Players (novel)

Publisher's summary
Promising his companion, Peri, high society elegance in fin-de-siecle London, the Sixth Doctor manages to hit the right time, but the wrong place...

The TARDIS has landed on the sun-baked veldt in the middle of a Boer War skirmish. And soon the Doctor and Peri are involved in the adventures of a struggling politician and war correspondent who they know is destined for greater things - a certain Winston Churchill. But mysterious forces seem to be interfering in his potentially great career...

Arriving in London, the Doctor and Peri enter high society but find themselves in a world of intrigue populated by notorious figures from Wallis Simpson to Joachim von Ribbentrop. And behind everything, the Doctor senses the hidden hand of the Players - mysterious beings who regard human history as no more than a chess board. Can the Doctor and Peri find the right moves to defeat them - before it's too late?

Characters

 * Sixth Doctor
 * Second Doctor
 * Peri Brown
 * Winston Churchill
 * Edward VIII
 * King Adelebert

Continuity

 * Peri complains about "lousy caves" (DW: The Caves of Androzani), "paranoid gastropods" (DW: The Twin Dilemma), the Cybermen (DW: Attack of the Cybermen) and "a punishment dome dedicated to torture and death" (DW: Vengeance on Varos).
 * The Pinkerton Private Investigation Agency first appeared in NA: Shakedown.
 * Later in his personal timeline, the Seventh Doctor would meet Tom Dekker in Chicago in 1929. When Dekker mentions that he knew a "funny little fella" called the Doctor who ran a speakeasy with a girl named Ace, Peri speculates that he may be referring to a future incarnation of the Doctor. The Sixth Doctor dismisses the idea out of hand. (NA: Blood Harvest)
 * The Doctor mentions that he has met Dracula. (BFA: Son of the Dragon)
 * Winston Churchill meets the Doctor for the first time in his personal timeline in 1899 while he is in his sixth incarnation. He later meets the Second Doctor in November 1915 and the Sixth Doctor again in December 1936. He would later meet the Sixth Doctor for a third time in 1942 (PDA: The Shadow in the Glass) and the Eleventh Doctor in 1941 (DW: Victory of the Daleks). Furthermore, the Eleventh Doctor would later meet a version of Churchill who existed in an alternative timeline in which all of history was occurring at once and Churchill was the Holy Roman Emperor. (DW: The Wedding of River Song)
 * The Seventh Doctor would later meet Joachim von Ribbentrop once again in 1939. (NA: Timewyrm: Exodus)
 * The December 1936 sequences take place contemporaneously with the events of PDA: Wolfsbane.
 * The Tenth Doctor would later meet Edward VIII's great-grandmother Queen Victoria in 1879 (DW: Tooth and Claw) and his grandfather Edward VII in 1902 (QR: Revenge of the Judoon).

For the Second Doctor

 * Players occurs during PDA: World Game

For the Sixth Doctor

 * Players occurs after DW: The Mark of the Rani
 * Players occurs before DW: The Two Doctors