It's not really a doggie...
Most importantly, since when has Sabbath crewed the Jonah with real apes rather than babewyns?
I KNOW it's not really a doggie, that's why I said 'What IS it with the doggie?' Filthy disgusting cat-hating dawgs aren't usually able to travel in space and time, swallow Vortex Wraiths, suspend their heart-beats, mess around with their respiratory by-pass systems, etc. What I don't understand about that...creature...(one of the many things, actually) is how it could be so intelligent as to play dead (albeit after being told to by the Doctor) yet so mind-bogglingly pooch-like as to mess up the creation of the entire universe in a moment of jealousy. Speaking of which, why WAS Chloe fussing over her doll instead of her mongrel? OK, so - shock horror - the poor ickle dolly was a bit sticky, but the doggie had just COME BACK FROM THE DEAD, even _I_ would have given it a BIT of attention in the circumstances.
Don't ask me about Sabbath's crew. Infinity Race mentioned apes rather than babewyns, and I thought it was one (of many) mistakes by someone who obviously hadn't bothered to read any of the other Sabbath books. Now it's definitely crewed by a bunch of monkeys. Maybe the babewyns just got out of hand, Sabbath slaughtered them all and then got nostalgic for a bit of fur about the place?
...or it's another example of alternate universes at work again.
Ah no, this is definitely (I think) the MAIN universe this time, the Doctor did clever and incomprehensible and before-the-dawn-of-time type things to ensure that he landed on the real Earth for a change.
It's been a while since I read TAOHS, but I assumed that "babewyns" was an archaic, general term for primates. I assumed they were baboons, but Sabbath could have changed his crew since that book. In this book, it was gorillas and at least one baboon.
As to Chloe's seeming lack of attention towards Jamais, I guess you're not familiar with little kid's short attention span....
The idea behind 'Henrietta Street' is that the babewyns are hideous atavistic reflections of human nature that only appear in the form of monstrous apes. In other words, they're not really apes. Sabbath's crew are 'tamed' babewyns - so they're definitely hideous atavistic monsters and not the ordinary monkeys they're described as here.
God, yes. They scare the hell out of me. These are NOT the common-or-garden inhabitants of your local monkey house. I mean, they can perform heart surgery, for a start.
'It was the Satan of the Hellfire Club. It was the monkey-faced thing that ruled Notre Dame. It was the animal, the beast, that leering, biting, unthinking demon that lay in wait for all unwary witches who tried to go too far into Shaktyanda. This slavering, idiotic guardian of the threshold, this stinking, blood-soaked little god at the edge of time.'
On a not totally unrelated subject...I have to admit you've got the advantage when it comes to children (I generally run shrieking in the opposite direction whenever I see one, rather like I do with spiders) but one thing they ARE capable of is total devotion towards their pets. When I was...ahem...a child (don't quote me on this, I generally strenuously deny ever having been any such thing) my adoration of Pushkin (my cat) was second only to books (OK, probably joint second with Who). And if she'd keeled over with her little paws in the air AND THEN MIRACULOUSLY COME BACK TO LIFE I think that even if my dolly had been a bit sticky (not that I HAD dolls, sticky or otherwise, yuck) I'd've given the darling moggie a few minutes of my undivided attention. And Chloe was probably even closer to Jamais than I was to Pushkin, what with her having no parents, home planet, etc, just her mongrel (and a side-line in torture and murder).
DWM: 'It transpires that [Chloe] is one of the few Time Lords to have survived the destruction of Gallifrey' - she IS?! Since WHEN! The Master said there were only FOUR for heaven's sake - were they SERIOUSLY the Master, the Doctor, Chloe and that-idiot-from-Gallifrey-Chronicles??
The Master said there were only FOUR for heaven's sake - were they SERIOUSLY the Master, the Doctor, Chloe and that-idiot-from-Gallifrey-Chronicles??
And what the hell was Erasmus, then? And Miranda? (And...the dawg?)
Trouble with spending most of your book doing an intriguing build-up to the great mystery...said mystery has actually gotta make SOME SORT OF BLOODY SENSE when you finally get there. Also not end up being totally irrelevant (as the Doc himself points out: 'Chasing round after the threads of a mystery that doesn't matter any more. Stitched up'. Always a bad sign when the characters start criticising the plot).
'Time and space have been fractured, fragmented - in fact, royally shafted - due to the demented actions of an eighteenth-century time-travelling ex-British Secret Service agent pain in the arse called Sabbath' - are we ABSOLUTELY SURE it's all Sabbath's fault? I kinda got the impression it might have been the Doctor's. Something to do with that stupid diary of Fitz's? Of course, as I also kinda got the impression this whole alt-uni arc is a demented royally shafted pain in the arse I couldn't swear to it.
'My masters want a single universe - none of this "a-new-universe-is-born-every-time-a-decision-is-made" rubbish' - *much sympathetic nodding* that IS a bloody stupid idea for my beloved New Who to perpetuate.
'"It's the start of this universe," said the Doctor before anyone else could interrupt. "The spontaneous formation of matter from total void - superheated matter that expanded and cooled and form..." He gestured wildly round his ship. "Formed everything! Everything from nothing at all!"' - OK, I'm not gonna criticise anyone for ignoring Slipback, but...TERMINUS!! YOU MORON! (And by 'moron' I mean Stephen Cole not the Doc who at least - being Eight - has the excuse of amnesia.)
'The crucial point had slithered sluglike, closer and closer. Now he wanted to face it alone, not with the tiring chatter of the children about him. If they didn't make it through, their little lives would end without fear' - there are times when I wouldn't object to the Doc using that sort of language about her/his pets *coughPeterDavisonEracough* but I don't think MCGANN feels that way. It's not like HE'S so superior, the amnesiac loser.
'The deed was done, the sacrifices, quite frankly, worth it' - that's IT? Slaughtering UNIVERSES, the deaths of hundreds of different versions of Fitz and Anji (are you sure you've even got the right ones btw) - that's all casually dismissed?
Come to think of it, shouldn't the Reapers have just swooped in and dealt with all this interfering-in-history?
'The Doctor took them in the TARDIS all round the world, posing together, piecing together the dates and details of their mythical relationship' - have these people never heard of PHOTOSHOP?
Sabbath never dreams? (Not a nit, just a reminder to myself to try to catch him dreaming one day.)
Since when does the Doctor hand out £100 compensation to the baddies he defeats?
'"An interdimensional time-travelling dog?" Anji looked at him dubiously. "How does that work?"' - well, QUITE. (If it was a cat instead...well, that would be DIFFERENT.)
'Supposing some great disaster occurred on a world with time-travel capability. Temporal fallout could contaminate other planets' - aren't the EDAs yet again forgetting the fact that Adventuress of Henrietta Street spelt out: it's not just that Gallifrey has been destroyed, it's that it NEVER EXISTED.
'"And this girl, she must have her own kind of TARDIS," Anji reasoned.' - WHY does she reason this? She knows the girl time-travels using her *wince* DAWG - '"The Doctor looked at her worriedly. "Must she?" "Well, yours can't be the only one in existence, can it?"' - Anji has SERIOUSLY never had a little chat with Fitz (before HIS convenient amnesia) about the whole LAST OF HIS KIND COS HE BLEW UP GALLIFREY stuff? - "I suppose not," said the Doctor quietly' - again, WHY NOT! You and Susan seemed to think Sexy was the only TARDIS around even when the Time Lords were alive and kicking...
'Perhaps the old girl's frightened. Perhaps their ship is bigger than she is. She's not met her own kind before' - er, yes she has! Have you somehow managed to get amnesia about the fact you've got amnesia...?
Who cut Chloe's heart out? Why did this give her 'sight'? Why hasn't she grown since the clock of her world stopped ticking? The Doc's perfectly capable of ageing and regenerating in New Who after s/he blew Gallifrey to smithereens.
'I find people on lesser Earths who are hurting...people from the alternative realities. Then...we take them here...Jamais sucks out their souls and breathes them into the body of their double' whereupon the real souls 'are displaced as the new soul asserts itself' - OK, quite apart from the blatant pointless insanity of this, does it even match up with what Fitz sees - the new soul pretending to be her former self, using a wheelchair she's obviously never used before, when she should be totally used to being in a wheelchair, that's what's brought her here to steal someone else's body, after all.
So in a hundred years all the other universes will be cancelled out? Thanks to the Doctor saving the 'real' one? Isn't that exactly what Sabbath wanted and the Doctor didn't want?
'I don't survive, Anji. I only endure. Death has forgotten me. I celebrate life...because all I can do is feed from it. Perhaps in order to die, you have to truly live. Not muddle by in this patchwork, vampiric existence I cling to' - JEEZ Doc, the alt-uni arc has been hard on us all, what with being total gibberish, but when exactly did you become such a misery-guts?
So Basalt stinks horribly but still has a string of plain-Janes all round the world madly in love with him and just sitting there waiting to be abused by him? Do you really think quite so many women are quite THAT sad?
'Chloe's doll still clutched tightly in one hand as if for comfort' - how I'd love to scream insults at the stupid EDAs for thinking the Doc goes round clutching dollies. How I hate Cold War for robbing me of this pleasure.
'For the first time in an age, the Doctor had truly no idea what he might do next' - ARE YOU ••••••• KIDDING ME, he's spent the last few months if not years blundering around with no idea what to do next, as Sabbath runs rings round him and the multiverse collapses...
'He clenched his fists and fought against the drug, focused on his heartbeat, drove it faster and faster, fast enough to drive out the poison' - Sabbath can do that? But the Doctor can't, any time s/he gets drugged?
'With Jamais too old and enfeebled now to go leaping through time and space to new places, Chloe was grounded. For ever' - why was there no discussion of her going off in the TARDIS? Why doesn't the Doctor give a toss that he's found another member of his own species? The last time he met a little girl with two hearts he adopted her as his daughter, for heaven's sake.
And what's with this 'Blessed Destroyer' stuff anyway? What the hell makes Chloe think the git who wiped out her species is a GOOD GUY?