The Scarlet Empress (novel)

The Scarlet Empress was the fifteenth novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It was written by Paul Magrs, released 7 September 1998 and featured the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones.

It was also the first full-length novel to feature Iris Wildthyme, a Time Lady who first appeared in the short story Old Flames.

It was named after the Marlene Dietrich film, a trend which continued with Magrs' next Doctor Who novel The Blue Angel.

Publisher's summary
Arriving on the almost impossibly ancient planet of Hyspero, a world where magic and danger walk hand in hand, the Doctor and Sam are caught up in a bizarre struggle for survival.

Hyspero has been ruled for thousands of years by the Scarlet Empresses, creatures of dangerous powers — powers that a member of the Doctor's own race is keen to possess herself: the eccentric time traveller and philanderer known only as Iris Wildthyme.

As the real reasons for Iris's obsession become clear, the Doctor and Sam must embark on a perilous journey across deserts, mountains, forests and oceans. Both friends and foes are found among spirits, djinns, alligator men and golden bears — but in a land where the magical is possible, is anything really as it seems?

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * Eighth Doctor
 * Sam Jones
 * Iris Wildthyme
 * Gila
 * The Cyborg Duchess
 * The spider
 * The Spider Duchess
 * Major Angela
 * The Mock Turtle
 * The first Scarlet Empress
 * The current Scarlet Empress
 * Julia
 * Executioner
 * Our Lady of the Flowers
 * Giselle
 * The Vizier
 * Brewis

Books

 * Aja'ib is a book of fantastic stories, tales and adventures.

Culture

 * Romana II once dragged the Doctor to an opera in Milan. After that they went to see the soprano hermaphrodites of Alpha Centauri.
 * Sam sings ABBA songs with Iris on their road trip.

The Doctor

 * The Doctor describes himself as an ethnomethodologist.
 * The Doctor recalls "jumping off an Ice Warrior ship over Central London. Scuba diving with Zygons. Causing havoc once again on Skaro."
 * Iris was not fond of the Seventh Doctor.

Foods and beverages

 * Iris consumes a variety of alcohol, mostly gin.
 * Sam drinks too much of the crystallised wine.
 * Gila buys some fish.
 * The Doctor offers the Mock Turtle a jelly baby prior to travelling through the vortex in Iris' bus.

Gallifrey

 * Iris was mentions that she's met some of her other selves via time scoop.
 * The Doctor and Iris both know that the Death Zone is no larger than North Wales.
 * On Gallifrey, regeneration is treated the same way that sex is treated on Earth.

Individuals

 * Iris mentions the Doctor has collaborated with Davros, Napoleon Bonaparte, Al Capone, the Rani and Adolf Hitler.
 * The Doctor and Iris met Oscar Wilde in Paris just after Wilde's imprisonment.
 * The Doctor and Jo Grant met with Iris and they met Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso just after the Doctor and Jo had left Spiridon.
 * Only the heart of the Cyborg Duchess is flesh. She joins with the giant spider to become a symbiotic creature.
 * The Mock Turtle was locked in stasis in ice on a plinth over looking the ocean. He's mildly telepathic. His hind legs are hooves.
 * Sam doesn't like Pink Floyd.

Iris Wildthyme and the Doctor

 * Iris claims to have survived "Giant Spiders on Metebelis Three, the Cyberman tombs of Telos, the Drashigs in feeding frenzy on their foetid swamp world."
 * Iris has also recently escaped Xeriphas.
 * Iris refers to the Master as a "phallocentric dope".
 * The Doctor challenges Iris' claims, stating, "You didn't foil the Dalek invasion of Earth in the twenty-second century. I did! It was me, Susan, and Ian and Barbara! And the Cyber tombs on Telos...You weren't there Iris. You weren't to be seen!"
 * Iris replies by saying that in her version, she travelled with her "glamorous young assistant" Jeremy.
 * Whilst in a river with patriarchal psychic river jellyfish-like creatures, Sam is telepathically contacted by said patriarchal creatures, who tell her that the Doctor was woven on a loom and only thinks he has a human mother.
 * The Doctor recalls having Christmas dinner with Iris, Tegan and Turlough.
 * Iris once proposed to the Doctor in Venice.
 * Iris once travelled with an "obtuse shape-shifter who loved nothing better than to spend much of his time as a lippy garrulous penguin."
 * Kroton the Cyberman is a friend of Iris.
 * Iris astral projects herself around Hyspero while everyone sleeps in Major Angela's house with the bears.

Locations

 * Bears that shave their golden fur live in the Forest of Kestheven.

Species

 * Sam sees Draconian princes, Spiridons in purple furs and Martians in armour on the streets of Hyspero.
 * The Doctor mentions vampires to Sam while discussing the borders between magic and science.
 * According to the Doctor the Chelonian version of Cinderella had to be seen to be believed.
 * Iris is sick because she took high tea with a Draconian prince and ate a live Kaled mutant from the shell.

TARDIS

 * Iris Wildthyme's TARDIS responds to Iris' voice commands.
 * She has some cassettes in her TARDIS of Motown, ABBA, and Shirley Bassey.
 * In Iris's bus the time winds come in through the windows when it's in flight.

Technology

 * Sam and Gila trade a dismantled and useless etheric beam locator for some bread.
 * The Scarlet Guards have T-Mat-like devices on their belts.

Time travel

 * The Doctor describes travelling through the Vortex as "vworp vworp".

Continuity

 * This is Iris Wildthyme's first full novel appearance. She first appeared in PROSE: Old Flames.
 * Iris regenerates into the blonde version next seen in PROSE: Femme Fatale.
 * The Doctor thinks back over his most recent adventures: Skaro, (PROSE: War of the Daleks) London, (PROSE: The Bodysnatchers) San Francisco, (TV: Doctor Who and/or PROSE: Vampire Science) and the House of Lungbarrow. (PROSE: Lungbarrow)
 * The Doctor mentions having been put on trial, (TV: The Trial of a Time Lord) exiled, (TV: Spearhead from Space) summoned to carry out ridiculous tasks, (TV: Genesis of the Daleks, The Brain of Morbius) and "dragged back to your ancestral home to atone for sins that weren't even yours." (PROSE: Lungbarrow)
 * Sam has a dream sequence which occurs just after PROSE: The Bodysnatchers.
 * While entertaining the birds of paradise the Doctor mentions many of his past adventures.
 * When "he was sent to avert the genesis of the dreams and desires of one particular historical despot". (TV: Genesis of the Daleks)
 * When he met "the vicious slime-like beast in the pit that only [he] could befriend and talk to". (TV: The Creature from the Pit)
 * When he "was forced to battle a multi-legged fiend that secreted acid from every pore in an arena watched by some million or more". (COMIC: Doctor Who and the Iron Legion)
 * When he visited "the world at the edge of the cosmos where [he] fell into a puddle and met the last known and very strangest creature in the world". (TV: Planet of Evil)
 * When he "went to the centre of the world and met people for whom time had stood still". (TV: Doctor Who and the Silurians)
 * When he encountered "the demon who lived under a church and unleashed himself one sacred night". (TV: The Dæmons)


 * The Doctor recalls the events of PROSE: The Dying Days (jumping off an Ice Warrior over central London), scuba diving with Zygons (PROSE: The Bodysnatchers) and causing havoc (again) on Skaro. (PROSE: War of the Daleks)
 * The Doctor and Iris perform a mind-sharing ritual much like the Second Doctor and Third Doctor once did. (TV: The Three Doctors)