The Discontinuity Guide
The Eighth Doctor Adventures

Alien Bodies

November 1997

Author: Lawrence Miles

Editor: Stephen Cole

Roots: The Unthinkable City is, as Kortez notes, similar to Brigadoon. sticky-backed matter augmenters are inspired by Blue Peter's infamous sticky-backed plastic. The black man in the House of Commons sings ev'ry time we say goodbye. The one-armed Grandfather Paradox goes back to the Norse legend of Odin/Wotan who exchanged his eye for wisdom. There are references to Laika and Sputnik 2, Von Daniken, the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Braveheart, Bandersnatchers [sic] (from Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky), Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World, Charlton Heston's Biblical epics (The Ten Commandments and possibly Ben Hur), Only Fools and Horses, Star Wars, Tarzan, the 1950 Jimmy Stewart movie Harvey, the FT Index, someone on Dronid orders a Tequila Mockingbird - clearly named after the book To Kill a Mockingbird, the currency of Dronid is denaris - presumably the name was derived from the Roman Empire's Denarius, Mizz magazine, hyposprays - which are standard Star Trek medical equipment, and Bagpuss.

Goofs: This is more a retrospective goof, but Tchike mentions humans using weapons that they had bought from the Selachians in 2054. Later on, Bregman remembers Selachians being in the Eye-Spy Book of Alien Monsters, and that they use organic technology in their thinker-weapons. However, The Final Sanction definitively establishes that the Selachians didn't exist until 2104. [Perhaps a small group of them got thrown back in time.]

Qioxtl mentions the Seven Hundred Wonders of the Galaxy, presumably this is an incorrect reference to the Seven Hundred Wonders of the Universe mentioned in Death to the Daleks.

Sam's wristwatch is said to work at 30 leagues under the sea. However a league is not a measure of depth. (this is a Jules Verne in-joke).

Homunculette muses that Time Lords cannot get drunk, yet the Doctor managed it in both Slipback and Transit.

Why does Tchike think that nobody below the rank of Brigadier knows that the Doctor exists when Kortez, who is only a Colonel, has met him?

If Sam was only born in 1980, then she's probably just a little bit too young to have had Star Wars toys, or at least too young to have had brand new ones.

If the Unification means that Bregman is too young to remember Scotland, then why is Birmingham said to be in England on the cigarette packet? Surely if one retains its individual identity then the other one must too.

The Doctor tells Qixotl that Dalek guns aren't detachable, even though they've been detached in Power of the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, and Love and War.

Sam's eyes are said to be green, whilst in The Eight Doctors they were said to be blue. [Perhaps this is a byproduct of her two sets of biodata and the security systems switched across that information from Dark Sam.]

If Qixotl boasts about his encounter with the Doctor and the Antiridean organ-eaters back on Dronid, why does he not remember the incident when the Doctor mentions it?

Double Entendres: Sam: 'I've seen Braveheart, if that's any good.'
The Doctor: 'No, it isn't.'

Technobabble: Silverberg energy is associated with psychic activity. Type 103 TARDISes have systems that, at 100 percent efficiency, they can predict every thought in organic minds with an accuracy of 1.3 millifreuds.

The city was generated by an old block transfer modulator and some sticky-backed matter augmenters.

Homunculette to the Doctor: 'Dimensional incursion? What kind of ludicrous technobabble is that supposed to -'

The Doctor thinks that he might be able to deal with E-Kobalt's corrosive crystals by using an EHF variable phase signal to readjust their cellular structure.

Dialogue Disasters: The Doctor: 'I nearly killed you. I'm terribly sorry.'

Dialogue Triumphs: Marie: 'Not out of principle. Politicians don't have principles, not even on this side of Mutter's Spiral.'

The man was English, and therefore naturally reserved. Or, to put it another way, no one cared what he had to say, most of the time.

The Doctor: 'I'm sorry, I thought you were all timeless beings of unlimited evil, and I'd come here to defeat you.'

The Doctor: 'Do I have some kind of reputation?'

Cousin Sanjira: 'The spirits are a convenience. Their prime function is to be useful, not to be worshipped. Which is the greater weapon? The Grandfather himself, or the awe the people have for him?'

Qixotl: 'Energy weapons and combustive artefacts don't function properly inside City limits. Except for cigarette lighters, obviously.'

The pause returned. And this time, it brought some of its friends along with it.

Qixotl: 'You're going to have to bid at the auction. Like everyone else.'
The Doctor: 'Over my dead -'

The muzak became 3 per cent more irritating than it had been previously.

Continuity: The Third Doctor intended to track down Laika, the dog sent into space in Sputnik 2, since "the early days". However, he only managed it after putting a new dematerialisation circuit into the TARDIS. [Possibly since The Green Death, when he hasn't had any problems with it.] The sonic screwdriver can burn letters into stone.

Biodata (The Deadly Assassin) goes deeper than DNA and "simple" genetics, though it is part of the biodata matrix, as [certain] experiences [particularly those involving time travel] get encoded into the biology of the being whose biodata it is. Time Lords have certain mechanisms built into their biodata that makes them sensitive to distortions in the biodata around them.

UNISYC is a successor organisation to UNIT, originating as the militant wing of the UN's "Security Yard". Colonel Kortez has been in UNISYC for over 30 years, being in the ISC division during the Cyberbreaches of the '30s and at Saskatoon when Republicans issued their ultimatum against Canada. During that encounter, he took one of the Selachian thermosystron bombs even though the Doctor destroyed all the rest of them. Rumour has it that he's been shot at by prehistoric lemur-people and survived an assassination attempt by an android posing as the Norwegian Minister for Health. UNISYC has a "Big Green Museum", containing extraterrestrial specimens stuffed and dipped in formaldehyde. Some operatives of UNISYC suffer from Displacer Syndrome, a form of insanity. Its first signs are accepting the bizarre, the alien, and the downright stupid without questions. Most of those who left after the Cyberman incursions of the 2030s ended up founding cults in LA or seeing aliens everywhere. UNISYC personnel are fifteen times more likely to commit suicide than the average human being. UNISYC personnel who are given 19-L security clearance by UNISYC Central get to read The Eye-Spy Book of Alien Monsters, allegedly covering every alien species the organisation has ever shot at. It includes Cybermen, Martians (The Dying Days, The Seeds of Death), Selachians (The Murder Game - but see goofs), Krynoids (The Seeds of Doom), the Time Lords (who are said to be telepathic), the Quirkafleegs (said to be telepathic), the Hurgalnooks, the Bandersnatchers [sic], and the Rock-eating Yellow-Bellies. They are ordered to memorise and eat the book. At 20-L, they are told that it was a credulity test, only a few of the aliens are real, and you aren't supposed to eat the book. The first sign of insanity is believing every word of the book. The UNISYC handbook includes a "welcome BEM" speech. One of their training videos includes the quote "beneath this layer of apparent comfort lie the psychic tendrils of an alien mind parasite." UNISYC agents are trained to shake hands with aliens who have hands and shoot at those with tentacles.

A UNISYC Conclave requires at least five individuals. A Zodiac-level one requires at least 60-L Clearance. As a result of the non-stop subterfuge between the powerblocs, UNISYC is unable to negotiate to try and see the Americans' store of ET artefacts (The Toybox).

The Doctor and General Tchike have played a number of games of chess, played by appointment. Each time, the rules become a little more complicated. By this point, the bishops are time active, the rooks have minimal hyper spatial capabilities, and the queens can make deals with the Higher Powers of Creation to go round corners. The Doctor says that his new neurosystem (The Enemy Within) makes it hard to remember the rules. During these games, Tchike attempts to execute the Doctor. Tchike says that human governments have been cleaning up after the Doctor for 300 years [possibly since the 1799 date of Christmas on a Rational Planet, when an organisation called the Brotherhood discovered his existence.] The Doctor planned his escape from Tchike on a screen with graphics that look like they were created on a blocky 1980s computer [c.f. the computer graphics from pretty much any 1980s Doctor Who story]. Five years ago, Tchike erased all records of the Doctor from UN files and now nobody below the rank of Brigadier even knows that the Doctor exists.

Mr Qixotl (not his real name) is short, frog-like, and genetically shabby. He has a genuine Sintachi suit acquired at great cost from the fashion-butchers of Vienna Prima. However, he still looks shabby. He looks like a thirty-year-old who has sold off the next fifty years of his life at bargain basement prices. He has previously performed back-street gene splices for second-rate thugs who want to avoid DNA fingerprinting and skulked around seedy cocktail bars scraping narcotic residue [i.e. the remnants of cigarettes and the like] out of ashtrays. He has the technology to introduce leopards to the exosystem that store everything they see in their urine, which he uses as a security system. He has bugged the entirety of the Unthinkable City. His invitations to the auction are like business cards but thinner than paper and a brilliant silver. The cards resolve themselves into the language of the reader giving the co-ordinates [they may use a similar technology to the psychic paper used by the Doctor and Captain Jack in the new series] . He uses insects to collect biodata samples from individuals, if they're on the guest list (as determined by biodata samples taken by the invitations), they are let in. Otherwise, the leopards are set on them. He is familiar with the Doctor's biodata. He has installed psychic dampeners in his skull because at least three of the races invited to the auction are known to have rudimentary telepathic abilities [presumably the Time Lords, the Celestis, and the enemy]. He has acquired a TARDIS, but has heavily modified it, changing the entire structure and operating system to ensure that the High Council couldn't track it. When he arrived on Dronid, the dematerialisation circuit failed. The security systems protecting the Relic use the biodata of the interloper against them, finding their greatest weakness and exploiting it. One of the few parts of the City that is real is the stone in the conference hall, stolen from the Temple of Undue Discomforture on Globulus.

Homunculette views Marie (his Type 103 sentient TARDIS, created on Simia KK98) as his companion rather than his friend, and claims that Time Lords don't trust anyone unless they're stupid or dead. He wears a black business suit (similar to the Time Lord in Terror of the Autons). She has sub-organic sensory experiences, and thinks that if she invented a proper terminology for them, she'd be the only one who understood it. She interprets his snarling to mean that they will have to report another mission failure. As a type 103 TARDIS, Marie outwardly resembles the inhabitants of the planet on which she lands. Inside, she makes her presence known as a disembodied voice. She opens up by drawing a line across her face with her finger from the centre of her forehead to her chin. This opens up her head to a large enough size that a Time Lord can enter. She hiccups when she lands. His entire House once spent months on Simia KK98 sealed into silos beneath the permafrost waiting for the enemy probes to finish scanning the surface. They tried to get drunk, go mad, or do anything to stop them thinking. The Time Lord Last Wave have force-regenerated themselves until their skins were covered in black organic blast-proofing. [Presumably under certain circumstances, regenerations can significantly change Time Lord biology.] Marie gives off no biodata signals. Marie's secure array affects time-aware beings more than other beings and she has entire subsystems devoted to interpersonal dynamics. There is an organic part of her mind that exists in simple fourdimensional space and acts as an anchor to the real world. Her senses can be interfered with by the block transfer computations involved in the construction of the Unthinkable City. She has an internal holographic display system, and can stand a full-on thermonuclear blast and not take so much as a scorch mark. However, she may display scorch marks to indicate to the pilot that something is wrong. A year or so ago, Marie visited 20th Century London and her Chameleon Circuit got stuck in the form of a 1960s Police Woman (100,000 BC). He has a sonic monkey wrench. The Time Lords decided to mate Marie with a male type 105 to see what kind of mutations it would produce. They had reasoned that if TARDISes reproduced like organic beings, then random mutations would prevent the enemy from working out their weaknesses, hence introducing sexual reproduction. Mating two different types was a new experiment in that direction.

The Time Lords are in the middle of a war with an unnamed enemy, who are said to be much much more dangerous than the Daleks. In the early years of their assault on Gallifrey, the enemy created disembodied intelligences called anarchitects. Anarchitects are like computer viruses that can inhabit architecture and rewrite it, rebuilding entire cities at will. This is the same technology used in early TARDIS models, but the Time Lords hadn't thought of using it as a weapon. Although they can infect walls and floors, you are safe from them if you are in a river. Lord Ruthventracolixabaxil starved to death inside his own TARDIS when an anarchitect hijacked it and turned the central corridor into an endless Möbius loop. Type 103 TARDIS units are produced in a manner that is almost organic [presumably a reference to biological reproduction, as Cold Fusion establishes that TARDISes are grown rather than built.] Both the Shift and Cousin Justine consider it possible that the Doctor is representing one of the newblood Houses at the auction, suggesting that some of them have separatist tendancies. Both sides in the war have blocked off whole chunks of history from each other and the Time Lords can't get in touch with their past. However, renegades technically aren't part of Gallifrey's past, and are too tricky to put a time blockade on. All Gallifreyan Civil Servants have a psychic tripwire so that if they try to reveal confidential information they will have a psychic seizure and die. They have created defensive arrays the size of star systems and have taken apart entire galaxies.

The first attack on Gallifrey was a botched attempt to kill off the High Council. Botched meaning that the Time Lords had been lucky. Compared to the Daleks, the enemy are really dangerous. The enemy wear clothes that are a parody of Time Lord robes as they have only contempt for Time Lord society. By this point, the Time Lords believe that they are losing the war and are desperate for the advantage that possessing the Relic might give them. They have scanned its entire timeline to discover the most opportune time to remove it. Only a time active culture could have acquired it before that point. At the start of the war, the enemy took out most of Gallifrey's secrets. The Demat Gun, the Sash of Rassilon, and most of the Time Lords' other big guns were wiped out, as were the biodata codes which an ex-president like the Doctor would have. [Presumably all other Presidents and Ex-Presidents were either captured, killed, or had their biodata corrupted.] However, their weapons are still capable of unpicking someone's entire timeline and replacing it with monkey biodata. The original Time Lord homeworld has been "wiped", and as a result, Homunculette went to the training complex on Gallifrey XII, where the War Cardinals taught him the basics of escapology. Justine believes that the Time Lords have been at war for half a millennium.

The Shift is a conceptual entity who is capable of inducing paranoia in a type 103 TARDIS, causing it to self-destruct. He was created by Celestis technology, but works for the enemy. He can alter thoughts and ideas but not create them. He has been marked by the enemy, but being marked by the Celestis as well causes his mind to tear apart.

The Relic is a box two metres long, is coffin-sized and made of metal. It has extreme tachyon traces and contains what may be the Doctor's body. The Greek letters Theta Sigma (The Armageddon Factor) are heavily implied to be inscribed on its surface. Whilst Time Lords are supposed to be telepathically active after death due to residual psychic power, but the Doctor is hyperactive, even as a corpse. At various points) in his future, the Doctor's biodata has things added to it that make it a much weirder mix, and it will contain things that the future Time Lords have totally lost. The Last Doctor says that he once had a winklegruber neural parameter predictor - you tell it what you're looking for and it tells you the last place you'd think of looking for it. Qixotl was involved in the Doctor's "death" and knows that the pedigree of the corpse isn't as cut and dried as everybody thinks it is. The true story of the Doctor's death is very complicated and Qixotl was involved to a significant degree.

Trask is a corpse that has been reanimated by the Celestis forcing one of their deceased agents back into a physical form. He hasn't had a use for a smile in 400 years. He believes that he died by drowning and strongly suspects that the Doctor may have been responsible in a previous incarnation. [Later fan theories suggest that Trask was Rasputin, as the Doctor watched him drown in The Wages of Sin.] However, the Shift states that the Doctor killed Trask and that he altered Trask's memories of his method of death to make it more dramatic. Another Celestis servant is Kristopher Patrick Englund and he made a deal with the Celestis once whilst he was in the middle of an operation - they would ensure that he didn't die during his operation, and they would mark him and he would do their bidding in return. He came from an era of Earth history where the White House and the House of Commons were political centres.

Faction Paradox recruits from all sorts of races, and they wear skulls as masks. In this case, the skulls look half-human, half-bat, being relics from a timeline where the Time Lords lost their war with the Vampires. The Doctor says that the Faction is a family affair [partly a reference to their family-based titles, and partly to the fact that its founder, Grandfather Paradox (see Christmas on a Rational Planet), was from the House of Lungbarrow.] They are similar to voodoo cults, believing in spirits and has occult rituals. Time Lords view them with dread because their philosophy is directly opposite to those of the Time Lords. Cousin Justine and Little Brother Manjuele are "human-plus". Their technology is all stolen from the Time Lords. They graduate from being "Little Brother" to being "Cousin", and very senior members are "Mother". They believe that even Time Lords must be given proper funeral rites because the ceremony is the key, although younger initiates don't understand this. Their great hero is Grandfather Paradox, who cut off his own arm to remove the tattoo the Time Lords had branded him with. Time Lord legend claims that there was once a Grandfather Paradox, but he doesn't turn up in the High Council's files. Faction ships are like TARDISes, but they materialise inside an architecture, becoming an extra (dimensionally transcendental) set of rooms inside somewhere else. They have roundels containing skulls. Justine and Manjuele use symbioadaptive cord, which is some kind of intelligent rope, to tie up Homunculutte. One of their rituals allows them to remote control somebody. However, this influence can be overcome by, for example, the Doctor and the Relic working together.

The Celestis are a group of high-ranking Time Lords, essentially the Celestial Intervention Agency, who saw the war coming when the High Council didn't. They were scared because the enemy would erase their existence rather than kill them. They fled space and time, scratching out all traces of their physical existence, changing themselves from real people into ideas, conceptual entities. They probably used the same technology as was used to put the Land of Fiction (The Mind Robber) together. The Celestis have slipped information about the enemy to the Time Lords, though some of them have recently gone over to the other side because the enemy are more imaginative and dynamic and the Celestis are now beings of ideas. They have agents all over the material universe, all of whom bear the Celestis' mark. When those agents die, their minds are transferred to the Celestis' home of Mictlan. They can force these agents back into a material form, animating the dead as in the case of Trask. Their decisions are made in an area of Mictlan known as the Grand Hall. When they contact "the land of the living", the "hole" is in the middle of the hall. The Celestis have rules and codes of conduct, and they never break deals. Some of the inhabitants of Mictlan are victims of Faction Paradox rather than servants of the Celestis as both have used techniques that banish people to conceptual space.

Sam's full name is Samantha Angeline Jones and she was born on the fifteenth of April 1980. Her wristwatch is a Japanese design, is capable of telling the time thirty leagues (see Goofs) below sea level and going "eep" in the middle of school assembly. She sometimes thinks of the Doctor as a function of the universe whose function is to break into and out of places. She knows all about regeneration (probably from General Kramer in Vampire Science). Her mum is a social worker and her father a doctor. She thinks his hand tastes of chicken. She has two distinct sets of biodata. In one, she has naturally dark hair, was arrested for shoplifting age twelve, got a cigarette burn in a nightclub aged 14, has injected diamorphine, which led to scars on her arm. This Sam has some B&H gratis points in the top drawer of her dresser and lost her virginity aged 15. This Sam would never have met the Doctor, instead spending the rest of her life in a King's Cross bedsit. The other Sam, the censored version, has naturally blonde hair. She is on Amnesty International's mailing list, planning to vote Labour as soon as she is old enough, and the only person in her class who doesn't think that homosexuals should be shot on sight.

The TARDIS contains internal gravity compensators. Either the switch to activate the scanner has changed or three is more than one switch that does the job. The scanner now takes the form of a display on the ceiling. The Doctor uses maser-modulated artron energy to make toast.

The Doctor is three and a half years into his current body, and Sam thinks that he is about three years old by his reckoning (a reference to the three years he spent away from her before Vampire Science), and he considers himself three and a half years old. He has a copy of the hardcopy pocket edition of Genetic Politics Beyond the Third Zone by Professor Gustous R Thripstead in his pocket. The book has an entry on Faction Paradox. His biodata pattern is still recognisable to Qixotl, though it would later become more erratic and complex. She speculates that the TARDIS is able to switch off the parts of the human mind that cause culture shock. [If this feature exists, it must have been damaged or disabled by The End of the World. It may be part of the Temporal Grace circuits, which are known to exert influence on the minds of companions.] She had Star Wars toys as a child. She once got totally drunk to see exactly how her liberal-minded her parents were. This was the only time she's ever done that. She worked out that the best way to deal with that and travelling with the Doctor is to just pretend that the world's always been that way and that nothing unusual is happening. The reason his pockets are so volumous isn't that they're extensions of the TARDIS. Instead, as Yeltstrom's Karma and Flares: The Importance of Fashion Sense to the Modern Zen Master indicates, a sentient lifeform can achieve an awful lot by being at one with his jacket. He produces a sink plunger/Dalek key from his pocket, as well as the Mark One Sonic Screwdriver (Fury from the Deep), and a fairy cake. He can prevent Homunculette from attacking Qixotl by restraining him with a single finger.

There is some disagreement within Time Lord society about what the First Law of Time actually is. Homunculette is said to be "human-plus-plus-plus-plus" [possibly a reference to hints in the New Adventures that humans would inherit the Time Lords' mantle]. When Rassilon kick-started the Eye of Harmony and installed the interfaces in the first TARDIS units he prevented Time Lords from seeing into their own future.

Dronid has been damaged by Time Lord interference. Some of this interference, possibly the clockwork bacteria, led to things that took people apart by biting chunks out of your history. The interference was an attempt ot cover their tracks after the first battle in the "War in Heaven" against their enemy. During this first battle, they had Gabrielidean allies. By the era of the Faction Paradox interlude, the planet no longer has roads connecting the towns, but does have an organisation called the Corporation, who are Faction Paradox's main rivals for control of the planet. The planet is still primitive enough to use combustion engines, and has only just invented television. The planet's original name is Drornid, but the first edition of Bartholomew's Planetary Gazeteer contained a typo and called it Dronid, so everyone except the locals now uses that name and the locals gradually adopted the new name to keep in with the off-world domination of the economy

When the Dalek/Kroton ship re-enters normal space only 1000 kilometres above Earth's surface, it sends shockwaves through the psychic aura of the eastern hemisphere, causing those in India and Malaysia to see disturbing patterns in the static of their TV sets, forcing images of impossible machines into the minds of research scientists, and New Agers to experience visions of crystal planets which they would put down to something in the water. It is a design that the Doctor doesn't recognise, being an ugly lump of metal with ion engines welded to the underside. It is black, which is a very Dalek colour. According to the Doctor, during the late 21st Century, the Daleks are scattered around the edge of Mutters' Spiral trying to build up a decent galactic powerbase. Those left behind on Skaro are starting to think about putting together their own little empire. This is the "static electricity" phase of Dalek development. However, he claims that Dalek history keeps changing, which is why his knowledge of it is rusty [possibly a nod to the theory that Genesis of the Daleks rewrote Dalek history or to the implication in one of the Timewyrm novels that the Timewyrm rewrote large chunks of it]. Its internal corridors are painted luminescent black and humanoid eyes can't pick up the frequencies. It has a secondary lighting system which would be used when there were organic components or prisoners onboard.

The Krotons call themselves the Kroton Absolute. They are adaptable, when they move to a different kind of environment, they shatter their body, apart from the head, which contains the central nervous system and a tendril which absorbs biomass. They then use the tendril to absorb fresh biomass from, for example, any nearby organic lifeform and use it to grow a new body. In zero-gravity environments, they use spider-like bodies. The Kroton seen here is E-Kobalt-Prime Command Unit of the Kroton Fifth Lattice. His superior units are in the Kroton First Lattice. Ten of their ships comprise a Warspear. The planet Quartzel Eighty-Eight produces their most powerful weapons, including those that devastated the Metatraxi homeworld, reducing the moons of Szacef-Po to powder and ensuring the surrender of the combined forces of Criptostophon Prima. This destructive power is, however, merely equivalent to a couple of decent-sized particle warheads. The First Lattice is the ultimate authority in Kroton society. It is impossible to draw the line between the entities that control the Kroton Absolute and the city-vessel they inhabit. On their homeworld, the First Lattice had been a fortress, but the war with the Metatraxi, decades ago, led the Absolute to leave the planet - growing vast engines and turning itself into a vast dynatrope, draining the neural energies of over four thousand Krotons to do so. It is navigated by four minds, the Highest Brains that had seen its growth over the centuries and form the heart of its structure. Their guns fire miniature crystals which function as corrosive devices. They originated on a planet commonly called Krosi-Apsai-Core. They evolved from a form of quasi-organic tellurium-based crystal. Originally, it was a predatory gestalt life-form which created "slaved" sub-beings out of its own biological mass. At this stage, they were not sentient but could nullify or mimic the innate offensive and defensive abilities of the animals they preyed on. When a militant capitalist humanoid culture occupied their world, they began copying the brains of that culture's servo-robots. The invaders withdrew from the planet, whilst the Krotons began developing. Every Kroton is "slaved" to the Kroton Absolute and is psychologically (but not telepathically) linked to every other Kroton in thinking distance.

The Metatraxi planet SkSki%ro+tho+ha=ve>n is called Qu2296 by the Krotons, and is protected by a global grid of Metatraxi ships. This is a standard Metatraxi tactic. Most of the ships in such a formation are dronehusks, unintelligent semi-intelligent hollow shells constructed on a Metatraxi nesting world relying on orders from the swarmleader to function. The Metatraxi have a code of honour.

Weapons available to buy from the criminal underclass on Dronid by Mr Qixotl's seqment include dystronic weapons and Klutterbug missiles. One of the many off-world traders is a Gabrielidean. Gabrielideans are a liquid lifeform and they don't have proper names on their home planet. They can use technology to create artificial humanoid bodies in order to blend in. They are born in pools. A couple of generations ago, a Time Lord Cardinal tried to build a powerbase on Dronid putting together an army in the vain hope of overpowering the High Council. He was eventually dragged back to Gallifrey, but bits and pieces of Time Lord technology were left lying around the planet. [c.f. Shada].

Earth is a nexus world, like Dronid, Solos (The Mutants), and Tyler's Folly (Down). This kind of world is insignificant at first sight, but looking at the bigger picture, it is linked to the destinies of a whole host of intergalactic powers.

Marie suggests that Earth is a "G-type enviroment". The Toy Store is the US Government's store of captured alien technology. It was in a hanger in New Mexico, but got moved to Los Angeles after the States fell apart [presumably in the Wars of Independence mentioned elsewhere in the book]. Qixotl is the name of the god of ludicrous profit margins on Golobus. Raston cybernetic lap-dancers are said by the Raston Hardware Company catalogue to arouse unquenchable lusts in humanoids, though the company tends to go OTT with marketing, and Qixotl doesn't see the appeal. The company still maintains that its products are artefacts left behind by an extinct mystery super-race, even though everybody knows that they were put together in an old warehouse on Tersurus Luna.

Links: The introductory note mentions Genetic Politics Beyond the Third Zone by Professor Gustous R Thripstead, and the Doctor later has a copy on his person. (Another of Thripstead's books was mentioned in The Sun Makers). UNISYC is clearly a continuation of UNIT. Its ISC division is probably a reference to International Space Command, as seen in The Tenth Planet. The Doctor mentions the seventh Doctor's skill at chess (most notably The Curse of Fenric). The block transfer modulator presumably uses block matrix computation (Logopolis). Homunculette mentions the Cybermen, and dates their next invasion attempt to next year. The Doctor claims that he is trying to give up on the jelly babies (a reference to Tom Baker's liking of the sweets.) Homunculette's Story takes place in the ruins of Dalek-occupied Earth (The Dalek Invasion of Earth). Items from the Toy Store include Cyberman artefacts from the 2030s (intended as a reference to The Wheel in Space), and Ice Warrior artefacts from The Dying Days and/or The Seeds of Death. There is a brief mention of the [Paris] Rock (Transit. High Gallifreyan was first mentioned (as Old High Gallifreyan) in The Five Doctors. Dronid/Drornid was mentioned in Shada, as was the rival Time Lord President.

There are references to parts of the Doctor being human (Enemy Within), the Cloister Room (Logopolis), the Quetzel (War of the Daleks), the Osirians (Pyramids of Mars and The Sands of Time), The Doctor having been Time Lord President (The Invasion of Time and The Five Doctors) and having worn the Sash of Rassilon and having fingered the Great Key (The Deadly Assassin and The Invasion of Time). The Doctor remembers Gallifrey's skies being burnt orange (The Sensorites), Rassilon's Mimic (Managra), and the war with the Vampires (State of Decay, The Pit, Blood Harvest, Goth Opera, Vampire Science). There is also a reference to the Hourly Telepress (The Mind Robber) and a suggestion that the collapse of the United States led to the cold war between two superblocs seen in Warriors of the Deep.

There are also references to Drashigs (Carnival of Monsters). When discovering that Marie has broken apart, the first thing Homunculette notices is the hatstand, which is reminiscent of Frontios. The Doctor and Sam discuss the TARDIS's ability to look like anything (100,000 BC, Attack of the Cybermen, The Left-Handed Hummingbird, Conundrum, No Future, and the Ionic Column design (Logopolis, Castrovalva). Sam says that she was in the fortieth century a couple of weeks ago (a reference to John Peel's probable intended date for War of the Daleks). The Doctor yet again uses the alias Smith (The Wheel in Space, Spearhead from Space, and numerous other stories). Golobus was mentioned in The Greatest Show in the Galaxy. There are mentions of Lurma (Carnival of Monsters and Salostopus (The Trial of a Time Lord).

Grandfather Paradox briefly appeared in Christmas on a Rational Planet. The tattoo Grandfather Paradox removed is inspired by speculation that the tattoo the Third Doctor had in Spearhead from Space was a Time Lord prison brand. The Doctor recalls his fake tomb from Revelation of the Daleks and using his respiratory bypass system to feign death (most memorably in The Pyramids of Mars). Bregman knows about the Zygons having organic ships (Terror of the Zygons, The Bodysnatchers). The Doctor mentions the "little question of my ancestry" (the half-human line from the TV Movie / Enemy Within and the revelations in Lungbarrow).

There are references to the Demat Gun (The Invasion of Time) and the Land of Fiction (The Mind Robber, Conundrum, Head Games, Happy Endings). The Doctor mentions that some of his experience of avoiding being killed by the Daleks was quite recent (War of the Daleks). The Doctor used a sink plunger-shaped object to open a Dalek lock in Remembrance of the Daleks. Daleks using static electricity comes from The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and Power of the Daleks. The Krotons were previously seen in The Krotons (you'd never have guessed. ;).

When Sam and Kathleen travel to find the relic, it reels out a number of quotes from the Doctor's history. These are "I never give advice, never." (The Daleks); "There are terrible things in the universe, things that must be fought" (The Moonbase); "But if you could touch the alien sand, and hear the cry of strange birds and watch them wheel in another sky" (100,000 BC); "We'll burn that bridge when we come to it." (I think that's a fourth Doctor one); "it seems that I'm some kind of galactic yo-yo" (The Claws of Axos).

Dystronic explosive was used by the Thals in Genesis of the Daleks. Homunculutte mentions that he was expecting someone dangerous as the final bidder, and proceeds to mention the Cybermen [who aren't really that dangerous] and the Sontarans before saying that even the Voord (The Keys of Marinus) are more threatening than the Krotons. The Doctor remembers Gallifrey pushing him around. This includes show trials (The War Games, Trial of a Time Lord) and subtle manipulations such as Exarius (Colony in Space), Peladon (The Curse of Peladon), Solos (The Mutants), and Skaro (Genesis of the Daleks).

There is a quote of some of Sam's dialogue from The Eight Doctors. Raston cybernetic lap-dancers are obviously from the same place as the Raston warrior robot from The Five Doctors. They were said to be from an extinct mystery race in The Eight Doctors. Tersurus was mentioned in The Deadly Assassin. The Krotons are at war with the Metatraxi, mentioned in The Also People. Qixotl mentions the Hand of Omega (Remembrance of the Daleks, Lungbarrow). The Time Lord captured by the Krotons mentions the Rassilon Imprimatur (The Two Doctors).

The Doctor and Sam discuss the destruction of the Mark Five Sonic Screwdriver (The Bodysnatchers). The Doctor mentions the destruction of the Mark One (possibly The Visitation) as being centuries ago. Qixotl muses about the normal way to gain power on a planet being to squeeze yourself into its timeline by doing things like inventing the wheel and setting yourself up as a god, which is probably an allusion to Scaroth (City of Death), the Dæmons (The Dæmons), and the Osirians (Pyramids of Mars). He also mentions Earth being a nexus world like Dronid, Solos (The Mutants), and Tyler's Folly (Down).

The Doctor mentions Susan being the psychic one in the family (The Sensorites). He gives his regeneration as the "seventh" - a convention most notably used in Lungbarrow. The Shift appears to the Doctor as a businessman in a bowler hat (like the Time Lord from Terror of the Autons). The Doctor mentions his brain-wrestling match with Omega (The Three Doctors). The Doctor's psychosis reminds the Doctor of how Adric's death wiped out the dinosaurs, looking after history (Earthshock) and of how he went back to visit his previous incarnations (The Eight Doctors) as well as saying that Sam probably isn't a wolf of Fenric (The Curse of Fenric). The Doctor remembers happy hours taking the Hand of Omega for walks when he made a home for himself on Earth (An Unearthly Child/Remembrance of the Daleks). The Gabrielideans are probably connected to the Droge of Gabrieldes (The Pirate Planet). The Doctor's restraining of Homunculutte with a finger is similar to the seventh Doctor in Battlefield.

Location: The TARDIS; Earth Orbit, 1958; The East Indies ReVit Zone, particularly The Unthinkable City, c.2069; Geneva Neutral Province c.2069; London, 2169; Arizone, March 2069; Geneva, April 2069; Dronid, local years 15367 and 15414; The Quartzline Front in the Kroton-Metatraxi war, campaign year F83; Simia KK98 probably in Dronid year 15367; Mictlan.

Future History: The East Indies ReVit Zone has been re-carpeted with forest. This is, at least in part, achieved by means of a bio-induction system, which pumps new genetic material into the ecosystem. Such devices take months or years to have a visible effect on an environment. This process began 20 years ago. Re-Vit Zones aren't usually designed to accommodate any large predators. The Unification means that Kortez is too young to remember Scotland. Summerset's leopard was a genetically enhanced panther developed on Earth during the 2050s. They were used as guard dogs by the very rich and were quite a status symbol in Japan. The USA suffered from Wars of Independence with breakaway Southern states. One of its consequences was the Phoenix Sandbowl in Arizona. The reason and means for the destruction of Phoenix in '37 are unknown, but it may have been done by a Tesla bomb. The fashion in 2069 is for self-polarising contact lenses. The old UN is considered a joke since the World Zones Accords of '38. Cloud Ten is the "original" brand of Cannabis Cigarettes, and are made in "Birmingham, England." By this era there are Brazilian gunrunners in Canada and Earth's population is nearly 10 billion. The Swiss town of Lausanne has sub-suburbs where Dutch immigrants (St Anthony's Fire establishes that Holland was destroyed by global warming) and welfare addicts were housed.

The Daleks' invasion of Earth began with Daleks dropping out of the sky over London and exterminating the politicians.in Parliament Square. The politicians had responded to the Daleks' surrender demands by sealing themselves inside and letting the Daleks set them alight because they had nowhere else to go. At the time, London was one of twelve key political sites across the planet, and there was a mosaic in the centre of the House of Commons with the logo of the World Zones Authority. In 2169, the former House of Commons is occupied by a black man who sells weapons. He has filled the seats with mannequins and has installed some big speakers. He has relics from the Toy Store - a collection of extraterrestrial artefacts formerly owned by the human military. These include things that the Cybermen left behind in the 2030s and real Ice Warrior relics from before they dropped the [Paris] Rock. The building is reputed to be haunted.

Unrecorded Adventures: In 2054, the Montana Republican Militia used thermosystronic weapons to attempt to take over Canada. UNISYC forces including Tchike and Kortez attempted to capture the thermosystron bombs under orders from the innermost circles of the World Zones Authority, but the Doctor's intervention blows them all up. The Doctor involved had a "little baggy" body - so the second or seventh. This was the first time Tchike met the Doctor. Sam has known the Doctor for seven months, three weeks, and six days [which is a lot longer than the time covered by the previous stories featuring them). In that time, he has done something profoundly strange every 2.1 hours (which means he's done approximately 2700 profoundly strange things).

The Doctor remembers having met Faction Paradox "twice within a couple of decades. Twice in two regenerations." Presumably these encounters were during the Seventh Doctor's era. He met Tchike and Kortez at Saskatoon in a previous incarnation, possibly the seventh. He thinks that he recognises Qixotl, though he doesn't seem to know the face [given that he's just had a premonition of events experienced by his potential future self, this may be in his future.] Qixotl doesn't seem to recognise the Doctor's face either. Sam's first couple of weeks away from Earth was a run of one stupid situation after another. They probably included places where the sky was green and the sea is made out of acid. The Doctor has told Sam stories of the Great Vampires (first seen in State of Decay)

Mr Abel, who works for the Incorporate on Dronid in 15367 claims to have once winged the Doctor with a microwave knife, which should normally cause major tissue damage, and yet the Doctor just walked away from it. The last time Qixotl met the Doctor, there was a whole flotilla of Antiridean organ-eaters on his tail, and he got off without a scratch. The Doctor has encountered the Krotons twice before (The Krotons and an unrecorded adventure). On both occasions, they were wearing their high gravity forms. The second occasion featured the sixth Doctor, who helped some humanoids on the edge of Kroton space rise up against a Kroton colonisation force who were crystal-forming their planet. This was seven campaign years before E-Kobalt's native time. The Doctor once almost wiped out the whole Faction Paradox family on Dronid.

He mentions that the last time he met Qixotl, Qixotl tried to sell him to the Antiridean organ-eaters piecemeal, and two regenerations before that he tried to turn him over to an Embodiment of Pure and Irredeemable Evil, the Doctor trusted him and he betrayed him. Qixotl had to change his face after what the Doctor did to him the last time. It's unclear whether these are the Doctor's memories, the Relic's memories, or memories implanted by the Shift.

The Bottom Line: 'You're playing with the Web of Time, and all you care about is how Time Lord biomass is doing on the FT Index.' Alien Bodies is a stunning tour-de-force. Not only does it enrich the mythology of Doctor Who more than any other book, it does it with style, panache, and verve. Everything about the book is superb, the revelations about his, and the Time Lords' future, the portrayal of the war situation, the revelations about "Dark Sam", the character interactions, the writing style, and the cliffhanger endings to various chapters. Miles even manages to make the Krotons look dangerous. The only real downside to the book is that some readers will find it confusing when they read it for the first time.