The Discontinuity Guide
The Past Doctor Adventures

The Face of the Enemy

January 1998

(Features the Master and UNIT after Day of the Daleks, during The Curse of Peladon, and before The Sea Devils)

Author: David McIntee

Editor: Stephen Cole

Roots: Gangster movies, big-budget action movies (the helicopter attack), the Star Trek Deep Space Nine episodes Crossover, Through the Looking Glass, and Shattered Mirror (revisiting a parallel universe - Benton even comments on the Star Trek episode Mirror Mirror which introduces the universe they follow on from). The novel opens with a quotation from Dracula. There is a reference to Quatermass ("that chappie from the British Rocket Group"). Superintendant Morgan is apparently named after actor Garfield Morgan (The Sweeney). Some of the place names used here are taken from various other sources, including Kingsdown in Kent (Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Moonraker), and Little Storping (The Avengers episode 'Murdersville').

There are references to Woody Allen, the Carry On films, Solitaire, Dirty Harry, Coca Cola, the IRA, Charles Bronson, the Krays, the Richardsons, the Tibbs, Fabergé eggs, Dixon of Dock Green, Jack Warner, The Blue Lamp, Columbo, Mick Jagger, Guinness, Smirnoff, The Who, Clint Eastwood, Capability Brown, The Times, Churchill, Charlton Heston, Germaine Greer, The George Baker Selection's "Little Green Bag", Bewitched, Willie Nelson, Dick Francis, Space 1999, Erich Von Daniken, Svengali, Rasputin, Starsky and Hutch, The Sweeney, David Bowie's "Diamond Dogs", the Financial Times, Stealers Wheel's "Stuck in the Middle With You", Barry McGuire's "Eve of Destruction", Christopher Lee, Bulldog Drummond, Tarzan, Richard Hannay's performance in The Thirty-Nine Steps, James Bond, John Wayne's performance in The Fighting Seabees, and Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire". The Master reads a copy of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Ian's brief tenure at NASA is a reference to Ian Stuart Black's novelisation of The War Machines. David A. McIntee visualized Marianne Kyle as being played by Jacqueline Pearce; Marianne is the name of the character she played in The Avengers episode 'A Sense of History', and the name Kyle is inspired by Catwoman. McIntee also claims that Malky Reeves is loosely named after actor Maurice Roeves. The Master's "Be seeing you" is a nod to The Prisoner.

Goofs: The Author's one-page introduction claims that the story is probably set in 1976, which contradicts most of the UNIT dating theories out there. Similarly, it is also stated here that four years elapsed for the Brigadier between The Web of Fear and The Invasion, and two years between The Invasion and Spearhead From Space.

Conran identifies himself as Doctor Conran on page 40, but is called Mister Conran by his staff on page 52.

It's quite a co-incidence that Kyle attaches herself to the Master's criminal organisation - especially given that she clearly has no idea he's a Time Lord.

The Conclave stole UNIT's report on Inferno to discover how the Doctor reached and left their world. However, they must have already worked it out because how else would they travel to the Doctor's world? [They worked out how to get there but not how to get back]. It's also interesting that their standard gun is an exact duplicate of the AK-47.

In the Inferno universe, Stalin was in command of White Russia. However, Stalin was a communist revolutionary and the White Russians were counter-revolutionaries.

The Brigadier travels in the Master's TARDIS here prior to the events of The Three Doctors, contradicting his surprise at the interior of the Doctor's TARDIS in that story.

Technobabble: 'Temporal instability detector'

Dialogue Disasters: Barbara's repeated use of the phrase 'I teach history' (once might have been OK, but repeatedly using it to justify an argument is way too much).

Dialogue Triumphs: DC Thorpe: 'A postie chucked his fag end out his van's window - technically that's littering.'
DI Boucher: 'We're desperate, but not that desperate.'

Benton: 'May I ask what you're not going to do with them sir?'
Yates: 'I'm not going to take these things over to the wreckage and I'm not going to grab something for Chesterton to take back to the Doctor's lab.'

The Master: 'Why Brigadier, I might almost think you didn't entirely trust me.'
The Brigadier: 'On the contrary, I entirely trust you to be manipulative, deceitful and almost certainly to attempt to escape. Honesty doesn't seem to be your strong suit.'
The Master: 'Honesty? Tell me, Brigadier, do you really find the politicians you are subservient to to be "right" or "honourable"? Do you really respect even those superior officers who clearly have fewer skills than you do? Of course not! But you play their game - you deceive both them and yourself by pretending to respect them, by calling them "sir", by subsuming your own desires to follow their whims... I do not. If I want something, I take it. You tell me, which of us is the more honest?'

The Master: 'Ask yourself, have I ever denied anything I've done? Have I ever lied about anything? No. I'm proud of my so-called crimes, Brigadier. I think you'll find that in many ways I am the most honest man you've ever met.'

Ian: 'They wanted some advice for their SETI projects.'
Yates: 'And what did you tell them?'
Ian: 'Don't.'

The Brigadier: 'Everyone does some foolish things in his time. I expect I won't be an exception.'

The Brigadier: 'Oh, I see.'
The Master: 'Really?'
The Brigadier: 'No.'

The Master: 'Pain is a universal constant, Chesterton. Everyone understands that.'

Continuity: The Brigadier recalls that Jo's uncle is the Ambassador to the UN [this is the uncle we see in Decalog 2: Where the Heart Is rather than the apparently different one we see in Blood Heat].

UNIT brought Liz Shaw back out of retirement/a leave of absence following the events of The Scales of Injustice [an attempt to reconcile the events of that story with he subsequent decision to leave at the end of The Devil Goblins From Neptune]. She is currently engaged on a lecture tour in America with Stanton Friedman and Carl Sagan.

The Brigadier drinks at the British Legion, and stays in touch with Jimmy Turner (The Invasion) and Jimmy Munro (Spearhead From Space), both of who have now left UNIT. He is planning to take Doris to Brighton to buy her a watch to match the one that she bought him (Planet of the Spiders). Lieutenant Beresford [Major Beresford from The Seeds of Doom] was brought in to replace Yates when he was promoted to Captain. UNIT HQ is currently located at Denham in Wiltshire (see The Scales of Injustice). UNIT's official HQ is on Salisbury Plain near Rudloe Manor. but this is only a depot containing a wide variety of specialised equipment. UNIT's airborne HQ is an EC-130H Hercules (The Invasion). It is implied that UNIT maintains contact with Dr. Henderson at Ashbridge Cottage Hospital and employs him to handle special cases for them (Spearhead From Space). Anne Travers is now working at Whitehall (The Web of Fear, Millennial Rites). UNIT can hold prisoners under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.

The Brigadier meets Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan here for the first time (Planet of the Spiders). Harry is working at Faslane submarine base at this time. He attended Dartmouth Naval College and spent his first year as a fully commissioned officer serving on the Ark Royal. Whilst posted at Faslane, he is occasionally visited by Esther Bland (Harry Sullivan's War).

Mike Yates is planning to take Jo to see the new Woody Allen film as part of their date (see The Curse of Peladon). When she disappears with the Doctor, he arranges a date with somebody else, but is forced to stand her up. The Doctor has mentioned Ian and Barbara to him a couple of times.

Following their return home in The Chase Ian and Barbara got married on the first anniversary of their return (see also The Eleventh Tiger). They have a son named John [a.k.a. Johnny Chess or Johnny Chester - see Timewyrm: Revelation, Love and War, The Hollow Men, Byzantium!, King of Terror], currently attending primary school and occasional looked after by Barbara's parents. During their absence, their colleagues at Coal Hill School assumed that they had eloped to Gretna Green. On his return to Earth, Ian took a lecturing position at the Royal Aircraft Establishment's technical college at Farnborough and was given a MoD grade of Higher Executive Officer - equivalent to Major. He took part in a yearlong exchange with NASA, during which he did some consulting work on the US stealth project. He spent his National Service in the RAF in Malaya. His National Service superiors' letters of recommendation were important in getting him employment after his return to Earth. He wears spectacles for close work. Both Ian and Barbara required treatment for damage caused by exposure to radiation on Skaro following their return home (The Mutants). The Brigadier hands Ian a Sam Browne belt with a pistol, which he knows how to use from his National Service days. Barbara's grandmother died just before the previous Christmas. Ian and Barbara are writing a journal to leave for Susan to find in 2167 (The Dalek Invasion of Earth). One of the other teachers at Coal Hill School tried unsuccessfully to interest Ian in bird watching. When Ian was eighteen years old, he fell in love with a girl at university, but pretended to lose interest in her so that she would accept a job offer and he wouldn't hamper her career. Following her departure, a newspaper erroneously printed her picture with a story about a girl who was killed in a car crash. Since then, Ian has had nightmares about any woman he ahs got close to dying in a car crash. When he had the same nightmare about Barbara, he knew that he loved her. Barbara once stayed in student accommodation in France. Barbara does some teaching at the local Comprehensive School.

Ian says that Aberdeen has a higher than usual radiation count [c.f. Human Nature].

Corporal Bell has a brother, taken hostage by Kyle's people.

Following his capture at the end of The Dæmons, the Master is imprisoned at the Aylesbury Grange Detention Centre, a prison chosen by the UN without consulting the Brigadier. He was earlier placed on remand at Stangmoor Prison prior to his trial (Freedom (Short Trips)). He is awaiting transfer to a new prison Fortress Island once it is complete (see The Sea Devils). He still uses the alias Magister. Magister is supposedly a Cypriot; Emil Keller, the alias the Master adopted in The Mind of Evil, is meant to be Swiss, and Colonel Masters, the alias he used in Terror of the Autons was supposedly Rhodesian. The Master states that equipment that can determine whether or not objects have traveled through time is standard fitting in all TARDISes. He plays the stock market, easily exploiting humanity's "primitive system of investments" to require the funding he needs for acquiring servants on Earth, and effectively owned the Magnum Bank in London prior to its destruction. He pilots a Westland Lynx helicopter. Having escaped from prison, he changes into a John Phillips suit. He drinks absinthe as well as brandy. He smuggled his tissue compression eliminator into prison with him and uses it several times here. He also uses an automatic pistol and an Uzi and carries a laser pistol. His TARDIS is disguised as a Rolls-Royce. He owns a Jaguar and smokes Cuban cigars (see The Mind of Evil). He carries a device that can locate his TARDIS up to a range of over 500 miles and that can also detect perturbations in the space-time continuum. He mimics the Doctor and Ian's voices on the telephone (see The Time Monster). He is unable to hypnotize psychotic minds. When he enters UNIT HQ he hypnotizes two UNIT sentries into believing that they have just admitted the Prime Minister. As far as he can recall, none of the Doctor's friends or companions have ever asked him why he hates the Doctor until Barbara asks him. He recognizes Dalek technology. He builds a temporal instability receptor that detects movement in the space-time vortex. He considers the Brigadier to be a worthy and honourable adversary despite his inferiority. The Master is skilled in jeet-kun-do (the one-inch punch). He has reconfigured the controls of his TARDIS since his visit to Exarius. There is an armoury on board his TARDIS. He sends his TARDIS to the ruined Devil's End church so that the Brigadier can't find it, were it disguises itself as the altar (The Dæmons, The Eight Doctors).

The parallel Earth of Inferno was devastated but not destroyed by the events of I-Day, the day that Stahlman penetrated the Earth's crust. The effects of the eruption destroyed most of Great Britain and a chain of explosions throughout the ring of fire destroyed almost everywhere else. In this Earth, the Conclave ruled the Republic. The leaders of the five main continents formed a "super cabinet" whose headquarters is a station named Copernicus on the Moon. The leader of the Republic of Great Britain represented Europe; the other four political entities are the American Confederation, the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, India, and White Russia. In this parallel universe, the South won the American Civil War, and the Brtish Repbulic and Stalin divided up Europe between them, meaning that the Second World War never took place. The Master from the parallel universe, still named Koschei (The Dark Path), fought the Great Intelligence and the Yeti ten years earlier; his TARDIS was ruined and its central console was cannibalized by the British Republic, allowing them a means of travelling between parallel universes. They killed Ailla (The Dark Path) and enslaved the badly injured Koschei, imprisoning him and connecting him to their computers to forcibly take information from him. He was tortured to death several times during his interrogation, using up his remaining regenerations. He begs the Master to kill him. The Republic's artificial gravity and fast drive technology was stolen from the Bannermen, who landed in Wales in 1959 (Delta and the Bannermen).

The Doctor relocates the TARDIS console outside the TARDIS by reconfiguring the architectural configuration to place it outside on the end of a link (see The Ambassadors of Death, Inferno). He has mentioned Ian and Barbara to Mike Yates. He kept two of the time travel devices used by the guerillas in Day of the Daleks. He has told Benton several times that he provided Napoleon with the quote "An army marches on its stomach" (Day of the Daleks).

The Tzun (First Frontier) modified themselves with Nedenah (The Devil Goblins from Neptune) DNA.

Links: In the prologue, the Doctor and Jo recall the events of Colony in Space, and the Brigadier does so later. The prologue and epilogue tie in the story with the events of The Curse of Peladon. We see Doctor Henderson from Spearhead from Space. There are lots of references to The Dæmons, Short Trips: Freedom, and (indirectly) The Sea Devils - which are the context for the Master's appearance. The closing phase of the story draws heavily on Inferno (the parallel universe), The Dark Path (Koschei, the Doctor's "betrayal" of the Master), Delta and the Bannermen, and The Web of Fear.

The Brigadier, Benton, and Yates between them recall several UNIT stories including the Doctor's absences between The Web of Fear and The Invasion and between The Invasion and Spearhead from Space and during Colony in Space. They also recall Yeti (The Web of Fear, Cybermen (The Invasion), Spearhead from Space, Inferno, The Scales of Injustice, Devil Goblins from Neptune, Terror of the Autons, Chin Lee (The Mind of Evil), Axos (The Claws of Axos), and Day of the Daleks. The Brigadier recalls his wife Fiona (The Scales of Injustice, Downtime) and is seeing Doris (The Scales of Injustice, Planet of the Spiders, Battlefield) and half-remembers a briefing on The Faceless Ones. There are mentions of Liz Shaw, Anne Travers (The Web of Fear, Downtime), Rachel Jenson (Remembrance of the Daleks) and 'the chappie from British Rocket Group' [Bernard Quatermas - seen in The Dying Days]

Ian and Barbara recall leaving Shoreditch in the TARDIS (100,000 BC), the trouble caused by the TARDIS fluid links and being shot by Daleks (The Daleks), The Edge of Destruction, the sandstorm in the Gobi desert (Marco Polo), Voord (The Keys of Marinus, witnessing the Aztec civilisation The Aztecs, flying in rockets (The Sensorites), being imprisoned in the conciergerie The Reign of Terror, Robomen (The Dalek Invasion of Earth), the city of Bikugih (Venusian Lullaby), More Short Trips: Romans Cutaway, lecherous Romans (The Romans), Zarbi (The Web Planet), Jumping time tracks (The Space Museum), and The Chase. Ian knows something about the events of First Frontier. Barbara also mentions Susan and Vicki.

Kyle mentions Emil Keller (The Mind of Evil) and Colonel Masters (Terror of the Autons), though it's unclear how she apparently knew of either 'person' or that they were the Master. The Master makes a couple of references to The Dark Path.

Corporal Bell appeared in The Mind of Evil> and The Claws of Axos. Sergeant Osgood first appeared in The Dæmons. Jo recalls her previous trip in the TARDIS to Exarius (Colony in Space). There are also references to Rassilon, the TARDIS' time-path indicator (The Chase), C19 (The Scales of Injustice, Who Killed Kennedy, Time Flight), Ranch 51 and the Nedenah (The Devil Goblins From Neptune), and Corman AFB and the Tzun (First Frontier).

Location: London; UNIT HQ in Denham; Little Storping near Aldbury; Glasgow, Garelochhead and Faslane submarine base in Scotland; and Scotland and the Moon in the parallel Earth of Inferno five years after that story. It is apparently November and between Day of the Daleks and The Sea Devils in your preferred UNIT dating scheme.

The Bottom Line: 'Other helpers fail, comforts flee and you come to me'. McIntee's third novel to date to feature the Master again captures the Doctor's arch-nemesis supremely well, and contrasts him nicely with the Doctor by forcing him to temporarily adopt the role of UNIT's scientific advisor. The characterisation of the UNIT regulars is also spot on and as usual for McIntee the action-packed plot rattles along at a cracking pace.

'I never saw an armoury aboard the Doctor's TARDIS.' Despite the heavy reliance on continuity, this is quite a good read. The plot unfolds at a steady pace, the interaction between the Master and Ian and between the Master and the Brigadier gives us a real insight into the characters, and none of the continuity seems forced (except, perhaps, the dating). This is McIntee at his best.