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I think this book could be better by having no continuity changes/ different changes
It could be between The Daemons and Day of the Daleks, Day of the Daleks and The Curse of Peladon or The Curse of Peladon and The Sea Devils. It's up to you which of those three gaps you would prefer it to fit into.
sooo... what stories is this inbetween?
Roots - the black ships with all the legs and screaming constantly screamed Babylon 5 Shadow vessels to me.
Tragedy Day gets off to a good start with the media conspiracies but stumbles and crashes by the end. Crispin's insecurities and Shrubb's attempted Celebroid rebellion are introduced far too late into the story, and they might have gotten some room to breathe if not for the whole Friars of Pangloss nonsense dragging out the ending. On top of that, the Vijjans had no real role to play beyond being slaughtered. Disappointing.
The Dalek Invasion of Earth, not Planet of Giants. Also I'm pretty sure everyone on this website has watched that episode.
"His attachment to Susan means he is upset when she leaves and he comes to regard his new companion Vicki as a surrogate Susan. "
He wasn't upset when Susan left. If you watched the episodeThe Planet of the Giants, the Doctor basically locks Susan out of the TARDIS with the lame "excuse" that she belongs with David. She didn't want to leave at all and was devastated when he did that. He was mean, cruel and nasty to her all through the first series. Then he goes and picks up Vicki and treats her better than he did is own granddaughter! Frankly, if I was there I'd smack the Doctor so hard, he'd fly through Time and Space without needed a TARDIS.
add some info the rubbish science
???
Paul Cornell crashes Doctor Who into the punk movement (something the programme never approached in a meaningful way), views the UNIT years through a delightfully paranoid lense, a mini Land of Fiction in the form of the Mediasphere, and brings back not one, not two but three returning enemies that were pretty rubbish. No Future is one busy novel, but it's all good fun, except for Ace whose antagonism with Bernice is really grating on me now.
The sisters seem to named after the Jacksons: Michaela, Latoya, Germaine and Janet. The Doctor mentions a frog with a broken leg and then says was it in a car accident which could be a reference to the game Frogger.
Why no mention of all the Duran Duran references?
Filling the odd absence in '80s Doctor Who of a video game-centred plot, The Nightmare Fair has quite a few good ideas, but the inclusion of the Toymaker, who hasn't been on the programme since 1966, is a puzzling one and could have early been replaced with a new antagonist. At least Williams recognized The Celestial Toymaker hadn't gone nearly far enough with the deadly games idea and pushed them in a more engaging direction. It's also fun to see him knock the yellow peril stereotypes and how Mandarin robes don't belong on Gough.
Lyons tries to push the ideas of The Mind Robbers further than before to fair results. This is some really clever writing with a few fantastic moments like the Scrabble conversation, but the tensions of the TARDIS gang begin to really feel forced after a while and I didn't need an explanation for the Land of Fiction.
In Star Trek: The Animated Series (1973-4) there was a regular character Lieutenant M'Ress, who was the Enterprise's relief communications officer (so sometimes replacing Uhura). M'Ress was a female Caitian - a felinoid race in the Federation. While no other details of the race were given on screen, expanded information appeared in official publications, starting in 1974, that the Caitians came from the planet Cait which is in the Lynx Constellation (later further specified as 15 Lyncis).
Therefore, looking at your Continuity 6th paragraph, the one on Cat People, while you identify the sources of several of the other Cat People races in the Roots section above, you have missed that the felinoids of Cait and the Lynx constellation are lifted as directly from Star Trek as others come from Flash Gordon and Larry Niven.
Under continuity you say:
"COBRA is the Commons Office Briefing Room something or other, who decide things such as raids on hostage situations."
COBRA is the actual, real world (not made up for the book) UK emergency response committee that is convened in cases of national emergency such as terrorist attacks, threats to the UK, public health emergencies, natural disasters etc. The membership is not fixed and depends on who is relevant to the particular situation that called for it being convened, but would involve government ministers, senior civil servants, emergency services representatives, and security service and military representatives if appropriate. It is often (but not always) chaired by the Prime Minister.
Whilst the name sounds vaguely cool and tough when it is announced that the PM has convened the COBRA committee (which always means there is some kind of emergency with national repercussions), it is actually just a straightforward acronym for the room in which this emergency committee meets in the Cabinet Office building in Whitehall - Cabinet Office Briefing Room A ... COBRA.
I think the only book that is truly unrepresented is Time's Crucible. As to the other "Nobody" entries above...
Apocalypse: Raphael is mentioned near the end.
Warhead: Vincent and Justine get in touch with Lord Tasham and help him clean up his act.
Lucifer Rising: Legion is mentioned by Spandrell at the start.
Parasite: The Artefact is mentioned as well, see above.
Sanctuary: Guy is more than *mentioned*, although he's not actually in it himself...
Zamper: Kadiatu mentions the Zamps, somebody else mentions Zamper re spaceship design.
SLEEPY: Apparently Cinnabar and Byerley's wedding is mentioned.
Also it's Hamlet Macbeth, not Hamish - but I get the damn thing confused as well.
He was in America in the Gunfighters after Salvation.
• It's somewhat convenient that the pilot fish just happen to be in the area where the Doctor and Donna are hunting for a taxi.
The Doctor hadn’t given Donna the bio-damper yet – the pilot fish probably just tracked the Huon energy.
• How does Donna know that her holiday in Spain coincided with the Battle of Canary Wharf the Doctor's talking about?
People were talking about it when she got home, and it was probably on the news?
• If Huon particles need something living to catalyse inside, why risk using a human subject who could potentially walk out on you, when you could just use caged animals?
I don’t really have an answer to this other than perhaps it needed something unique to human biology.
• It's a bit of a co-incidence that Torchwood drilled a hole to the centre of the Earth right next to the lab where they were making Huon particles.
I got the impression that the lab was built there because the hole was there…
• The Doctor says that he's going further back than he's ever been before. So he's clearly forgotten his trips to the early years of the universe/galaxy in The Edge of Destruction and Castrovalva, seeing the origin of the universe (as mentioned in Destiny of the Daleks), and the origin of the Earth in the Exploration Earthradio show, and probably a few more trips that I've temporarily forgotten. [He's referring to his current incarnation.]
As you’re pointed out, The Doctor could just have been referring to his current incarnation.
• The formation of the Earth seems to happen too fast to be realistic. [The TARDIS is speeding up time for its occupants relative to the outside, to give them a better view.]
Again, you’ve already pointed out that the TARDIS could have been speeding up their viewing of the outside events.
• If the "pilot fish" are such good shots that there's no chance of them hitting the bride, as the Empress says, then why do so many of their shots completely miss the TARDIS?
TARDIS force-field/perception-filter guided them away.
• Why are the Army, rather than the RAF, attacking the Racnoss ship? Surely the air force would be faster, and be better equipped for the task. Also, if the other Racnoss ship is capable of withstanding the pressures at the centre of the Earth for 4.6 billion years, why is the Empress's ship destroyed so easily? [There's a comment about the Empress's Huon energy being depleted, but why would that affect the strength of her ship's hull?] And is it really flying low enough to be within range of the tanks?
Good point about the RAF. Don’t know. Maybe it was designed for the higher temperatures and high pressure – perhaps cooler temperature above the surface and a change in air pressure destabilised the defence systems slightly – say maybe on an atomic level – just enough to present an Achilles’ Heel?
• In [TV]The Underwater Menace[/TV}, Professor Zaroff's plan to drain the oceans into the Earth's core would have heated the water enough to destroy the Earth. Even if we can assume that he would have drained a lot more water, surely there should have been a similar effect with this hole. And it's quite lucky that the hole missed the pockets of Stahlman's gas and of lava we saw in Inferno, though we can probably assume that there are areas of the planet which contain neither.
Less water involved, and also maybe Torchwood had precautions in place to prevent lava or gas leakage that a normal business wouldn't have had access to.
• Donna claims that she became a widow during this story, but she never actually married Lance.
Given the day that Donna had had, I think we can probably forgive her a slight inaccuracy in throwaway comment. And she’d been emotionally invested enough in the relationship that the grief was probably comparable.
I guess it was inevitable that we'd miss some of those references, thanks for filling in some of the blanks. They're now added in.
The list of references is definitely not complete.
You have nothing for Marinus, but the Voord are mentioned.
You have nothing for Aztecs, but Chris says ‘... we can’t change history. Not one line, apparently. I mean, maybe the odd word or two. I don’t know.’
I’m sure there are more; those are just the first two blanks in your table. I don’t think the rumout about every story is true, but it’s closer than you’re giving credit for.
First, a quick indirect reference: Starting in the late 70s, Doctor Who featured an increasing number of charming rogue characters. But bizarrely, they all fit the 60s archetype, which for the entire rest of the world (especially in SF) had been completely replaced by Han Solo. With Jason, they finally caught up to the late 70s. (Or reverted to the mid 30s, which is the same thing here.) Sabalom Glitz was a lovable rogue that nobody could actually love; Jason Kane is one that anyone can. Of course he's really more a parody of Han Solo taken seriously than he is the character played straight, but that's true for everything Dave Stone does.
Anyway, I realize that Dave Stone is the marmite writer of the New Adventures, but I can't believe anyone who liked Sky Pirates could hate Death & Diplomacy. Critics point out--rightly, and with Dave's assent--that the former is all broad gags and wild ideas that, while fun, add up to nothing.
As for Space Bitch Ace, I think most people would agree that the idea of her was interesting, but the execution was terrible. But I don't think that's because the writers hated the idea. She was terrible when PDE wrote her, and she was his idea, while Kate Orman, the ultimate frocks-over-guns writer, was the only one to make good use of the character.
As for Benny: almost nobody could write Space Bitch Ace, most of the writers couldn't handle Roz, and everyone did Chris well but only writing him as a completely different character beyond the surface stuff; Benny was the only companion (until Fitz) who was well-realized enough that almost everyone could make her work. And I don't see her as a Mary Sue at all. But if you don't like her, I'm obviously not going to change your mind after all these decades.
That being said, I would suggest reading one of the Benny novels: Dead Romance. Benny isn't even in it, only a distant relative of hers. (And she's not even that if you read the Mad Norwegian version.) Actually, the book before it (speaking of Mary Sues) only peripherally includes Benny as well, but I suspect you'd hate that one, as it's Dave Stone at his Dave Stoniest.
The book does have guest stars from Human Nature. Alexander Shuttleworrh shows up, and he and the Doctor discuss Joan Redfern (although not by name, IIRC).
The three Higher Eternals are from most of Cornell's books, and should probably be listed for at least Revelation.
A bunch of the Travelers show up, not just Maire.
Also, doesn't the soldier that Benny killed in Just War show up in the Puterspace pagan wedding?
Finally, Romana (and the mention of former President Flavia) is a reference to Blood Harvest (and Goth Opera, and the alternate future in Human Nature), in the same way that Ace is a reference to Set Piece, and so on for the Master, the UNIT crew, etc. Like Ace, Romana 2 is a TV character, and a recurring character, and a former companion, but like Dorothee, Lady President Romana is a VNA character.
These are now added into the article. Thanks for pointing them out.
"Turlough remembered reading about the effects of plasma damage on the biosphere of Qo’noS. Nasty business. ‘I can imagine,’ he muttered."
Qo’noS is the Klingon Homeworld in Star Trek, and its biosphere was devastated by the explosion of its moon Praxis and the energy production facilities thereon.
"The Maitre D’ was not happy. He’d been in Cubiculo 498, enjoying coffee and liqueurs with Senator Xavier on Risa"
Risa is the most famous leisure planet in the Federation in Star Trek, with the best restaurants.
Two mentions of the "Academia Scholastica on Vulcan". It sounds like its referencing the prestigious Vulcan Science Academy from Star Trek, and not the Power of The Dalek's Doctor Who Vulcan, which was an unpleasant planet, Earth's 3rd ever colony basically just for resource mining, soon abandoned and was "practically a legend" already by 2136.
"... the Cubiculo was considerably more ornate than the others, with its inlaid patterns of gold and latinum."
Gold pressed latinum - the Ferengi currency, also widely used by other races when not dealing in Federation credits.
I'm pretty sure I noticed another Star trek reference too, but can't remember what it was at the moment.