Birthright is the seventeenth novel in the Virgin New Adventures series. It was written by Nigel Robinson, published in 1993, and featured the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Benny.
- You may wish to consult
Birthright (disambiguation)for other, similarly-named pages.
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.
Plot
to be added
Characters
References
Crime
- Springheel Jack is similar to Jack the Ripper, except Springheel is a Charrl who has emerged through a time portal.
Cults
- The Brotherhood of the New Dawn believes man has become decadent and evil.
Diseases and illnesses
- Bernice contracts the flu.
Individuals
- Jared Khan was born seven hundred years ago.
- Margaret Waterfield is Edward Waterfield's sister and Victoria Waterfield's paternal aunt. She is murdered by Kahn's thugs.
- Muldwych is most likely the Merlin incarnation of the Doctor. He has been stranded on Antýkhon for a thousand years.
Languages
- Bernice can't read Cyrillic.
Locations
- Channel Tunnel still survives in 22,000.
- Ace took a trip with the Doctor to Africa "a long time ago". The hive of the Charrl resembles termite mounds which she saw there.
Planets
- Antýkhon turns out to be a future Earth.
- New Skaro is mentioned as the new home planet of the Daleks.
TARDIS
- The Time Vector Generator is an ebony bar that links the exterior and interior dimensions of a TARDIS.
Theories and concepts
- The Charrl created three hundred of the 700 Wonders of the Universe.
- The Migration is the movement of the Charrl from Antýkhon to Earth.
Time travel
- The Great Divide, a temporal portal from approximately 22,000 to 1909.
- Ace gets transported to the year 22,000.
- Bernice gets transported to 1909.
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 story).
- This novel almost does not feature the Seventh Doctor.
- A prelude to this novel was published in DWM 203.
- The jacket illustration for this book was incorrectly reproduced reversed 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 PROSE: 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 PROSE: Happy Endings.
- The Charrl are to said to have created the three hundred (of the seven hundred) wonders of the universe, first mentioned in TV: Death to the Daleks.
- The Doctor also encountered a renamed future Earth in TV The Mysterious Planet.
- Mikhail Vladamir Popov returns for a brief cameo in Happy Endings as one of Bernice's wedding guests.
- The Doctor's eagle pedestal speaks to Benny. (TV: The Pirate Planet)