Bad Therapy

Roots: In homage to numerous action movies including several James Bond films, Chris gets a fight on top of a moving train. There are references to Movie News, the Evening News, Rolls Royce, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room, Physical Strength and Fitness magazine, Brylcream, Winnie-the-Pooh (Christopher Robin), Nancy Drew, Superman, Sartre, the Bible (David and Goliath), Freud, South Pacific, Ronnie Scott's, and Porche.

Dialogue Triumphs: "I just love human beings. No logic to your behaviour at all, and yet you're so irresistible. How do you do it?"

"We mustn't make ourselves alone. We mustn't try to cut ourselves off from the people around us. To isolate ourselves is a such a childish thing to do."

Continuity: The Palace of the First Queen of Kr'on Tep was one of the grandest structures on the planet when it was built; by Peri's time it is largely ruined, except for the centre of the palace. It was a wedding gift to the First Queen, a woman scientist named Petruska whose husband was the first and most famous king of Kr'on Tep, Moriah. Moriah arrived from another planet to conquer Kr'on Tep and turn into one of the most powerful civilizations in its area of space. According to legend, Petruska was unfaithful to Moriah, who killed her in a rage and left Kr'on Tep, never to return. Yrcanos can trace his ancestry right back to Moriah and Petruska's first-born. The palace ostraca of the Ker'ana Ton Warriors is in the K'tum Pi desert on Kr'on Tep. The Time Corridor that Petruska built on Kr'on Tep leads to twentieth century Earth. Learning of her affair, Moriah killed her before she could use the Time Corridor and fled through the gateway himself, traveling the galaxy in an attempt to find material for his work to recreate Petruska, always returning to the chamber on Kr'on Tep, which he used as a base; eventually, he became aware that his descendent Yr'canos had brought a bride from Earth and set the gateway to take him there. Moriah is either immortal or very long lived.

Moriah creates the toys in an attempt to recreate Petruska. The Toys are genetically engineered therapy instruments at the Petruska Institute run by Moriah. They are empathic and can sense who a patient needs around them, becoming replicas of those people and providing physical and emotional care for the patient. They are grown from tissue and organ cultures derived from the bodies of the Black Cab's victims. They have two glands at the base of the throat, which secretes their empathic fluid; remove this and they die, since they require the love of whichever human they become bonded to survive. The Toys whither and die without humans to bond to. Moriah describes the Cab as a "gelatinous creature"; it is composed of an artificial material that he created during his research, which responds to his thoughts and feelings. Moriah's rejected attempts to recreate Petruska eventually kill him, as the Toys created in her image rip him apart as the gateway explodes.

The Doctor has barely spoken since Roz's death. He and Chris dine in a Soho restaurant. The Doctor can type human blood by taste. He claims that he is fond of science fiction. He drinks coffee several times whilst in Soho. He wears his tweed jacket here. He produces a huge bunch of long-stemmed white roses from his sleeve, and then produces a rubber chicken from his sleeve, throws it into the air, points at it and shouts "one finger can be a deadly weapon" whereupon it disappears in a ball of scarlet fire and hundreds of tiny chocolate eggs rain down. He tries to pay a taxi fare with tiny faintly luminous cubes. His pockets contain two apple cores, a catapult, fourteen inches of string, a cricket ball, twenty-three Arcturian pounds, three gobstoppers, a small Swiss Army knife, some matches, and a white handkerchief. He uses a Venusian hip throw on Carl. He eats an apple and reads a paperback book on the history of criminal activity in London during the twentieth century whilst waiting for Harris; he pockets the apple core and throws the book in a bin. Harris pours him a scotch. He performs artificial resuscitation on Jack. He claims that a literal translation of his real name has thirty-eight syllables. Having woken up naked in a morgue, he dons striped pyjamas. He makes cappuccinos for himself and Julia Mannheim. He dons a latex mask and adopts the alias Billy Spot to infiltrate Gordy Scraton's organization, adopting a London accent. He telepathically links with Peri to access her memories of Petruska.

Chris is less accustomed to, but not uninterested in, the attentions of men (Damaged Goods). He likes blonde women. He drinks wine with Tilda. He eats buttered toast and jam. The TARDIS wardrobe selects for him a Zoot suit with knee-length navy coat and a felt hat. He finishes Patsy's whiskey. He has sex with Patsy. At the Adjudicator Academy, cadets were taught that the last resort for an unarmed officer faced with an armed opponent is the Diving, Rolling Breakfall with Kick; in practice, this almost never works, but Chris tries it on Gordy Scraton here and gets shot in the shoulder in the process.

Following the events of Trial of a Time Lord, Peri becomes Queen Gilliam of Kr'on Tep and its seven systems, as well as the Governor of seven worlds. She has spent twenty-five years on Kr'on Tep. To her frustration, she usually has to wear intricate and unwieldy clothing that means she requires the aid of two handmaidens to sit down, and her schedule is entirely filled with affairs of state. She has shoulder length blonde hair by now, and knows how to pilot a shuttle. She has been researching Petruska and Moriah and uses translation software to translate the inscriptions in the Palace of the First Queen. She still bitterly resents the Doctor abandoning her, and doesn't love Yrcanos. Ala'dan gives her a null-gravity belt. She returns to Earth in London 1958 via the Time Corridor. The first thing she does once reunited with the Doctor is to slap him. Following the events of Mindwarp, she made Yrcanos wait on Thoros Beta for a month because she thought the Doctor would come back for her; he tells her that he thought she was happy at first and then got caught up with other things. The Doctor drops her off at Victoria Station in London in the later twentieth century and she forgives him for abandoning her. He gives her some traveller's cheques and currency, and also returns her passport; because the photograph is so out of date, she lets him keep it as a memento. She plans to go traveling around Europe.

The TARDIS wardrobe currently has a sign on the door reading "Closed for refurbishment". It frequently changes its style and location and has recently appeared both as a small gentleman's tailor complete with elderly bespectacled shop assistant, and as a huge warehouse sized room with wicker baskets stuffed full of clothes piled up to the ceiling. When Chris visits on this occasion, there is a low-backed Edwardian nursing chair outside the door.

Links: The Doctor and Chris are still strongly affected by Roz's death (So Vile a Sin). There are references to Original Sin, Planet of Fire, The Caves of Androzani, The Twin Dilemma, Attack of the Cybermen, Vengeance on Varos, The Mark of the Rani, and Ishtar (Happy Endings). Chris recalls being infected by a telepathic virus (SLEEPY).

Location: Soho, London, October 1958; Kr'on Tep, date unknown; London, the late twentieth century.

Unrecorded Adventures: Following Roz's death, the Doctor and Chris have made brief visits to various locations including a junk market on a small low-gravity moon where the Doctor rummaged through skips of electronic junk looking for spares; a water-covered world where they swam with the nomadic amphibian inhabitants; and a transport museum in an artificial satellite where Chris flew a variety of aircraft.

The Bottom Line: "I don't know if I trust you anymore, Doctor." With themes of trust, betrayal, healing and emotion, Bad Therapy is perfectly placed directly after So Vile a Sin, and shows both the Doctor and Chris coming to terms with Roz's death extremely well. The inclusion of Peri, far from being gratuitous, forces the Doctor to confront his own relationships with his companions, which is entirely in keeping with the themes of the novel.

Discontinuity Guide by Paul Clarke

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Comments

I'm sure Jack travels in the TARDIS toward the very end of this book. At least in two or three trips.

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