No Future (novel)

No Future
Doctor:	Seventh Doctor
Companion(s):	Ace, Benny
Featuring:	The Brigadier, Benton, Yates
Main enemy:	Mortimus, Vardans
Main setting:	London, Glastonbury and Varda, 1976
Key crew
Publisher:	Virgin Books
Writer:	Paul Cornell
Cover by:	Pete Wallbank
Release details
Release number:	23
Release date:	17 February 1994
Format:	Paperback Book; 23 Chapters, 272 Pages
ISBN:	ISBN 0-426-20409-3
Virgin New Adventures
← Previous	Conundrum
Next →	Tragedy Day
DWM "New Adventures order"
← Previous	Conundrum
Next →	Tragedy Day

No Future is the twenty-third novel in the Virgin New Adventures series and was written by Paul Cornell. It features the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice. This was the final novel in the story arc of alternate universes. It also featured a return to the 1970s "UNIT era" with UNIT, the Brigadier, Benton and Yates.

Publisher's summary

'This time, anarchy's real. There are power cuts and Wilson's resignation, a great upheaval of unease. But now there's real fear too. Real panic. And that's not how it's supposed to be.'

Somebody has been toying with the Seventh Doctor's past, testing him, threatening him, leading him on a chase that has brought the TARDIS to London in 1976 -- where reality has been altered once again.

Black Star terrorists foment riots in the streets. The Queen barely escapes assassination. A fearful tension is rising. Something is going to happen. Something bad.

Meanwhile, Benny's the lead singer in a punk band. Ace can't talk to her or the Doctor without an argument starting, so she's made murderous plans of her own. The Doctor's alone — he doesn't know who his enemy is, and even the Brigadier has disowned him.

As usual, it's up to the Doctor to protect the world. And he can't even protect himself.

Plot

to be added

Characters

• Seventh Doctor
• Ace
• Bernice Summerfield
• Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart
• RSM John Benton
• Major Bryan Carpenter
• Captain Alex Pike
• Corporal Claire Tennant
• Robert Bertram
• Danny Pain (aka Danny Paripski)
• Kit
• Cob
• Julie Quinlan
• Mike Yates
• Kevin Doyle
• Artemis

Worldbuilding

Books

• The Garvond is mentioned in the Red Book of Gallifrey.

Culture

• The Doctor first heard Benny's voice at a party in Finchley.
• Black Star is a group of anarchists. It developed from the "Angry Brigade". It was created through Mortimus's time interference.
  • Black Star bombed Big Ben's face in 1976.
• Professor X is a television series that is broadcast between Bruce Forsyth and Basil Brush.

The Doctor

• The Doctor mentions having killed the Tremas Master.

Individuals

• Yates also knows of Hamlet Macbeth.
• UNIT soldiers call Bryan Carpenter "Karen Carpenter".

Music

• Bernice is the lead vocalist in Plasticine. She also writes some of the music.

Politics

• Shirley Williams is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1976. Her cabinet includes Home Secretary Tony Benn and Roy Jenkins.

Species

• Artemis the Chronovore is released by Ace.
• The Vardan Mediascape was created by the Vardans using the same technology as that which generated the Land of Fiction. The Mediasphere grants access to it.
• Vardans are ridiculed as the only race to be outwitted by the Sontarans.

Religion

• The Brigadier is into Buddhism.

Technology

• Mortimus uses the alias Robert Bertram to run Priory a record company and also other related companies and invents CDs a decade early.
• Ace creates Vengeance of the Vardans as a message for the Doctor and her past self.

Theories and concepts

• Death and Time are referred to as Eternals.
• The Doctor's future self broke the First Law of Time by leaving himself messages.

United Nations Intelligence Taskforce

• Broadsword is the intelligence wing and Special Ops division of UNIT.
• UN Resolution 2245 allows UNIT to use "ultimate force" against hostile extra-terrestrials.
• Spontaneous human combustion is ten more times likely to happen to a UNIT operative than a normal person.

Notes

• This is the final story in Alternate Universe arc. The novels Blood Heat, The Dimension Riders, The Left-Handed Hummingbird and Conundrum are the previous novels in the Alternate Universe Arc.
• This novel is the last one to feature the TARDIS (taken from the alternate Earth in Blood Heat) with a functioning chameleon circuit. Near the end of the novel, the Doctor smashes it with a hammer.
• This novel had a working title of Anarchy in the UK.
• The title is a reference to the Sex Pistols' song "God Save the Queen".

Continuity

• TV: Battlefield is chronologically (for the Doctor) the first time he met the Brigadier in his seventh incarnation, but this story is set earlier in the Brigadier's life and later in the Seventh Doctor's based on the events of Battlefield.
• TV: The Invasion of Time was the first story to feature the Vardans. A single Vardan is mentioned in Return of the Living Dad as being a survivor of this invasion attempt.
• Following TV: The Daleks' Master Plan, the Monk is carrying a degree of baggage. His previous appearance and previous meeting with the Doctor was in this story, which would seem to contradict COMIC 4-Dimensional Vistas.
• The memory blocks the Doctor puts in place in the Brigadier's mind are removed in PROSE: Happy Endings.
• Danny Pain and the rest of Plasticine reappear (a bit older) in Happy Endings.
• Big Ben is attacked again in TV: Aliens of London.
• Bernice notes that the Vardans are "the only race in history to be outwitted by the intellectual might of the Sontarans." (TV: The Invasion of Time)
• The Doctor would later encounter the Monk in the Abbey of Kells in Ireland in 1006 during his eighth incarnation, by which time the Monk had himself regenerated at least once. (AUDIO: The Book of Kells)

External links

• Prelude to No Future as published in DWM
• No Future at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: No Future at The Whoniverse
• The Cloister Library: No Future
• Doctor Who Bewildering Reference Guide to No Future
• Paul Cornell by Paul Scoones (Interview) - TSV 48