Doctor Who: The Newbies Guide

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This is the sixty-sixth novel in BBC Books' Past Doctor Adventures series.

Where does this fit?

This happens at some point between Season 22's Vengeance on Varos and Season 23's The Trial of a Time Lord

Other Guides to this Story

Doctor

The sixth Doctor is tall with curly blond hair. He wears a multicoloured patchwork coat. He is overbearing and arrogant. He likes to be the centre of attention.

Companion(s)

Perpugilliam (Peri) Brown is an American botany student from the 1980s. She met the fifth Doctor in Planet of Fire when she was on holiday in Lanzerote with her stepfather Howard, and helped him to defeat the Master. In The Caves of Androzani the Doctor sacrificed his fifth incarnation to save her life. She continued travelling with the sixth Doctor, despite his initial ill treatment of her, and the fact that they were always bickering.

Recurring and Historical Characters

The Nestene Consciousness is a disembodied intelligence descended from a being that survived the previous universe. It attempted to invade the Earth in Spearhead From Space and Terror of the Autons. It has the ability to control items made of plastic, and usually employs Autons as agents.

Autons are plastic beings controlled by the Nestene Intelligence. There are two types of Autons. The first are sophisticated duplicates which need the original to be kept alive in order to duplicate them. The second are crude killing machines with a gun hidden in their hands. This second type are often disguised as shop window dummies. The guns have two settings - kill and disintegrate. The Doctor faced them in Spearhead From Space and Terror of the Autons.

In Vengeance on Varos the TARDIS needed a new supply of Zeiton 7. The Doctor obtained some, and has been playing around with it since then.

In The Trial of a Time Lord the Time Lords put the Doctor on trial for his interference in the universe. The trial was revealed to be, in part, a cover-up of certain secrets concerning the planet Ravalox, which the Doctor had apparently discovered in The Mysterious Planet (episodes 1-4 of Trial of a Time Lord).

In the novella Shell Shock we discovered that Peri had been abused by her stepfather Howard, who appeared in Planet of Fire, though you don;t need to read that to understand the references here.

None.

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