The Death of Art was the fifty-fourth Virgin New Adventures novel. It featured the Seventh Doctor, Chris Cwej and Roz Forrester. It was another in the arc of stories featuring psychic powers.
Publisher's summary[]
He did not know if his powers could save him until the horses' hooves had crushed his ribs and his heart had stopped beating. After that, it was obvious.
1880's France: the corrupt world of the Third Republic. A clandestine brotherhood is engaged in a desperate internal power struggle; a race of beings seeks to free itself from perpetual oppression; and a rip in time threatens an entire city. The future of Europe is at stake, in a war fought with minds and bodies altered to the limits of human evolution.
Chris finds himself working undercover with a suspicious French gendarme; Roz follows a psychic artist whose talents are attracting the attention of mysterious forces; and the Doctor befriends a shape-shifting member of a terrifying family. And, at the heart of it all, a dark and disturbing injustice is being perpetrated. Only an end to the secret war, and the salvation of an entire race, can prevent Paris from being utterly destroyed.
Plot[]
to be added
Characters[]
- Seventh Doctor
- Roz Forrester
- Chris Cwej
- David Clayton
- Brother Tomas
- Montague
- Clarissa Montfalcon
- Dominic Montfalcon
- Emil Montfalcon
- August Mirakle
- Georges Picquart
- Anton Jarre
- Claudette Engadine
- Jean Veber
- Marcel
- Alfred Dreyfus
- Francesque Duquesne
- Grandmaster
- Hubert Henri
- Jean Mayeur
- Jules Perraudin
- Jules Balmarian
- Kasper
- Pierre Duval
- Truthseeker
Worldbuilding[]
- The King in Yellow is mentioned.
Devices[]
- The ormolu clock is still within the TARDIS.
The Doctor[]
- The Doctor was once invited to the Rani's 94th birthday party.
The Doctor's items[]
- Ace has the Doctor's 500 Year Diary.
People[]
- Georges-Eugene Haussmann became Prefect of Paris in the 1850s.
- Roz Forrester recals arresting the fake mystic Rhan-Te-Goth in the 30th century during her three-month stint on fraudster watch assigned by her trainer Konstantine.
Species[]
- The Time Lords' lives are linear, just in more dimensions.
Sports[]
Theories and concepts[]
- The Sensory Limitation Effect is a barrier of scale where events take place over timescales too vast to be meaningful.
Food and beverages[]
Notes[]
- This novel is based on the historical events of the Dreyfus Affair.
- The novel makes references to the disappearance of the author of The Dynamics of an Asteroid - i.e. Professor James Moriarty, last seen falling off a cliff in Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes story The Final Problem.
- Anton Jarre recalls meeting a Belgian police sergeant who is clearly intended to be a young Hercule Poirot, the detective created by Agatha Christie.
- The novel makes reference to the events of The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe.
Continuity[]
- Chris pretends to be the Fifth Doctor, not very successfully, following the events of PROSE: Cold Fusion.
- The Doctor saves the partially formed Notre Dame du Paris configuration in the TARDIS for possible later use. (TV: Doctor Who)
- The Quoth later made a minor reappearance in PROSE: White Canvas.
External links[]
- The Death of Art at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
- The Discontinuity Guide to: The Death of Art at The Whoniverse