Who Killed Kennedy (novel)

Publisher's summary

The shocking secret linking a Time Lord and a President.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on 22 November, 1963.

Now, the publication of this volume reveals frightening new information about the assassination, the real reasons why the President of the United States had to die and an incredible plan to save the man known as JFK!

These stunning revelations involve an ultra-secret military force disguised as a minor off-shot of the United Nations and an international terrorist leader who has twice brought the world to the brink of nuclear conflict.

For more than three decades the public has been fed lies, half-truths and misinformation. Now despite — government attempts to halt the publication of this volume — the complete, shocking story can be told. Read the book they tried to ban!

Characters

References

Companions of the Doctor

Earth-based conflicts

The Shoreditch Incident

Individuals

James Stevens spent time as a journalism teacher and mentored both "Ruby" (by implication Ruby Duvall, though the dates don't match) and Sarah Jane Smith.
Horatio Chinn
Group Captain Gilmore
Rachel Jensen

Time technology

Time ring

Corporations

International Electromatics

UNIT and Affliates

Notes

Though published by Virgin Books, this novel does not fit into the usual Virgin Missing Adventures or Virgin New Adventures format and stands alone. It relies exclusively on Doctor Who television continuity, though the Glasshouse, which this novel introduced, did get incorporated into the plot of The Scales of Injustice, a Missing Adventure.

However, the cover has the silver diamond Doctor Who logo usually associated with the Virgin Missing Adventures and is generally grouped together with those novels.

The novel credits the fictional James Stevens as David Bishop's co-author for this book.

The book reveals some of the "in-universe" explanations and cover-ups for alien invasions: for example, incidents like the Auton invasion are covered up as terrorist assaults and the Master (in his "Victor Magister" alias from The Dæmons) is later used as a scapegoat for them all. This leads to some incidents of discontinuity, such as the existence of the War Machines having been covered up despite them being public knowledge in DW: The War Machines.

As well as a major supporting role for Dodo Chaplet, the novel features cameo appearances by two Doctors and numerous other companions: the Third Doctor, either the Second or Seventh Doctor, Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, Liz Shaw, Jo Grant and Sergeant Benton. Furthermore, the First Doctor, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright, Susan Foreman, Ben Jackson, Polly Wright, Jamie McCrimmon, Zoe Heriot, Mike Yates, Sarah Jane Smith, Melanie Bush and Ace are mentioned but do not appear.
Of the first seven incarnations of the Doctor, the only ones who are neither seen nor mentioned are the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Doctors.

Continuity

James Stevens was the Daily Chronicle reporter whom the Ashbridge Cottage Hospital porter Mullins spoke to over the phone in order to report that a man with inhuman blood had been admitted as a patient following a meteorite shower. He and numerous other reporters are barred entry by the Brigadier and UNIT. Shortly afterwards, Stevens meets a poacher named Sam Seeley in a pub who told him that he had found one of the "thunderballs" which had recently fallen to Earth. Stevens dismisses Seeley's claims as nothing more than the ramblings of a drunk. Several days later, London is crippled by the events of Black Thursday, a terrorist attack during which hysterical members of the public reported seeing window shop dummies coming to life. (DW: Spearhead from Space)
Stevens' mysterious contact directs him to the Wenley Moor nuclear research facility. Stevens calls the facility and is surprised when the phone is answered by the Brigadier, who hangs up as soon as he realises that he is speaking to a journalist. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians)
Several weeks after the plague outbreak, a woman named Doris Squire was still being treated for shock "after claiming to see some sort of lizard walking upright like a man." According to Stevens, this story did not even make the gutter press. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians)
While interviewing Ralph Cornish of the Space Centre on the state of British scientific development in the run up in the Mars Probe 7 crisis (DW: The Ambassadors of Death), Stevens inquires as to the effect of the death of International Electromatics founder Tobias Vaughn on said development. (DW: The Invasion) Refusing to answer the question directly, Cornish directs him to Vaughn's former associate Ashley Chapel. (MA: Millennial Rites)
Stevens dismisses Isobel Watkins' claims that Earth had been invaded by "robot men from outer space" (DW: The Invasion) as well as Greg Sutton's similarly outlandish claim that a green slime from the centre of the Earth transformed scientists into wolf monsters during the Inferno Project. He describes Sutton's story as sounding like the plot of a "science fiction potboiler." (DW: Inferno)
Stevens manages to collect various reports of a series of agent procateurs known as "the Doctor" who have been involved in various unusual incidents such as the ULTIMA Incident in 1943 (DW: The Curse of Fenric), the Shangri-La Incident in 1959 (DW: Delta and the Bannermen), the Shoreditch Incident in November 1963 (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks), the C-Day fiasco and the contemporaneous Gatwick Incident on 20 July 1966 (DW: The War Machines, DW: The Faceless Ones) as well as the aforementioned death of Tobias Vaughn and the Wenley Moor Incident.
After almost a year of attempting to collate information about the "Doctor" agents from disparate sources, Stevens finally sees one of them in person at the press demonstration of the experimental Keller Process at Stangmoor Prison. The Doctor was accompanied by a "small, mousy looking woman with a pleasant face." (DW: The Mind of Evil)
Stevens suspects that the Doctor and UNIT may have been involved in the disappearance of a 15-year-old Coal Hill School pupil named Susan Foreman and her teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright from Shoreditch in November 1963. Susan, whose home address was I.M. Foreman's junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane, only spent several months at the school and had difficulty making friends. Other students described her as being strange and remembered that she mentioned that she lived with her grandfather. All of her records were later found to be forgeries. Despite extensive searches and appeals for assistance, Susan was never found. (DW: An Unearthly Child) On the other hand, Chesterton and Wright reappeared in the summer of 1965. (DW: The Chase) They claimed to have spent the previous year and a half doing missionary work in Central Africa. Not quite returning to their old lives, Wright became a university history lecturer, specialising in the Aztec period of Central American history (DW: The Aztecs) whereas Ian became a university science lecturer and gained a professorship within a year. He specialised in astronomy but showed expertise across a wide range of fields that were the beyond the scope of a former secondary school science teacher's training. (DW: An Unearthly Child, et al.) They eventually married (PDA: The Face of the Enemy, SJA: Death of the Doctor), had a son named John (NA: Timewyrm: Revelation) and began writing a diary to leave for Susan in the 22nd century (PDA: Byzantium!).
Stevens later meets a young woman named Dodo Chaplet who suffered a nervous breakdown following the events of C-Day. (DW: The War Machines) She does not remember anything about that day but her claims to have met one-eyed reptile men (DW: The Ark) and Wild West gunfighters (DW: The Gunfighters) and to have played games with living dolls (DW: The Celestial Toymaker) resulted in her being sent to a psychiatric institution.
In 1971, a terrorist known as Victor Magister or "the Master" is arrested following an incident at the village Devil's End. (DW: The Dæmons) He and his accomplices are subsequently charged with the attack on Black Thursday (DW: Spearhead from Space), the plague outbreak (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians) and the failure of the World Peace Conference (DW: The Mind of Evil), among other incidents. Magister escaped from custody in the autumn of 1971, causing a great deal of scandal in the prison service. (DW: The Sea Devils) Stevens notes that his terrorist activities of the early 1970s were little remembered by most British people in 1996.
A Northern Irish UNIT soldier named Francis Cleary is deeply disturbed by the sight of one of his fellow soldiers, who was also a good friend, being killed by an alien at the Nuton Power Complex (DW: The Claws of Axos) and finally goes mad after seeing Satan himself at a church in Devil's End (DW: The Dæmons).
Following Dodo's murder, Stevens sees a television report which mentions that UNIT is providing security for the Second World Peace Conference at Auderly House. Entering the grounds of the manor house clandestinely, he is saved from death at the hands of an ape creature by the Doctor. The Brigadier later shows him its body, which finally convinces him that the various outlandish stories which he has heard about aliens visiting and/or the invading the Earth are entirely true. (DW: Day of the Daleks)
Stevens notes that the Brigadier retired from UNIT in the mid 1970s and began teaching mathematics at "a minor public school for boys." (DW: Mawdryn Undead) According to Stevens' sources, he is "occasionally wheeled out when things are going very wrong somewhere in the world." (DW: Battlefield, BFA: Minuet in Hell)
Ruby Duvall first appeared in NA: Iceberg.
NA: The Dying Days mentions the fiction book-within-a-book Who Killed Kennedy. It also attempts to explain why some of the UNIT dating is wrong: it was changed prior to publication. Stevens had "gone to ground" in April 1996 whereas his co-author David Bishop was still in London in May 1997.
The Ninth Doctor was present at Kennedy's assassination. (DW: Rose)

Timeline

At various points throughout, the events of the novel take place contemporaneously with those of every Doctor Who serial from DW: Spearhead from Space to DW: Day of the Daleks.

External links

Who Killed Kennedy Full text available as an e-book at the New Zealand Doctor Who Fan Club Webpage
Who Killed Kennedy at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
The Discontinuity Guide to: 'Who Killed Kennedy at The Whoniverse