The Face of the Enemy (novel)

The Face of the Enemy
Main character(s):	The Brigadier, The Master
Featuring:	Ian, Barbara, Yates, Benton, Osgood, Bell
Main enemy:	The Conclave, Republican Security Forces
Main setting:	Earth, 1970s
Key crew
Publisher:	BBC Books
Writer:	David A. McIntee
Release details
Release number:	7
Release date:	5 January 1998
Format:	Paperback Book; 22 Chapters, 288 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-563-40580-5
BBC Past Doctor Adventures
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The Face of the Enemy was the seventh novel in the BBC Past Doctor Adventures series. It was written by David A. McIntee, released 5 January 1998 and featured the Master.

It was the first full length novel published by BBC books which does not feature the Doctor as the main character or in the story at all. It features primarily the Master in the lead role, whilst also featuring two previous companions, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright.

Publisher's summary

The Doctor and Jo have gone off in the TARDIS, leaving the Brigadier and UNIT facing a deadly mystery — and a moral dilemma...

Robbery and murder are on the increase in Britain as disputes between underworld gangs escalate into open warfare on the streets. The Master seems inextricably linked to the chaos — despite the fact he is safely under lock and key.

Meanwhile UNIT is called in when a plane missing in strange circumstances is rediscovered — contaminated with radiation and particle damage that cannot possibly have occurred on Earth.

As the mystery deepens, what little light they can shed on the matter leads the Brigadier to believe that with the Doctor away, Earth's only hope may lie with its greatest enemy...

Plot

to be added

Characters

• The Master
• Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
• Captain Mike Yates
• Sergeant Benton
• Ian Chesterton
• Barbara Wright Chesterton
• Koschei
• Sergeant Osgood
• Corporal Bell
• Harry Sullivan
• Bennetts
• Beresford
• Carswell
• Frederick Jackson
• Detective Inspector George Boucher
• Company Leader George Boucher
• Joseph Barron
• Marianne Kyle
• Rob Thorpe
• Ross Grant
• Voshinin
• Williams

Worldbuilding

Individuals

• Ian and Barbara's son John is in primary school.
• Ian and Barbara eloped on the first anniversary of their returning to Earth.
• Ian and Barbara required treatment from their exposure to radiation on Skaro.
• Ian and Barbara are writing a journal to leave for Susan in 2167.
• Barbara teaches history at a local comprehensive school.
• The Brigadier meets Surgeon-Lieutenant Harry Sullivan for the first time.
• The Brigadier is now divorced from his wife.
• The Doctor has tutored the Brigadier in how to disable a Time Lord, just in case someone needs to stop the Master again.
• Jo and Benton are not fans of Woody Allen. Benton prefers the Carry On films.

The Master

• Following his arrest in Devil's End, the Master is held in Aylesbury Grange Detention Centre.
• The Master is prepared to work with UNIT as long as it benefits him.
• He takes action against the government of the Republic of Great Britain because of how they treated his parallel self.

Inferno Earth individuals

• Koschei still works for the Celestial Intervention Agency with Ailla, who has already died at the hands of the Conclave and the Republican Security Forces.
• Koschei was tortured to the point where he has run out of regenerations.
• The Conclave has access to space travel thanks to studying Bannerman ships.

Foods and beverages

• The Master drinks absinthe and brandy.

Notes

• This story occurs concurrent with the Doctor and Jo's visit to Peladon in the television story The Curse of Peladon.
• This story re-examines the events of the television story Inferno, and shows the after-effects of the "Inferno Project" at Eastchester on the alternate Earth which, contrary to the Doctor's assumption in that story, has not disintegrated, but has been devastated beyond recovery.
• The Master's TARDIS is in the form of a black Rolls-Royce limousine (with darkened windows) for much of the story. It takes the appearance of a thick bulkhead door when it materialises aboard HMS Redoubt. When the Master sends his TARDIS to the cavern of the church at Devil's End, it assumes the form of the Stone of Sacrifice; he is depicted recovering it in the novel The Eight Doctors.
• After dying in a road accident, George Boucher is taken to the afterlife by his nephew Rob Thorpe, who had been killed earlier in the story. Making The Face of the Enemy one of a small number of officially licenced Doctor Who stories to explicitly touch on, if subtly, the concept of an afterlife with no scientific or pseudoscientific explanation. While it could be rationalised as Boucher hallucinating in his final moments, just seconds earlier he was still lucid enough to attempt to send a message to UNIT about the activities of the parallel Earth infiltrators.

Continuity

• Jo recalls her previous trip in the TARDIS to Uxarieus on 23 March 2472. (TV: Colony in Space)
• Ian and Barbara returned to Earth on 26 June 1965. (TV: The Chase, PROSE: The Time Travellers)
• Ian and Barbara are married. (PROSE: Goth Opera, COMIC: Hunters of the Burning Stone)
• Ian and Barbara recall leaving Shoreditch in November 1963, (TV: An Unearthly Child) their first encounter with the Daleks on Skaro and the trouble caused by the supposedly damaged fluid link, (TV: The Daleks) the search for the fault in the Doctor's TARDIS, (TV: The Edge of Destruction) the sandstorm in the Gobi Desert, (TV: Marco Polo) the Voords, (TV: The Keys of Marinus) the Aztecs, (TV: The Aztecs) flying in rockets in the 28th century, (TV: The Sensorites) being imprisoned in the Conciergerie Prison during the French Revolution in July 1794, (TV: The Reign of Terror) being imprisoned in Salem, (PROSE: The Witch Hunters) Robomen, (TV: The Dalek Invasion of Earth) the city of Bikugih on Venus in 3,000,000 BC, (PROSE: Venusian Lullaby) lecherous Romans, (TV: The Romans) the Zarbi (TV: The Web Planet) and jumping time tracks. (TV: The Space Museum)
• Ian is aware of the Tzun from his time working with NASA and eventually recalls that the Master was said to be involved with them. (PROSE: First Frontier)
• The Master was remanded in Stangmoor Prison prior to his trial. (PROSE: Freedom)
• The Brigadier vaguely remembers attending a briefing on the Chameleons, whose attempt to invade Earth on 20 July 1966 was foiled by the Second Doctor. (TV: The Faceless Ones)
• Marianne Kyle is aware of the Master's former aliases of Colonel Masters and Professor Emil Keller. (TV: Terror of the Autons, The Mind of Evil)
• In the parallel universe, the Republican Security Forces of the Republic of Great Britain battled a group of Bannermen, from whom they obtained artificial gravity and fast drive technology, in Wales in 1959. (TV: Delta and the Bannermen)
• In the parallel universe, it was the Master's counterpart Koschei who defeated the Robot Yeti and the Great Intelligence earlier in the 1970s. (TV: The Web of Fear)
• While he was posted at the Faslane submarine base, Harry was occasionally visited by Esther Bland, the sister of his close friend Teddy Bland. (PROSE: Harry Sullivan's War)
• Anne Travers is now working at Whitehall. (TV: The Web of Fear, PROSE: Millennial Rites)
• The Brigadier mentions Professor Rachel Jensen. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks)

External links

• The Face of the Enemy at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: The Face of the Enemy at The Whoniverse
• The Cloister Library: The Face of the Enemy
• Doctor Who Bewildering Reference Guide to The Face of the Enemy, with notes from David A. McIntee