The Banquo Legacy (novel)

The Banquo Legacy was the thirty-fifth novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It concluded with a prelude to The Ancestor Cell, continuing the lead-up of previous novels. Banquo put two new characters in the leading roles and had them tell the story through first-person accounts. The Doctor was sidelined for a vast majority of the book.

Publisher’s Summary
Banquo Manor -- scene of a gruesome murder a hundred years ago. Now history is about to repeat itself.

1898 -- the age of advancement, of electricity, of technology. Scientist Richard Harries is preparing to push the boundaries of science still further, into a new area: the science of the mind.

Pieced together at last from the accounts of solicitor John Hopkinson and Inspector Ian Stratford of Scotland Yard, the full story of Banquo Manor can now be told.

Or can it? Even Hopkinson and Stratford don’t know the truth about the mysterious Doctor Friedlander and his associate Herr Kreiner -- noted forensic scientists from Germany who have come to witness the experiment.

And for the Doctor, time is literally running out. He knows that Compassion is dying. He’s aware that he has lost his own ability to regenerate. He’s worried by Fitz’s fake German accent. And he’s desperate to uncover the Time Lord agent who has him trapped.

Characters

 * The Eighth Doctor
 * Fitz Kreiner
 * Compassion
 * Thomas Jeffries
 * John Hopkinson
 * Sowerden
 * Gordon Seavers
 * Susan Seymour
 * Pamela
 * Catherine Harries

Residents and staff of Banquo Manor

 * Sir George Wallace
 * Robert Dodds
 * Richard Harries
 * Cuthbert Simpson
 * Elizabeth Wallace
 * Beryl Green

Police

 * Inspector Ian Stratford
 * Sergeant Baker
 * Inspector Hetton
 * Chief Inspector Driscoll

The Doctor

 * 19th century England is the Doctor's favourite time and place.
 * Uses the alias Dr. Friedlander.
 * Refers to Irving Braxiatel as "a colleague and occasional collaborator in adventures of the mind, the body and the soul".
 * States that "relatives are hard to keep track of".
 * Tells Stratford he is qualified in many thing; some not yet invented.
 * Doesn't believe in luck.

Physics

 * Artron energy is present in humans at a low level.
 * According to the Doctor, the Artron inhibitor "inhibits the block-transfer equations that make reconstitution and regeneration of the outer plasmic shell possible".

Books

 * The Necronomicon is among Harries' book collection.

Plays from the real world

 * Ian considers whether the situation is akin to that The Magistrate or The Second Mrs Tanqueray.

Earth Locations

 * Gordon Seavers went to University of Oxford; Sowerden teaches there.
 * Three Sisters is the nearest town to Banquo Manor.

Human organisations

 * The Eighth Doctor poses as a member of the Society for the propagation of the forensic sciences.

Foods and beverages from the real world

 * John and Beryl drink whisky.

Individuals

 * The Doctor states that Irving Braxiatel would have a field day in Harries' book collection.

People from the real world

 * John feels like he's trapped in an Arthur Pinero play.
 * The Doctor states that the age of the gentleman scientist is over. "No more Galileos, Newtons or Faradays".
 * Nikola Tesla allowed half a million volts to pass through his body and walked away unscathed.
 * Among Harries' book collection is some poetry containing works by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Books from the real world

 * Ian read Confessions of an English Opium-Eater by Thomas De Quincey.
 * The Doctor states that he provided Franz Hartmann with notes on premature burial for his book.
 * Susan states that her climb down the chimney resembles The Water Babies.
 * Coleridge's poem, Time, Real and Imaginary, is among Harries' book collection.

Continuity

 * Simpson is able to gain the ‘seed code’ of Compassion’s randomiser from Susan Seymour, leading straight into The Ancestor Cell.
 * The Doctor mentions a friend nearly being killed by a Giant rat. (DW: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)
 * The Doctor comments that he "once did something similar with a charge of distronic radiation on a Zygon ship in Scotland" when explaining Nikola Tesla's allowance for half a million volts to pass through him. (DW: Terror of the Zygons)

Timeline

 * This story takes place after EDA: The Space Age
 * This story takes place before EDA: The Ancestor Cell