The Crystal Bucephalus (novel)

The Crystal Bucephalus was the fourth novel in the Virgin Missing Adventures series. It was written by Craig Hinton. It is the only Missing Adventure novel to feature the Fifth Doctor, Tegan Jovanka and Vislor Turlough travelling together. In addition, Kamelion makes a rare appearance.

Publisher's summary

 * "I'm a Time Lord, not a bank manager. When I invested in this place I had no idea that it would succeed. I mean — a time-travelling restaurant?"

The Crystal Bucephalus: a restaurant patronised by the highest echelons of society in the 10th millennium. The guests are projected back in time to sample the food and drink of a bygone age.

When the galaxy's most notorious crime boss is murdered in the Bucephalus, The Doctor, Tegan and Turlough are immediately arrested for the killing. To prove their innocence, they must track down the perpetrators of slaughter and sabotage, and uncover a conspiracy which has been 5,000 years in the making.

Plot
At the end of the tenth millennium, the elite of the galactic Union dine at the Crystal Bucephalus, a temporal projector which allows its patrons to dine at famous historical restaurants.

The time equipment, designed by Alexhandri Lassiter, projects the visitors through time with a reduced reality quotient, ensuring that they are able to spend brief periods in the past without altering history.

When Maximillian Arrestis, the kingpin of a criminal syndicate called the Elective, is poisoned by a bottle of wine sent from the Benefactor’s Cubiculo, the fact that it killed him proves that he was murdered by someone from his own time zone.

The Maitre D’ retrieves and arrests the occupants of the Benefactor’s Cubiculo -- and the Doctor, Tegan and Turlough, who had just arrived at a quaint 18th-century French restaurant in the TARDIS, are surprised to be dragged over 8000 years into the future and accused of murder. Tegan impulsively flees into the corridors of the Bucephalus, where she meets Arrestis’ consort Diva -- who is being pursued by a man in a shielded combat suit. The man in the suit forces them both into an empty Cubiculo and transports them all into the past, intending to use Diva as bait to make his enemy show his hand.

The Doctor and Turlough appear to be in serious trouble until the Doctor realises where he is and reveals to the stunned Maitre D’ that he owns the restaurant. He had invested in the Bucephalus some time ago to dispose of the compound interest accumulating in his galactic bank account, and had never expected anything to come of the concept. Intending to find out who tried to frame him, the Doctor suggests that Turlough follow the Maitre D’ on his rounds to learn more about the galactic political situation, while the Doctor speaks with Lassiter about the technology used in the Bucephalus.

Lassiter, happy to discuss his work with a fellow scientist, explains that his equipment generates time bubbles around his patrons, who are then navigated through the Vortex by a pool of Legions, multi-dimensional creatures recently released from a period of imprisonment imposed upon them by the Time Lords. The Doctor comes to suspect that Lassiter has deliberately retarded the full potential of his research in order to avoid creating an actual time machine, but before he can confront Lassiter on this, one of the Legions suffers a near-fatal infarction.

Sven Tornqvist, the religious leader of the Lazarus Intent, has just invited the Maitre D’ to dine with him, but Turlough, fed up with the Maitre D’s supercilious and arrogant attitude, pushes past him into the Cubiculo… just as the injured Legion loses control of the time bubble, apparently exposing both Turlough and Tornqvist to the Time Winds.

Instead of disintegrating in the Vortex, Turlough and Tornqvist are transported to the Exemplar, the home of Lassiter’s former student and lover Ladygay Matisse. Through the Exemplar, she can control the functions of the Bucephalus without Lassiter’s knowledge, and she has used it to kidnap Tornqvist and find out what he knows about her ally.

Tornqvist withstands the interrogation and is sent to the cells with Turlough to recover his strength before the next session. While recovering, he tells Turlough about his religion; founded over 5000 years ago, the Lazarus Intent has brought faith and comfort to most of the galaxy, and for all of that time its followers have been searching for a time machine with which to rescue Lazarus himself from his death at the hands of the Sontarans.

Matisse’s son, Garrett Byson, arrives with food for the prisoners; due to his mother’s exposure to temporal radiation during her pregnancy, he has the body of a grown man although he is only nine years old. Tornqvist thus easily hypnotises the child with his Inf, the symbol of the Intent, and he and Turlough head back to the gateway, intending to force Matisse to return them to the Bucephalus.

The Doctor and Lassiter analyse the readings taken during the Legion’s attack, and discover that its infarction was deliberately induced by someone with technology equivalent to that of the Bucephalus. The Maitre D’, however, refuses to shut down the restaurant on their say-so, and since the Doctor is an absentee owner he is unable to insist. It occurs to the Doctor at this point to wonder why nobody from the Elective has responded to Arrestis’ murder, and when he examines the body he finds it to be a clone -- which should be impossible, since genetic research is forbidden by the Lazarus Intent and the technology to create a clone thus does not exist in this time period. Before he can convey his discovery to Lassiter, however, Matisse initiates the next stage of her plan and begins to alter the topography of the Carte de Locales…

The man in the suit has taken Tegan and Diva to 1980s London and allowed them to escape, but he soon tires of waiting and recaptures them, revealing himself to be the real Arrestis. He knows who Diva really is and why she agreed to become his consort, and thus tried to keep her running around in the past in order to force Lassiter to rescue her.

Since it seems this is not going to happen, he contacts Matisse and orders her to return him to the Exemplar, but Turlough and Tornqvist break in and confront her before she can do so. Her android servants restrain them, but by the time she gets back to the controls, her earlier sabotage has taken effect, turning the Grid into a topographically closed system from which she cannot retrieve Arrestis. Unaware of the danger, Diva tries to use her own recall rod to return to the Bucephalus, but this simply transports her,

Tegan and Arrestis to the next location on the Carte de Locales -- a private party on the planet Myrmidon, where gatecrashing is punishable by death. When Arrestis’ boorish behaviour draws unwanted attention, they are forced to flee to the next stop, but an anomaly in the Grid separates Tegan and Diva from Arrestis, sending them to the beautiful crystal world Diadem while Arrestis ends up in a bar on 20th-century Earth.

to be added

Characters

 * Fifth Doctor
 * Tegan Jovanka
 * Vislor Turlough
 * Kamelion
 * Alexhendri Lassiter
 * Maximillian Arrestis
 * Sebastian Lassiter
 * Sven Tornqvist
 * Ladygay Matisse
 * Garrett Byson
 * Hellenica Monroe
 * Hercule DeSalle
 * Neil Corridge

The Doctor

 * The Fifth Doctor can "swim" through the Time Vortex.
 * The Doctor again demonstrates his psychic prowess by seizing control of Kamelion from "Lazarus" and speaking through Kamelion's mouth.
 * The Doctor spends an extended period trapped on the ice planet Pella Satyrnis and creates the Tempus Fugit while trapped there.

Individuals

 * While stranded in 1980s London, Tegan meets a young waitress in a McDonald's restaurant.

Continuity

 * The Doctor claims that he has not smoked tobacco in four incarnations. (TV: An Unearthly Child)
 * The Doctor remembers Alexander the Great being "a dreadful bore". (AUDIO: Farewell, Great Macedon)
 * Tegan refers to her encounters with the Cybermen, (TV: Earthshock) the Terileptils (TV: The Visitation) and the Mara. (TV: Kinda, Snakedance, AUDIO: The Cradle of the Snake)
 * The Doctor recalls his most recent encounter with the Time Lords (TV: Arc of Infinity) as well as his encounters with Ruath (PROSE: Goth Opera) and Omega. (TV: Arc of Infinity; AUDIO: Omega)
 * The Doctor once again refers to humanity as being "indomitable". (TV: The Ark in Space, Utopia)
 * The Doctor's jacket was given to him by Professor George Litefoot. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)
 * Tegan recalls that she was last in a medieval castle only a few days before. (TV: The King's Demons)
 * The Doctor laments the destruction of his sonic screwdriver by the Terileptil leader in September 1666, and opines that he should have sued the Terileptils for criminal damage. (TV: The Visitation)
 * A book by Ernst Findecker is in the TARDIS library. (TV: The Talons of Weng-Chiang)