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Publisher’s Summary
The TARDIS lands in the Scottish capital, Edinburgh, during Easter 2003. The city is almost at a standstill, its public services close to collapse and its people terrorised by a bombing campaign.
Within hours one of the Doctor’s friends is caught in a deadly explosion, while another appears on television confessing to the murder of twelve people. The TARDIS is stolen by forces intent on learning its secrets. When the Doctor tries to investigate, his efforts are hampered by crippling chest pains.
Someone is manipulating events to suppress humanity’s development — but how and why? The trail leads to London where a cabal pushes the world ever closer to catastrophe. Who is the prisoner being held in the Tower of London? Could he or she hold the key to saving mankind?
The Doctor must choose between saving his friends or saving Earth in the past, present and future. But the closer he gets to the truth, the worse his condition becomes...
Characters
- The Doctor
- Fitz Kreiner
- Gets beaten repetitively during a police interrogation.
- Anji Kapoor
- Anji falls victim of extreme racism in the alternate Earth; British Empire.
- Sabbath
Plot
The Doctor arrives in Edinburgh 2003, and Anji decides it's close enough to home for her to leave the Doctor and Fitz after accidentally being caught up in events in the previous two novels when she originally departed the TARDIS. However, the TARDIS has landed in alternate reality where some key figures have been murdered through history preventing the world developing past the 1950's.
The Doctor, having trouble with his hears heads off to the library, Fitz notices a Red haired woman in a cafe nearby and attempts to use his womanly charms on her, while Anji gets her bearings to find her friend Mitch who she hoped would offer her a place to stay and some money to get back to London. Anji heads to his place of work to find it never existed, and while questioning numerous people and encountering much prejudice from people, concludes that something is amiss. She heads to the train station to try and buy a ticket to London and again encountering prejudices, and discovering that the ruler of Britain is a King and there is no such thing as a computer or credit card, and was told she was not allowed to sit in first class but in luggage beause some of the other people would be offended by her colour and that many believe she'd smell of curry. Given that she could no longer buy a ticket due to "foreign" currency, she headed off to the cafe to meet with Fitz, where again they both were met with prejudice- Anji for sitting down in the cafe and for Fitz to be talking to a "servant" as if they were friends. Suddenly a bomb went off and Fitz was held accountable for the bombing and sentence to death without a fair trial and abused and beating until he confessed he had planted the bomb and on live tv condemned (reluctantly) the Doctor and Anji as terrorists.
Meanwhile Anji was pulled out of the rubble and taken to hospital where the Security Service wanted to take Anji as part of her crime as a terrorist. The Matron refused to let them take her, but the Matron locked Anji in a room and refused to speak to her for being a terrorist.
The Doctor on the other hand had gone to a meeting with a friend he had made in the library called Hannah. He attended a meeting with some people who wished for freedom of speech and to be able to think for themselves and wanted out of the police state when the meeting was interrupted by the news broadcast showing Fitz condemning the Doctor as a terrorist. He was ejected along with Hannah who was accusing of conspiring with terrorists. While both had headed off to find Anji (having gathered that Anji was with Fitz at the bombing), the meeting at the Pub was discovered by the Security Service and all people in the Pub were shot dead for sitting with terrorists. The Doctor had searched numerous hospitals for Anji with Hannah and eventually found Anji and got her out just before the Security Service found her.
All three then headed to London where Fitz was now being held in the Tower of London along with Alan Turing. The three attempted a rescue attempt and succeeded but turned out Hannah was working for the Security Service and was shot dead. Sabbath of that reality turned out to be behind the removal of major players in history but was not the same Sabbath as the one The Doctor knew, as he was unable to travel back in time only forward.
References
- The TARDIS is ‘tortured’ and through their link the Doctor is affected, and hears its screams.
Notes
- This novel takes place in an alternate universe on an Earth where an alternate Sabbath had murdered several key figures preventing the creation of the computer.
- Second Novel to feature Alan Turing.
Continuity
Alan Turing makes an appearance in this novel, last seen in The Turing Test. However this version of Alan Turing is part of a parallel universe where he survived to live to 91 in 2003 instead of committing suicide in 1954.
Events of Hope are mentioned