No Future (novel)

No Future
Doctor:	[[doctor::Seventh Doctor]]
Companion(s):	Ace Bernice Summerfield
Main enemy:	Mortimus The Vardans
Main setting:	Trafalgar Square, London, 1976 London, 1976 UNIT Training Facility, 1976 Glastonbury Festival of Performing Arts, 1993 Varda, 1976
Key crew
Publisher:	[[publisher::Virgin Books]]
Writer:	Paul Cornell
Release details
Release number:	23
Release date:	February, 1994
Format:	Paperback Book, 272 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-426-20409-3
Virgin New Adventures
← Previous	Conundrum
Next →	Tragedy Day

No Future is the twenty-third novel in the Virgin New Adventures series and was written by Paul Cornell. It features the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice. This was the final novel in the story arc of alternate universes. It also featured a return to the 1970s "UNIT era" with UNIT, the Brigadier, Benton and Yates.

Publisher's summary

'This time, anarchy's real. There are power cuts and Wilson's resignation, a great upheaval of unease. But now there's real fear too. Real panic. And that's not how it's supposed to be.'

Somebody has been toying with the Doctor's past, testing him, threatening him, leading him on a chase that has brought the TARDIS to London in 1976 -- where reality has been altered once again.

Black Star terrorists foment riots in the streets. The Queen barely escapes assassination. A fearful tension is rising. Something is going to happen. Something bad.

Meanwhile, Benny's the lead singer in a punk band. Ace can't talk to her or the Doctor without an argument starting, so she's made murderous plans of her own. The Doctor's alone -- he doesn't know who his enemy is, and even the Brigadier has disowned him.

As usual, it's up to the Doctor to protect the world. And he can't even protect himself.

Plot

to be added

Characters

• The Seventh Doctor
• Ace
• Bernice Summerfield
• Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
• Mike Yates
• Danny Pain (aka Danny Paprpski)
• Mortimus
• Captain Alex Pike
• Corporal Clare Tennant

References

Books

• The Garvond is mentioned in the Red Book of Gallifrey.

Culture

• The Doctor first heard Benny's voice at a party in Finchley.
• Black Star is a group of anarchists. It developed from the "Angry Brigade". It was created through Mortimus's time interference.
  • Black Star bombed Big Ben's face in 1976.
• Professor X is a television series that is broadcast between Bruce Forsyth and Basil Brush. Professor X travels in a "TASID" which is disguised as a post box. According to Benny, it was "like a pantomime version of the TARDIS!".

The Doctor

• The Doctor erases the Brigadier's memory just by touching him.
• The Doctor mentions having killed the Master.

Individuals

• Bernice calls the Brigadier "Sir", despite hating being brought up in the military.
• Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart dies but is brought back by a "wish" granted by the Chronovore Artemis.
• Mike Yates believes in Black Star's goals and has doubts about renewing his UNIT status.
• Yates also knows of Hamlet Macbeth.
• Ace uses the psudonym "Dorothy Moose".

Music

• Bernice is the lead vocalist in Plasticine, she also writes some of the music.

Planets

• Ace was once marooned on an ice planet.

Politics

• Shirley Williams is Prime Minister of Britain.

Species

• Artemis the Chronovore is released by Ace.
• The Vardan Mediascape was created by the Vardans using the same technology as that which generated the Land of Fiction.
  • The Mediasphere grants access to it.
• Mortimus trapped Artemis using the blood of races whose destinies have been altered by the Time Lords: Minyans, Silurians, Daleks, humans and Mandrels.
• Mortimus used Artemis to give Morka the power to kill the (alternate version) of the Doctor, resurrect the Garvond, empower Huitzilin, and restore the Land of Fiction. He also used her to release the home planet of the Vardans from the time loop that the Doctor trapped it in following their attempt to invade Gallifrey.
• Vardans are ridiculed as the only race to be outwitted by the Sontarans.

Religion

• Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart is into Buddhism. He was introduced to the Eight Fold Path by the Doctor. He uses his meditation techniques to combat the Vardan mind control.

TARDISes

• Danny Pain saves the world by throwing a piece of the Monk's TARDIS (disguised as a desk and the papers inside) out of the window and signing a piece he then gives the Doctor.
• The Doctor disguises the TARDIS as Nelson's Column by materialising around the actual monument.
• The Doctor deliberately breaks the chameleon circuit on the TARDIS, fixing it into the shape of a police box.

Technology

• Mortimus uses the alias Robert Bertram to run Priory a record company and also other related companies and invents CDs a decade early.
• Mortimus supplies UNIT with virtual reality technology and is appointed scientific advisor.

Theories and Concepts

• Death and Time are referred to as Eternals.
• During a dream Death tells Ace all Eternals have a champion.
• Mortimus has taken on the mantle of Death's champion.
• The Doctor's future self broke the First Law of Time by leaving himself messages.

Time Lords

• Mortimus thinks he gains Ace as an ally.

UNIT

• UNIT Broadsword is the intelligence wing and Special Ops division of UNIT.
• UN Resolution 2245 allows UNIT to use "ultimate force" against hostile extra-terrestrials.
• Spontaneous human combustion is ten more times likely to happen to a UNIT operative than a normal person.

Notes

• This is the final story in Alternate Universe arc.
• This novel is the last one to feature the TARDIS (taken from the alternate Earth in Blood Heat) with a functioning chameleon circuit. Near the novel's end the Doctor smashes it with a hammer.
• This novel had a working title of; Anarchy in the UK.
• The title is a reference to the Sex Pistols' song "God Save the Queen".

Continuity

• PROSE: Blood Heat, The Dimension Riders, The Left-Handed Hummingbird and Conundrum are the previous novels in the Alternate Universe Arc.
• TV: Battlefield is chronologically (for the Doctor) the last time he met the Brigadier. However, this story is in his own personal future.
• TV: The Invasion of Time was the first story to feature the Vardans. A single Vardan is mentioned in Return of the Living Dad as being a survivor of this invasion attempt.
• Following TV: The Daleks' Master Plan, the Monk is carrying a degree of baggage. His previous appearance and previous meeting with the Doctor was in this story.
• The memory blocks the Doctor puts in place in the Brigadier's mind are removed in PROSE: Happy Endings.
• Danny Pain and the rest of Plasticine reappear (a bit older) in Happy Endings.
• Big Ben is attacked again in TV: Aliens of London.
• Bernice notes that the Vardans "the only race in history to be outwitted by the intellectual might of the Sontarans." (TV: The Invasion of Time)
• The Doctor would next encounter the Monk in the Abbey of Kells in Ireland in 1006 during his eighth incarnation, by which time the Monk had himself regenerated at least once. (AUDIO: The Book of Kells)

External links

• Prelude to No Future as published in DWM
• No Future at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: No Future at The Whoniverse
• Doctor Who Bewildering Reference Guide to No Future