Millennial Rites (novel)

Millennial Rites was the fifteenth novel in the Virgin Missing Adventures series. It was written by Craig Hinton. It featured the Sixth Doctor and Melanie Bush in an adventure that took place before the events seen in TV: Terror of the Vervoids, Mel's first television appearance.

Publisher's summary

 * "The Millennium, Mel: the last New Year's Eve of the Twentieth century. But it's definitely not party time."

England, 1999: the Sixth Doctor and Mel have come to London to celebrate the new year with old friends - and to heal old wounds. But others are making more sinister preparations to usher in the new millennium. A software house is about to run a program that will change the fabric of reality. And an entity older than the universe is soon to be reborn.

When Anne Travers' fear of the Great Intelligence and millionaire philanthropist Ashley Chapel's secret researches combine, London is transformed into a dark and twisted mirror image populated by demons and sorcerers. Only the Doctor can put things right, but his friends have also been shockingly changed and he cannot trust anybody - least of all himself.

Characters

 * The Doctor/The Valeyard
 * Melanie Bush/Melaphyre
 * Ashley Chapel/Ashmael
 * Yog-Sothoth
 * Saraquazel
 * Dame Anne Travers/Anastasia
 * Julia Prince
 * Barry Brown/Bartholomew
 * Derek Peartree
 * James Campling
 * Cassie
 * David Harker/Harklaane
 * Louise Mason/Louella

Individuals

 * Edward Travers
 * Tobias Vaughn
 * Shub-Niggurath and her offspring, the Nestene Consciousness
 * Lloigor
 * Colonel Lethbridge Stewart
 * Jamie McCrimmon

Libraries and archives

 * Library of St John the Beheaded

Species

 * Great Old Ones, the Time Lords of the previous universe
 * Cybermen, Daleks, Ogrons, and Robot Yeti footage is viewed by Chapel
 * Hisk version of koala bears and a dog-like domesticated animal on Danos

Planets

 * Vortis
 * Polymos
 * Hisk
 * Danos
 * Skaro
 * Telos
 * Sontara

Earth locations

 * Tibet
 * Hyperborea

Realities

 * Pre-Universe
 * After-Universe
 * Great Kingdom - a merging of the laws of three realities

Books

 * The Gnostic Apocrypha of Nostradamus
 * Liber Inducens in Evangelium Aeternum by Joachim of Fiore
 * Eltdown Shards
 * Pnakotic Manuscripts
 * Book of Eibon
 * The Many Eyes, Lies, and Lives of Yog-Sothoth by Count Alexei Mussomov
 * On the Cessation of Oracles by Plutarch
 * The Black Scrolls by Cardinal Leofrique DeSable

Continuity

 * I2, OffNet and Ashley Chapel all previously appeared in PROSE: System Shock.
 * The Doctor had faced the Quarks and their Giant Wasps previously on Gano. (COMIC: The Killer Wasps)
 * James Stevens had been directed to Ashley Chapel when researching the death of Tobias Vaughn. (PROSE: Who Killed Kennedy)
 * The Doctor laments the destruction of the sonic screwdriver by the Terileptil leader in September 1666. (TV: The Visitation)
 * Professor Edward Travers was discredited after the London Incident, as many regarded it as being his fault. (TV: The Web of Fear) However, his daughter's career has been more successful. She is now Dame Anne Travers OBE and has served as chief scientific advisor to the Cabinet since 1981, having succeeded her University of Cambridge lecturer and mentor Professor Rachel Jensen. (TV: Remembrance of the Daleks, PROSE: The Scales of Injustice).
 * On the same night, the Seventh Doctor and an older version of Mel gate crashed the New Year's Eve party being thrown by Alisha Hammerson, the Auton head of Hammerson Plastic PLC, in London. They foiled her plan to replace her guests with Auton replicas so the Earth could be dominated and absorbed by severing her link to the Nestene Consciousness. (DWM: Plastic Millennium) Concurrently in San Francisco, an older version of the Seventh Doctor regenerated into his eighth incarnation. After an initial bout of amnesia, the newly regenerated Doctor stopped from stealing his body and destroying the Earth, with the help of Dr. Grace Holloway. (TV: Doctor Who (1996))


 * Millennial Rites occurs before the flash forward scenes of TV: Terror of the Vervoids