Birthright (novel)

Birthright is the seventeenth novel in the Virgin New Adventures series. It was written by Nigel Robinson, published in 1993, and featured the Seventh Doctor, Ace and Benny.

Publisher's summary
"I feel like a pawn in a blasted chess game, Ace." "I know what you mean. Trouble is, they keep changing the chess-players."

The TARDIS has died. Stranded in early twentieth-century London, Bernice can only stand and watch as it slowly disintegrates.

In the East End a series of grisly murders has been committed. Is this the work of the ghostly Springheel Jack or, as Bernice suspects something even more sinister?

In a tiny shop in Bloomsbury, the master of a grand order of sorcerers is nearing the end of a seven-hundred year quest for a fabled magic wand.

And on a barren world in the far-distant future the Queen of a dying race pleads for the help of an old hermit named Muldwych, while Ace leads a group of guerrillas in a desperate struggle against their alien oppressors.

These events are related. Perhaps the Doctor knows how. But the Doctor has gone away.

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * Ace
 * Bernice Summerfield
 * The Charrl
 * Queen Ch'tizz
 * Mikhail Vladamir Popov
 * Jared Khan
 * Margaret Waterfield
 * Muldwych
 * Chel
 * Ernie Wright
 * Isk
 * Korin
 * Natasha Popova
 * Randolph Bellingham
 * Reggie Hawkins
 * Rosa
 * Seeba

Crime

 * Springheel Jack is similar to Jack the Ripper, except Springheel is a Charrl who has emerged through a time portal.

Cults

 * The Brotherhood of the New Dawn believes man has become decadent and evil.

Diseases and illnesses

 * Bernice contracts the flu.

Individuals

 * Jared Khan was born seven hundred years ago.
 * Margaret Waterfield is Edward Waterfield's sister and Victoria Waterfield's paternal aunt. She is murdered by Kahn's thugs.
 * Muldwych is most likely the Merlin incarnation of the Doctor. He has been stranded on Antýkhon for a thousand years.

Languages

 * Bernice can't read Cyrillic.

Locations

 * Channel Tunnel still survives in 22,000.
 * Ace took a trip with the Doctor to Africa "a long time ago". The hive of the Charrl resembles termite mounds which she saw there.

Planets

 * Antýkhon turns out to be a future Earth.
 * New Skaro is mentioned as the new home planet of the Daleks.

TARDIS

 * The Time Vector Generator is an ebony bar that links the exterior and interior dimensions of a TARDIS.

Theories and concepts

 * The Charrl created three hundred of the 700 Wonders of the Universe.
 * The Migration is the movement of the Charrl from Antýkhon to Earth.

Time travel

 * The Great Divide, a temporal portal from approximately 22,000 to 1909.
 * Ace gets transported to the year 22,000.
 * Bernice gets transported to 1909.

Continuity

 * This novel runs parallel with the events of PROSE: Iceberg, with the Doctor being absent for the majority of Birthright. This was the first "Doctor-lite" novel under the New Adventures banner (Target Books previously published two non-Doctor original novels, Harry Sullivan's War and Turlough and the Earthlink Dilemma), and in some ways was a rehearsal for the later Doctor-less series of novels featuring Benny that began in 1996.
 * The Charrl and Muldwych make an appearance in PROSE: Happy Endings.
 * The Charrl are to said to have created the three hundred (of the seven hundred) wonders of the universe, first mentioned in TV: Death to the Daleks.
 * The Doctor also encountered a renamed future Earth in TV The Mysterious Planet.
 * Mikhail Vladamir Popov returns for a brief cameo in Happy Endings as one of Bernice's wedding guests.
 * The Doctor's eagle pedestal speaks to Benny. (TV: The Pirate Planet)