Business Unusual (novel)

Business Unusual
Doctor:	Sixth Doctor
Companion(s):	Mel, the Brigadier
Featuring:	Hawke, Lines, Christine
Main enemy:	Nestene Consciousness, Martyn Townsend
Main setting:	England, 1989
Key crew
Publisher:	BBC Books
Writer:	Gary Russell
Release details
Release number:	4
Release date:	1 September 1997
Format:	Paperback Book; 5 Chapters, 277 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-563-40575-9
BBC Past Doctor Adventures
← Previous	The Ultimate Treasure
Next →	Illegal Alien

Business Unusual was the fourth novel in the BBC Past Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Gary Russell, released 1 September 1997 and featured the Sixth Doctor, Melanie Bush and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.

It was Gary Russell's attempt at depicting Mel's first adventure with the Sixth Doctor and also the Sixth Doctor's first meeting with Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart.

Publisher's summary

A security force with no official identity... a managing director with no name... a sinister creature on guard patrol resembling some kind of hellhound... SenéNet is no ordinary multinational company.

The Doctor arrives in Brighton, 1989, travelling alone. He soon discovers his old friend, the Brigadier, has gone missing investigating SenéNet, whose new interactive games console is soon to be released at an absurdly reasonable price. He was last seen at their headquarters — based in the picturesque Ashdown Forest...

Investigating further, the Doctor becomes more and more entangled in a deadly web of intrigue. Together with Mel, a plucky computer programmer from Pease Pottage, the Doctor must overcome the conspiracy of silence, rescue the Brigadier and save the world once again — something that would be a lot easier if he just knew where to start...

Plot

Called by Robert Lines to July 1989 by space-time telegraph, the Doctor thwarts the attempts of the Master and the Usurian Company to defraud the Dow-Jones and conquer the Earth, but he needs a programmer to help him erase any and all information on the ordeal. He goes to Brighton to rest and spots Mel, whom he has been avoiding meeting for some time in the hopes of averting the High Council's creation of the Valeyard, before heading back to his TARDIS and feeling her American friend Trey Korte unwittingly attempting to read his mind with latent esper abilities kickstarted by the TARDIS.

The Doctor takes Trey by taxi to 36 Downview Crescent after he collapses and tries to hurriedly leave upon realising that it is Mel's house, but she arrives before he can do so and, after initially taking a disliking to him, she agrees to be friendly and to help him with his computer problem. On the way to the police, however, the Doctor spots a coded message indicating that the Brigadier is missing and contacts John Sudbury, who informs him that the Brigadier vanished a month ago whilst investigating SenéNet. Mel, meanwhile, finds that the company have slimmed down the staff at Brighton Information Technologies since purchasing 49% of it and Luke Aspinall, her friend and now boss, is cold to the touch and acting out of character. She resigns.

A Japanese man who has been involved in producing video games for SenéNet's Maxx console, is found dead near SenéNet's headquarters and the Doctor becomes increasingly suspicious. After Mel completes his task, he takes her to Nessie Burgers, recently bought by SenéNet, where he collects one of each of the chain's plastic toys and finds them cold even in the heat, just as Mel did Luke's hand. Mel is kidnapped on the way to SenéNet to find the Brigadier and is taken to Irma Krafchin at the Hospital, where she finds both Trey and her mother, Christine, sedated and is chased by an Auton. With help from Lines and Mel's father, Alan, the Doctor learns that several children have been suffocated by Nessie Burgers' toys, controlled thanks to the Maxx.

The Doctor goes SenéNet and meets the managing director, the partially cyber-converted Martyn Townsend, and his assassin and executive officer, Mr Jones. Townsend is not working with the Nestenes and intends to merge his consciousness into an Auton using Trey's powers and three Nestene spheres, his plan to take over the world being solely to give himself something to do. Dr Krafchin, the human form of one of the spheres, brings Trey to Townsend to perform the merge whilst Mel is imprisoned with the Brigadier, but they are saved by former UNIT soldier Bryan Erskine who releases them and kills Mr Jones. Mel distracts the Stalker so that the Brigadier and Erskine can find the Doctor and is reunited with her father and DI Lines.

Having deduced that the Nestenes have been using Townsend, the Doctor defeats the Autons and saves Trey from being taken over, but is unable to save Townsend from being crushed after a Sontaran Mezon gun in his collection explodes. Mel creates a virus which will render the Maxx useless and tries to convince the Doctor to take her with him on his adventures, but he refuses out of concern for her and his own future and promises to return in a later incarnation. Despite this, Mel says goodbye to her parents and Trey, packs her bag and distracts the Doctor as he enters the TARDIS so that she can slip inside, but he reveals that he is aware of her presence and welcomes her aboard. Their first stop is Herec.

Characters

• Sixth Doctor
• Melanie Bush
• The Brigadier
• Robert McLaughlin
• Ciara
• Cellian
• Lawson
• Jones
• Robert Lines
• Stephanie Rowe
• Christine Bush
• Trey Korte
• Joe Hambridge
• Luke Aspinall
• Alex Simmons
• John Sudbury
• Pale Man
• Alan Bush
• Rupert Illingworth
• Anne Macko
• Ryuichi Futayomoto
• Yoshi Ohata
• Roberta
• Shaun Lyon
• Susan Illingworth
• Rupert Illingworth
• Jennifer Fletcher
• Harry
• Peter Lovelady
• Miles
• Jodie
• Nan Ainsworth
• Robin Keston
• Bryan Erskine
• Darren
• Jane Castell
• Irma Krafchin
• Janine Gilbert
• Sally Myers
• Tom Marsh
• Ashley Moby

Worldbuilding

• The Doctor reflects on people he is able to maintain friendship with through multiple incarnations, including Wilkin, the St Cedd's College porter, and "that dotty Welsh beekeeper", presumably Goronwy.
• The Brigadier considers video game characters the Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog.
• The Doctor likes Pink Floyd, especially the album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

Foods and beverages

• The Doctor buys a Lochie burger from Nessie's in Brighton and devours it in a single mouthful.

Notes

Original proof cover

• This novel was originally titled The Chains of Commands. After the cover proofs came back, people told Steve Cole that the title looked like a misprint. Gary Russell proposed new titles included Jeaux Sans Frontiers, Games Without Frontiers, and Business Unusual.
• Despite the novel being set in 1989, British involvement in the Gulf War is mentioned. In the real world, the Gulf War took place in 1990-1991.
• This serves as the Brigadier's introduction to this incarnation of the Doctor and functioned as the middle chapter of a trilogy which included the Third Doctor novel, The Scales of Injustice, and Evelyn Smythe's print introduction, Instruments of Darkness.
• The novel revolves around a "problem" depicted in The Ultimate Foe. There, the Doctor meets Mel for the first time. But that Mel is from the Doctor's personal future. Yet she departs the Time Lord trial room with him, despite the risk of meeting her younger self. The novel Time of Your Life had already explained that the Doctor took the Mel of The Ultimate Foe immediately back to her proper place in time (an event that is later chronicled in depth in the audio story The Wrong Doctors). In Business Unusual, writer Gary Russell gave us the obverse of The Ultimate Foe — namely the young Mel's first encounter with the Sixth Doctor. However, now it is the Doctor who's out of synch with Mel.
• Much as Gary Russell's follow-up novel, Instruments of Darkness, contradicted the Big Finish audio history of Evelyn Smythe, this novel treads heavily over the Big Finish history of the Brigadier. Both this novel and the audio story The Spectre of Lanyon Moor chronicle the first encounter between the Sixth Doctor and the Brigadier. However, since Spectre sees the Sixth Doctor explicitly express his surprise that the Brigadier recognises him, it may be that the Brigadier in Spectre deduced that this was a younger version of the Sixth Doctor to the one he had encountered in the past, with the Brigadier in Spectre and the Sixth Doctor in Business each acting as though they have not met the other 'before' in this incarnation to preserve the timeline and/or avoid awkward discussions.
• This novel incorporates elements of the backstory that John Nathan Turner wrote created for Mel which sees her meeting the Doctor by assisting him in thwarting an attempt by Master to disrupt the global stock market. This backstory ended up being ignored in Season 23 Mel doesn't recognise the Master when she sees him in The Ultimate Foe. In order to address this inconsistency, this version of their first meeting sees the Doctor meeting Mel after he disrupts the Master's plans (without he Master even being aware of it) and helping him in the aftermath of it by using her coding skills.

Continuity

• The Sixth Doctor is desperately trying to avoid contact with Mel, because he fears that if she meets him, she will somehow become his companion and he will be set on the path towards becoming the Valeyard. This would lead the Doctor to hide himself in the past in an attempt to settle down. (PROSE: The Spindle of Necessity)

External links

• Business Unusual at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Business Unusual at The Whoniverse
• The Cloister Library: Business Unusual
• Gary Russel's Strange Matter: Business Unusual, author notes via Internet Archive: Wayback Machine