Byzantium! (novel)

Byzantium! was the forty-fourth BBC Past Doctor Adventures novel. It featured the First Doctor, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki Pallister. Set at the beginning of The Romans as the TARDIS falls off the cliff, this is the first full length story that features Vicki as a companion.

Byzantium!

Doctor:

First Doctor

Companion(s):

Ian, Barbara, Vicki

Main setting:

Byzantium, 64; London, 1973

Key crew

Publisher:

BBC Books

Writer:

Keith Topping

Cover by:

Black Sheep

Release details

Release number:

44

Release date:

2 July 2001

Format:

Paperback Book, 36 Chapters, 283 Pages

ISBN:

ISBN 0-563-53836-8

BBC Past Doctor Adventures
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Publisher's summary

"Life is cheap in Byzantium. Life is cheap everywhere that the Romans are."

Byzantium. The imperial city — rising dramatically, as if by a trick of the light, from the peninsula of the Bosphorus and the Black Sea. Its domes and towers and minarets overlook a place of intrigue, lust, power, oppression, resistance and murder.

Romans, Greeks, Zealots, Pharisees ... all meet in the market squares of the great city, but mutual loathing and suspicion are rife.

Into this cauldron, the Doctor and his companions arrive, expecting to view the splendour and civilisation of the Roman Empire. But events cast them into a deadly maelstrom of social and political upheaval. In the eye of the hurricane they must each face the possibility of being stranded, alone and far from their own times, in an alien culture bunker.

Chapter Titles

Prologue: Once in a Lifetime

Episode One: LXIV, And All That...

Chapter One: Direction, Reaction, Creation
Chapter Two: There Are Seven Levels
Chapter Three: Through the Past, Darkly
Chapter Four: Naming All the Stars
Chapter Five: Babylon's Burning
Chapter Six: The People Who Grinned Themselves to Death
Chapter Seven: Cephalic Symbol
Chapter Eight: Right Here, Right Now

Episode Two: Four Sides to the Circle

Chapter Nine: The Culture Bunker, Part One — Heliocentric
Chapter Ten: The Culture Bunker, Part Two — Spies Like Us
Chapter Eleven: The Culture Bunker, Part Three - Going Underground
Chapter Twelve: The Culture Bunker, Part Four — Everybody's Been Burned Before
Chapter Thirteen: The Enemy of My Enemy Is My Friend
Chapter Fourteen: He Not Busy Being Born is Busy Dying

Episode Three: Window Shopping for a New Crown of Thorns

Chapter Fifteen: Pale Shelter
Chapter Sixteen: True Faith and Brotherhood
Chapter Seventeen: The Culture Bunker, Part Five — How Soon Is Now?
Chapter Eighteen: Searching for the Young Soul Rebels
Chapter Nineteen: Some Call It God-Core
Chapter Twenty: What Did Your Last Slave Die Of?

Episode Four: Infamy, Infamy, They've All Got It In For Me

Chapter Twenty-One: Perfume (AU on You)
Chapter Twenty-Two: The Culture Bunker, Part Six - Jehovahkill
Chapter Twenty-Three: You're History
Chapter Twenty-Four: Rust Never Sleeps
Chapter Twenty-Five: Give 'Em Enough Rope
Chapter Twenty-Six: Jigsaw Feeling (A Poem for Byzantium)

Episode Five: Four Lone Ends

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Culture Bunker, Part Seven — Losing My Religion
Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Passage of Time Leaving Empty Lives Waiting to Be Filled
Chapter Twenty-Nine: One Man Clapping
Chapter Thirty: Coping
Chapter Thirty-One: The Culture Bunker, Part Eight — Just Another Greek Tragedy
Chapter Thirty-Two: A New Dawn Fades
Chapter Thirty-Three: Here's Where The Story Ends
Chapter Thirty-Four: ...And Miles to Go Before We Sleep
Epilogue: Two Thousand Light Years from Home

Plot

to be added

Characters

References

The Doctor

The Doctor has been travelling in the TARDIS for sixty years, making him two hundred ninety-six during this story.
The Doctor has visited Rome, Jerusalem and Antioch and witnessed both the debut performance of King Lear and the assassination of US President William McKinley.
The Doctor was on the field of battle in the Battle of Passchendaele during World War I.
"Trois Gymnopédies" is being played in a tavern on a musical instrument the Doctor has not seen before.

Individuals

Barbara compares Vicki to Susan Foreman.
The ship which transported Vicki to Dido left Earth in 2493.
Vicki has never heard of Plato, Socrates or Archimedes, though she is vaguely aware of Charles Dickens.
Maximus tells Ian that Shalmaneser II failed in battle because his army had wicker shields.
Caesar Tiberius succeeded Augustus in AD 14.

Notes

This book is also available as an ebook and from the Amazon Kindle store.
The novel reveals that Vicki's last name is Pallister. It was never mentioned in any televised episode.
Vicki states that her mother wanted to call her Tanni, but her father preferred Vicki. This is a sly reference to the fact that the new companion's name in TV: The Rescue was originally going to be Tanni.
There is a flash-forward scene which reveals Ian and Barbara will have a son, John Alydon Ganatus Chesterton, by 1973. TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith and COMIC: Hunters of the Burning Stone would later confirm that Ian and Barbara will someday marry.

Continuity

Vicki refers to her recent rescue from Dido in 2493. (TV: The Rescue)
Ian adapts the story of the Daleks and the Thals to entertain an audience. (TV: The Daleks)
The Doctor seems to be aware that Vicki will eventually become Cressida in circa 1200 BC. (TV: The Myth Makers)
Barbara mentions that she learned her lesson about trying to change history in Mexico. (TV: The Aztecs)
By 1973, Ian has befriended Greg Sutton. (TV: Inferno)
Gaius Calaphilus fought "Boudica's wretched Iceni" in Roman Britain in 60. During his fourth incarnation, the Doctor and his companion Leela would encounter Boudica during her revolt against the occupying Roman forces in Britain. (AUDIO: The Wrath of the Iceni)

External links