Apparently this book features a robot canary joining the TARDIS crew. Peter Anghelides asked for name suggesting on rec.arts.drwho. Of course that could be Peter's 'interesting' sense of humour at work.

Well, if he has an interesting sense of humour, it was on holiday for the duration of Kursaal.

Wouldn't know, haven't read it. The radw quotefile however contains many PA quotes, some of which I found hysterically funny.

Agreed, it was in fact on a serious holiday in Kursaal. So far however, FW appears to be a far better book.

Yay! Only 3 books to get until I own all the EDAs. (well, until January)

OWN them? You fork out good money for this stuff????? Wow. How many have you actually read, though?

All but about 5- there's no way I could rely on my library to have them, so it's the only way. Their most up to date Who book is 'Seeing I' and that's one of about 3! I don't intend to do anything silly like trying to collect the NAs or anything. For now....

It's cost quite a bit, but it's amazing how much you save skipping lunches ;-)

Edje - I need your help again. To my complete astonishment, I actually managed to get my hands on Parallel 59 AND Shadows of Avallon!!!!!!!! (All hail Norbury Library) but have no immediate prospect of acquiring Frontier Worlds. As all that sitting-round-trying-not-to-read-Taking-of-Planet-5-whilst-waiting-for-The-Blue-Angel business drove me mad (though not nearly as mad as when I finally got to read them both and discovered that neither was much good), I intend to devour my prizes ASAP. So could you tell me a) if this is a suicidally s t u p i d thing to do, and b) everything I need to know from Frontier Worlds for the rest of the arc to make any sense.

Well, Frontier Worlds isn't necessary as such, but I reckon it makes the arc more even to read it. You could actually skip to Shadows of Avalon, but there are things in FW and P59 that IMHO are quite important.

All you need to read in 'Frontier Worlds' is the dream sequence (in terms of the arc)

What's this nonsense about Fitz getting lost in the New Forest on 'the Fordingbridge road'? Let's assume that he and his family came down from London (probably via Winchester) and his father didn't think that it would be more logical to catch a ferry to the Isle of Wight from, say, Portsmouth. Presumably his mum navigated them towards Cadnam at Totton - there's really no other way to get to Fordingbridge from further north on an NF route - in which case surely they would have realised they weren't anywhere near Hythe *before* hitting Cadnam and thus still remaining in a state of quantum uncertainty about whether they were on the 'Fordingbridge road' or the 'Downton road'!!!!

What were they paying the copy editors? Honestly!

What's this nonsense about Fitz getting lost in the New Forest on 'the Fordingbridge road'?

I'm with Emily in assuming that the Who World geography is a bit different, especially since Shoreditch is apparently in South London. And as for the Sydney geography in 'Invasion of the Cat People'...

Not a bad book overall although it did play on the capture-escape theme a little too often. Compassion turns out to be a lot more interesting in this book than Sam ever did over twenty-odd ones. Dewfurth's suicide is right up there with Harrison Chase's memorable method of dying.

Compassion turns out to be a lot more interesting in this book than Sam ever did over twenty-odd ones.

Oh, that's a little unfair. Dark Sam was mildly interesting, at least. And even Blonde Sam killed the occasional person and had the occasional bout of immortality and set up the occasional political party and suchlike. Plus Compassion had the grossly unfair advantage of being a Faction Paradox-worshipping gunrunner who was turning into a TARDIS.

'The Doctor let out a great wail of horror' 'his whole side seemed to explode in agony' 'with a little thrill of horror' - No Doctor is ever quite this much of a pathetic human wimp. Something this book is obviously well aware of - 'Fitz couldn't remember seeing him like this' - yet does anyway for absolutely no reason.

'You've seen Bambi, haven't you?' - not a nit, just keeping track of the Doc's viewing-habits ever since Capaldi went from not having heard of Alien to watching Frozen 387 times.

Blimey, did Thin Ice nick its fish from Frontier Worlds?

God have I mentioned how BORING I find action-adventure scenes, particularly in novels, particularly when they're the entire first tenth of a novel?

'What do you want it to say on your burial capsule when they shoot your remains out in the great beyond' - um, you people do remember you're LIVING ON A PLANET, right?

No one in this century can be expected to have heard the name Frank Sinatra? This would be fine with me if only in every OTHER story the entire bloody universe hadn't appeared to be totally obsessed with twentieth-century Earth culture...

'He steers her across the universe' - but a few pages ago Sexy said 'I like to lead when I dance' and made it clear she only let the Doc THINK he was in control.

If Fitz thinks the place is bugged, why does he talk so much before suddenly starting to mouth things?

Why don't Fitz and Compassion hear the chandelier smash?

'The TARDIS isn't smart about Earth colloquialisms. It once told a friend of the Doctor's that the advertising phrase "Coke adds life" translated as "Class-A drugs bring your ancestors back from the grave"' - no it didn't. Sexy is fantastic about colloquialisms, I've never heard a single slip-up in Fifty-Seven Glorious Years.

The Doc has 'sixty-nine chromosomes divided into twenty-three homogenous triads' - does this fit in with the Time Lord DNA we saw on-screen in A Good Man Goes to War?

Dewfurth and Sempiter are fine with going on exploiting the Raab to get an edge in the corporate fight with Reddenblak even though IT WILL DESTROY THE PLANET IN A FEW MONTHS? (I mean, in a few DECADES I'd get, I mean, we're doing it but....MONTHS?)

'"You're with Reddenblak - that was the only reason I agreed to talk with you in the first place." "Ah, well actually -" don't TELL the guy you desperately need information from that he's mistaken about the only reason he's talking to you!

'"It's at times like this," said the Doctor, rummaging around in his capacious jacket pocket, "that I thank my good fortune in recovering my sonic screwdriver." Who'd have thought that the spare would have rolled under the TARDIS console and remained there through two entire lifetimes?' - who indeed would have thought there even WAS a spare? Who'd've thought that the Doctor would be so spectacularly incapable of whipping up another one himself, given that JODIE! managed it WITH SOME SPOONS whilst in the middle of post-regenerative trauma?

The Doctor doesn't know how to play the piano? Even DODO and STEVEN found the time to learn to play the piano at Space Academy/the Orphanage/whatever.

The Doctor wears Mars and Spencer underpants? Why in hell's name would anyone feel the need to give us ANY information about ANY Doctor's underwear? (Well, unless Twelve is telling Osgood about his question-mark pants, OBVIOUSLY.)

To be continued...

God have I mentioned how BORING I find action-adventure scenes, particularly in novels, particularly when they're the entire first tenth of a novel?

I think you've mentionned it once or twice.

The Doc has 'sixty-nine chromosomes divided into twenty-three homogenous triads' - does this fit in with the Time Lord DNA we saw on-screen in A Good Man Goes to War?

I had a look at it. We see a closeup of a human DNA strand, looking quite normal, and of a Time Lord DNA strand, with what looks like an energy helix winding its way along its length. I assume this is a representation of the artron energy that gives Time Lords their peculiar characteristics. It doesn't give any information about number of chromosomes or how they are arranged.

However, those chromosomes being arranged in triads instead of pairs like ours could imply that Gallifreyans have three genetic progenitors instead of two, father, mother, and something else. It is not necessarily the case, this sort of unusual chromosome arrangement does happen in some Earth species for other reasons, but it's something to think about.

However, those chromosomes being arranged in triads instead of pairs like ours could imply that Gallifreyans have three genetic progenitors instead of two, father, mother, and something else.

'Something else' presumably being...THE TIMELESS CHILD!!!!!

(Still, it's odd that if the not-very-good Frontier Worlds Corporation can spot this, no Time Lord ever has, though I s'pose that's Time Lords for you...)

Something else' presumably being...THE TIMELESS CHILD!!!!!

Is there no escape from this atrocity!?

Bwahahahahaha!

OK, there's 'something that looks like a shaved cat' that ends up getting slaughtered along with a lot of other creatures, I was really hoping this planet had no oochies so no oochies can be harmed in this book but hey, it'll make do... 'And there...you can make out the eyes...the ears...' - Yup, I think shucking off your entire skin including the eyes can count as fulfilling the Who Novels' OTHER obsession...

Since when has Fitz gone all gooily sentimental over animals, let alone canaries?

Why the HELL does Fitz go back to his flat when he's just sent the security forces to his flat? (Lying about 'Just hanging around the apartment, y'know. Got a few pallies round, having a few brewskies...' - when he KNEW the phone call was being bugged.) Especially when he knows there's no way he could beat the security forces back there when he missed the bus and had to run for half an hour to get there...

''How had we got here before them? Did they get lost, or had they taken the scenic route?' - QUITE.

Look, I'm used to the fact that the Old Who Doctor and his pets inexplicably never have mobiles despite their extreme levels of life-saving, planet-saving potential, but why the hell doesn't ALURA have one, she's a citizen of an Earth colony on another planet.

'I should have told her how I felt' - um, are you suddenly claiming Fitz WAS in love with Alura? Despite obviously not being in love with Alura for the rest of the book BEFORE she died? And despite him not giving his brutally-murdered girlfriend another thought in all his subsequent books (as far as I can remember, anyway)?

'I also decided to abandon the more disgusting of the Nutrition Bar cakes, which is to say all of them' - leaving aside the fact you hadn't tried all the different flavours...who'd be stupid enough to set off for a trek through an unknown jungle on an alien world for an indeterminate amount of time whilst injured AND DELIBERATELY NOT TAKE ANY FOOD?

'I don't know why I didn't notice earlier' - QUITE. Compassion's entire EXISTENCE is signals and she didn't notice the bloody great homing-beacon signal emitting from Fitz's ARM? Even I noticed it and I'm not the evolving-into-a-TARDIS product of a signals-dependent culture. (It's not that I'm a genius it's just that every couple of pages (slight exaggeration for dramatic effect) Fitz is scratching his arm and wondering why his company 'inoculation' is still itching after all these months...)

Fitz has just discovered that Ellis is (probably) a cold-blooded murderer - and after beating him up a bit...allows Ellis to scrabble around in his pockets for a while before being SURPRISED that Ellis...produces a gun?

How wonderful, we're treated to two mentions of Fitz's y-fronts in addition to the blasphemous mention of the Doctor's underwear.

'Doctor! I've never been so glad to see anyone in my entire life!' - seriously? As far as A Day in the Life of a Companion goes, being 'stranded between an inferno and a jungle with no transport, no directions, and bugger all to eat for miles around' is a pretty ordinary day.

'With an apparently supreme effort, the Doctor presumably restrained himself from slapping them both across the face' - again, massively uncharacteristic and it's not like Fitz and Compassion were to KNOW that setting fire to the Corporation's secret evil crop would, y'know, doom the planet and stuff. Plus it's a bit rich of the Doc to start complaining about his Strays being 'clumsy, heavy-handed overenthusiastic amateurs' NOW.

And, let's face it, the planet is totally not doomed, you can just use that weather control station (who nicks their plot from THE SEEDS OF DEATH for heaven's sake?) to save it. It's yet another problem with this book that I thought of this before THE DOCTOR did.

'He won't get further than the end of the street before he collapses, let alone clamber up that mountain' - which bit of HE HAS A FLYER has somehow slipped Compassion's mind?

'Call them what you like, so long as they remember to bring all the weedkiller they can lay their hands on' - but three pages earlier you said that, far from killing the Raab, 'the dousing in weedkiller will just accelerate the change in his metabolism'.

'"Why couldn't we use the snow bike in the transport?" grumbled Fitz into the hood of the Doctor's coat. "Compassion had more need of it," yelled the Doctor in the slipstream. "To get her to the research station"' - but the Doctor and Fitz's job of SAVING THE PLANET was way more important than Compassion's job of, um, going to a research station to see if there's anyone there for, er, some reason.

'A dog thinks, My owner loves me and feeds me and takes care of me, so he must be god. A cat thinks, My owner loves me and feeds me and takes care of me so I must be god' - Compassion is MY kinda person! Well, aside from the use of the word 'owner'. Also the arms-dealing. And the invention of an afterlife.

This entire book was just padding, wasn't it. There's no way that the Doctor (even the Eighth, never exactly the brightest and most successful of the bunch) and/or Compassion (more than half-computer/TARDIS herself at the time) wouldn't have been able to hack into the Frontier Worlds computer and find out what the corporation was up to in five minutes flat instead of months of going undercover and then indulging in various pointless action-adventures like falling off cliffs and hacking their way through jungles. With Ellis turning up to pick his nose at them every five minutes just to make the padding rather disgusting.

There's no way that the Doctor (even the Eighth, never exactly the brightest and most successful of the bunch) and/or Compassion (more than half-computer/TARDIS herself at the time) wouldn't have been able to hack into the Frontier Worlds computer and find out what the corporation was up to in five minutes flat instead of months of going undercover

Or the Doc could just have BOUGHT the entire company. Or, of course, 51% of it.

As Old Sixie did in World Enough and Time. (The Diary of River Song Season Two one, not Season Ten/Thirty-Six one, obviously.) It's unDoctorishly capitalist but then squandering MONTHS undercover is unDoctorishly...laggardly.