Why does the text refer to Old Man Crawley as 'Old Man Crawley' on *every single occasion he's mentioned*, even in dialogue. What's wrong with 'Mr Crawley' or even just 'Crawley'? Was it to bulk out the word count? If so, couldn't a more creative way have been found to do this rather than something that's guaranteed to put readers in mind of 'Scooby Doo, Where Are You?'

In fact why does Deadstone call himself Crawley at all given that a) Deadstone has supposedly been dead for centuries and he coud pass himself off as his own descendent and b) no one knows or cares who Deadstone was anyway.

OK, there are the gypsies but if they really were a nuisance he could just have called in the tabloid press: EVIL SCROUNGING GYPOS TORMENT HAVE-A-GO-HERO WITH "WALKING UNDEAD" SLUR!

Whenever I read OMC's name, my brain kept re-writing it as "Old Man Kinsey" (the REM song) just to get over the sillines of it all.

I also thought the name "Crawley" was used to suggest the name "Crowley", as in Alistair. Lame.

What is it with gypsies in the UK? Are they really that prevalent, and that much of a nuisance?

The Doctor's totally unexplained reappearance at the end was a total anti-climax, and made absolutely no sense.

Is the state of National Health that bad that Hazel can't just take her son in for MRIs and other tests, instead of just getting tranquilizers. He's been having seizures and nosebleeds, both symptoms of brain tumors. Xanax isn't going to help that.

Speaking of health care, several of the characters are bitten by dogs and/or rats, yet no one seems concerned about contracting rabies.

Harris' behavior is very odd. Why is so concerned that Fitz will reveal the location of the ectoplasmic entity? And I don't care if the dog became attached to me; there's no way I'm adopting a violent dog that bit me (several times!). It's the RSPCA for you, mate.

There's been a recent campaign of vilification of gypsies in the tabloid press, who've picked them as the current scapegoat for all societies ills. Hence my sarcastic comments.

Rabies is virtually unknown in modern Britain (and strict quarantine laws on animals prevent it from entering the country from abroad). Fear of contracting rabies would probably come quite low down the priorities of anyone bitten by a dog or a rat.

'Yer look like a poofter.' Hmm. Is this the beginning of a trend? What with Rose's 'You're so gay' comment to the Ninth Doctor? Are some incarnations lacking in masculinity?

And talking of trends...if there's one thing I have a problem with, it's dead cats. I like my oochies cute and fluffy and purring and ALIVE, thank you very much. So I didn't appreciate them being eaten in Indestructible Man and I don't appreciate them appearing on the FIRST PAGE of Deadstone Memorial crawling with maggots. You want to let us know this is a horror story, try being a bit horrifying instead of harming innocent moggies.

Still, at least when a pet gets kicked it's that disgusting dawg.

Yup, yet another alternative-universe book, yet again allowing the author not to bother supplying a proper ending. After all, other dimensions are SUPPOSED to be inexplicable...right? So if the Doctor miraculously returns for no reason whatsoever...that's all part of the fun! Ditto for the reunified creature travelling back there simply by being in one piece. If being whole is gonna cause that kind of transdimensional relocation, that universe's inhabitants must lead interesting lives.

The Doctor ponders the causes of his general melancholy (work, fluff in TARDIS telepathic circuits, etc). The fact that he watched his daughter die recently doesn't figure into his musings, for some reason.

'Perhaps there's something or someone inside me who wants to be free' - nice moment. A lot more subtle than when the Ninth Doc actually pops up for a minute at the end.

For a heartless conwoman, Trix seems a lot more concerned about Anji's well-being than the Doctor is. Which is nice, given how utterly superfluous Trix is in this book.

Militantly maternal Hazel knows (through her telepathic son) that her daughter is trapped in Old Man Crawley's cellar, but when a knock on the door fails to elicit any answer, she...goes home to cry. MY mother would have smashed the bloody door down. Or at least gone to the police and got THEM to break in (preferably with some lie about him stalking her or something rather than the telepathic stuff).

This GROSSLY exaggerates the Doctor's reluctance to so much as TOUCH a gun. And his attitude towards the rats verges on the pathological. If you and your pals are being attacked by, quote, a torrent of maddened rats, then you shouldn't be QUITE so concerned to check that the rat Fitz chucked out of the window is uninjured.

Two hundred years. Two hundred years for the ghost to find its psychic half in a small wood. Isn't its psychic half, well, PSYCHIC?

What's the Doctor doing smashing violins AGAIN? And how on EARTH would Fitz, of all people, be able to tell that it was a Stradivarius?

'It seem' on p264 should be 'it seemed'.

If the Ninth Doctor is ALREADY haunting the TARDIS, waiting to be born...WHAT ABOUT THE TIME WAR? Isn't this all hideously premature?

'The Doctor considers his own future in this book too - but it's a positive outlook: there's a feeling of big change on the way, rather than tragedy' - Baxendale in DWM. are you CRAZY? He's gonna BLOW UP HIS OWN SPECIES and then DIE. Of course, Eccy is TOTALLY WORTH IT but you can't expect McGANN to feel that way.

If the Ninth Doctor is ALREADY haunting the TARDIS, waiting to be born...WHAT ABOUT THE TIME WAR? Isn't this all hideously premature?

Never mind the Time War, what about the War DOCTOR?

Are some incarnations lacking in masculinity?

Ah yes, that would be JODIE! n'Ruth *blissful sigh*

I like my oochies cute and fluffy and purring and ALIVE, thank you very much. So I didn't appreciate them being eaten in Indestructible Man and I don't appreciate them appearing on the FIRST PAGE of Deadstone Memorial crawling with maggots.

It wouldn't have been so bad if this had just got the oochie-murdering OVER WITH on page one but nope...'He lifted one yellowed piece [of bone] up and inspected it in the torchlight. "Cat femur," he said, curiously' (CURIOUSLY? This is the guy who sacrificed himself to poisoned gas to save a cat in Dying Days!). 'Dead, rotting puppies and headless cats...'

It also takes its eye-gouging duties too seriously, I really hoped that everyone's eyes bleeding all over the place all the time fulfilled any contractual duties in this regard (especially when 'blood welled from his eyes until they looked like blackcurrants swimming in their own crimson juice') but nope, you just had to 'the eyes within the sockets shrivelled and vanished' didn't you...

The Doctor ponders the causes of his general melancholy (work, fluff in TARDIS telepathic circuits, etc). The fact that he watched his daughter die recently doesn't figure into his musings, for some reason.

Said reason OBVIOUSLY being that he doesn't give a ••••. (To be fair, this is an impressive foreshadowing of Tennant's failure to give a toss about HIS daughter's death.) There's even a moment when Hazel says 'You have clearly never had a teenage daughter, Doctor' nad 'The Doctor looked as if he was about to argue the point' instead of, say, LOOKING A BIT SAD.

'I've always had a liking for hot, sweet tea - like the army makes' - you HAVE? I've only just started tracking Our Hero's tea-and-coffee habits but I'm not convinced. Also - 'lapsang souchong, his usual morning brew, with just a dab of honey' - fits in with this how, exactly.

'The Doctor had got to his feet, in a rather old-fashioned way, as soon as Jade appeared' - since WHEN!

'"He's a schoolteacher" "Schoolteacher? How do you know?" "Chalk marks on the thumb and index finger of his right hand"' - they didn't have whiteboards rather than blackboards by 2004-ish?

'The splintered remains of a violin, which had been snapped in two and flung across the room the day before with a loud cry of "Boring!"' - Yeah, I found this hard to believe even before later revelations that it's a Stradivarius. The Doctor doesn't wantonly vandalise the greatest artefacts of her/his favourite species. Also, it undermines the powerfully painful violin-smashing of Year of Intelligent Tigers if it's something the Doc just does for a HOBBY.

'"Do you believe in ghosts?" "I've learned to keep an open mind."' - WHEN? I don't recall you encountering any post-amnesia and you didn't believe in 'em BEFORE then (Well, sort of...'"And I said I didn't believe in ghosts," he said, addressing any major supernatural powers who might have been passing by.' - Alien Bodies).

'The Doctor said, "I don't want to cause any trouble"' - since WHEN! (Well, there was Rosa but it jarred like hell there too.)

'Jade started down towards the lane that led past Old Man Crawley's house. There were already a few kids on their way home down here, because it was a handy short cut' - that's funny cos earlier on Cal 'always tried to come home from school this way, ignoring the short cut through the park that most of the children used, so that he could pass by [Old Man Crawley's] house'...

'Or even a couple of those microwave dinners she'd brought home last night. But didn't they have to be defrosted first?' - How can a woman who feeds her kids on microwave meals not REALISE that microwaves can cook frozen stuff - AND have a defrost button?

'He reminded her of someone from a Jane Austen novel - but one of the dark, risky and unsuitable fellows. An artist or a highwayman' - sure, because Austen's novels are just PACKED with artists and highwaymen...

'It's a big universe, all right - one of many' - hmm. Where exactly DID the EDAs' misbegotten alt-uni arc LEAVE the status of all those other universes? I have the feeling Sabbath may have succeeded in collapsing 'em all into one true universe? But then I also have the feeling it was all mind-bogglingly unclear.

'You've only got to look at the TARDIS to see how much the old thing loves Earth too. No matter where we go, or when, we always come back here because only this place feels like home' - maybe she's humouring her Thief? Maybe she's scared you'll hit her with a hammer if she doesn't? Maybe she dutifully wants to save it from all those alien invasions?

The Doc's been playing chess in the TARDIS with a ghost in dark Victorian clothes with long, white hair and the face of a skull? Um...?!

'I have a superb sense of direction. At least, I thought I had...' - not a nit, just me trying to keep track of which Doctors (if any) DO actually have a sense of direction and which are deluding themselves in this regard...

'"Why don't you just report it?" "To whom?" asked the Doctor mildly. "The authorities," she replied. "The, er, relevant authorities." "Such as the Ministry of Psychic Phenomena." "There's no need to be sarcastic"' - in a century on Earth, the Doc completely failed to notice Counter-Measures, Torchwood, UNIT, the Forge etc etc...and vice-versa?

To be continued...

'I've known person-specific telepathic force fields to stretch across entire star systems' - you have? When? (Post-Ancestor Cell obviously, as you never do get those memories back, dammit.)

'It's all right to believe in something that just makes you feel good, you know' - NO IT ISN'T! And since when has the Doctor APPROVED of believing in fake-news? Gods I miss Capaldi (CHANG: Over time, Doctor Skarosa became convinced these were the voices of the recently departed. He believed it was a telepathic communication from the dead. DOCTOR: Why? Was he an idiot?).

'The Doctor was chewing on the last rasher of bacon' 'including four lambs' kidneys' - whatever happened to Eight being a vegetarian...?

'"The Doctor once told me that everything is a coincidence," said Fitz thoughtfully. "But that we only notice the important ones."' And yet later Trix is saying to the Doctor 'I thought you didn't believe in coincidences'...

'He crashed into the chest freezer behind him and lay flat on his back' - I don't quite see how this would work, logistically.

'These are my favourite biscuits' - BLESS, McGann is a custard-cream fan just like his JODIE! self...

'While the Doctor's areas of expertise were phenomenally eclectic, he had never claimed to be a medical doctor' - oh come ON. Half the time he ABSOLUTELY is claiming to be a medical doctor...

'There was one worrying moment' - er, there were actually TWO worrying moments.

'Perhaps [Hazel] had allowed everyone else's optimism to build her own hopes up. "Told you she wasn't home," said Cal' - well, QUITE. So 50% of 'everyone else' was definitely not being optimistic...

'Hazel had been on the verge of calling in a medical doctor or even the police. Now she was upstairs, lying on her bed' - the excuses for Hazel never managing to acquire NHS/police help for her foaming-at-the-mouth/kidnapped children is wearing REALLY thin...Even before she DOES call for an ambulance and doesn't get one because 'She had not been able to bring herself to describe the extent of Cal's seizure' *rolls eyes*

'The Doctor's pen torch gave up and the chamber was plunged into darkness' - the Doc doesn't have a decent torch? The Doc can't use his sonic screwdriver as a light? The Doctor has to resort to a (non-everlasting!) match?

'"But only because we've no other option," the Doctor grumbled, "and it's only a door"' - geez, any more of the Doc's bizarre anti-gun agenda and I'll be tempted to pick one up myself...

Why the hell is dog-ravaged, Fitz-imprisoning Harris insisting on staggering round the woods with Our Heroes like he's the new Companion?

So one minute Old Man Crawley is feeding kids to monsters and the next he's info-dumping his entire history cos the Doctor asked.

No one ever noticed Crawley's hands were devoid of fingernails?

'"It's been an exciting time for the human race, the last couple of centuries," argued the Doctor. "I was here for the last one - all of it - and I enjoyed every minute. Well, almost every minute"' - are you CRAZY! Has the Doc forgotten The Burning, Casualties of War, The Turing Test, Endgame...

'She could tell he was as fearful as she was' - really? Fitz is as terrified about the lives of Hazel's kids as Hazel is?

So vis-a-vis getting home, one second the Doc's 'anything is possible', then it's 'Of course I can! I'm the Doctor!' and the next it's 'I can't promise anything'...

'A tall, thin man with intense, deep-set eyes and a long, bony nose' - as if anyone would spot Eccy and not notice THE EARS...

The first half is a refreshing change of pace but then it just goes on...and on...and on...

'"Why don't you just report it?" "To whom?" asked the Doctor mildly. "The authorities," she replied. "The, er, relevant authorities." "Such as the Ministry of Psychic Phenomena." "There's no need to be sarcastic"' - in a century on Earth, the Doc completely failed to notice Counter-Measures, Torchwood, UNIT, the Forge etc etc...and vice-versa?

Never mind all of THEM, the Doctor KNOWS all about the Society for Psychical Research, like him it had the misfortune to star in The Burning...('The Society for Psychical Research is an offshoot of the Royal Society. Not some crackpot mystic organisation given to experiencing feelings and documenting gossip.')