Interference - Book One (Shock Tactic) was the first volume of Lawrence Miles' two-part multi-Doctor novel Interference. It was released by BBC Books on 2 August 1999 and featured the Eighth and Third Doctors alongside their companions Sam Jones, Fitz Kreiner, and Sarah Jane Smith.
Publisher's summary
Five years ago, Sam Jones was just a schoolgirl from Shoreditch. Of course, that was before she met up with the Doctor and found out that her entire life had been stage-managed by a time-travelling voodoo cult. Funny how things turn out, isn't it?
Now Sam's back in her own time, fighting the good fight in a world of political treachery, international subterfuge, and good old-fashioned depravity. But she's about to learn the first great truth of the universe: that however corrupt and amoral your own race might be, there's always someone in the galaxy who can make you look like a beginner.
Ms Jones has just become a minor player in a million-year-old power struggle... and as it happens, so has the Doctor.
Both of him, actually.
Plot
- Main article: Interference (novel)
Characters
What Happened on Earth
- Eighth Doctor
- Sam Jones
- Fitz Kreiner
- Sarah Jane Smith
- K9
- Guest
- Compassion
- Kode
- Badar
- I.M. Foreman
- Alan Llewis
- Coldicott
- Lost Boy
- Mathara
What Happened on Dust
Worldbuilding
Books
- In the UN's building in Geneva, Fitz finds a book with UNISYC seals called Theoretical Monsters: A Credibility Test. It lists:
- The Cybermen
- The Xxxxxxxxxlanthi (mind-chewers from the Fifth Universe)
- Gell Guards
- Kalekani (which use a terraforming virus on biospheres to replace all land with flats and slopes of green, On Earth it's called "golf".)
Books from the real world
- The character of the Devil in The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov was based on the Doctor (in his third incarnation or earlier).
Cults
- Upon finding himself in 2593/2594 Fitz decides to join the Faction Paradox.
Culture
- I.M. Foreman has recently read The Lord of the Rings.
The Doctor
- The Doctor tells Badar about his imprisonment on Ha'olam.
The Doctor's items
- UNIT uses the space-time telegraph to contact the Doctor.
- The Doctor left the space-time telegraph with the UN in the 1970s or the 1980s.
Energy and radiation
- K9 can detect artron energy.
Exhibitions and conventions
- COPEX has been running since at least 1992. It is an arms fair.
- Sarah Jane Smith masquerades as "Sarah Bland", working for International Procurement Services to get into COPEX.
Foods and beverages
- The Third Doctor gets hot coffee thrown in his face by Magdelana Bishop.
Gallifrey
- The order that I.M. Foreman was a part of devolved into the monk the Doctor knew on the hillside on Gallifrey.
- I.M. Foreman operates I.M. Foreman's One-Species Nongenetically Engineered Travelling Show.
Gallifreyan technology
- Bowships are described by Sam. They have "huge spikes fitted to the prows of the ships, glittering gold in the light from the nearest stars."
- The TARDIS is modelled out of pure mathematics. It is a complex space-time event. Its very existence and position in relation to the rest of the continuum is just an intricate code series.
- The Rassilon Imprimatur maps a Time Lord "on to the Vortex by numbers, linked to the heart of space-time by an umbilical cord of pure mathematics."
Human politicians
- According to the Doctor, the order of Presidents of the United States is: Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Dering, Springsteen, Norris.
- Likewise, the order of Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom is: Heath, Thorpe, Williams, Thatcher, Major, Blair, Clarke.
Individuals
- Fitz Kreiner is 29 years old when he arrives on Earth with the Doctor and Sam. He goes from 1996 to 2593 in the Cold; after waking up, he celebrates his 626th birthday.
- Badar is an imprisoned journalist. With the Doctor he discusses the Doctor's travels and they build a world of ideas that he can retreat into, to escape the torture he endures. On 20 August 1996 he is executed.
- Magdelana Bishop is the assigned defender of the township on Dust.
- Father Kreiner has the heads of several Time Lords on his walls, including the Master and the Rani (though one of them is the head of a clone).
Locations
- Fitz has an apartment in Augustine City on Ordifica.
- The Eleven-Day Empire is Faction Paradox's home base.
- The Remote's home is called Anathema.
Organisations
- There are Ghanaians, Iranians, Saudi Arabians, Indonesians, Russian Mafia and British at COPEX.
- Lewis knows C19's "black" technology.
- UNISYC is being established.
- UNIT, UNISYC, and the ISC are holding some of the technological balance of power.
- Order of the Rectangle, the Cult of the Black Sun and the Luminus were all created by the Faction Paradox.
- Guest fronts the Remote's contingent to Earth to sell the Cold.
Planets
- Dust and Quiescia are on opposite sides of the Mutter's Spiral.
- Ordifica is the planet on which Fitz is brought out of the Cold.
- The Ogron home planet is located at coordinates 0110011 by C2.
- Sarah and the Doctor have just left Quiescia when they arrive on Dust. Before that they were on Peladon. They're heading back to Earth at Sarah's request.
Species
- The Doctor states, "Trade-dependant races are quite common in this part of the galaxy. The Selachians are always trying to unload arms on planets like this one. The Mentors are even worse. And the Arcturans would sell their own souls, if they had any."
- Guest, Compassion, and Kode use Ogrons for security.
Technology
- The Remote's transmitters use block-transfer formulae.
- According to Compassion (speaking to Sam), "You're not supposed to have transmats on Earth. Not in the twentieth century."
- A court case was brought against Microsoft because of its software provided to the robots at the Festival of Ghana. Bill Gates is still apologising for his company's part in it and that it wasn't his fault the robots started killing people.
- The Cold is quite possibly related to validium.
- Sam uses binoculars (given to her by the Doctor) made in the Filipino Protectorate in 4993. The binoculars have lip-reading software on them.
Vehicles
- Sarah's Land Rover has a computer system powered by I² technology.
- K9 can drive Sarah's Land Rover.
Notes
- This is the first novel in the BBC Eighth Doctor Adventures line to use a blue Doctor Who logo on its cover and spine. Before this it was a silver logo.
Continuity
- Faction Paradox first appeared in PROSE: Alien Bodies.
- Sam was put through the emotional and temporal wringer in PROSE: Unnatural History. That was a couple of months ago for Sam.
- At the end of PROSE: Autumn Mist, Sam told the Doctor that she would be leaving him and the TARDIS when they next landed on Earth close to her original time.
- The novel / story is continued in PROSE: Interference - Book Two.
- The space time telegraph was first mentioned in TV: Revenge of the Cybermen.
- Lewis mentions the events of TV: The Tenth Planet, saying he remembers all the fuss from the 1980s and the worry over the new Z-bomb that could destroy the Earth.
- I.M. Foreman refers to the Time Lords using bottle universes as an escape route from the War in Heaven. (PROSE: Dead Romance)
- Sam's bad drug experience appears here. It was first mentioned in PROSE: Longest Day.
- Fitz recalls his indoctrination by the Chinese in PROSE: Revolution Man.
- The Festival of Ghana is a reference to TV: The Chase.
- I² appeared in PROSE: System Shock.