Spiral Scratch (novel)

Spiral Scratch was the seventy-first BBC Past Doctor Adventures novel. It was written by Gary Russell. It featured the Sixth Doctor and Mel.

Publisher's summary
Carsus: the largest repository of knowledge in the universe -- in any universe, for there is an infinite number of potential universes; or rather, there should be. So why are there now just 117,863? And why, every so often, does another one just wink out of existence?

The Doctor and Mel arrive on Carsus to see the Doctor’s old friend Professor Rummas -- but he has been murdered. Can they solve the mystery of a contracting multiverse, and expose the murderer?

With the ties that bind the Lamprey family to the past, present and future coming unravelled around him, only the Sixth Doctor can stop the descent into temporal chaos. But he is lost on Janus 8. And Schyllus. And a twentieth-century Earth where Rome never fell. And...

Characters

 * The Doctor
 * Melanie Bush
 * Monica Lamprey
 * Shepherd Mullen
 * Rummas
 * a Time Lord
 * a friend of the Doctor on Carsus
 * Joseph Tungard
 * Richard de Calne
 * Sir Bertrand Lamprey

Continuity

 * Mel witnesses several different versions of the Doctor, including one with a penguin, presumably Frobisher. Two Doctors wear blue coats. Both are accompanied by a lady in her fifties, who is meant to be Evelyn Smythe. (WC: Real Time)

Timeline

 * Spiral Scratch occurs after ST: Curtain Call.
 * Spiral Scratch occurs immediately before DW: Time and the Rani.