I'm hoping that these fuzzy memories are signs that the Doctor is regaining his past, as well as Gallifrey. Of course, the fact that there is a book on the horizon to be titled "The Gallifrey Chronicles" is a bit of a give away.

Fingers crossed...

Still, it's a bit weird to read Halflife - all about whether or not the Doc'll decide to regain his memories, conclusion: no he won't - and in the next book have him reel off stuff he really shouldn't remember out of City of Death, The Plotters, etc.

Not that weird. It just means these memories are repressed, not gone. Remember how in the early post "Stranded on Earth" arc stories, the Doctor could only remember how to use his sonic screwdriver when he didn't think about it? Same thing here. The difference here is how vivid the memories are. Maybe what happened to him in "HalfLife" shook things up a bit.

Obviously Fitz still remember, as evidenced by the weak joke at the end of this book.

That's another thing. Why did Fitz get amnesia in the first place? And why is it suddenly fading?

Fitz didn't get amnesia so much as he got fuzzy memories. I chalk that up to the effects of changes to the time line.

So why's he suddenly getting 'em back? The timeline's changing again?

Compassion obviously managed to keep her memories (see Halflife (yeah, apparently that Madam Xhing person or whatever she was called - the one who was trying to give the Doc his memories back - means 'Compassion' in Chinese or something) and The City of the Saved (second Faction Paradox novel, very good by the way)).

OK, so Compassion's a TARDIS, but you'd think that would make her MORE vulnerable to Gallifrey's destruction than Fitz, not less. (Oops. I keep forgetting Fitz is TARDIS-constructed himself. OK, AS vulnerable, anyway.) That's aside from the fact she shouldn't be able to MOVE without being powered from the Eye of Harmony.

Oh, roll on The Gallifrey Chronicles...

Presumably the Lance Parkin one and not the John Peel volume of the same name from 1991 (with exciting interior illustrations by Trevor Baxendale, for some reason...)

I think the time lines are settling down, not changing. And actually, Fitz didn't really have that big a memory loss problem anyway. Most of the time in the past novels he spent trying to keep the Doctor from remembering.

with exciting interior illustrations by Trevor Baxendale, for some reason...

Really?! I must take another look...discover if his drawings are as boring as his writing. (Highly unlikely, if not downright physically impossible.)

I think the time lines are settling down, not changing.

Christ, I hope not! If they settle down properly, the Doctor's a goner. He really shouldn't be wandering around like that, what with his home planet NEVER having existed...

actually, Fitz didn't really have that big a memory loss problem anyway.

I know! That's what I'm complaining about! It's all so...pointless. Suddenly, in Escape Velocity, for no readily apparent reason (I mean, for no 'fictional' reason within the book, AND for no real-life reason, as it's entirely irrelevant to that and subsequent books) Fitz realises his memory's a bit dodgy. And - god knows how many years later, in Halflife - he realises, that, hey, his memory used to be a bit dodgy but it's OK now! WHY?

'When it comes to saving planets from spooky-alien-tentacles stuff, the Doctor is so "da man"' - god, have you ever HEARD such a great description of Our Hero! (Well, OK...yes. In Girl in the Fireplace and Family of Blood and Parting of the Ways and The Dying Days but hey, another one is always welcome.)

OK - why, in hell's name, are the previous Doctors on pages 21 and 22 so WRONG? Troughton does not have ginger hair! Pertwee does not wear eyeliner!! What's going on? Has history changed? Well, obviously it has with Gallifrey having ceased ever to have existed and stuff, but I thought that just meant the First Doc ended up crystalline (Sometime Never...) instead of this 'kindly' nonsense.

'Sod their indigenous customs!' - yup, Flip Flop also gave me the impression that's how Jonathan Morris feels.

How did Trix get away with saying half that stuff, what with scepticism being a capital offence? Similarly, the Low Priest merely looks mortified when Fitz suggests 'god doesn't actually bloody exist' instead of having him executed.

It's wrong to claim that Fitz had never had something to look forward to, never spared a thought for the future in all the time he'd been with the Doctor. What about that Parallel 59 woman he'd been (inexplicably) planning on going back for and settling down with?

If Astrabel was so madly in love with his wife Zoberly for fifty years, why did he go through all those marriages and divorces?

'They were out to get him, which meant that he must be getting close' - er, yes, except that he's a bidder and they're bumping off all the bidders, one by one.

'We thought you were dead' - Fitz to Trix. No they didn't. The Doctor and Fitz had been TOLD she'd popped out BEFORE the Tate Modern blew up. They discussed the possibility she was dead, hoped she was OK, wondered if she'd gone back to the TARDIS, decided she'd probably turn up, etc etc.

All the selfish memes were amazingly successful, given how they shouldn't really have caught on. Introducing war to a mind-bogglingly peaceful race, cars to an all-female race, etc.

Enormous fun. And a fine tribute to Alien Bodies. And a powerful political message, albeit one I'm trying not to agree with.

'When it comes to saving planets from spooky-alien-tentacles stuff, the Doctor is so "da man"' - god, have you ever HEARD such a great description of Our Hero!

SO great, in fact, that nowadays the Doctor uses it about himself. Albeit in a 'Never saying THAT again' kinda way.

'Morris is at pains to assure us that The Tomorrow Windows is not a pastiche....but at times, the book does seem to be a parody of Lawrence Miles' Alien Bodies, right down to the alien auction attended by a variety of absurd extraterrestrials...each of whom get their own "story chapter."' - DWM review. It's a PARODY? I thought it was a TRIBUTE!

OK - why, in hell's name, are the previous Doctors on pages 21 and 22 so WRONG? Troughton does not have ginger hair! Pertwee does not wear eyeliner!! What's going on?

OK, the Discontinuity Guide helpfully states:

'Personal futures for the Doctor include:' - FUTURES? Not a rewritten past, then?? - 'a listless looking man sat on a sofa with a girl in a red dress in an unconvincing medieval dungeon (Rowan Atkinson's Doctor from The Curse of Fatal Death); an aristocrat with a high forehead and devilish, shadow-sunken eyes sucking on an inhaler (Scream of the Shalka); a man with long hair swept back and a bent nose, in a cream suit strolling through Regents Park [possibly Stephen Fry?]; a kindly-faced old man in an astrakhan hat pottering in a junkyard; a short, impudent looking man with ginger hair and a afghan coat (Peter Angehlides' future Doctor from More Short Trips: Good Companions, Short Trips and Side Steps: Revenants, and A Life of Surprises: The Collection); a stockily built man in crushed velvet suit and eye-liner; a scruffy student with unkempt, curly hair and an apologetic, lopsided smile (possibly Hugh Grant's Doctor from The Curse of Fatal Death); the Valeyard (Trial of a Time Lord); and a wiry man with a gaunt, hawk-like face, piercing, pale grey-blue eyes and a thin prominent nose (Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor).'

And NONE of 'em are female? Screw 'em all.