The Eleventh Tiger (novel)
The Eleventh Tiger was the sixty-sixth BBC Past Doctor Adventures novel. It featured the First Doctor, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki Pallister.
Publisher’s Summary
May you live in interesting times.
The TARDIS crew have seen many different eras. When they arrive in China in 1865, they find banditry, rebellion, and foreign oppression rife. Trying to maintain order are the British Empire and the Ten Tigers of Canton, the most respected martial arts masters in the world.
There is more to chaos than mere human violence and ambition. Can legends of ancient vengeance be coming true? Why does everyone Ian meets already know who he is? The Doctor has his suspicions, but he is occupied by challenges of his own. Soon the travellers must learn that sometimes the greatest danger is not from the enemy, but from the heart.
In interesting times, love can be a weakness, hatred an illusion, order chaos, and ten Tigers not enough.
Plot
to be added
Characters
References
The Doctor
- The Doctor claims to have "sons or daughters, or both". One of these is presumably the mother or father of Susan and another is presumably the mother or father of John and Gillian.
- The Doctor engages in a kung fu duel. The Doctor uses his knowledge of fulcrums and levers to insult the traitor he's fighting (and enjoys taking great pains to explain exactly what he did and how he did it), and, once he's suitably infuriated, tricks him into smashing his foot against a pole the Doctor was standing in front of. He then has the traitor's wounds tended to. Ian and Barbara are aghast.
Individuals
- As a child, Ian loved the works of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, whose stories inspired him to pursue a career in science.
- During his national service in the 1950s, which he served in Wales, Ian was a boxer.
- Ian is ready to fight the duel for the Doctor, despite knowing he would be easily beaten and humiliated.
- Ian bears a very strong resemblance to his paternal great-grandfather Major William "Bill" Chesterton, leading Ian to mistakenly believe that his ancestor is his future self lost in time. Major Chesterton was a member of a Hussar company in Jaipur, India in 1860. His father was a drunkard and a gambler who habitually slept with prostitutes. By 1890, Major Chesterton had retired to England, where he translated Mountains and Sunsets by Ho Lin Chung into English.
- Barbara knowingly quotes the song "Kung Fu Fighting", saying the "Kids are as fast as lightning".
Species
- The Mandragora Helix refers to the Doctor as "Traveller" and is aware of his influence throughout Earth's history. It speaks to absorb him into itself.
Notes
to be added
Continuity
- The Doctor, Ian and Barbara previously visited China in 1289 in the company of Susan Foreman. (TV: Marco Polo)
- The Doctor claims to speak all Chinese dialects. (TV: The Mind of Evil, TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)
- Once again the Doctor indulges in a violent fight. (TV: The Romans)
- Ian and Barbara discuss the Doctor kidnapping them in 1963. (TV: An Unearthly Child)
- The Doctor warns Ian about the potentially disastrous consequences of him coming into contact with his future self. (TV: Day of the Daleks, TV: Mawdryn Undead)
- Vicki recalls visiting Turkey (PROSE: Byzantium!) and Italy (TV: The Romans).
- During his fourth incarnation, the Doctor would encounter the Mandragora Helix once again in San Martino, Italy in 1492 in the company of Sarah Jane Smith. The Helix refers to the fact that the Doctor had defeated it 400 years earlier. (TV: The Masque of Mandragora). Though it should be noted that it was not e entirely clear if it was the Mandragora Helix at all.
- Barbara tells Ian that she loves him. (PROSE: Romans Cutaway) Ian, who reciprocates her feelings, proposes that they get married if they ever make it home to the 1960s. (PROSE: Byzantium!, PROSE: The Face of the Enemy)
- Pg 18 "'Hell's teeth,' he whispered." This was an expression invented for the show to allow Tegan to have convincingly Australian-sounding swearwords in Logopolis. David McIntee is fond of transplanting it to other cultures.
External links
- The Eleventh Tiger at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Discontinuity Guide to: The Eleventh Tiger at The Whoniverse
