Evolution (novel)

Evolution was the second novel in the Virgin Missing Adventures series. It featured the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith.

Publisher's summary

 * "Someone is tampering with the fabric of the human cell," the Fourth Doctor said darkly, "perverting its secrets to his own dark purposes."

Sarah Jane wants to meet her fellow journalist Rudyard Kipling, and the Fourth Doctor sets the co-ordinates for England, Earth, in the Victorian Age. As usual, the TARDIS materialises in not quite the right place, and the time travellers find themselves pursued across Devon moorland by a huge feral hound.

Children have gone missing; at the local boarding school, the young Rudyard Kipling has set up search parties. Lights have been seen beneath the waters of the bay, and fishermen have been pulled from their boats and mutilated. Graves have been robbed of their corpses. Something is going on, and Arthur Conan Doyle, the ship’s doctor from a recently berthed arctic whaler, is determined to investigate.

The Doctor and Doyle join forces to uncover a macabre scheme to interfere with human evolution - and both Sarah Jane and Kipling face a terrifying transmogrification.

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * The Fourth Doctor
 * Sarah Jane Smith
 * Rudyard Kipling
 * Arthur Conan Doyle
 * Sir Edward
 * Sir Alexander Cromwell
 * Josh Andrews
 * Ben Tolliver
 * Ross
 * Billy
 * Breckinridge
 * Captin Grey
 * Alice
 * Lucy
 * Colley

Locations

 * Sarah compares the moors to Karn and observes the effect that adventure has had on the Doctor's mood.

TARDIS

 * Sarah swims in the Doctor's TARDIS' "bathroom".

Continuity

 * In several scenes told from Sarah's point of view, she refers to the planet Karn and the encounter with Morbius in DW: The Brain of Morbius. Her observations imply this story takes place almost immediately after those events.
 * The TARDIS's "bathroom" in which Sarah swims was first seen on-screen in DW: The Invasion of Time.
 * A crashed Rutan ship is key to the back-story; this story occurs (in the Doctor's personal timeline) prior to DW: Horror of Fang Rock, which is also about events set in motion by a Rutan crashing in an isolated part of the English coast.
 * The Doctor mentions Metebelis III (DW: The Green Death DW: Planet of the Spiders) and Argolis (DW: The Leisure Hive).
 * Sarah refers to her first trip in the TARDIS to 13th century England (DW: The Time Warrior) and her encounter with Sutekh in 1911 (DW: Pyramids of Mars).
 * Queen Victoria has secret agents who investigate unusual occurrences. (DW: Tooth and Claw)

Timeline

 * Evolution occurs after DW: The Brain of Morbius
 * Evolution occurs before TVC: Return of the Daleks