The Burning (novel)

The Burning was the thirty-seventh novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Justin Richards. This was the beginning of an arc of stories featuring an amnesiac Eighth Doctor trapped on Earth.

This arc of novels and short stories were effectively a soft reset/reboot of the Eighth Doctor line of stories. With the destruction of Gallifrey and an amnesiac Doctor the writers were able to begin a new-ish line of stories featuring the Doctor without as much of the arcs and history that had carried the series up to The Ancestor Cell.

Publisher’s summary
The late nineteenth century — the age of reason, of enlightenment, of industrialisation. Britain is the workshop of the world, the centre of the Empire.

Progress has left Middletown behind. The tin mine is worked out, jobs are scarce, and a crack has opened across the moors that the locals believe reaches into the depths of Hell itself.

But things are changing: Lord Urton is preparing to reopen the mine; the Society for Psychical Research is interested in the fissure; Roger Nepath and his sister are exhibiting their collection of mystic Eastern artefacts. People are dying. Then a stranger arrives, walking out of the wilderness: a man with no name, no history.

Only one man can unravel the mysteries; only one man can begin to understand the forces that are gathering; only one man can hope to fight against them. And only one man knows that this is just the beginning of the end of the world.

Only one man can stop the Burning.

Chapter Titles

 * 1) Fighting Fire
 * 2) Manson’s Progress
 * 3) Under Mine
 * 4) Warm Reception
 * 5) Heated Conversations
 * 6) By the Light of the Fire
 * 7) The Fires of Hell
 * 8) Curio
 * 9) Souvenir
 * 10) Firing Test
 * 11) Night Callers
 * 12) Lines of Inquiry
 * 13) Into the Depths
 * 14) Fire Pattern
 * 15) Torchlight
 * 16) A Death in the Family
 * 17) Moving Mountains
 * 18) Doctor’s Orders
 * 19) Solid State
 * 20) From the Embers

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * The Eighth Doctor
 * Roger Nepath
 * Colonel Wilson
 * Reverend Matthew Stobbold
 * Professor Isaac Dobbs
 * Lady Urton
 * Lord Urton
 * Alistair Gaddis
 * Betty Stobbold
 * Brookes
 * Devlin
 * Griffiths
 * Isaac Dobbs
 * Patience
 * William Grant
 * Fire elemental

Continuity

 * The Doctor revisits Reverend Stobbold’s daughter Betty in PROSE: Father Time.
 * The origin of the fire elemental is explained in PROSE: Time Zero.