Birthright (novel)
Publisher's summary
'I feel like a pawn in a blasted chess game, Ace.' 'I know what you mean. Trouble is, they keep changing the chess-players.'
The TARDIS has died. Stranded in early twentieth-century London, Bernice can only stand and watch as it slowly disintegrates.
In the East End a series of grisly murders has been committed. Is this the work of the ghostly Springheel Jack or, as Bernice suspects something even more sinister?
In a tiny shop in Bloomsbury, the master of a grand order of sorcerers is nearing the end of a seven-hundred year quest for a fabled magic wand.
And on a barren world in the far-distant future the Queen of a dying race pleads for the help of an old hermit named Muldwych, while Ace leads a group of guerrillas in a desperate struggle against their alien oppressors.
These events are related. Perhaps the Doctor knows how. But the Doctor has gone away.
Characters
- Ace
- Gets stuck in 22,000.
- Took a trip with the Doctor to Africa 'a long time ago'. The Charrl's hive resembles Termite mounds which she saw there.
- Bernice Summerfield
- Gets stuck in 1909.
- Can't read Cyrillic.
- She gets the flu.
- the Charrl
- Queen Ch'tizz
- Mikhail Vladimir Popov
- Returns for a brief cameo in Happy Endings
- Jared Khan
- Born 700 years ago.
- Margaret Waterfield
- Is Edward Waterfield's sister and Victoria Waterfield's paternal aunt.
- Is murdered by Kahn's thugs.
- Muldwych
- Is most likely the 'Merlin' incarnation of the Doctor.
- Got stranded on Antýkhon for 1,000 years.
References
- Antýkhon turns out to be a future Earth.
- The Brotherhood of the New Dawn believes man has become decadent and evil.
- Springheel Jack similar to Jack the Ripper, except springheel is a Charrl which has emerged through a time portal.
- The Great Divide a temporal portal from 22,000ish to 1909.
- The Time Vector Generator is an ebony bar that links the exterior and interior dimensions of a TARDIS.
- The Migration the Charrl's movement from Anty'kon to Earth.
- Channel Tunnel still survives in 22,000.
- The Charrl created 300 of the 700 Wonders of the Universe.
- New Skaro is mentioned as the new home planet of the Daleks.
Notes
- This is one of several Virgin New Adventures which were adapted by Big Finish Productions for their first season of Bernice Summerfield audio dramas; Birthright (audio drama).
- This novel almost does not feature the Doctor.
- A prelude to this novel was published in DWM Issue 203.
- The jacket illustration for this book was incorrectly reproduced as a full-colour page in Doctor Who: Timeframe: The Illustrated History. A second edition and paperback corrected this error.
Continuity
- This novel runs parallel with the events of NA: Iceberg, with the Doctor being absent for the majority of Birthright. This was the first "Doctor-lite" novel under the New Adventures banner (Target Books previously published two non-Doctor original novels, Harry Sullivan's War and Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma), and in some ways was a rehearsal for the later Doctor-less series of novels featuring Benny that began in 1996.
- The Charrl and Muldwych make an appearance in NA: Happy Endings.
- The Charrl are to said to have created the 300 (of the 700) wonders of the universe, first mentioned in DW: Death to the Daleks.
- The Doctor also encountered a renamed future Earth in DW The Mysterious Planet.
