A word of warning for those who feel so inspired by Cabinet of Light that they want to rush out and buy the entire Time Hunter series devoted to Emily (and her trusty sidekick Lechasseur):

Don't do it.

I mean, Lance Parkin is probably my second-favourite Who author, but for heaven's sake! This thing (I've forgotten its name...Last Resort...Final Sanction....Winning Side! That's it!) is a silly little mystery story based around *gasp* Emily being dead! Only - obviously - she isn't. And he doesn't even come up with a good excuse for keeping her alive. And the totalitarian alternative England is...if I say 'Orwell rip-off' then it's the understatement of the century. It couldn't be more of a daylight robbery if we'd bumped into Winston Smith and Big Brother in the street. And the idea of how England got that way is frankly unconvincing. As is Emily and Lechasseur's stupidity. Neither of them think 'time travel' when they find her corpse, even though they both know quite a bit about the Doctor.

Alright, as far as Time Hunter wastes-of-time go, Kitsune is actually moderately enjoyable. Though given that Mochizuka KNOWS what wearing Hide and Chic clothes leads to, why is he spluttering 'Aren't you going to put it on'?

Time Hunter 6 (bloody hell those numbers on the spine are tiny): Echoes:

The first half is boring as hell. Endless descriptions of some stupid house, repeated every time it gets dusty or not-dusty. The second half livens up considerably, albeit at the cost of introducing child-rape and descriptions of the spikes used in abortions.

'She did get odd looks when commenting that she had no idea who the Crazy Gang were or that she had never heard of Clark Gable. For a time it had bothered her' - well, just STOP saying you haven't heard of them, then!

Emily and Lechasseur place more weight on the weather forecast than on the buildings when working out if they've travelled in time? Guess it must have been a lot more accurate in the 1950s.

So the son who's just died fighting in the War was YOUNGER than his SIX sisters. Yet they're ALL still living in their mother's home, and only the eldest is married?

I realise Tess finds disembodiment preferable to her actual LIFE, but it's still not exactly pleasant, so greeting its return with a 'huge grin' is a bit weird.

The moral dilemmas were interesting but not exactly to my taste. OF COURSE it would be better for Tess NOT to bring a baby into her rape-ridden, alcoholic, drug-addicted, starving, homeless, Victorian prostitute-life. The fact it would save dozens of other women from disembodied insanity AND free whatshisface is, of course, a bonus. Yet her decision to keep the foetus is hailed as some sort of great moral victory, even by the people who've just been condemned to hell as a result.

All the women seem pretty sane at the end considering we'd been told lots of them had gone raving mad.

Why does Emily trick the boy? Why SHOULDN'T he be free? It's not as if her trick saves the life she sacrificed or anything. It just (she thinks) condemns her and her best friend to death.

Oh look, the boy's free after all, for no readily apparent reason! And Tess has found an excellent home for herself! So never mind that all the other women have been sent back to be beaten to death!

Sorry, I'm making this book sound MUCH worse than it actually is.

David Howe in DWM: 'Time Hunter is very Doctor Who-like in its premise and execution' - no it isn't - 'but it's also quite different' - well, YEAH. 'We see it as a fusion of science fiction and time travel, steeped in film noir and detective fictions' - look, even I may have suspected there was some 'film noir' thing going on in Cabinet of Light, but in its spin-offs...not so much.

Daniel O'Mahony: 'Lance Parkin will be writing the first book in the series, The Winning Side, so I think my babies are in good hands. They'd better be, for Lance's sake - I know where he lives!' - and yet SOMEHOW Lance Parkin remains mysteriously unmutilated...

9: The Albino's Dancer:

Oh god, not ANOTHER Time Hunter book opening with 'Emily is dead!' It wasn't exactly a success in The Winning Side.

'But there was nothing she could do except wait and have faith in her saviour' - yeah, this isn't the first or last time in this book that Emily is just the damsel in distress, waiting for her spiv knight in shining armour to rescue her. OR the first or last time in this book that a mere female is in this position - Kate/Catherine seems to spend half her life waiting for THE SAME guy to rescue her.

Oh, and HOW Emily's womanly tender-heartedness is coming out: 'Can I help?' she asks the Albino MONSTER WHO KIDNAPPED HER.

Emily being a pathetic soft-hearted enemy-loving wimp is one thing. Honore Lechasseur saying 'I'm sorry' to Leiter like he's DAVID TENNANT or something...not so understandable. Also 'It didn't make it any easier knowing what he was going to do, even if it would save another life. Emily's life.' - THE - GUY - IS - DEAD. (And also...EVIL.) He's not going to CARE if you commit the apparently HIDEOUS CRIME of...REMOVING HIS TIME-TRAVEL BELT. In order to save EMILY'S LIFE. Has Lechasseur ALWAYS had this fetish about corpses? He DOES know they're gonna get EATEN BY WORMS whatever he does, right? And that THEY'RE NOT GONNA CARE BECAUSE THEY'RE DEAD YOU MORON?

Not that THAT'S anything compared to him DIVING INTO FLAMES to save the EVIL ALBINO. When he's pyrophobic due to his past experiences. And the Albino's REALLY EVIL.

'He was definitely going to Hell' - Lechasseur's a CHRISTIAN???? Who thinks he should be DAMNED FOR ALL ETERNITY for getting a time-travel belt off a CORPSE? Blimey.

'She was going to pull them out of the rubble alive...Because they weren't special, in the grand scheme of things, and if she saved them, maybe that might make her somebody special. Because maybe that might give her a memory she could cherish, and hold on to' - Emily's a ••••••• TIME SENSITIVE, what makes her feel the need to be MORE special?? And haven't she and Lechasseur made ENOUGH cherishable memories yet - or are ALL their adventures as depressing as the three or four I've had the misfortune of reading? And, OK, so she's an amnesiac, but GET OVER IT ALREADY. Unlike US, she doesn't KNOW she was an ex-Companion of Himself - she doesn't REALISE she should have been BEGGING for death, a la Donna Noble, rather than forget our Doctor.

'The belt glowed like a star against her waist...The belt glowed like a star at her waist' - YES ALRIGHT! I GET THE MESSAGE!

'They left him with a big-eared, leather-jacketed navvie...The navvie's attention was already elsewhere. "Fantastic!" he said' - I REALLY REALLY HOPE they're not dragging THE LOVE OF MY LIFE into this thing. Cos it's one thing for the Kingmaker audio to drop certain hints, but THIS...

'She had failed, and because of that, a woman was going to die. Because of her.' - er...Kate's decided, for no particular reason, to blow herself and the bunker AND YOU to Kingdom Come. So drop the pity and start getting pissed off LIKE A HUMAN BEING, why don't you.

Lechasseur can GROW A BEARD? I'm no expert, but didn't he get various bits involving beard-growing abilities blown off in the war? Why the hell, if physically capable, doesn't he attempt to consummate his obvious obsessive-devotion to Emily?

Well. Notwithstanding the above, I rather enjoyed that. It's a pity, of course, that between this being written and me actually reading it, New Who drastically overdosed on such timey-wimey stuff. But that's of little importance when weighed against a Dale Smith novel that DOESN'T make me want to blow my and/or his brains out.

10: The Sideways Door:

'I know a cafe not far from here' - Emily. So Lechasseur has to half-drag, half-carry a stinking drunk almost half a mile to a cafe whose waiter then won't let said stinking drunk in? This - is - LONDON! Find a closer cafe, you morons!

Wouldn't 1950s London after NOT having two World Wars have been MASSIVELY different - or at least massively overpopulated?

'Realisation dawned on him. "The things you're doing," he said, "They're unravelling aren't they? And you're afraid. You're afraid that the changes you've made to your own past are going to fade."...."Excellent piece of deduction."' - I'd hardly call it DEDUCTION given that they've already told him that 'Changes don't always "stick"' and he SAW Lechasseur collapse as his past caught him up.

'"Honore, they've killed so many people." "I know, I saw it for myself."' - and, what, didn't think to MENTION to Emily that they were hanging round with a couple of cold-blooded murderers?

'We might end up back in our own time and place never knowing when or where our friends here may appear to change our past.' - I thought you were CONVINCED you'd never get home to the right reality without Jonah's help?

Why has Lechasseur never thought of saving his murdered mother until now?

Why does he just stand around and watch her die when he DOES finally go back?

Why is Emily shrieking blue murder at him for letting mummy die when in the LAST book, SHE was the one who insisted he didn't go back and change time to save HER life?

'I found one little girl still alive. I undid her ropes and let her go' - and presumably she was cut to pieces and just stumbled out to die?

Not bad at all - alternative universes are always fun - but not particularly convincing either.

5: The Severed Man:

Lechasseur and Emily only met a few months ago? It feels like DECADES for the misfortunate reader...

Why would Emily move so far from Lechasseur? And, come to think of it, where does her rent money come from?

'She took a deep breath, trying to ignore the pervading stench of blood and iron in the air all around her' - well, don't take a deep breath then! Also, what took her so long to notice the stench?

'"You seem to know an awful lot about the circumstances surrounding this suspicious death. Particularly for a, um, foreigner. Would you care to elaborate down at the station?" Lechasseur stared at the man, barely containing his anger. He had expected the values of the Victorian Londoners to be outdated and hypocritical by his own standards, but this was something else.' - For heaven's sake! He's been found standing over a mutilated corpse and has promptly reeled off a load of highly suspicious facts about it that no innocent man would have known! And, leaving aside the colour of his skin, he IS a foreigner - he's got an American accent! What did he EXPECT the policeman to do? Also, since when were the 1940s (or 50s or whenever he's from) so enlightened?

So the police in 1892 beat up innocent civilians at night and play cards all day? And don't even ask for their suspects' addresses? And don't even search their suspects before locking them up - which is incredibly lucky for Lechasseur as he has, charmingly, robbed the mutilated-murder-victim of his wallet. (Shouldn't he and Emily have got into the habit of carrying around small quantities of gold or something for when they land in a different time-period?)

Since when has Emily been brilliant at unarmed combat?

Why don't Lechasseur and Emily just drink their pints? They were thirsty even before their long walk.

'Emily's memory loss had seemingly occurred in one fell swoop, like a blackboard being wiped clean, a flower renewed' - A FLOWER RENEWED?

'He was at his mother's bedside as she died of a wicked cancer, her entire chest eaten away by the growth' - funny, cos The Sideways door says she was murdered.

'There was no sign of the creature anywhere. He didn't know what to make of it. "What happened?" "I'm not sure, but I think it's going to be okay. I guess time will tell. The entity seems to have gone, for now"' - what, that's IT? THAT'S the grand climax to this novel?!

There's just so much pointless running-around. And dreams. And searching-of-empty-houses. In fact, it (no doubt unfairly) feels like ALL the Time Hunters consist of these things, in an endless cycle of boredom.

11: Child of Time:

Typical. The first Time Hunter book I actually ENJOY (well, the first half anyway, after that it's a lot of getting captured and sneaking around deserted buildings and boring rituals just like every OTHER Time Hunter book) and it's the last one.

The Daemons! The Fendahl (well, mentions thereof if not a personal appearance)! The Doctor! The TARDIS! They're FINALLY pulling out the stops and doing some serious copyright infringement to make this feel like it's actually Who-related, whereas the previous ones couldn't have felt more distanced from the Whoniverse.

'How could someone who had seen the things they'd seen, who had visited other worlds and other times, who had the potential, deep down in the very fibre of their being, to make such a difference to other people's lives - how could someone who had tasted all that settle down to a normal life? The very thought of it was repellent to her' - so...er...why DID you decide to settle down to a normal life, then? (Apparently this happened at the end of Sideways Door, but I sure as hell don't remember it...*checks Sideways Door* nope, there's a lot of Emily screeching that Honore as good as killed his mummy (something mysteriously never referred to in the few-weeks-later Child of Time) but nothing about 'em GIVING UP.)

'She was on her way to see Honore now, and that would be the end of the matter, one way or another' - er...HOW would it be the end of the matter? If you agree to stick with the no-time-travel thing, what's to stop you changing your minds in a few more weeks?

Just cos it's got a Big Ben doesn't automatically mean it's London. There could be loads of New Londons with Big Bens by 2586.

Can you really repeatedly torture someone so badly that their bones are horribly etched all over the place, and they still recover?

'Signs written in English' - so Emily and Lechasseur can automatically (and mysteriously) understand everything anyone ever says to them on their travels, but can't read the writing?*

Of course there's nothing WRONG with a future-Doctor having a plum-coloured velvet smoking jacket, it's just not the direction the last few have been heading in. And as for the cigarettes...!

'"What smell?" Maria seemed genuinely puzzled.' - OK, so she grew up in stinking medieval Venice but SURELY the stench would hit her when she's been away for a while?

'However, he wasn't yet prepared to believe that...his Emily...was ultimately the creation of the Sodality' - which bit of 'ALL time channellers and time sensitives are the creation of Sodality' is Lechasseur somehow failing to grasp?

Why do Lechasseur and Maria just STAND BY and WATCH - TWICE!! - as the Daemon is summoned when they KNOW this will lead to the end of the world? (Look, don't ask me what they COULD have done, I'm not the world-saving time-travelling type.)

Probably not a good idea to put the time-channelling High Executioner right in front of the Daemon when telling him that all time channellers have been exterminated.

Why the hell would Emily think that SHE'S the Child of Time? Which bit of 'the Child of Time can travel in time without a time-sensitive' is she just not getting? Which bit of 'Maria can travel in time without a time-sensitive' has likewise just slipped her mind?

The Daemon isn't terribly...convincing (even aside from its very existence contradicting Azal's 'I am the last of the Daemons'). 'The Daemons' rule of time and space shall begin this day' is the average Who-megalomanic-monster line - the Daemons were blatantly adverse to ruling. And I don't really get why Maria would give 'em mastery over space and time even if they DID want it.

So Lechasseur sees the future (or lack thereof) has changed in 2586 - but what about the past? This book acts as if the Doctor dumping Emily amnesiac back in the 1940s has rewritten this devastated-future-that-should-never-have-occurred, but given that Emily and Lechasseur don't lift a finger to stop the Daemon...IT HASN'T. The Sodality has still made the mistakes that will lead to a devastated twenty-sixth-century Earth.

So Emily discovers that she used to be evil (shouldn't have taken the High Executioner's mask being removed for the penny to drop - she and/or Lechasseur should have recognised the 'familiar' VOICE, not to mention that any reader would have worked out this painfully obvious fact in two seconds flat without needing a voice) so she instantly declares her undying love for Lechasseur and leaps to her death? (And embarrassingly gets saved by some magic children. And then apparently lives happily ever after.) This is...not entirely convincing.

Also, Cabinet of Light gave me the impression that Emily was an ex-Companion. And frankly it's a bit creepy of the Doctor to dress her up in pink pyjamas before shoving her out the TARDIS doors.

Blurb: 'They are thrown into a thrilling adventure that takes them from London in 1951 to Venice in 1586 and then forward a thousand years' - leaving aside the 'thrilling adventure' stuff (it would be like shooting fish in a barrel)...actually, they go to 2586 first, THEN Venice.

*'He found that, as always when he travelled to other times and places with Emily, he was somehow able to understand what was being said, as if everyone was conversing in English' - look, Sunshine, if you can't think of a decent explanation, don't draw attention to the problem. If Emily HAD been an ex-Companion you MIGHT just have got away with her retaining her TARDIS/Time-Lord-gift-given language abilities (Love and War's the only indication that Sexy drops you like a hot brick the moment you leave) and unconsciously extended them to Lechasseur due to their close bond, but Child of Time has just screwed THAT theory up good and proper.

Also, Cabinet of Light gave me the impression that Emily was an ex-Companion

I also got this impression.

Wouldn't KEEPING her as an ex-Companion have helped justify the existence of the Time Hunter books? They'd've looked like less of an act of desperation and more as following in the fine Bernice Summerfield tradition.

On the other hand, at least it makes the Doctor's abandonment of an utterly-helpless Emily a bit more forgivable if she's AN EVIL MONSTER and not a friend.

On the other OTHER hand, Doctors who aren't Matt Smith are ALWAYS abandoning their Companions...

The character has the same first name as you.

Daniel named her after me.

Of course, we weren't expecting her to get her own series at the time.

You have an official Who character named after you? Way cool!

Especially when I THOUGHT SHE WAS A COMPANION, dammit!

In case anyone's wondering, I do have the specific reassurances of Lawrence Miles and Nick Walters that THEIR Emilys (a prostitute and a kid-that-gets-hideously-tortured, respectively) were definitely NOT named after me...

1: The Winning Side:

I'm sorry, is sticking '1984' on the cover in some way supposed to render the utter-but-inferior-rip-off-of-Orwell's-1984 IRONIC, or something?

Well, it's mercifully short, anyway.

'What he did wasn't run-of-the-mill, but it wasn't illegal' - it WASN'T? Since WHEN!

'There were, of course, any number of past misdemeanours that might have come to [the police's] attention' - there were? But you just said he never did anything illegal!

'Lechasseur had one eye making sure no-one was trying to steal his bicycle' - they didn't have bike-locks in 1949?

'Bath. 318 AD. From Cornish gold' - why the HELL would Lechasseur suddenly be showing off his magic powers to a shopkeeper?

I thought 'chestnut hair' was auburn? So why is Emily also described as having 'brown hair'?

'The best they'd come up with was what the police said: it was all a coincidence' - blimey, did they both manage to get through Cabinet of Light without encountering the concept of TIME TRAVEL?

Lechasseur 'wasn't sure he was entitled to' vote in a general election? He's an American citizen! He's made no attempt to naturalise! What makes him think he might be able to vote in a British election?

'Amanda must be lucky enough to live safe from the threat of violence. This was, of course, how most people lived.' - It WAS? In LONDON? A few years after Hitler had tried to Blitz it off the face of the Earth?

'Some aspects of ordinary life - cooking, driving a car, eating in a café - came naturally to her' 'This place would look much the same if they'd travelled two hundred years into the past, or two hundred years into the future' 'When they'd shown her a picture of a cat, she'd correctly identified it...she knew the names of lots of trees...she'd pointed out that a chimpanzee was an ape, not a monkey' - this would all make sense if, as assumed at the time, Emily was an amnesiac ex-Companion. As it turns out she's a crazed homicidal Lady High Executioner from the twenty-sixth century (Child of Time)...it makes no sense whatsoever.

Why doesn't Emily start feeling DOOMED when told to get into those overalls? The ones she'd seen her own dead body in...

'Now he knew the future, and was condemned to return to 1949 to live it out' - what on Earth makes Lechasseur think he'll ever be able to get home?

'His suit had been made for him' - what, in a couple of hours flat so he could travel back in time in it? I doubt this political/social set-up could be so efficient.

'You said it yourself: history has been written' 'What can be written can be rewritten' 'It happened and it didn't. That doesn't add up' 'Does it have to' 'I guess it's just what time does...heal itself' - as excuses for EMILY IS DEAD...OH NO SHE ISN'T it would have felt pretty passé even in 2003. Post-Moffat's Companion-resurrection-of-the-week it's EVEN WORSE.

Did Emily and Lechasseur never touch in Cabinet of Light? Or in all the time they've been friends since then?

Have duly watched Daemos Rising, to which Child of Time is a sequel.

Unfortunately it doesn't resolve ANY of my problems vis-a-vis Child of Time, though it TOTALLY vindicates my opinion that the Daemon is just WRONG. Cos now it manages to LOOK totally wrong AS WELL.

Even Kate Lethbridge-Stewart looks wrong!

There's definitely SOMETHING timey-wimey going on with that woman. It's like she was never meant to exist - certainly the impression I got from Old Who - but a cosmos without a Lethbridge-Stewart scarcely bears thinking about, so various VERSIONS of Kate started bleeding through from other realities or, um, SOMETHING.

2: The Tunnel at the End of the Light:

Blimey, the cover says it's 1950? How's Emily been surviving, she has her own lodgings but doesn't seem to have a job other than assisting Lechasseur and I didn't notice him handing over any of the money he's being paid...

Would male lieutenants in 1950 have manicured hands?

Would lieutenants with SHAKING HANDS be sent to defuse bombs? ('He'd been chosen for this little task because he was the best' - stopping a V1 blowing up in central London is not a little task and you're not the best because - HELLO! SHAKING HANDS!)

'He seemed on to it though' - no •••• Sherlock, what was it that gave away the fact Crest had spotted you trying to touch him? His screech of 'Would you mind not trying so hard to touch me? It's terribly obvious you know!'...? (And why didn't Lechasseur try...y'know...ASKING PERMISSION?)

'She caught her first sniff of heavy spirits, an odour that grew geometrically with each step she took' - GEOMETRICALLY?

Lechasseur doesn't carry a torch? Even his amnesiac sidekick has the sense to carry a torch!

Forget the torch, Lechasseur DOESN'T CARRY MONEY! (And neither does Emily but I'm prepared to cut the penniless time-refugee amnesiac some slack, whereas Lechasseur's got a massive wad of someone's life-savings back at his flat!)

OK, unfair to nitpick our first female Master for not being ANYTHING LIKE our beloved Michelle Gomez (like THAT'S gonna stop me) but as well as an almost feline quality (so glad SOMEONE'S remembered Survival) and skin so white it's almost blue and bright red lips and a voice like honey and a close-fitting black gown...what's with the whites of her eyes being flecked with gold spots...? And her being a time sensitive like Lechasseur instead of being, y'know, a TIME LORD. (Lady. Whatever.)

'"Crest's poem," Emily realised. "Then he is connected to all this"' - well, DUH. That's why you USED HIS POEM THAT HELPFULLY TOLD YOU WHO ALL THE VICTIMS ARE to...y'know...track a victim.

Oh gods, and if you think EMILY'S stupid, try Lechasseur growling that he hadn't guessed anything of the sort when she tells him he should have guessed that Crest was involved...

Emily and Lechasseur are very casual about changing history. Admittedly changing history to stop a giant ape stomping round London destroying it, but still...were there not agonised debates about changing history in The Winning Side after they found future-Emily's corpse lying around? (NB: genuine question as can't really remember much about The Winning Side other than crushing disappointment.)

Crest is a 'particularly ugly' Subterranean - yet still manages to pass for human?

Just...dreary and pointless.

Crest is a 'particularly ugly' Subterranean - yet still manages to pass for human?

Why not? Madame Vastra and Strax passed for human, and I dare propose that Madame Vastra looks less like a human than any Subterranean, however ugly they may be, would

Nonsense, guys FAINT if Vastra whips off that veil...

ONE guy fainted, others thought she had some sort of exotic skin condition.

Bah humbug, everyone else probably just crawled away to spend the rest of their lives drawing on walls, it's just that unfortunately the BBC didn't bother to film 'em...

guys FAINT if Vastra whips off that veil...

Alice the maid did as well.

3: The Clockwork Woman:

'"But do you think she'll come back, Honore?" the girl asked. "I hope so, Emily," the man answered' - they're old friends locked up alone in a cell, why are they (conveniently for their secret eavesdropper) using names at each other?

Dove the Clockwork Woman can hear whispers and murmurs through a wine-cellar door? It's not like she has super-duper-robot hearing - a few pages earlier Emily was 'speaking too quietly for me to make out the words'.

'It was as though it were possible for a man and a woman to converse, and to be in company, without giving so much as a thought to the kind of acts that Sir Edward desired me to do' - not necessarily a nit, just another piece of evidence in the do-Lechasseur-and-Emily-love-each-other debate. (Child of Time: yes. Rest of books: not so clear, especially given Daniel O'Mahony's claims that Lechasseur's war-wounds included castration.)

Lechasseur jumps off the roof and somehow manages to be hanging by his fingers from a windowsill two stories down?

'"Silly idiot jumped!" he exclaimed exultantly. "Jumped off the roof. He'll be spread across the ground like butter now. Smack!"' - and yet Sir Edward resisted the temptation to LOOK as he gloated?

'So taken was [Sir Edward] with the idea of being visited by a representative of a foreign power, that he had not even questioned why such a man would be hiding in his wardrobe' - I'd find that hard to believe even if this wasn't the guy Sir Edward had been gloating over killing a few days earlier.

Lechasseur can mend the unicorn in moments that Sir Edward - you know, the guy who created a perfect thinking feeling sex-robot from scratch in the NINETEENTH CENTURY (or maybe the eighteenth, really can't be bothered to check if Dove was created more than five years ago) - couldn't manage even though he'd created said unicorn in the first place...??

'Are you, then, alone?' - um, you KNOW Lechasseur and Emily are friends. He's not alone.

Lechasseur sets off after the kidnapped Dove, walking all the way to London - very gallant, but why the hell isn't he chasing after Emily, his best friend, the woman THE DOCTOR entrusted to his care, and also his only chance of getting back to the twentieth century? How hard would it BE to look for her crashed glider? (Luckily Emily and Dove both happen to have been dragged to the same brothel so he heroically manfully saves both of 'em in one fell swoop, but what are the odds?)

Yeah, I totally don't get this whole 'There's something we need to do here. Something important. Until it's done, we've got to stick close to you...We don't know [what it is]. But we'll know when we've done it' thing.

'Before we could even think of running, we were seized and dragged down the street, pulled this way and that by the furious villagers' - hmm. Emily and Honore at least should be well used to RUNNING by now.

'Utter despair. To live with Sir Edward again. To let myself run down and stutter to a halt. Two insupportable options and yet it seemed that to one or the other of them I must turn' - you've lied to Sir Edward before, why the hell don't you just string him along for long enough for him to make you a new key and then bludgeon him unconscious again?

Becoming a feminist through reading the words of Mary Wollstonecraft liberates you from all physical restraints (like needing your clockwork self to be wound up daily)? HOW?? And SINCE WHEN?? In case you hadn't noticed, the whole 'biology isn't destiny!' thing didn't work out so well for dear old Wollstonecraft who DIED IN CHILDBIRTH!

If this the "Emily" that was named after you?

That's the one!

They eventually screwed her up by claiming she used to be a genocidal maniac from the far future, but when he created her Daniel MEANT her to be a Companion.

Lechasseur jumps off the roof and somehow manages to be hanging by his fingers from a windowsill two stories down?

I don't think so, not unless the local gravity is much weaker than it is here.

It's 1805 England, so I shouldn't think so.

Did Emily and Lechasseur never touch in Cabinet of Light? Or in all the time they've been friends since then?

Oops! Yes they did: 'Their hands were held together, a joint fist of interlocking fingers.'

So basically the entire premise of the Time Hunter novellas is a lie? Colour me SHOCKED.

Also, Cabinet of Light gave me the impression that Emily was an ex-Companion. And frankly it's a bit creepy of the Doctor to dress her up in pink pyjamas before shoving her out the TARDIS doors.

'"She was there when I was attacked. She helped me get away but lost her memory. You could call her a witness, if you liked"...She was running, she remembered that clearly, pulled through the alleys of East London by the man in black. Behind them beat the batwings of their pursuers...' - Cabinet. Totally contradicting Child of Time, in which Emily is thoroughly unconscious and amnesiac as the Doctor carries her into the TARDIS to dump in London. Before any Mestizer-attacks take place.

So Emily discovers that she used to be evil (shouldn't have taken the High Executioner's mask being removed for the penny to drop.
Also, Cabinet of Light gave me the impression that Emily was an ex-Companion.

Inuniverse maybe the enemy keeps changing Emily's history like it does the Doctor's as hinted at, (I can't remember where, a novel maybe?). There's a chance she could be rewritten as a Faction member or just attracts their attention by being a paradox herself. What would her Faction rank and name be do we think?

I don't see her reaching any rank higher than Cousin, I s'pose she might go for Cousin High Executioner rather than Cousin Emily as her name. No idea what shadow-weapon she'd bond with, she seems rather a wimp...

There was no need for him to look up, the person's identity was obvious. The combination of Faction robes with those scarf ends and a cat were a big give away, not as big of one as the wheelchair of course but he was polite enough not to think so too loudly.

But...only ONE cat...?

She seemly always has another another on her lap but never the same one, some of them evn wear little skull masks...

AWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

8: Deus Le Volt:

I adore the Fendahl but it's very much a one-off monster and doesn't stand up well to repeated rematches (Kaldor City, The Further Adventures of Lucie Miller, Torchwood) - least of all HERE.

'The foulest stench Emily had ever had the misfortune to be exposed to' - honestly, they never complained about how much the Crusades stank in The Crusades...

ALL the men are dressed in 'dirty red tunics'?

'How could he have been so naive as to suppose that he and Emily could simply waltz into this unfamiliar historical period, in a distant foreign land, and talk the locals into revealing the whereabouts of the strange knight they had encountered in London' - er...QUITE.

'She nodded off resting in Honoré's arms' - and they don't...travel anywhere? Aren't they supposed to magically whizz off through time when they touch?

'This guy switches from wanting us dead to wanting to risk his safety to help us' - er...QUITE.

DID they shake hands in those days?

'Lechasseur wasn't exactly sure what he expected to find in the city, but he had strong suspicions that he was far more likely to find his prey there than outside the city walls' - *sigh* yup, I had the strong feeling everyone was doing stuff to advance the 'plot' (if it can be dignified with such a term) rather than due to any logic.

'Our people are starving' - they were roasting a pig earlier!

'Let them in, it's the only way to minimise the bloodshed' - that's not how sacking towns works.

Why does everyone assume a fragment of bone is the sacred-relic-Lance.

'"The Turks must have fought back!" muttered Emily, shocked by what she was seeing' - she...didn't expect the soldiers who'd be valiantly defending their town for months to...valiantly defend their town?

Lechasseur sends Emily (woman, slave) to gather a joint Christian/Muslim army and tell 'em to fight Reynald? Hmm...

'A cloud of death hanging over the camp. Emily was disturbed to realise that she found it not so much uncomfortable as fascinating...There was something so familiar about it; something under the surface that made her feel like she'd been in a situation like this before' - well, kudos for trying to have some sort of build-up to the 'Emily was so evil before she lost her memory!' revelation of Child of Time, I s'pose - 'She shuddered and hoped that all the things she'd seen whilst travelling with Honoré weren't immunising her to the emotional impact of such horrors' - surely her feelings relate to her pre-Honoré adventures, or what she can subconsciously recall of them, at least...?

Lechasseur has the same strength of will as the FOURTH DOCTOR, to make his legs work despite the Fendahleen-paralysis?

WHY wasn't Simon afraid of the Fendahleen?

'"My plan is complete!" announced Reynald joyfully, rising to his feet. "The Fendahl lives again!"' - not without a Core it doesn't.

'Her curiosity about her past had burned unbearably for months' - it HAD?