Time Zero (novel)

Time Zero was the sixtieth novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Justin Richards, released 2 September 2002 and featured the Eighth Doctor, Fitz Kreiner, Anji Kapoor and Trix MacMillan.

Publisher's summary
"It doesn't take the creation of a whole new universe just to kill a cat."

With Fitz gone to his certain death and Anji back at work in the City, the Doctor is once more alone. But he has a lot to keep him occupied.

At the Naryshkin Institute in Siberia, scientists are busily at work in a haunted castle. Over a century earlier, creatures from a prehistory that never happened attack a geological expedition. Pages from the lost expedition's journal are put on display at the British Museum, and a US spy plane suffers a mysterious fate. Deep under the snowy landscape of Siberia the key to it all remains trapped in the ice.

Only the Doctor can see that these events are all related. But he isn't the only person involved. Why is Colonel Hartford so interested in the Institute? Who is the mysterious millionaire who is after the journal? How is the Grand Duchess, descendant of the last Tsar, involved?

Soon the Doctor is caught up in a plot that reaches back to the creation of the Universe. And beyond...

...to Time Zero.

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * Fitz Kreiner
 * Anji Kapoor
 * Sabbath (alias Holiday)
 * Beatrice MacMillan (aka Trix)
 * George Williamson
 * Alexander Hartford
 * Andrew Jenkins
 * Basil Flanaghan
 * Bill Thorpe
 * Blake Michaels
 * Bob Lansing
 * Chedakin
 * Control
 * Maxwell Curtis
 * Edward Parton
 * Gerhart Graul
 * Gilbertson
 * Hanson Galloway
 * Jonas
 * Larry Withers
 * Lionel Correll
 * Mike Nesbitt
 * Miriam Dewes
 * Ostrander
 * Paul Anderton
 * Penny Ashworth
 * Peter Caversham
 * St John Price
 * Vladimir Naryshkin
 * Yuri Culmanov
 * Fire elemental

Worldbuilding

 * The origin of the fire elemental is revealed here.
 * Several time travel and physics theories / terms are brought up, including Schrödinger's cat, o-regions, slow light time machines, and quantum theory.

Continuity

 * The fire elemental is first seen in PROSE: The Burning (which takes place after this novel, from the perspective of the fire elemental).
 * Fitz met George Williamson in the earlier novel {cs|Camera Obscura (novel)}}.
 * Fitz remembers the planet Hope, where the ruler is a mechanical man and the sea is made of acid, a reference to the earlier novel
 * Anji remembers Dave and talks with his mother, which occured in PROSE: Escape Velocity)
 * There is a flash-back to the Doctor back in 1938, having the note about his meeting with Fitz in 2001. (PROSE: The Ancestor Cell, PROSE: The Burning et al)
 * The Doctor recalls his conversation with Sabbath in Spain about the nature of time. (PROSE: History 101)
 * The Doctor recalls people who became clocks, a reference to the Clock-Persons from PROSE: Anachrophobia); beasts from other dimensions, a reference to the Mal'akh from PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) and fire demons. (PROSE: The Burning) He also mentions destroying a time machine in the 19th century. (PROSE: Camera Obscura)