Consequences is the third instalment in the Virgin Decalogs series - a series of books which each contain ten tales on a common theme. Although two more Decalog volumes would be published, this is the last to feature The Doctor. The next short stories featuring the Doctor would appear when BBC Books launched the Short Trips line a couple of years later.
In Consequences, we see the ramifications of some of the Doctor's actions throughout space and time and how, more often than not, a happy ending is not the only one.
Consequences is notable for featuring a short story written by Steven Moffat, who would go on to become a multi-Hugo Award-winning scriptwriter for the Doctor Who series and be named its showrunner as of 2010.
Publisher's summary
- 'The consequences of having the Doctor crashing around our universe can be colossal...The Doctor is a time traveller. Never forget that, because it is central to an understanding of what makes him so terribly dangerous. Most of us, in our tiny, individual ways are involved in the writing of our history. Only the Doctor is out there rewriting it.'
But even the Doctor may not see the threads that bind the universe together. Perhaps, instead, he cuts right through them. Who knows what events he sets in motion without even realising? Who knows what consequences may come back - or forward - to haunt him?
Ten completely new tales from the universe of Doctor Who. Seven Doctors' lives, inexorably linked in a breathtaking chain of consequences.
- taken from the jacket synopsis
Individual Stories
Notes
- Consequences varied slightly from the initial two Decalog books in that the stories contained within not only share a common theme, but are also a continuation of the same sequence of events, set unwittingly into motion by the Doctor himself. These events twist and turn throughout time and incarnations - so that while actions taken by the Second Doctor may directly influence the Fifth, so do actions taken by the Seventh influence the Fourth, and so on. Each story influences the next in the series.
- Keith R.A. DeCandido, author of "UNITed we Fall", is one of a handful of writers to have written original fiction for both the Doctor Who and Star Trek franchises.