Set Piece (novel)

 is the thirty-fifth New Adventures novel. It features the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Bernice Summerfield. This is the last novel to feature Ace as an ongoing companion in the Virgin New Adventures novel range. She reappears as a "guest character" in Happy Endings and Lungbarrow.

Publisher's summary
''Dead. He was dead. How the hell was she supposed to do CPR on a man with two hearts?''

There's a rip in the fabric of space and time. Passenger ships are disappearing from the interstellar traffic lanes. In an attempt to find out who's behind the disappearances, the Doctor and Ace allow themselves to be captured. But when Bernice's rescue attempt goes terribly wrong, the time travellers find themselves scattered throughout history.

Ace, stranded in Ancient Egypt, struggles to survive in an environment as alien as a distant planet: the Earth 3,000 years before she was born. She manages to find employment as a nobleman's bodyguard. And then she comes face to face with the metal horrors which have pursued her through time - the creatures she saw kill the Doctor.

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * Ace
 * Bernice Summerfield
 * Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart
 * Sedjet
 * Vivant Denon
 * Sesehaten / Sesehset
 * Pharaoh Akhenaten
 * Ship
 * Thierry

The Doctor

 * The Doctor has his thousandth birthday.
 * The Doctor knows how to speak French (separate from the TARDIS).
 * The Doctor suffers a double cardiac arrest.

Foods and beverages

 * Bernice drinks absinthe and eats grapes in Cairo.
 * Benny's travelling bag holds gold, vodka, antibiotics and camping equipment.

Individuals

 * Time calls the Doctor her champion.
 * The Doctor first met Death on a Gallifreyan hill side.
 * Ace's name is revealed as Dorothy McShane.
 * Ace becomes one of Sejet's bodyguards. She's called Tepy, which means "First One".
 * Ace leaves the Doctor; she is twenty-six.
 * Ace ends up in a relationship with one of Captain Sorin's ancestors, Count Nikolai Sorin, at one point.
 * Vivant Denon harbours Kadiatu.
 * Ace tells Sesehset about the butterfly effect.

Languages

 * Ace speaks Egyptian when stuck in Egypt, but doesn't realise it's because of the TARDIS until she's been there for several months.

Locations

 * Ace goes to Glebe (Sydney, Australia), aged thirty-seven.

Theories and concepts

 * Some of Death's "siblings" appear, including Pain and Time. All the Eternals (Time, Death, Pain) appear to be female.
 * Pain is older than Death.


 * Pain visits Benny in a dream, telling her of the vulnerable nerve cluster in a Time Lord's shoulder.
 * Death clarifies for Benny that her mother (Claire Summerfield) was killed by the first Dalek beams during the attack on their colony.

Time Lords

 * The Doctor showed the Brigadier how to disable a Time Lord (in case the Master ever returns to Earth); a blow to the left shoulder on a Time Lord hits a vital nerve cluster.

Timeline

 * Ace visits Denon in 1815, aged twenty-eight.

Time travel

 * Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart's time machine has been knocking holes in space time.

Weapons

 * Ace carries a Draconian army knife.

Continuity

 * It's claimed here that Time Lord nanites can regrow limbs. The Doctor re-grows a hand in TV: The Christmas Invasion.
 * Whilst reading records of history of Egypt, Ace finds references to Daleks in the pyramids as seen in TV: The Daleks' Master Plan.
 * Kadiatu next appears in PROSE: The Also People.
 * Ace makes a cameo appearance in PROSE: Head Games and attends Benny's wedding in Happy Endings.