Business Unusual (novel)

Business Unusual was author Gary Russell's attempt at depicting Melanie Bush's first adventure with the Sixth Doctor.

Publisher's summary
''A security force with no official identity... a managing director with no name... a sinister creature on guard patrol resembling some kind of hellhound... SenéNet is no ordinary multinational company.''

The Doctor arrives in Brighton, 1989, travelling alone. He soon discovers his old friend, the Brigadier, has gone missing investigating SenéNet, whose new interactive games console is soon to be released at an absurdly reasonable price. He was last seen at their headquarters - based in the picturesque Ashdown Forest...

Investigating further, the Doctor becomes more and more entangled in a deadly web of intrigue. Together with Mel, a plucky computer programmer from Pease Pottage, the Doctor must overcome the conspiracy of silence, rescue the Brigadier and save the world once again - something that would be a lot easier if he just knew where to start...

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * Melanie Bush
 * The Brigadier

Continuity

 * The novel revolves around a "problem" depicted in The Ultimate Foe. There, the Doctor meets Mel for the first time. But that Mel is from the Doctor's personal future. Yet she departs the Time Lord trial room with him, despite the risk of meeting her younger self. MA: Time of Your Life had already explained that the Doctor took the Mel of The Ultimate Foe immediately back to her proper place in time. So in Business Unusual, writer Gary Russell gave us the obverse of The Ultimate Foe — namely the young Mel's first encounter with the Sixth Doctor. However, now it is the Doctor who's out of synch with Mel.


 * The Sixth Doctor is desperately trying to avoid contact with Mel, because he fears that if she meets him, she will somehow become his companion and he will be set on the path towards becoming The Valeyard. This premise, central to the novel, makes little objective sense. Mel is instrumental in his victory in The Trial of a Time Lord. Indeed, his adventure with her in Terror of the Vervoids is the key piece of evidence he offers in his defense. If he doesn't meet Mel, then it is unclear how he would have won his freedom. He seems to forget, here, that he has already overcome the Valeyard, and so no longer has to fear becoming him. It is only the audience who knows the Valeyard appears to have survived the events of The Ultimate Foe.


 * Much as Gary Russell's follow-up novel, Instruments of Darkneess, contradicted the Big Finish audio history of Evelyn Smythe, this novel treads heavily over the Big Finish history of the Brigadier. Both this novel and BFA: The Spectre of Lanyon Moor chronicle the first encounter between the Sixth Doctor and the Brigadier.


 * The Doctor refers to A Fix with Sontarans as a bad dream.

Timeline

 * Business Unusual occurs after: BFA: Legend of the Cybermen
 * Business Unusual occurs before: ST The Best Joke I Ever Told
 * For Mel this story occurs before both MA: Millennial Rites and DW: The Trial of a Time Lord, but only the courtroom scenes in the case of the latter as this is her first meeting of the Sixth Doctor.