Big Bang Generation (novel)

Big Bang Generation
Doctor:	Twelfth Doctor
Companion(s):	Benny, Peter, Ruth, Jack
Main enemy:	Ancients of the Universe
Main setting:	Sydney, December 2015 New South Wales, 22 December 1934 Bates' World, 51st century El Diablo
Key crew
Publisher:	BBC Books
Writer:	Gary Russell
Read by:	Lisa Bowerman
Cover by:	Lee Binding
Release details
Release number:	60
Release date:	10 September 2015
Format:	Hardback (UK) Paperback (US)
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-84990-991-4
BBC New Series Adventures
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Next →	Deep Time

Big Bang Generation was the sixtieth novel in the BBC New Series Adventures series. It was written by Gary Russell and featured the Twelfth Doctor and Bernice Summerfield.

It was the second entry in The Glamour Chronicles series, published in September 2015.

Notably, it marked the first official time that Benny met an incarnation of the Doctor from the revived series.

Publisher's summary

"I'm an archaeologist, but probably not the one you were expecting."

Christmas 2015, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.

Imagine everyone's surprise when a time portal opens up in Sydney Cove. Imagine their shock as a massive pyramid now sits beside the Harbour Bridge, inconveniently blocking Port Jackson and glowing with energy. Imagine their fear as Cyrrus "the mobster" Globb, Professor Horace Jaanson and an alien assassin called Kik arrive to claim the glowing pyramid. Finally imagine everyone's dismay when they are followed by a bunch of con artists out to spring their greatest grift yet.

This gang consists of Legs (the sexy comedian), Dog Boy (providing protection and firepower), Shortie (handling logistics), Da Trowel (in charge of excavation and history) and their leader, Doc (busy making sure the universe isn't destroyed in an explosion that makes the Big Bang look like a damp squib).

And when someone accidentally reawakens the Ancients of the Universe — which, Doc reckons, wasn't the wisest or best-judged of actions — things get a whole lot more complicated...

Plot

After receiving a message from Keri asking him to meet her at the White Rabbit, the Doctor arrives in Legion City and learns that she believes that she was invited there by him, producing a series of postcards as evidence. He gets a text inviting him to Sydney in 2015 and, after giving a superphone to Keri and having his sonic screwdriver stolen, he departs for Earth.

In the late 51st century, Colonel Sadkin and Professor Horace Janson request the services of River Song, but the Stormcage Containment Facility reject the request. They are instead joined by Benny, Peter, Ruth and Jack, who were transported from the 27th century by a stone given to Benny by her future self from a time eddy in which she and her friends are stuck. They put most of the team to sleep with Peter's knock-out patches before realising that Jaanson has wandered off; they watch him promise copies of the Glamour to Cyrrus Globb and Kik, criminals sent on behalf of the Headless Monks.

Kik notices Benny and holds her at swordpoint. Benny presents the stone that she has, a shard of the Glamour, and they use it to enter the Pyramid Eternia to find the time portal of the Ancients of the Universe. Inside the portal stands ghostly versions of herself, Peter, Ruth and Jack, scattered through time and sending messages to the Doctor to come and save them. Her Peter, Ruth and Jack are captured as well, but they all manage to get free and find themselves merged with their future selves when they true to use the Blinovitch Limitation Effect to release them. When Benny merges with herself, the entire pyramid vanishes.

In Sydney, the Doctor is accosted by Ruth and Peter and told to meet Jack at a café which, by the time he reaches it, is called the White Rabbit. He meets Benny, who counts down the seconds until the Pyramid Eternia appears. To return the pyramid and everybody transported back to the 21st century, they learn from Keri's search on GalWiki where the Glamour is in 2015 and go back in time in the TARDIS to 1934 to ensure that Tomas G. Schneidter finds it. He does so, but his wife, Roderika, shoots him and it falls to the floor, erasing her and Tomas's men from time.

Returning to 2015 with a spare sonic screwdriver, Benny and the Doctor go with Peter, Ruth and Jack to the Power Station museum and steal the Glamour. Jaanson jumps at it and is erased from time, as are his ancestors and descendants. Time dies and the Doctor meets the Ancients, whom he is able to convince to restore the universe. He finds the Glamour before it had ever been touched by a non-Ancient and returns it to them, erasing anything that ever happened as a result of their technology, after which he is returned to Legion with his TARDIS. Peter returns the screwdriver that was stolen from him.

Benny has the Doctor take her to her future self to warn her not to dig up the shard of the Glamour. Future Benny agrees not to and blows the place up before returning to Legion City with Peter, Ruth and Jack in the Irverfield. She catches a glimpse of the TARDIS as it dematerialises and wishes the Doctor happy landings, whatever face he has.

Characters

• Twelfth Doctor
• Bernice Summerfield
• Peter Summerfield
• Ruth
• Jack
• Keri
• Horace Jaanson
• Kik the Assassin
• Cyrrus Globb
• Tomas G. Schneidter
• Roderika Schneidter
• Sergeant Rhodes

Worldbuilding

Postcards

• The postcard that Keri receives is from Ardethe Four.
• The Doctor is surprised that physical postcards still exist in the 27th century.
• There is a postcard with a Koala on it in Sydney. Koala do not live in the cities because of the lack of eucalyptus leaves.

Concepts

• Reference is made to chronon energy, the Blinovitch Limitation Effect and time locks.
• Time travel is only available to certain individuals in the 51st century.

Individuals

• Robin Hood is mentioned.
• Von Hindenburg is the president of Germany in 1934.
• Ruth claims to have sold stolen artefacts to Aloysius D. Campling, the Estatelands of Salvadori, Les Sourire du Starship Louvre, Jared Jones and the Braxiatel Collection.

Locations

• In 5066, Kik tracked Globb to Mason's World.
• The Doctor compares Legion City to Tombstone.
• Hookup apps are used on Aztec Moon.
• There are numerous coffee shops and an IMAX cinema in Sydney.

References to the real world

• Sky Ray lolly wrappers are kept in the Milk Archive in the 36th century.
• The Doctor says that human TV signals are sent into space, so people in other galaxies could be watching Juliet Bravo, the first X-Factor final or The Wurzels on Top of the Pops in Christmas 1976.

The Doctor

• The Doctor sees a Land Crow with a drunken rider.
• The Doctor reads The Hungry Tiger of Oz by candlelight in the TARDIS.
• Keri has gone ice skating with the Doctor on the planet K174B in another solar system, which is actually an animal that looked like an ice rink, and broke her leg doing it. The Doctor nicknamed the creature Torvill and Dean.
• The Doctor receives a postcard Bernice sent from 1969 and from Scunthorpe in 1991. The Doctor is unsure whether he has ever been to Scunthorpe.
• The Doctor is over 2000 years old.
• The Doctor attended a Sam Smith concert with Clara a couple of months ago, where he obtained a smartphone that he still carries.
• Clara's friend Shona designed an app called Find Your Sonic, which is able to disable the sonic from any distance. He is also able to link the phone to the TARDIS.
• The Doctor mentions Sto'Vo'Kor, the Klingon afterlife from Star Trek.
• The Doctor sees two Killoran mercenaries getting drunk in the White Rabbit.
• When Bernice is hit by chronon energy, the Doctor sees the faces of other companions, including Clara Oswald, Amy Pond, Rory Williams, River Song, Wilfred Mott, Donna Noble, Martha Jones, Jack Harkness, Mickey Smith, Rose Tyler, Cinder, Molly O'Sullivan, Tamsin Drew, Lucie Miller, C'rizz, Charlotte Pollard, Samson Griffin, Gemma Griffin, Mary Shelley, Grace Holloway, Ace McShane, Hex, Mel Bush, Evelyn Smythe, and Susan.

Bernice Summerfield

• Bernice gets stuck in a time eddy.
• Bernice refers to the Laws of Time.
• Bernice thinks the Twelfth Doctor has more of a Glaswegian accent, but thinks the Seventh Doctor has more of a Highlands accent.
• Bernice is now in her fifties, and attributes the fact that she looks around 35 due to travelling in the TARDIS and using time rings.
• Bernice's Shimmer creates a costume from Pygmalion.

Keri

• Keri owns a tablet.
• Keri receives a spam email from Galaxy Five's Readers Digest; the Doctor says it is the only remaining print magazine.
• The Doctor gives Keri a smartphone that he received as part of a job lot in Houston.

Foods and beverages

• The Doctor eats some cold Hawaiian pizza and tomato chocolate.

Notes

• Gary Russell states on the endnote page that he originally wanted to use River Song in the story, but Steven Moffat told him he did not want the book to conflict with anything that might happen between River and the Twelfth Doctor on television. Moffat suggested he use Bernice Summerfield instead and Russell was delighted by the idea. As it would turn out, Moffat intended for The Husbands of River Song to be the first and only time the Twelfth Doctor and River met, as it would also be their final adventure together.
• This is the first New Series Adventures novel to reference characters created for the Big Finish audio dramas (Summerfield having predated that part of the franchise).
• All of the chapter titles are songs by British band Duran Duran (one song from each studio album, except "Rio" and including the unreleased "Reportage"). Additionally, the names of two Duran Duran side projects, Arcadia and the Power Station, are used as names for a hotel and a museum in Australia, and Medazzaland, an album title, is used as the name of a planet.
• Bernice says that she comes from "another time, another world" and was "born in the 26th century", alluding to Susan's dialogue from "The Pilot Episode".
• The Doctor mentions Time Squids and the Crinis, monsters from the Doctor Who Experience Interactive Story that ran from 2014 to 2017.

Continuity

• Bernice remembers digging up a "rock thingy" on Legion. (AUDIO: Legion)
• The Doctor has encountered Keri in a previous regeneration, and says she has met Bernice a couple of times before. (PROSE: Legacy)
• Aztec Moon has previously investigated by a variety of parties including the Brotherhood of Magicians (PROSE: Nothing up My Sleeve) and Melville Trout (AUDIO: Bad Habits)
• A group of scholars try to get information about the Glamour from the Panopticon archives in the Obverse. (PROSE: The Blue Angel)
• River Song is imprisoned in Stormcage Containment Facility. (TV: The Impossible Astronaut/Day of the Moon, A Good Man Goes to War, HOMEVID: First Night, GAME: The Eternity Clock) She is the archaeologist that the Papal Mainframe expected to arrive, rather than Bernice.
• Keri has had an adventure with the Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, Luke Smith and K9 Mark IV. The Doctor has met Luke before on a number of occasions. (TV: The Stolen Earth, The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, The End of Time)
• Bernice crosses her handwriting. (PROSE: Human Nature)
• The Doctor visited the White Rabbit. (AUDIO: Everybody Loves Irving) He muses on the fact there is also a White Rabbit that is a pub on the Thames Embankment in London (AUDIO: The Harvest et al.) and a bar on Bedrock 12.
• Bernice says that, as an archaeologist, she is "probably not the one you were expecting". (TV: The Night of the Doctor, AUDIO: The Defectors)
• Ruth's mind was wiped when she attempted to flee from an uprising and has no memory of her life before meeting Bernice. (AUDIO: The Temple of Questions)
• Jack met Bernice on a future Earth that looked like Victorian London, where he was nicknamed Spring-heeled Jack. (AUDIO: Judgement Day)
• Benny thinks back to when she first met the Seventh Doctor on Heaven, where they encountered the Hoothi. She was significantly younger then. (PROSE: Love and War) She also thinks of how she has met more than one incarnation of the Doctor. (PROSE: The Dying Days, AUDIO: Benny's Story)
• Bernice attributes her youthful looks to using time rings. The Doctor gave Bernice and Jason Kane time rings for their wedding. (PROSE: Happy Endings, AUDIO: Walking to Babylon, Birthright, Just War, Making Myths, Closure)
• Bernice reflects on how she would never have met Jason, Adrian, Guy, Bev, Irving Braxiatel or Wolsey and would have not have brought Peter, Joseph, the Collection or Legion into being without the Doctor. (PROSE: Death and Diplomacy, The Squire's Crystal, A Question of Identity, Theatre of War, Prelude Human Nature, Oh No It Isn't!, AUDIO: Theatre of War, The Genocide Machine)
• When two versions of the same person occupy the same space at the same time, given the Blinovitch Limitation Effect it usually results in a big bang. (TV: Mawdryn Undead)
• Bernice recalls when her body was controlled by someone else. (PROSE: The Squire's Crystal, AUDIO: The Curse of Fenman)
• A woman thinks the Doctor has a Welsh accent, but he says that he is Scottish. (TV: Deep Breath) He is unsure why he regards himself as Scottish when he is not human, but wonders if he will have an Australian accent in a future incarnation.
• The Doctor is unsure whether Bernice is a real professor. (PROSE: Blood Harvest)
• The Doctor says the last time people repeated his words, things didn't go so well for him. (TV: Midnight)
• The Doctor remarks on how much older Peter looks than the last time he saw him. (PROSE: ...Be Forgot)
• Benny's last encounter with the Doctor was on Skaro with the Seventh Doctor after Ace stole an Omega device. (AUDIO: The Lights of Skaro) She would later meet him in his seventh incarnation again. (AUDIO: The Pyramid of Sutekh)
• One of the Papal Mainframe soldiers mentions Colonel Octavian. (TV: The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone)
• The Doctor tells Bernice that Gallifrey is missing. (TV: The Day of the Doctor ^[+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)","The Day of the Doctor"]) He says he is unable to find his family.
• The Doctor also tells Bernice that Gallifrey had been destroyed (COMIC: Sky Jacks ^[+]Loading...["Sky Jacks (comic story)","Sky Jacks"], PROSE: Doctor Who and the Time War) but that he had later rewritten history to save it. (TV: The Day of the Doctor ^[+]Loading...["The Day of the Doctor (TV story)","The Day of the Doctor"])
• Bernice says that she will never forget how the Doctor was there for her after Guy de Carnac died. The Doctor says that every time he visits France he thinks of him. (PROSE: Sanctuary, AUDIO: The Scapegoat, The Monster of Montmartre, TV: The Girl in the Fireplace)
• Stacy Townsend and Ssard are briefly seen celebrating their eighteenth wedding anniversary. (PROSE: Placebo Effect)
• Peter uses a Deindum maser. (AUDIO: Escaping the Future)
• Bernice is frustrated that the Doctor has given other companions phones with universal roaming, but did not give her one. (TV: The End of the World et al.)
• The Doctor says that his sonic screwdriver gets stolen and broken more times than one would expect, and that he has duplicates. (TV: The Visitation, The Magician's Apprentice)
• The Doctor is fond of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. (AUDIO: Terror of the Sontarans)
• Peter identifies as gay and is single. He remembers having a romance with a slave named Antonio Tulloch on Bastion who died, and feels a lot of grief because of this. (AUDIO: The Curse of Fenman) 
• There are clones of Professor Candy. (PROSE: Continuity Errors, TV: Let's Kill Hitler)
• The shop and the group use a Shimmer to disguise themselves in Sydney in 2015. (TV: The End of Time) 
• Ruth wears a pair of sunglasses the Doctor once owned in a previous incarnation. (TV: The Magician's Apprentice) 
• The Doctor mentions the man who sold the Sydney Opera House to five different people. (TV: The Ribos Operation)
• Bernice and Keri talk about the Planet of the Hats. (TV: Partners in Crime) 

Additional cover images

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  Textless cover art

Editions published outside Britain

• Published in the USA by Broadway Books in 2015 as a paperback edition.
• Published in Italy by Armenia in 2016 as a paperback edition.
• Published in Germany by Cross Cult in 2016 as a paperback edition.
• Published in the Czech Republic by Jota in 2017 as a hardback edition.

• AmericanBigBangGeneration.jpg

  US edition

• ItalianBigBangGeneration.jpg

  Italian edition

• GermanBigBangGeneration.jpg

  German edition

• CzechBigBangGeneration.jpg

  Czech edition

Audiobook

• This novel was released as an audiobook on 4 October 2015 complete and unabridged by BBC Audio and read by Lisa Bowerman.

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  Audiobook cover

External links

• Official Big Bang Generation page at Penguin Books
• Official Big Bang Generation audiobook page at Penguin Books
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Big Bang Generation at The Whoniverse
• The Cloister Library: Big Bang Generation