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RealWorld

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

References

Cultural references from the real world

  • Tegan has seen Blake's 7 and can cope with the idea of transmats.
  • The statement from the Train Computer, "The lever you have pulled – 'Brakes' – is not in service. Please make a note of it", is a reference to an episode of The Simpsons.
  • On page 142, the line "The birds sing a pretty song and there is always music in the air..." is likely a direct reference to episode 2 of the American TV show Twin Peaks.

Foods and beverages

Individuals

Individual Time Lords

  • 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.
  • The Other's/Doctor's children were culled, but Susan Foreman was saved.

Languages

  • The Fifth Doctor speaks a sentence in Gallifreyan to Patience. To Adric, the words sound almost musical, and remind him of a nursery rhyme.

Organisations

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

Spacecraft

Species

  • The Ferutu are beings from an alternate universe in which Gallifrey was destroyed shortly after Omega's experiments; they have assumed the role of the Time Lords, and actively engage in protecting and shaping the universe. Their "technology" (if it can be called that) is more akin to magic runes.
  • The Embodiment of Gris is mentioned by the Fifth Doctor.

TARDIS

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.

Notes

  • This is the only instalment of the Virgin Missing Adventures in which the Seventh Doctor appears.
  • The reasons that the Doctor seems to not remember meeting his future selves in other multi-Doctor stories are discussed. In most of the televised adventures, it is credited to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect.
  • This story begins a series of story arcs known as the "Psi Powers" arc for the Seventh Doctor, continuing in the novel The Death of Art and ending in novel So Vile a Sin
  • The Seventh Doctor remembers the events of the novel from the perspective of the Fifth Doctor and uses this knowledge against his younger self. This also occurs in the audio stories Peri and the Piscon Paradox and The Four Doctors and the television story Time Crash in which the Sixth, Eighth and Tenth Doctors respectively likewise remember the events portrayed from the point of view of their fifth incarnation.
  • The Seventh Doctor describes his fifth incarnation as being "bland" and "not even one of the good ones." This reflects the Sixth Doctor's low opinion of his immediate predecessor immediately after his regeneration as he told his companion Peri Brown that "he had a feckless charm that was never really [him]." (TV: The Twin Dilemma) The Eighth Doctor was more fond of his fifth incarnation than his two immediate predecessors. He once described him as "terribly polite." (AUDIO: The Four Doctors) By the time of his tenth incarnation, the Doctor expressed a fondness for his time as the Fifth Doctor. He looked upon his fifth incarnation as a turning point in his life. According to the Tenth Doctor, it was during his fifth incarnation that he truly began to enjoy himself. (TV: Time Crash)
  • The Gallifreyan sentence recited by the Doctor on page 124 is represented in the text by Greek letters: "Ανδ Ι τυρνεδ αρουνδ ανδ τηεψ ωερε αλλ ωεαρινγ εψεπατχηεσ." The passage doesn't actually mean anything in Greek, but if transliterated letter-by-letter to English the passage becomes "And I turned around and they were all wearing eyepatches," a sly reference to the infamous Eyepatch Story.

Continuity

External links

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