333 (unproduced novel)

333 was a novel pitched by Lawrence Miles for BBC Books' Eighth Doctor Adventures range circa 2002. It would have been about the Doctor "defeating his own irrelevance" to conclude the Sabbath arc, which began in Miles' The Adventuress of Henrietta Street ^[+]Loading...["The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (novel)"]. However, range editor Justin Richards instead commissioned Sometime Never... ^[+]Loading...["Sometime Never... (novel)"], as he thought Miles's story mischaracterised the Eighth Doctor's companion, Fitz Kreiner. Miles remarked that the story would not have worked afterwards, as it depended on the Doctor still struggling to regain his identity in the wake of Gallifrey's destruction.

Plot summary

With the Time Lords erased from history, the Eighth Doctor finds himself out of place in the post-War universe. Whereas Sabbath belongs to this new version of history, the Doctor has realised that his own way of doing things has become irrelevant, so he retires to Earth in the early 2000s, "when nothing was happening at all."

He thought he'd discovered a death-cult trying to reconfigure the internet to summon an ancient doomsday god, but it turned out SueTech was just an IT firm run by someone called Sue.A line from Lawrence Miles' original pitch

Instead, the story would focus on Fitz Kreiner, who had joined the Doctor as a young man and spent decades on the TARDIS. Because so much time had passed, by the time of 333 Fitz sees life on the TARDIS, adventuring and savings worlds from aliens, as normal. He cannot adjust to the Doctor's new, slower pace of life, so instead he joins Sabbath.

Because he's compelled to do this saving-the-world-from-aliens nonsense. Not exactly an addict, just conditioned to it.Lawrence Miles on Twitter

The antagonist of the story would have been John Dee's demon Choronzon, fitting the occultist themes of Sabbath's introduction in The Adventuress of Henrietta Street ^[+]Loading...["The Adventuress of Henrietta Street (novel)"] and of the post-War universe as a whole: "he's the sort of entity that Sabbath would respect as an enemy but that the Doctor would find stupid."

The story would have concluded with the Doctor defeating his own irrelevance.

Behind the scenes

• The darker side of Fitz's dependence on the Doctor was previously explored in Miles's Interference - Book Two ^[+]Loading...["Interference - Book Two (novel)"].
• Lawrence Miles tweeted about 333 following the transmission of TV: The Legend of Ruby Sunday ^[+]Loading...["The Legend of Ruby Sunday (TV story)"], as it bore resemblance to plot developments within that story.