Evolution (novel)

Evolution
Doctor:	Fourth Doctor
Companion(s):	Sarah
Main enemy:	Percival Ross, Tobias Breckinridge
Main setting:	Dartmoor, 1880 Andromeda Galaxy
Key crew
Publisher:	Virgin Books
Writer:	John Peel
Cover by:	Alister Pearson
Release details
Release number:	2
Release date:	15 September 1994
Format:	Paperback Book; 13 Chapters, 256 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-426-20422-0
Virgin Missing Adventures
← Previous	Goth Opera
Next →	Venusian Lullaby

You may wish to consult Evolution (disambiguation) for other, similarly-named pages.

Evolution was the second novel in the Virgin Missing Adventures series. It was written by John Peel and featured the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith.

Publisher's summary

"Someone is tampering with the fabric of the human cell," the Doctor said darkly, "perverting its secrets to his own dark purposes."

Sarah wants to meet her fellow journalist Rudyard Kipling, and the Doctor sets the co-ordinates for England, Earth, in the Victorian Age. As usual, the TARDIS materialises in not quite the right place, and the time travellers find themselves pursued across Devon moorland by a huge feral hound.

Children have gone missing; at the local boarding school, the young Rudyard Kipling has set up search parties. Lights have been seen beneath the waters of the bay, and fishermen have been pulled from their boats and mutilated. Graves have been robbed of their corpses. Something is going on, and Arthur Conan Doyle, the ship's doctor from a recently berthed arctic whaler, is determined to investigate.

The Doctor and Doyle join forces to uncover a macabre scheme to interfere with human evolution — and both Sarah and Kipling face a terrifying transmogrification.

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Fourth Doctor
• Sarah Jane Smith
• Rudyard Kipling
• Arthur Conan Doyle
• Sir Edward Fulbright
• Sir Alexander Cromwell
• Josh Anders
• Ben Tolliver
• Edmund Ross
• Abercrombie
• Percival Ross
• Billy
• Tobias Breckinridge
• Captain John Gray
• Roger Bridewell
• Alice Fulbright
• Lucy
• Cherry
• Brogan
• Raintree
• Jen Walker
• Jack Lamb
• Bernard Faversham
• Jim Brackley
• Martinson
• Jack Kinney

Worldbuilding

• Sarah swims in the "tub" in the "bathroom" of the Doctor's TARDIS. The merchildren also stay in the "tub" on the trip to Andromeda.
• Colonel Ross claims to be a special agent working directly under the command and authority of Her Majesty Queen Victoria and it is his job to investigate those matters that lie outside of the conventional.
• The Doctor can speak fluent dolphin.

Notes

• The Doctor is the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes. Specifically referenced are Holmes's choice of dress (the Doctor wears a deerstalker cap and long cloak), his methods of deductive reasoning and close reading of footprints to determine events at a crime scene. The outfit the Doctor is seen wearing on the cover of this story is also the same one worn by him in the television story The Talons of Weng-Chiang.
• The relationship between the Doctor and Doyle, himself a ship's surgeon, parallels that of Holmes and Dr Watson.
• There are numerous references to The Hound of the Baskervilles, especially in the early parts of the novel, concerning a great, dog-like beast claiming victims on the moors.
• The novel All-Consuming Fire establishes that while Sherlock Holmes is a real character in this universe, the name "Sherlock Holmes" is a pseudonym invented by Doyle to hide his true identity. This novel goes on to speculate that Doyle based some of the fictional Holmes' characteristics on the Fourth Doctor, in order to further obscure the detective's true identity. The TV story The Snowmen would later indicate that Holmes and his adventures were based on Madame Vastra.
• A crashed Rutan ship is key to the back-story. In the personal timeline of the Doctor, Evolution takes place before the television story Horror of Fang Rock, which is also about events set in motion by a Rutan crashing in an isolated part of the English coast.
• Queen Victoria is said to have secret agents who investigate unusual occurrences. This story was written twelve years before the television episode Tooth and Claw, so any intentional reference to the Torchwood Institute is impossible.
• This story is set between The Brain of Morbius and The Seeds of Doom.

Continuity

• Sarah refers to the planet Karn and her encounter with Morbius. (TV: The Brain of Morbius ^[+]Loading...["The Brain of Morbius (TV story)"])
• The Doctor mentions Metebelis III and Argolis. (TV: Planet of the Spiders ^[+]Loading...["Planet of the Spiders (TV story)"], The Leisure Hive ^[+]Loading...["The Leisure Hive (TV story)"])
• Sarah compares the moors to Karn and observes the effect that adventure has had on the Doctor's mood. (TV: The Brain of Morbius ^[+]Loading...["The Brain of Morbius (TV story)"])
• Sarah refers to her first trip in the TARDIS to 13th century England and her encounter with Sutekh in 1911. (TV: The Time Warrior ^[+]Loading...["The Time Warrior (TV story)"], Pyramids of Mars ^[+]Loading...["Pyramids of Mars (TV story)"])
• The Doctor would again encounter someone experimenting with human evolution. (TV: Ghost Light ^[+]Loading...["Ghost Light (TV story)"])

External links

• Evolution at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Evolution at The Whoniverse
• The Cloister Library: Evolution