There are many copies of Fitz and Anji in this book. Many of them die..

There's even at least 2 copies of the 8th Doctor.
One of them dies. He doesn't regenerate because the author forgot - that's got to be a nit.

Not neccesarily. It could have been a Doctor who hadn't grown back his second heart (and was no longer able to regenerate). Also, you can prevent a Time Lord from regenerating by stabbing both hearts and cutting through the spinal cord (see "The Infinity Doctor" for details).

If the Time Police's job is to kill everyone who invents time travel, how do they have access to time travel?

Why do we only encounter a couple of the Doctor and Co. through the book, but then have millions show up on the Martian ship?

Also, the next time the Doctor says "I'll explain later", whatever companion is standing there needs to haul off and smack the Doctor. The fact that this line was the central joke in "The Curse of the Fatal Death" should render it off limits to all future Who writings.

There are plenty of other ways of killing off Time Lords. If they get shot almost instantaneously dead, they wouldn't have TIME to regenerate. And even when the dying is long-drawn-out, regeneration is a dodgy process, never guaranteed - Peter Davison seemed pretty uncertain whether he could manage it.

God, this is boring. I mean, REALLY boring. I spent MONTHS tracking it down, only to find myself unable to be bothered to finish the wretched thing. God knows why I'm feeling so disillusioned. Most Paul Leonard books have been on the tedious side, and all the alternative universe books have been under par. But - how embarrassing - I must have had a subconscious feeling that anything with loads of Doctors and Companions running round getting killed would be exciting. And maybe the fact that Turing Test was GOOD lulled me into a false sense of security. Instead of which, I can't give a •••• about Fitz and Anji (let alone the barely-appearing Doctors) and as for Jack and whatshername...someone can kill ALL of 'em for all I care.

I agree with Emily. This is the most pathetically turd-like book ever to be expelled from the BBC. Everything I've ever said before about Paul Leonard books applies here because he's lumped all his incompetence into these pages. With this sort of tripe being produced it's a relief the series soon came to an end.

Well, I wouldn't go THAT far - there are, unbelievably, plenty of far worse BBC books out there, and - this is REALLY sad - I find I'm missing the range. I get withdrawal symptoms every month, with nothing to suffer* when, in the good** old days I used to look round, mutter 'Where the •••• is that Graham***' and proceed to scour the hundred or so libraries of which I'm a member in order to track the latest abomination to its lair, spend an excruciating few days attempting to plough through it, and then - highly cathartically - rip it to pieces on Nitcentral.

Of course, these days we have a new series (NEW SERIES!!!!) instead, so I shouldn't complain TOO much...

*I mean in the print medium, obviously. Big Finish still keep me well supplied with audio rubbish.

**OK, bad.

***For the benefit of any non-Grahams around, he used to sadistically keep me supplied with these things until he swanned off to Australia for some reason.

I think that, while the Virgin and BBC book lines may have had more than their shares of stinkers, they did go a long way in keeping the Who flame alive. And without that continued interest, the new series might never have happened.

Just remember that when you feel tempted to slag off every single book because of a few rotten Mick Lewises or Paul Leonards.

without that continued interest, the new series might never have happened

Very true, but then we had a lucky escape...if, say, St Lorraine of Heggessey had had the misfortune to bump into a Rags in her local Waterstones, the glorious happiness that is our new series would surely have been sunk then and there.

Just remember that when you feel tempted to slag off every single book because of a few rotten Mick Lewises or Paul Leonards.

For a start, I don't slag off every single book. Just the bad ones. Which admittedly often FEELS like every single book. And compared to Mick Lewis, Paul Leonard is a second Lawrence Miles, I'd never lump them together like that.

DWM review: Anji 'realises at last the hollowness of her previous existence as a slave to the money markets' - well, why does she go BACK to that particular job shortly afterwards, then?

'Despite fleeting appearances from the Daleks, Cybermen and Compassion' - what! WHERE?

'Despite fleeting appearances from the Daleks, Cybermen and Compassion' - what! WHERE?

OK, so the Daleks and Cybermen were bleedin' obvious but I didn't spot Compassion...

So the Nile was crystal-clear before the time-travellers came along to pollute it? I find that hard to believe.

The belt of the Pharaoh is crude stained bullock hide? Why so cheap?

'You go back in time, you change history. Every time. It's the first rule of the universe' - not in any of the REST of the Whoniverse it isn't, give or take a few of these EDA alt-uni gibberish-arc books.

Jack's suspicious of uncontrollably-laughing, greedy-smiled Ak and yet STILL tells him exactly how to operate the time machine?

'Good trick that, being able to carry a phone around' - yes Fitz, and wouldn't it have been REALLY GREAT if the Doctor had introduced you to the concept of MOBILE PHONES a few years earlier...?

How does all this 'only one reality can "win"' stuff fit in with Inferno, Battlefield, Rise of the Cybermen, etc...?

Why the hell would Fitz tell a stranger from another universe that 'It's like EarthWorld - except that this time we've done it to history' when said stranger's chances of knowing anything about EarthWorld are precisely zero?

Paul Leonard's Time Magic isn't quite as bad as his Time Trees from Genocide but it's still PRETTY STUPID. Come to think of it, that whole village-destroyed-by-time-travelling-aliens-with-one-survivor-looking-on-in-horror is also straight out of Genocide, as of course is the do-you-wipe-out-one-(or-more-)timeline(s)-to-preserve-the-'real'-universe stuff. None of which is any better when regurgitated for a second time.

'The Doctor doesn't - I beg your pardon, didn't - seem to understand time as it is constituted in this reality - in my reality' - fair play to this book, it may be a tedious convoluted pile of nonsensical gibberish but at least, unlike some other Sabbath-related novels, it's grasped the basic premise - that Sabbath knows what he's talking about and the amnesiac remnant from a never-existed world just doesn't GET how time-travel works in a post-Gallifrey universe.

'They are merely being polite in bowing down to a stranger' - really, Sabbath? Grovelling on their knees saying 'Great ones... we are humble...' is common POLITENESS?

'His blank face showed that he knew nothing about his other self. So it must be in his future' - or he's from a different timeline? ONE of us is being a moron, here (probably me for even TRYING to make sense of this thing).

'Fitz wondered if he would simply change sides, suborned by Sabbath like Juliette had been' - blimey, NO ONE'S been asking Sabbath what happened to the Doc's ex-fiancee, have they.

'When everything else has faded, coincidence is what keeps time rooted. It is ultimately destructive, like bindweed in a brick wall, but it can delay the end with its substance' - hmm. If coincidence was usually THAT bad, the Whoniverse would have imploded a long time ago.

Can NONE of these time-travellers-who-presumably-don't-suffer-from-prosopagnosia actually TELL whether or not Akhenaton is the real, older, Jack? (Actually it seems he IS the real, older, Jack and they just leapt to bizarre conclusions about him murdering and then imitating him. And then about Sabbath murdering him - oh, look, just forget it.)

'A lion roared, again and again, as if something was hurting it' - well you forgo-ed the traditional eyeball-gouging just for once but OF COURSE you just had to hurt an oochie, didn't you.

'If Sabbath was lying about how he killed this guy then it means he's going to kill us!' - er, no it doesn't. And Sabbath didn't actually tell them he killed Akhenaton. And even if he had told them, he might well have been telling the truth and this could just be another Akhenaton. There are a lot of doubles around the place, in case you hadn't noticed.

'I just killed him. I told Sabbath we would never do that and -' um, there's a difference between killing in defence of your chum-who's-about-to-be-murdered and doing, um, whatever-the-hell Sabbath's doing to people.

So Jack and Fitz sit down and read through Anji's diary despite knowing that - HELLO! - army on its way to kill everyone at this location!

'"I bet [Anji] was the one that told you that you couldn't go home." Jack nodded. "Fitz told me"' - er, so NOT Anji, then. So stop nodding.

The all-powerful Pharaoh didn't think to execute his hated allegedly-murderous-witch stepmother SOONER?

So Fitz in his tree-house can see the army so clearly - up to and including the sweat on their faces - yet none of them can see him?

So Ak 'doesn't understand' why he's not in a fashionable club - 'But they didn't let you in those places without money, and money was a problem for Ak right now' - so, er, he DOES understand why he isn't there, then...

'With a creeping feeling, Anji realised that the Doctor was at least as much in charge here as Sabbath' - and what made her realise this was...the Doctor giving an order and '[the men] hesitated, looking from the Doctor to Sabbath'?!

Fitz had once seen the Star Wars films, 'all nine in a row' - aren't there more than nine now?

'"Either the Others' ship exploded," said Sabbath. "Or possibly the TARDISes around it reached the critical mass and became anew sun." Anji wasn't sure if he was joking' - sadly post-Big Bang we can't point and sneer at this ludicrous idea.

'How many more refugees can you fit into the TARDIS? How many more little pieces of discontinuous causality can reality survive, Doctor? I told you that this entire adventure was your own fault. If you travel in time, without your so-called Laws to protect the world, then clearing up afterwards is a necessity' - um, remind me how all this is the Doctor's fault? JUST because he uses the TARDIS? (Alright, Name of the Doctor does give us this ' Time travel is damage. It's like a tear in the fabric of reality. That is the scar tissue of my journey through the universe' nonsense, but still...)

'"I had no choice but to agree to some of [Sabbath's] terms. Anyway, I could hardly keep him a prisoner in the TARDIS." "Why not?" Anji again' - Yeah, why the hell NOT? If you thought you could keep THE MASTER prisoner in the TARDIS in Last of the Time Lords...

Sorry, shoving ONE Jack into the past will save all the universes from time-travel being invented, even though it can be invented by ANY bright kid with a spare fiver...?

'A lion roared, again and again, as if something was hurting it' - well you forgo-ed the traditional eyeball-gouging just for once but OF COURSE you just had to hurt an oochie, didn't you.

Actually, lions roar to establish their territories, so this one may just be telling potential rivals to •••• off.

Well, that should be very comforting, thanks for trying, but let's face it, IT'S AN EDA, the odds are very much against the Precious just enjoying some quality territorial roaring-time...

Ray Bradbury's story, The Sound Of Thunder, should be among the roots for this novel, IMO.