Trace Memory (novel)

Trace Memory
Main character(s):	Captain Jack Harkness
Featuring:	Michael Bellini
Main enemy:	Vondrax Kenneth Valentine
Main setting:	Earth, Wales, Cardiff
Key crew
Publisher:	[[publisher::BBC Books]]
Writer:	David Llewellyn
Release details
Release number:	5
Release date:	6th March 2008
Format:	Hardcover Book, 256 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 978-1-846-07438-7

Publisher's Summary

Tiger Bay, Cardiff, 1953. A mysterious crate is brought into the docks on a Scandinavian cargo ship. Its destination: the Torchwood Institute. As the crate is offloaded by a group of local dockers, it explodes, killing all but one of them, a young Butetown lad called Michael Bellini.

Fifty-five years later, a radioactive source somewhere inside the Hub leads Torchwood to discover the same Michael Bellini, still young and dressed in his 1950s clothes, cowering in the vaults. They soon realise that each has encountered Michael before – as a child in Osaka, as a junior doctor, as a young police constable, as a new recruit to Torchwood One. But it’s Jack who remembers him best of all.

Michael’s involuntary time-travelling has something to do with a radiation-charged relic held inside the crate. And the Men in Bowler Hats are coming to get it back.

Featuring Captain Jack Harkness as played by John Barrowman, with Gwen Cooper, Owen Harper, Toshiko Sato and Ianto Jones as played by Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoki Mori and Gareth David-Lloyd, in the hit series created by Russell T Davies for BBC Television.

Characters

• Jack Harkness
• Gwen Cooper
• Owen Harper
• Toshiko Sato
• Ianto Jones
• Michael Bellini

References

• In separate flashback chapters, Gwen Cooper meets Andy Davidson for the first time and Ianto Jones is at Torchwood One with Lisa Hallett.
• Three past members of Torchwood are introduced in this novel. Lucy, Charles Cromwell and Kenneth Valentine.

Notes

The title of this novel is the same as the north american title for Another Code: Two Memories (DS Game).

Continuity

• Reference is made to the Sky Gypsy from TW: Out of Time, The Torchwood Estate in 1879 (DW: Tooth and Claw), the fairies of Roundstone Woods (TW: Small Worlds) and Albion Hospital in 1941 (DW: The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances).
• The events of DW: The Curse of Fenric, TW: To the Last Man and DW: The Unquiet Dead are also referenced by Hugo Faulkner.
• The explorer who discovers the Vondraxian Orb is referred to as "Nelson-Stanley", who may be Edgar Nelson-Stanley, the husband of the The Sarah Jane Adventures character Bea Nelson-Stanley who appears in SJA: Eye of the Gorgon.
• The device shown in Torchwood episode Ghost Machine is also mentioned.
• Jack states that the year is 2008.

Timeline

• Trace Memory occurs after: Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang
• Trace Memory occurs before: Reset

External Links

• Trace Memory at the Doctor Who Reference Guide