Cold Fusion (novel)

Cold Fusion was the twenty-ninth novel in the Virgin Missing Adventures series. It was written by Lance Parkin. It was the only multi-Doctor story involving televised Doctors ever told by Virgin Books. It involved the unusual pairing of the season 19 Fifth Doctor with the Seventh Doctor near the end of the Virgin New Adventures line.

Originally intended to be published alongside the novel So Vile a Sin to emotionally leverage Roz Forrester's death in that book, delays on Sin meant that people who read the book on publication didn't see this intended aspect of the book.

As a multi-Doctor story, its perspective was unusual. The Seventh Doctor was portrayed as largely disdainful of his earlier self's presence because of the dangers it presented. Though temporal paradoxes and other consequences of two Doctors meeting were touched upon in televised multi-Doctor stories, here they were more central. Moreover, the structure broke with the format of televised multi-Doctor stories, which held that the latest incarnation was the "current" Doctor and therefore the effective headlining "star" of the show. On balance, Fusion was a Fifth Doctor novel that happened to feature the Seventh, rather than a Seventh Doctor novel that used the Fifth.

Publisher's summary

 * "The entire universe is at stake and I'm locked in here with another incarnation of myself, and not even one of the good ones!"

More than one TARDIS lands on a barren ice world. The Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan find a once ordered society on the verge of collapse, as rebels wage a dirty war with Scientifica, the ruling elite. All that stands between order and anarchy is the massed presence of an Adjudicator peacekeeping force.

But is peace the only reason for the Adjudicator garrison? What exactly has been discovered deep below the planet's surface? Who are the mysterious Ferutu? And why is telling a ghost story a criminal offence?

The Fifth Doctor sides with the cause of justice and fairness as always. But, as a threat to the universe unfolds, he finds himself in conflict with his past... and his future.

Plot
to be added

Characters

 * Fifth Doctor
 * Seventh Doctor
 * First Doctor
 * Adric
 * Nyssa
 * Tegan Jovanka
 * Chris Cwej
 * Roz Forrester
 * Patience
 * Adjudicator Provost-General Tertullian Medford
 * Ziyou Wanle
 * SAM drone
 * Chief Scientist Whitfield
 * Quint
 * Adjudicator Dareau
 * Adam

Cultural references from the real world

 * Tegan has seen Blake's 7 and can cope with the idea of transmats.

Foods and beverages

 * The Seventh Doctor's favourite biscuits are chocolate HobNobs.

Individuals

 * Adjudicator Provost-General Tertullian Medford is a secret member of Unitatus.

Individual Time Lords

 * The Doctor badly remembers his life before his second regeneration.
 * Patience was in the house of Blyledge on "Glorious Gallifrey". She has/had thirteen children.
 * Patience's husband was one of the first to explore the vortex.
 * In her memory explored by the Fifth Doctor during their telepathic contact, she has short and black hair.
 * The Other's/Doctor's children were culled, but Susan Foreman was saved.
 * The husband of Patience in her memories is newly regenerated and has new hands that had not touched her yet. The new body is much taller and hairier than his previous beardless body. He has blond curly hair on his head and a beard which is darker and coarser.
 * In her memory, the regenerated husband of Patience thinks that he is old.
 * In her memory, Patience and her husband's firstborn is soon going to be father.

Languages

 * The Fifth Doctor speaks a sentence in Gallifreyan to Patience.

Organisations

 * Unitatus is what UNIT became; they use the old UNIT logo (a grid within a circle) as their herald.

Spacecraft

 * The colony has a Skybase in orbit.

Species

 * The Ferutu are beings from an alternate universe.
 * The Embodiment of Gris is mentioned by the Fifth Doctor.

TARDIS

 * The TARDIS has a lightspeed overdrive.
 * The Machine belongs to Patience.

Weapons

 * The Fifth and Seventh Doctors both use a technique which they describe as being "beyond the science of the Humanian Era", namely reversing the polarity of the neutron flow to disarm several fusion bombs.
 * A SAM drone is a mass-produced drone.

Continuity

 * "Lightspeed overdrive" is first mentioned in TV: Logopolis.
 * PROSE: The Infinity Doctors reveals who Patience is in one universe.
 * PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible and PROSE: Lungbarrow both gave some idea of the time from which Patience is from.
 * The Fifth Doctor is still recovering from the effects of his regeneration three days earlier. (TV: Logopolis, Castrovalva)
 * Nyssa refers to her father Tremas. (TV: The Keeper of Traken)
 * The Fifth Doctor tells Nyssa that nothing important was lost when they forced to jettison a quarter of the TARDIS during Event One. (TV: Castrovalva)
 * Tegan reminds the Fifth Doctor that she never got the chance to be an air hostess. (TV: Logopolis)
 * Adric mentions that the Keeper of Traken was able to divert the TARDIS' course. (TV: The Keeper of Traken)
 * The Doctor reminds Adric that the Master supposedly died on Castrovalva. (TV: Castrovalva)
 * The Fifth Doctor remembers the mindbending battle with Morbius of TV:The Brain of Morbius.
 * Adric has only known the Doctor for several weeks. They first met on Adric's homeworld Alzarius during the 32nd century towards the end of the Doctor's fourth incarnation. (TV: Full Circle)
 * Chris refers to Serenity, the last surviving planet of the Traken Union. The Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown visited it on one occasion. (AUDIO: The Guardians of Prophecy)
 * The Seventh Doctor refers to his fifth incarnation's numerous failed attempts to return Tegan to Heathrow Airport in 1981.
 * Whitfield refers to the Ice Warrior invasion of Earth in May 1997. (PROSE: The Dying Days)
 * The Fifth Doctor mentions that he was once a scientific advisor. (TV: Spearhead from Space, et. al)
 * The Fifth Doctor refers to his encounter with Omega. (TV: The Three Doctors)
 * The Fifth and Seventh Doctors would later meet each other again in AUDIO: The Sirens of Time, prior to the events of AUDIO: The Veiled Leopard and briefly in their eighth incarnation's TARDIS in AUDIO: The Four Doctors, though neither retained any memory of that experience.
 * Bernice Summerfield would later encounter the Ferutu on Dellah in 2596. (PROSE: Twilight of the Gods)

Behind the scenes
Lance Parkin's charity story "Executive Action" (published in Walking in Eternity) provides further details for the riots seen in Patience's memories. The Watch were rounding up all Womb-born, the Loom-born determined to become Gallifrey's dominant faction. According to Rema-Du, loomed Gallifreyans were "pale imitations" compared to the naturally born. This is the same story that states Wardog and the others of the Special Executive were prototypes of Rassilon's loom.