'By bestselling Young Bond author Steve Cole' - JODIE! ISN'T A ••••••• YOUNG JAMES BOND!

And...any relation to THE Stephen Cole?

'"Get behind me," the woman told her followers' - but they're already behind her ('In a blur, another woman, pale and lithe, had pushed past his targets to stand before them').

Hmm. I suppose 'There was steel in her eyes and a rainbow blazed across her chest' is as close as any of these four books have come to giving us a Terrance-Dicks-style Doctor-synopsis.

Ryan's never heard of Attila the Hun? (Not necessarily a nit, just a reflection on modern education.)

'The Doctor held up her little jar. "How many of your ten thousand horsemen survived along with you? I'd like to help them if I can"' - sure, you may be changing history by keeping 'em alive ('Rose, there's a man alive in the world who wasn't alive before. An ordinary man. That's the most important thing in creation. The whole world's different because he's alive') unless of course they go splat along with 300,000 others in the battle in a few hours ANYWAY, making the whole exercise rather pointless. Plus you've only got enough magic ointment in the jar for two or three more people. Oh, and they're all filthy rapist murdering invaders but other than that, GREAT IDEA DOC.

Since when has any Doctor said 'Just spitballing here'?

'With any luck, Graham and Ryan will get back to the TARDIS' - and get in HOW, exactly? They don't have keys, you never told 'em about the finger-clicking trick and, oh yeah, Sexy's toppled forward onto her door and needs SEVERAL people to haul her upright.

'They'll put themselves in danger waiting for us' - really? Either they'll get Sexy back on her feet in which case they can wait safely inside, or they won't be able to do so without more muscle so will have to wait for Graham and Ryan to return for entirely selfish reasons.

'Least I'm not pretending to be something I'm not' - yes you are! You're pretending to be a master of combat magicks, for starters.

So first you blindfold Ryan so he won't see your top-secret HQ and then you whip off the blindfold and practically give him a guided tour of said top-secret HQ, its secret entrance, which statue you pull to open said secret entrance, not to mention a full explanation of which family runs your top-secret organisation...?

'"You'll taste my sword," said Ricimer. "And he hasn't washed it in a while," Zeno added' - people WASH their swords?

"So, all these people. They're going to fight today?" - the Doc didn't say TODAY - "And three hundred thousand of them will die - and then rise up again?" "That's the bit I hope we can do something about" - but it's part of the historical record!

'Yaz looked at the Doctor. "Is there any chance he'll get better?" "Better at being dead? Take it from one who knows: if you don't come back from that one at the double, you never do"' - ooh what a lie! You were dead for AGES in the telemovie!

Goes on about bodily functions a lot, which is weird after Molten Heart where no one seemed to have any.

JODIE! advancing on a witch-woman/Attila the Hun confrontation: 'Sorry, not been introduced, I'm the Doctor, Mr Hun's new attorney...' - dammit can you nitpick something for being TOO Doctorish? I mean, when were we ever blessed with the sight of JODIE! being in full insane hilarious Doctor-mode on-screen?

JODIE! smells of camomile and engine-oil?

'"Doctor!" Yaz shouted, "no!"' - she thinks the Doc MEANS it when she offers the Tenctrama time-travel in exchange for sparing her Companions' miserable lives?

'"You'll taste my sword," said Ricimer. "And he hasn't washed it in a while," Zeno added' - people WASH their swords?

Well, yeah, otherwise they rust and lose their edge.

I would have thought - before the invention of stainless steel - WASHING swords would cause the rust and you just needed to wipe 'em down with a barely-damp cloth, not give 'em a nice bath...

Vesuvius's eruption was NATURAL?

For heaven's sake, even barely-clinging-onto-the-Whoniverse-by-their-fingernails Erimem novels know that Vesuvius's eruption wasn't natural...

Ryan really hasn't grasped the fact THE DOCTOR USED TO BE A BLOKE? Yaz hasn't grasped the fact THE DOCTOR DOESN'T INTERFERE WITH ESTABLISHED HISTORICAL EVENTS?

To be fair, Chibnall says (interview) 'Because actually, if you think of what she told them in the first series: It's pretty much zero.'

I always assumed they actually, y'know, TALKED off-screen between adventures in the TARDIS. How could they not have ASKED? And JODIE!'s hardly a black-and-white-era Doc who'd've gone all mysterious and DIED before uttering words like 'Time Lord.'

Ryan really hasn't grasped the fact THE DOCTOR USED TO BE A BLOKE?

*Sigh* He's not the only one. Doc n'Yaz in Star Tales: Chasing the Dawn:

'"It's easier looking like this." "Blonde?" "Like a girl." "Oh. OH. Don't you always?" "Nope." "Is that weird?" "I have," said the Doctor grandly, "quite a lot of handwidth for weird."'

Which bit of HALF AN HOUR AGO I WAS A WHITE-HAIRED SCOTSMAN is somehow beyond your petty human comprehension? (OK, aside from the 'white-haired' thing, that WAS a bit weird.)

Are you suggesting that Yaz was bloody SERIOUS in Demons of the Punjab instead of just trying to cover up a social faux-pas? (DOCTOR: This is the best thing ever. Never did this when I was a man. YASMIN: Doctor. You and your jokes. DOCTOR: Yeah, that's right. My references to body and gender regeneration are all in jest. I'm such a comedian.)

OK, so about two minutes after I wrote that the TV series heroically attempted to deal with its spin-offs' confusion by having Graham gasp 'I thought she was joking!' vis-a-vis the sex-change.

Of course, unlike the approximately fifty billion Seventh or Eighth Doctor novels n'audios, Chibbers can actually AFFORD to address the, er, four JODIE! books and zero JODIE! CDs.

Since when has any Doctor said 'Just spitballing here'?

Since Villa Diodati *gazes adoringly at Villa Diodata, well, apart from the bit where the Doc destroys the human race*

So kudos to this for foreseeing the happy day.