single timeline, the one real universe, wherever and whenever it can. It doesn't spin off whole new ones at the drop - or not - of a cat.' - That's not the impression the REST of this book, the subsequent alt-uni books, OR Tennant-in-Rise-of-the-Cybermen gave me. And what's with this 'real' universe thing?

'We have to ensure that it gets back to the right bookshop at the right time in the right reality or else everything - and I do mean everything - everything will unravel. Reality will fall apart, and all the universes will try to coexist together in the same part of the eleventh dimension' - why the hell should they all be so badly affected?

'What's this boat doing here?' - more to the point, how come none of you noticed it SOONER?

'The paper has been folded and unfolded more times than he can recall. Yet the writing is neat and fresh...The short note is signed with the same perfect writing....so neat, almost feminine a hand'- how odd, given that Casualties of War described said paper as 'a scruffily scribbled note'...of course, it was probably assuming that a note signed 'Fitz' was actually written by Fitz instead of by Compassion for no readily apparent reason...

The Doctor Who Reference Guide: 'The mysterious Control first appeared in The Devil Goblins from Neptune and The King of Terror, in which it was implied that the CIA in America had ties to the organisation of the same name on Gallifrey. In Time Zero, Control appears again and goes to extreme measures to get his hands on what he presumes to be time-travel technology, further implying that he may have had some connection to the Time Lords' - WTF and SINCE WHEN!