Who Killed Kennedy (novel)

Who Killed Kennedy is a DWU novel published by Virgin Books. It is often considered by fans to be a part of the Virgin Missing Adventures series, despite the fact that it was released as a standalone novel without ties to any of Virgin's ranges. It is the first true Doctor-lite novel, and revolves around how journalist James Stevens' investigations into the Kennedy assassination led him into the world of the Doctor. This then allows the author to explore a number of televised stories from the perspective of a neutral observer, much as the character of Elton Pope would later be used in Love & Monsters.

The book is further notable — perhaps even infamous — for a subplot involving the rape, near-wedding and murder of former companion Dodo Chaplet. However, this aspect of the story has often been conflated with aspects of The Man in the Velvet Mask, such that many fans wrongly believe that Kennedy tells the story of Dodo dying from syphilis — something that never happens in either book.

Author David Bishop unusually attempts to present the story as a non-fiction work of journalism. In pursuit of this goal of realism, he even allows Stevens joint credit for writing the book.

Publisher's summary
The shocking secret linking a Time Lord and a President.

President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas on 22 November, 1963.

Now, the publication of this volume reveals frightening new information about the assassination, the real reasons why the President of the United States had to die and an incredible plan to save the man known as JFK!

These stunning revelations involve an ultra-secret military force disguised as a minor off-shot of the United Nations and an international terrorist leader who has twice brought the world to the brink of nuclear conflict.

For more than three decades the public has been fed lies, half-truths and misinformation. Now despite — government attempts to halt the publication of this volume — the complete, shocking story can be told. Read the book they tried to ban!

22 January 1964
John F. Kennedy sit in his office surrounded by others, including his brother Bobby, as he is given the question of what to do on the nuclulear crisis.

It had been two mounths sense someone had attempted to assassinate him in Dallas, Texas. Though the man was unsuccessful, he killed many policemen before committing suicide, and below his civilian clothes was a Russian suit. As he waits for the near-end of the world, Kennedy thinks of his wife Jacqueline Kennedy, who had died in his arms during his assassination attempt. He recalled that he had been arguing with her that day, while in the limo. When he had heard the first bullet, he had figured it was a fire cracker. Then the second went off and suddenly he found it hard to breathe. Then the fatal third shot had hit his wife, sending shards of brain and bone from his wife all over him. She was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital but was pronounced dead on arrival.

The president is terrified to learn that a dozen to hundreds of "birdies" are headed their way. He had but two minuets to decide if he should let the rest of the world burn with the country, or if he should let all of America to die alone, leaving a world behind. Reluctantly, he launches the missiles, sending death across the skies.

22 January 1996
As James Stevens explains, the above sinerio never happend. John F. Kennedy was shot and killed on 22 November, 1963, and Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder. He was found to have links to the Soviet Union, but was never tried as he was killed weeks later. New President Lyndon Johnson set up the Warren Commission, who decided that Oswald had acted alone.

Stevens explains that the day Kennedy died was his eighteenth birthday. (In New Zealand, there is a time difference, so for him it was actually the 23 of November.) He recalls that after JFK's death, he became obsessed with finding out about the man. This passionate search for the truth lead him into journalism.

James Stevens was born on 23 November, 1945 (New Zealand time). He was the illigetimate son of an North American GI stationed in New Zealand and a seventeen year-old native. When his father learned she was pregnant, he became mad at her, and denied his responsibilities. He died in friendly fire two weeks later. James' birth was looked upon by shame, and when he was born he was put up for odoption.

On his 21st birthday, his foster parents told him that he was adopted. Years later, he went to meet his mother, but left again, realising that she had no love for him. Soon after, he left New Zealend for Britain. He arrived on Fleet Street and Sutton found work at the Daily Chronicle, a local newspaper. He however, soon discovered that his immigration was questionable, and that he needed a British wife soon. Just to mess with the royalty, he married Natasha, the daughter of Lord Howarth. It was a well known wearing, and he even got a Beatle to take a photo with them, making it a front page story.

Then, one day in 1969, James got a phone call that would change his life...

Characters

 * James Stevens
 * Dodo Chaplet
 * The Master
 * Francis Cleary
 * Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
 * Liz Shaw
 * The Third Doctor
 * Jo Grant
 * Sgt. Benton
 * Natasha Stevens
 * Ogrons
 * Professor J.P. Kettlewell
 * Mullins
 * Sam Seeley
 * Professor Ralph Cornish
 * Greg Sutton
 * Petra Williams
 * Isobel Watkins
 * Professor Kettering
 * Roland Summers
 * George Patrick Barnham
 * Alastair Fergus
 * Professor Gilbert Horner

Companions of the Doctor

 * Susan Foreman
 * Ian Chesterton
 * Barbara Chesterton (Barbara Wright)
 * Ben Jackson
 * Polly Wright
 * Jamie McCrimmon
 * Zoe Heriot
 * Sarah Jane Smith
 * Melanie Bush
 * Ace

Earth-based conflicts

 * The Shoreditch Incident

Individuals

 * James Stevens spent time as a journalism teacher and mentored both "Ruby" (by implication Ruby Duvall, though the dates don't match) and Sarah Jane Smith.
 * Horatio Chinn
 * Group Captain Gilmore
 * Rachel Jensen

Time technology

 * Time ring

Corporations

 * International Electromatics

UNIT and Affliates

 * UNIT
 * ICMG
 * C19
 * The Glasshouse

Continuity

 * James Stevens was the Daily Chronicle reporter to whom the Ashbridge Cottage Hospital porter Mullins spoke on the phone. He said a man with inhuman blood had been admitted as a patient following a meteorite shower. Stevens was one of many reporters barred entry by the Brigadier and UNIT. Shortly after, Stevens met a poacher named Sam Seeley in a pub. Sam told him he had found one of the "thunderballs" recently fallen to Earth. Stevens dismissed Seeley's claims as no more than the ramblings of a drunk. Several days later, London was crippled by the events of Black Thursday, a terrorist attack during which hysterical members of the public reported seeing window shop dummies coming to life. (DW: Spearhead from Space)
 * Stevens' mysterious contact directs him to the Wenley Moor nuclear research facility. Stevens calls the facility and is surprised when the phone is answered by the Brigadier, who hangs up as soon as he realises that he is speaking to a journalist. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians)
 * Several weeks after the plague outbreak, a woman named Doris Squire was still being treated for shock "after claiming to see some sort of lizard walking upright like a man." According to Stevens, this story did not even make the gutter press. (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians)
 * While interviewing Ralph Cornish of the Space Centre on the state of British scientific development in the run up in the Mars Probe 7 crisis (DW: The Ambassadors of Death), Stevens inquires as to the effect of the death of International Electromatics founder Tobias Vaughn on said development. (DW: The Invasion) Refusing to answer the question directly, Cornish directs him to Vaughn's former associate Ashley Chapel. (MA: Millennial Rites)
 * Stevens dismisses Isobel Watkins' claims that Earth had been invaded by "robot men from outer space" (DW: The Invasion) as well as Greg Sutton's similarly outlandish claim that a green slime from the centre of the Earth transformed scientists into wolf monsters during the Inferno Project. He describes Sutton's story as sounding like the plot of a "science fiction potboiler." (DW: Inferno)
 * Stevens manages to collect various reports of a series of agent procateurs known as "the Doctor" who have been involved in various unusual incidents such as the ULTIMA Incident in 1943 (DW: The Curse of Fenric), the Shangri-La Incident in 1959 (DW: Delta and the Bannermen), the Shoreditch Incident in November 1963 (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks), the C-Day fiasco and the contemporaneous Gatwick Incident on 20 July 1966 (DW: The War Machines, DW: The Faceless Ones) as well as the aforementioned death of Tobias Vaughn and the Wenley Moor Incident.
 * After almost a year of attempting to collate information about the "Doctor" agents from disparate sources, Stevens finally sees one of them in person at the press demonstration of the experimental Keller Process at Stangmoor Prison. The Doctor was accompanied by a "small, mousy looking woman with a pleasant face." (DW: The Mind of Evil)
 * Stevens suspects that the Doctor and UNIT may have been involved in the disappearance of a 15-year-old Coal Hill School pupil named Susan Foreman and her teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright from Shoreditch in November 1963. Susan, whose home address was I.M. Foreman's junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane, only spent several months at the school and had difficulty making friends. Other students described her as being strange and remembered that she mentioned that she lived with her grandfather. All of her records were later found to be forgeries. Despite extensive searches and appeals for assistance, Susan was never found. (DW: An Unearthly Child) On the other hand, Chesterton and Wright reappeared in the summer of 1965. (DW: The Chase) They claimed to have spent the previous year and a half doing missionary work in Central Africa. Not quite returning to their old lives, Wright became a university history lecturer, specialising in the Aztec period of Central American history (DW: The Aztecs) whereas Ian became a university science lecturer and gained a professorship within a year. He specialised in astronomy but showed expertise across a wide range of fields that were the beyond the scope of a former secondary school science teacher's training. (DW: An Unearthly Child, et al.) They eventually married (PDA: The Face of the Enemy, SJA: Death of the Doctor), had a son named John (NA: Timewyrm: Revelation) and began writing a diary to leave for Susan in the 22nd century (PDA: Byzantium!).
 * Stevens later meets a young woman named Dodo Chaplet who suffered a nervous breakdown following the events of C-Day. (DW: The War Machines) She does not remember anything about that day but her claims to have met one-eyed reptile men (DW: The Ark) and Wild West gunfighters (DW: The Gunfighters) and to have played games with living dolls (DW: The Celestial Toymaker) resulted in her being sent to a psychiatric institution.
 * In 1971, a terrorist known as Victor Magister or "the Master" is arrested following an incident at the village Devil's End. (DW: The Dæmons) He and his accomplices are subsequently charged with the attack on Black Thursday (DW: Spearhead from Space), the plague outbreak (DW: Doctor Who and the Silurians) and the failure of the World Peace Conference (DW: The Mind of Evil), among other incidents. Magister escaped from custody in the autumn of 1971, causing a great deal of scandal in the prison service. (DW: The Sea Devils) Stevens notes that his terrorist activities of the early 1970s were little remembered by most British people in 1996.
 * A Northern Irish UNIT soldier named Francis Cleary is deeply disturbed by the sight of one of his fellow soldiers, who was also a good friend, being killed by an alien at the Nuton Power Complex (DW: The Claws of Axos) and finally goes mad after seeing Satan himself at a church in Devil's End (DW: The Dæmons).
 * Following Dodo's murder, Stevens sees a television report which mentions that UNIT is providing security for the Second World Peace Conference at Auderly House. Entering the grounds of the manor house clandestinely, he is saved from death at the hands of an ape creature by the Doctor. The Brigadier later shows him its body, which finally convinces him that the various outlandish stories which he has heard about aliens visiting and/or the invading the Earth are entirely true. (DW: Day of the Daleks)
 * Stevens notes that the Brigadier retired from UNIT in the mid 1970s and began teaching mathematics at "a minor public school for boys." (DW: Mawdryn Undead) According to Stevens' sources, he is "occasionally wheeled out when things are going very wrong somewhere in the world." (DW: Battlefield, BFA: Minuet in Hell)
 * Ruby Duvall first appeared in NA: Iceberg.
 * NA: The Dying Days mentions the fiction book-within-a-book Who Killed Kennedy. It also attempts to explain why some of the UNIT dating is wrong: it was changed prior to publication. Stevens had "gone to ground" in April 1996 whereas his co-author David Bishop was still in London in May 1997.
 * The Ninth Doctor was present at Kennedy's assassination. (DW: Rose)

Timeline

 * At various points throughout, the events of the novel take place contemporaneously with those of every Doctor Who serial from DW: Spearhead from Space to DW: Day of the Daleks.