It's been a while since I read the book, but I seem to recall that the first of the fatalities occurred before the Doctor's TARDIS arrived. If everything that went wrong only did so because the Doctor, Ace & Benny were there, how come it started before they arrived?

Oh. Someone's got to read the beginning again and see if you're correct, because if so the book is an even more illogical pile of rubbish than hitherto suspected.

Any volunteers for this thankless task?

Evidently not ;)

I'm reading it right now. It appears the the first death takes place exactly as the TARDIS materializes. Possibly even a few seconds before, but I suppose that the Matrix detected the on-coming materilization.

I agree with Emily--the promising beginning soon turns into a traditional run-around, with a few too many convenient escapes.

I thought Benny said Maitland was an early 21st century writer. If so, why is he being dropped off in 1873?

This whole "can't create living matter" plot device is straight out of ST:TNG and the holodeck. I have to ask, though--WHY can't they create living matter? What's the difference between creating a person (or their body, anyway) and creating lunch (which the TARDIS kitchen and the Enterprise's holodecks do all the time)? The only thing missing from this artificial body would be an intelligence/soul/ka/indefinable spark, but considering the number of artificial intelligences we've seen spontaneaously arise, that problem can be solved as well.

The re-reading continues, although the pace has abated while wading through this. There's a very definite sense that the author had decided to write a few particular scenes and then looked for a plot to tie them all together. Unsurprisingly he failed and ended up with that weakest of climaxes by having a couple of minds battle it out. Two hours later and I can't remember how exactly it all ended. And I can't be bothered checking.

I have a feeling Benny referred to Aickland as a 20th century writer which may be supported by the last little bit about him taking years before starting to write. Am I the only one who is starting to get just a little bit fed up with all these characters from the future who have incredible in-depth knowledge of Earth 20th century pop culture?

It does seem a little odd. That's one of the reasons I had a problem with Tom Paris on "Voyager." I mean, I'm interested in the 19th century, but if you dropped me off there, I'd be lost.

Benny's excuse, though, is that she's an archeologist.

It's not MUCH of an excuse though, is it? I mean, it's not as if Benny's the universe's greatest archeologist. (No offence, but the woman faked her credentials! AND whenever she turns up for a dig she always ends up having to save the planet instead. The only time I remember hearing about her doing much real archeology was when she dug up a knife in a supposedly pacifist society, and got terribly excited about rewriting all the history books, before someone pointed out that, er, it's an eating utensil. (Just War))

And even if Benny WAS the universe's greatest archeologist, how much twentieth-century stuff can there BE to dig up after the various hideous catastrophes that befell Earth? (Eternity Weeps, Dalek Invasion of Earth, etc etc.)

DWM interview with Messingham:

'I wanted to do the ultimate Doctor Who novel.' - say WHAT! 'I wanted the ultimate anti-climax. Everything is going wrong, people are dying, what can the Doctor do? He realises that he is responsible for the decay, and the only thing he can do is go away and never come back...Great ending! Now, there was no way that Virgin were going to let this through.' - Pity, cos that WOULD have given the book a TOUCH of originality. Though I'd hardly say it would raise it to the level of ultimate Doctor Who book.

'Obviously the Doctor can never change - not really - but I wanted to see how far I could go.' - Of course the Doctor can change! Though as I can't remember a single thing about the Doctor in this book I wouldn't be able to say how far it had gone with him.

'I'm happy to the extent that a novel is out and it's readable - quite rare with the New Adventures' - gotta admire an author who'll stick the knife into his colleagues' backs like this. And of course it's true enough, except that Strange England wouldn't necessarily go on that smaller, 'readable' pile.

'I had no knowledge of other New Adventures coming out at the time' - well, that was rather careless of you - 'so I didn't realise that my ending would be compared to the detestable cyberspace stuff that's everywhere these days.' - Even if you couldn't be bothered to READ any of the other books you should've HEARD that they were pathetically Cyberspace-obsessed (as the Completely Useless Encyclopedia put it, 'it may sit uneasily in your fifteenth-century historical, but...') - even I knew that and I was avoiding the things like the plague at the time.

Back-cover blurb: 'Simon Messingham is a writer and performer of comedy' - then why are all his books - even the good ones - so utterly unfunny?

'Despite the inevitable "terrifying adventure" they were undoubtedly about to be embroiled in, she allowed herself a moment to relax' - who THINKS like this? Does Ace KNOW she's a fictional character?

'After three trips of rare tranquillity, Ace was getting trigger-happy. The Moscow City Carnival of 2219 had been dangerous and fun but it had lacked something. An edge' - sorry, how can something be tranquil AND dangerous?

Benny 'had started to wander the infinite corridors and rooms of the TARDIS...They had not seen her for a day or so, although the Doctor had sent a message for her now that they had landed' - sent a message HOW, exactly?

'As she stared out at the beautiful, exquisite woodland in front of her she realized with a sense of shock that she was missing the danger' - why the shock, Ace has ALREADY REALISED that she's trigger-happy due to annoying tranquillity?

'Bernice finally fished the last of the accumulated filth from her hair and clothes' - er, how? Accumulated filth usually needs a shower and washing-machine to dispose of, not some 'fishing'.

'She felt that the Doctor was perhaps testing the boundaries of her tolerance, and she was pleased to find that his remarks were charming rather than irritating. A sign of their new-found unity' 'Despite their new-found bonds of friendship with each other, at times he still liked playing the pompous headmaster' 'Ace seemed to find the Doctor's affectations less amusing than Bernice, perhaps because of the past differences they had tried so hard to overcome' - OK OK I GET THE MESSAGE! Ace and the Doctor are now on good terms! After being on bad terms! Praise the New Adventures that have given us this marvellous thing known as 'Character Development'! You can shut up about it now!

'Charlotte looked puzzled. Mrs Irving struggled to come to terms with these new, confusing feelings. There was a brief moment of bewilderment' - Gods of Ragnarok, I GET THE MESSAGE. They're puzzled/confused/bewildered. Are you beating your readership over the head with every single thing because you think they're imbeciles or because you need to stretch a thimble-full of plot over two hundred and seventy-six pages? Or, of course, BOTH?

'The Time Lord seemed to be particularly affected by the sound. She noted that perhaps it wasn't always an advantage to have super space hearing' - since when has the Doc had super space hearing? And anyway, didn't Christmas on a Rational Planet imply he could switch between Time Lord and human-style senses at will?

'I can't get it out of my head the feeling that this insect is intelligent...An evil, malign intelligence' - evil AND malign?! As opposed to, what, one or the other?

'How can a creature like this be evil or malign? At this level of intelligence it's working on instinct. Millions of years of evolutionary programming. How can it be capable of making moral decisions?' - aren't we ALL the product of millions of years of evolutionary programming...and yet STILL capable of moral decisions?

'Most of my contemporaries considered notions like good and evil to be outdated, archaic and redundant and found my preoccupation with such morality to be incomprehensible' - to be brutally honest, I find the concept of HARTNELL preoccupied with morality to be incomprehensible - 'Then again, they didn't steal a TARDIS did they? Didn't go round the universe to discover evil for themselves' - um...how can I put this tactfully...er, YES actually Doc, you don't need to be a misfortunate reader of Divided Loyalties to realise that this is EXACTLY what most of your contemporaries did.

'It was only good fortune that prevented us from ending up like this unfortunate girl' - really? Cos it was 'a low-grade hypnotism' that SURELY Mr super-sensed Oncoming Storm could have overcome without recourse to anything as vulgar as mere LUCK?

Benny just didn't bother to mention her vision to the Doctor when he accused her of day-dreaming?

'You'll have to get the throat closed the instant I've pulled the insect out. Then it's stitching and sterilizing' - stitching and sterilising with WHAT, exactly?

'She looked up at the Doctor. "She...she's stopped breathing." The Time Lord froze, scalpel poised. "She's dead," Bernice said' - why the hell would Benny get 'not breathing' confused with 'DEAD'? Hasn't she heard of CPR or anything? Even I've heard of CPR! (Not sure what it stands for, mind you, but am STILL sure that Curse of the Black Spot got it totally wrong.)

'He coughed. "We had better get a sheet to cover her with," he said sadly..."Why?" asked Charlotte. "Well..." He seemed to struggle to find the right words. "We can't just leave her here."' - since when has THE DOCTOR partaken of our bizarre human funeral customs instead of cheerfully suggesting 'Top layer if you want to say a few words'? In what alternative universe will A SHEET protect a corpse against the full heat of an idyllic summer? In what way is leaving her lying around on the hall floor (sheet or no sheet) a particularly good idea?

'I know Ace has probably got herself into terrible danger and I'm just as concerned as you are' - to be honest, Benny doesn't seem THAT concerned (she merely suggests Ace is half-way up a mountain by now) and also if the Doctor WAS remotely concerned he probably wouldn't be deciding that 'I'll go and look for her once we've sorted this out'. Cos 'this' could take some time. Especially with Victoria being DEAD and all, something the Old Who Doc wasn't as good at curing as our New Who heroes.

'There had been an absence of the telepathic itch that he felt when Ace was in the vicinity. It was always there, a subconscious contact with his companions, beyond even Time Lord comprehension' - since WHEN!

'He looked at the bookshelf...It was full of leather-bound volumes. "The good old Encyclopaedia Britannia," he laughed. "So they did get it off the ground. I was wrong."' - Why the hell - especially in view of his knowledge of future history - would the Doc assume said Encyclopedia would never materialise?

'His infuriating habit of always knowing everything in advance would come in useful for once' - for ONCE?! Surely if such foreknowledge existed (WHICH IT DOESN'T) it would come in useful ALL THE TIME?

To be continued...

sorry, how can something be tranquil AND dangerous?

Ever seen a tiger relaxing?

Benny 'had started to wander the infinite corridors and rooms of the TARDIS...They had not seen her for a day or so, although the Doctor had sent a message for her now that they had landed' - sent a message HOW, exactly?

I would expect the TARDIS to have a public address system of some sort.

aren't we ALL the product of millions of years of evolutionary programming...and yet STILL capable of moral decisions?

Well, insects normally have no choice, their behavior is rigidly determined by their heredity. We, on the other hand, have far more flexibility in our actions. Or so we like to think.

Even I've heard of CPR! (Not sure what it stands for, mind you, but am STILL sure that Curse of the Black Spot got it totally wrong.)

CPR, Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation

I would expect the TARDIS to have a public address system of some sort.

I would expect, if it DID have a public address system of sort sort, for it to be USED during all those millennia we've watched Sexy in action.

(Mind you, how DID House communicate with Amy n'Rory? Was that ever made clear?)

'"Are you sure you don't know what's going on?" the Doctor shook his head sadly. "My dear Benny, you have such a suspicious mind. No, I promise I haven't a clue." Bernice relaxed. Upon occasion you just had to trust the Doctor, even if you only half believed him' - sorry, in what way is it RELAXING to discover that your Oncoming Storm chum doesn't have a clue how to save you from the monsters?

The Doctor says he wants to examine the insect? But doesn't make any attempt to extract it from Victoria's corpse, or to keep an eye on said corpse in case it comes crawling out and kills anyone else, or Victoria becomes a zombie or anything (which, incidentally, she does).

'At last her life made sense again' - at last? It's been, like, AN HOUR!

Ace wears shorts and a t-shirt under her combat suit since when? She wore nothing whatsoever under it in Shadowmind.

AND she's wearing boots after shedding the suit? Why wouldn't boots come as part of the suit?

'Ace supposed there were worse things in life than being rescued by one of the Wurzels' – after Hollow Men?!

'Actually, I've never told anyone that before. I suppose I am a bit of a bore on the subject' – and, er, who exactly are you boring, given that you've never told anyone?

Why did Ace open the door so unguardedly when she knows there are really weird things going on, not to mention she's really pissed off the local yobs?

Said yobs seem surprisingly unaware that beating and kidnapping and murdering people is generally frowned upon in Britain, and might actually result in a custodial sentence, especially if you, y'know, happen to leave WITNESSES.

How marvellously intelligent of Ace to get her neck snapped when there's a superbeing around to miraculously cure her.

'Bernice scowled. "I hate the idea of servants. I get edgy when waiters try to serve me in restaurants"' – since when!

'Bernice was impressed, despite wondering how her friends in the largely vegetarian twenty-fifth century would have reacted to such a spread' – great, now I don't just have to worry about all the discrepancies about Benny and the Doctor being vegetarian, I have to worry about the twenty-fifth century too.

'And Victoria didn't get up and walk off on her own, did she?' - of course she did. And surely Benny's encountered enough zombies in her time to stop her making such a sweeping statement.

Why the hell would Benny bother whispering in case Charlotte's asleep when five seconds earlier she was BELLOWING at her?

'With amazing strength it cracked into him and sent him flying back against the far wall' - what's so amazing about a 'part crab, part spider and part Victoria' with 'large, fibrous legs' being STRONG?

'"A chessboard," uttered Bernice in surprise. "Do you play?" "A little," the Quack replied cryptically. I don't see what's so cryptic about THAT.

'Did he say anything?' 'Nothing I recall, sir. Except that he was hurtin'.' Actually he did say 'Ace, Ace you are hurt'. I usually wouldn't object to someone forgetting something quite that banal, but as he was glowing and miraculously curing her at the time...

Why the HELL does Benny drink tea made by the Quack, two seconds after warning Charlotte to be careful of the Quack, they mustn't trust him?

'Something worried Ace. His light did not seem to be as bright as she had expected' – which bit of 'I'm weak Ace...I need time' has slipped her mind in the last two pages?

'Ace did not even have time to close her eyes. The hammer crashed down. Thos stared in disbelief at his gun. The rifle was empty' – exactly how many escapes-from-certain-death are you gonna inflict on Ace in a vain attempt to pep up your dreary book?

'He's dead. His head's half off' – and yet he STILL managed to murmur 'I'm shot' before croaking?

'It's as if this place has become stained, tainted. Some outside influence has got inside it and is gnawing away at its heart' - and it SERIOUSLY doesn't occur to the Doc to add two and two together, i.e., that HIS arrival was an outside influence getting inside this place and everything started to go to hell pretty much the moment he arrived?

Bert and Aickland go on some heroic rescue-mission (that entirely predictably gets Bert killed) instead of, y'know, CALLING THE POLICE?

'All she could feel was the intense pain in her hands. Rix had clinically broken both middle and index fingers and tied her up again. Unable to stop herself, she had been sick. She struggled to rise above the pain, ignore it, but it could not be avoided' – there's just something really distasteful about this Ace-torture (I didn't much like the crunch as her neck was broken either). Maybe because – unlike, say, the Nazi torture of Benny in Just War – it just doesn't seem to have any POINT to it aside from filling up the pages.

Still, I suppose I should just be grateful that just for once no one's eyeballs have been gouged out -

- 'From here the gaps in the walls looked to her like the gouged-out eyes of a corpse' – silly me. OF COURSE there'd be eye-gouging, figuratively if not literally.

Aickland 'wondered briefly whether he should go back and find [Ace]. He shook his head. She was dead, she had to be' – really? Why did she have to be? After 'There came a cry from upstairs. Aickland recognized Ace's voice. So she was still alive'?

'"What are you going to do?" [Charlotte] asked, suppressing her illogical urge to laugh. This was neither the time nor the place. Garvey knelt down by Bernice. He ignored Charlotte's agonized sobs' - her WHAT! Since WHEN!

To be continued...

'Ace felt a tug of emotion. She had looked after Aickland for so long, it seemed odd for someone else to take over' – er...it was an hour or two, maximum! (Obviously Simon Messingham found the ordeal of writing this thing as appallingly-long-drawn-out as I found the ordeal of reading it. Hours stretch out into months...)

So the Doc's still thinking of 'em as 'companions' not, say, FRIENDS or anything?

Credit where it's due, Benny actually does a bit of body-language-reading, a magical skill of hers forgotten by 99% of her stories.

'I will help you to your...TARDIS and then I will come back' – HELP them to the TARDIS? He drastically held them up! Ace had to CARRY him! (Of course, Garvey ends up Nobly Self-Sacrificing himself to save them all, OF COURSE he does...)

'The creatures were ignoring [Ace] and concentrating on Garvey. More and more bounded down onto him. It was as if they preferred easy pickings to a difficult fight' – er, except that ACE – WAS – HELPLESS when the creatures on top of her all jumped off to attack the butler...

'"Anything his programming hadn't equipped him for. So he overloaded and...you could say that the goodness just leaked out of him." "So he was an angel," [Ace] whispered' – oh, as if Ace believes in any stupid 'angel' things. (And if she knew ANYTHING about them, she should know that they're more likely to wave a flaming sword in your face or have sex with you than leak goodness.)

'Ace knew more about guilt than anyone else she had met' – SERIOUSLY? More than the SEVENTH DOCTOR? The NA one riddled with guilt over murdering his predecessor and convinced his other selves will lock him up in a room with no doors for eternity?

Benny has never heard of the film 2001? Yet she's heard of literally everything ELSE about the late twentieth century...

'We were at the Academy together, a very long time ago' – wow, I hope someone's done a thesis on exactly WHY the Class of Whatever-it-was have ALL turned out to be Mad Renegades. (Though I don't remember a 'Galah' in the Deca...?)

So to paraphrase:

DOCTOR: Somehow, Galah has managed to form living tissue from the Architectural Configuration Program.
BENNY: She's found a way to literally play God. – Shouldn't she be thinking in terms of playing Goddess?
DOCTOR: Except that it can't be done! You cannot create living matter from inorganic components. – Why not? Eccy SAYS that 'life' is just 'nature's way of keeping meat fresh'. And who's to say Galah didn't nick a few cells and turn them into people, a la the Doctor's Daughter or something?
ACE: Isn't there an organic component in the TARDIS? Perhaps it was formed out of that?
DOCTOR: You could be right, Ace. Hmm. – HMM? You needed ACE to point out that Sexy isn't just some stupid MACHINE?!

Smart of Ace to recognise Charlotte when her template looks a hundred years old. How many old people are recognisable from their much younger selves?

'"I have ultimate power!" Rix bellowed. "Nothing can stop me!"' - Could this BE any more cliched? Has no one explained to this cut-price cardboard-cut-out of a villain that only Professor Zaroff can really carry of this whole nozzing-in-ze-vorld stuff? What next, claiming you're gonna take over the entire UNIVERSE, trying to inject your bog-standard book with some sort of POINT by drastically upping the stakes?

'The time has come for assimilation. With your knowledge, the universe will quickly become mine' – that would be a yes, then.

Benny 'wondered whether Ace ever got scared or shocked by violence and death' – er, surely Benny should have NOTICED by now? They've been shacked up together in that TARDIS for months. Also, when they first met Ace abandoning the Doctor in a fit of extreme hysteria at Jan's death might be taken as a subtle hint that yeah, she WAS shockable.

'In her mind, Ace had already given herself up for dead' – er, WHY? She's been in stickier situations than THIS, probably on a daily basis.

'"Save the speeches," hissed Bernice. "just get it over with"' - Given the Whoniverse's penchant for last-minute rescues this would be an incredibly stupid thing to say even if they weren't facing CRUCIFIXION.

'Aickland, with a surprising strength, threw off his guards..."Nice one!" shouted Bernice, who took the opportunity to give her surprised captors the slip. She intercepted the three robed creatures...Bernice struck out at all of them at once....Aickland punched the Quack so hard in the face that he disappeared into a cloud of dust' - they're surprisingly good at fighting for people surrounded by HUNDREDS of captors, especially given how hopeless they were a few minutes earlier when some creatures jumped out of the trees at them. Still, at least Charlotte's being consistently useless -

- 'Charlotte's captors were up and trying to grab her. Instinctively, she elbowed one of them in the face and ran up to Bernice...Charlotte kicked a robed figure down the slope' - *sigh* forget I said anything.

How can Rix possibly be more powerful than two Time Lords - one of them who's spent centuries in control of this very environment, and the other THE DOCTOR?

'You're a sculptor. How about one final piece of work? A masterpiece!' 'I would cease to exist' - I'm sorry, Galah said EARLIER ON THIS VERY PAGE that 'When this TARDIS dies I will perish with it. About time too' - !!

'Ace stopped cleaning her boots and stared up at him, perhaps wondering if the bad old days of arguments were going to happen again' - I thought I told you you could shut up about the new/old Ace/Doctor relationship now?

'Who is to say what is good and what is bad and that we'll always be right? That in the long run we're not just making things worse?'...'I know. Believe me, Benny, I always know.' - Whatever happened to Remembrance's more modest 'time will tell' attitude?

OK OK I GET THE MESSAGE! Ace and the Doctor are now on good terms! After being on bad terms! Praise the New Adventures that have given us this marvellous thing known as 'Character Development'! You can shut up about it now!

And actually, this is SIX BOOKS after the Doc/Ace reconciliation at the end of No Future (I'd vaguely assumed it must be one or two) - that's MONTHS of world-saving (Tragedy Day), separation (Legacy), getting chased by monsters (Theatre of War), getting possessed on alien planets (All-Consuming Fire), running illicit nightclubs together (Blood Harvest)...so why are you still harping on and on and on about the fact the two of them get on OK now, and in what way can said amity possibly be described as 'new-found'?

Bookwyrm:

'Almost everything about [the cover] image is wrong: in the actual story, the Doctor had deliberately abandoned his umbrella; the clocks here all show the same time, when they specifically don't within the text; the creature breathes steam rather than have it pour from vents; and the face is a composition of the Doctor, Ace and Benny's faces but is one face and, tellingly, made of metal' - but hey, apart from that...

'Rix ceases to be important to the plot, which appears to have crept up on Messingham without him noticing. In order to get rid of him, Messingham writers a most extraordinary page where his determination to survive and win switches to his committing suicide in about 20 lines' - oh. Yeah. That WAS a bit odd, now you mention it...

Hey, Jessica, is this where you got your user name from?

She predates the book by quite a long time.

'The Time Lord seemed to be particularly affected by the sound. She noted that perhaps it wasn't always an advantage to have super space hearing' - since when has the Doc had super space hearing?

Ten in the Fires of Pompeii novelisation: 'I'm a Time Lord. I can hear all sorts of things. My ears are bigger on the inside.'

Of course, he may not be entirely serious...

'The Time Lord seemed to be particularly affected by the sound. She noted that perhaps it wasn't always an advantage to have super space hearing' - since when has the Doc had super space hearing?

Ten in the Fires of Pompeii novelisation: 'I'm a Time Lord. I can hear all sorts of things. My ears are bigger on the inside.'

On the other hand, the Doctor's having to wave the sonic screwdriver around to pick up the sounds that Kaleidoscope is hearing just fine...(Kaleidoscope audio. Obviously.)

'The Time Lord seemed to be particularly affected by the sound. She noted that perhaps it wasn't always an advantage to have super space hearing' - since when has the Doc had super space hearing?

To be fair, he's got super space SMELLING in Caves of Androzani:

'Celery. It's a powerful restorative where I come from. Unfortunately, the human olfactory system is comparatively feeble.'

since when has the Doc had super space hearing?

To be fair, he's got super space SMELLING in Caves of Androzani

The Ninth Doctor mentions 'YOUR visible spectrum' in Shades of Fear: The Colour of Terror, suggesting he also has super space sight, though given he didn't even notice he was colour-blind for a couple of regenerations...(Day of the Doctor novelisation)

since when has the Doc had super space hearing?

Yup, Business Unusual also claims 'His hearing was far more acute than any human's'. I should probably stop mentioning it whenever there's any supporting evidence and start mentioning it when Her/Himself appears to have normal human hearing...except that a) different incarnations would presumably have different levels of acuteness for each sense and b) Christmas on a Rational Planet implies s/he can switch between Time Lord and human-style senses at will so maybe I should just shut up about this issue (non-issue. Whatever)...

The Ninth Doctor mentions 'YOUR visible spectrum' in Shades of Fear: The Colour of Terror, suggesting he also has super space sight

Yup, Vampire Science:

'It took him a few moments to adjust his eyes. A human wouldn't have been able to make out anything in the blackness, but for him the trickle of moonlight through the windows was enough'...

since when has the Doc had super space hearing?

*Sigh*

Ravenous 2: Seizure:

'Did you hear something?' 'I hear lots of things. My auditory senses are very complex. I often pick up things you two don't.' 'You just made that up, didn't you.' 'Maybe.'

since when has the Doc had super space hearing?

Oh, and just for the record...Time of Angels:

'Blimey, your teeth. Have you got space teeth?' 'Yeah.'

For the record, Five's eyesight is nothing special in The Mutant Phase. But then he IS the most pathetically-human of Doctors at the best of times.

Five's eyesight is nothing special in The Mutant Phase

The One Doctor:

'You can see in the dark as well?' - Sally-Anne. 'Effects of carrot juice' - the Sixth Doctor.

Vampire Science:

'It took him a few moments to adjust his eyes. A human wouldn't have been able to make out anything in the blackness, but for him the trickle of moonlight through the windows was enough'...

Also System Shock: 'His eyes adjusted inhumanly quickly to the gloom.'

'You can see in the dark as well?' - Sally-Anne. 'Effects of carrot juice' - the Sixth Doctor.

Well, not in Antidote to Oblivion, the Sixth Doctor 'can barely make out a thing in this gloom.'