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Set Piece (novel) is the thirty fifth New Adventures novel. It features the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice Summerfield. This is the last novel to feature Ace as an ongoing companion in the Virgin New Adventures novel range. She reappears as a "guest character" in Happy Endings and Lungbarrow. Set Piece was the second New Adventures novel written by Kate Orman, she went on to pen three further New Adventure novels and co-write a fourth (So Vile a Sin). She has also written for several other Doctor Who universe ranges.
Publisher's summary
Dead. He was dead. How the hell was she supposed to do CPR on a man with two hearts?
There's a rip in the fabric of space and time. Passenger ships are disappearing from the interstellar traffic lanes. In an attempt to find out who's behind the disappearances, the Doctor and Ace allow themselves to be captured. But when Bernice's rescue attempt goes terribly wrong, the time travellers find themselves scattered throughout history.
Ace, stranded in Ancient Egypt, struggles to survive in an environment as alien as a distant planet: the Earth 3,000 years before she was born. She manages to find employment as a nobleman's bodyguard. And then she comes face to face with the metal horrors which have pursued her through time - the creatures she saw kill the Doctor.
Plot
to be added
Characters
References
The Doctor
- The Doctor has his 1000th birthday.
- The Doctor knows how to speak French (separate from the TARDIS).
- The Doctor suffers a double cardiac arrest.
Foods and beverages
- Bernice drinks absinthe and eats grapes in Cairo.
- Benny's travelling bag holds gold, vodka, Antibiotics and camping equipment.
Individuals
- Time calls the Doctor her champion.
- The Doctor first met Death on a Gallifreyan hill side.
- Ace's name is revealed as Dorothy McShane.
- Ace becomes one of Sejet's bodyguards. She's called Tepy, which means 'First One'.
- Ace leaves the Doctor, aged 26.
- Ace ends up in a relationship with one of Captain Sorin's ancestors; Count Nikolai Sorin at one point.
- Vivant Denon harbours Kadiatu.
Languages
- Ace is able to speak Egyptian when stuck in Egypt, but doesn't realise it's because of the TARDIS until she's been there for several months.
Locations
Theories and concepts
- Some of Death's 'siblings' appear including: Pain and Time. All the Eternals (Time, Death, Pain) appear to be female.
- Pain visits Benny in a dream, telling her of the vulnerable nerve cluster on a Time Lords' shoulder.
- Death clarifies for Benny that her mother (Claire Summerfield) was killed by the first Dalek beams during the attack on their colony.
Time Lords
- The Doctor showed the Brigadier how to disable a Time Lord (in case of the Master ever returning to Earth); a blow to the left shoulder on a Time Lord hits a vital nerve cluster.
Timeline
- Ace visits Denon in 1815, aged 28.
Time travel
- Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart's time machine has been knocking holes in space time.
Weapons
- Ace carries a Draconian army knife.
Notes
- Sophie Aldred wrote the afterward for this novel.
- A prologue to this novel appeared in DWM 222
- The working title for this novel was Butterfly Wings. [1]
Continuity
- It's claimed here that Time Lord nanites can regrow limbs. The Doctor re-grows a hand in DW: The Christmas Invasion.
- Whilst reading records of history of Egypt Ace finds references to Daleks in the Pyramids as seen in DW: The Daleks' Master Plan.
- Kadiatu next appears in NA: The Also People.
- Ace makes a cameo appearance in NA: Head Games and attends Benny's wedding in Happy Endings.
Timeline
- This story takes place after NA: Warlock
- This story takes place before NA: Infinite Requiem