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Publisher's summary
'Someone here has been playing with time, Ace. Like playing with fire, only worse - you get burnt before you've lit the match.'
Abandoning a holiday in Oxford, the Doctor travels to Space Station Q4, where something is seriously wrong. Ghostly soldiers from the future watch from the shadows among the dead. Soon, the Doctor is trapped in the past, Ace is fighting for her life, and Bernice is uncovering deceit among the college cloisters.
What is the connection with a beautiful assassin in a black sports car? How can the Doctor's time machine be in Oxford when it is on board the space station? And what secrets are held by the library of the invaded TARDIS?
The Doctor quickly discovers he is facing another time-shattering enigma: a creature which he thought he had destroyed, and which it seems he is powerless to stop.
Characters
- The Doctor
- His current body is aging rapidly, the first time this has happened since The Tenth Planet
- Likes almond slices.
- Ace
- Still doesn't trust the Doctor.
- Bernice Summerfield
- Lost her load of archaeological finds in the Doctor's original TARDIS.
- Professor James Rafferty
- Garvond
- "The President" (aka Epsilon Delta, The President of St. Matthew's College)
- A Time Lord from the Ancient Time.
- He left Gallifrey inspired by stories of The Master, The Rani and especially The Doctor.
- Captain Romulus Terrin
- Darius Cheynor
- Second in command to Romulus Terrin.
- Lt. Albion Strakk
- Gets hit with a time beam giving him 10 years to live.
- Amanda
- Cybernetic android built by the President.
References
- The Doctor first read about the Garvond in The Worshipful and Ancient Law of Gallifrey.
- The Doctor once thought about retiring to Florana.
- The TARDIS (from the alternate world) doesn't entirely trust the Doctor.
- Professor Rafferty knows the Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Ian Chesterton and Professor Travers, and is also an old friend of the Doctor's.
- Amanda mentions; the Zygon Gambit, the Shoreditch Incident, and the events of Auderly House.
- The Doctor mentions Skagra.
Notes
- This is the second novel in the Meddling Monk Arc.
- A prelude to this novel was published in DWM Issue 206.
Continuity
- The events mentioned by Amanda correspond to: DW: Terror of the Zygons (The Zygon Gambit), Remembrance of the Daleks (The Shoreditch Incident) and Day of the Daleks (Auderly House).
- Darius Cheynor reappears in NA: Infinite Requiem.
Timeline
- This story takes place after DWM: Final Genesis
- This story takes place before NA: The Left-Handed Hummingbird