The Choice (novelisation)

The Choice was the seventh instalment in the Novelisations in Time & Space range. It was written by James Mulholland. It adapted the first of the two Adventures in a Pocket Universe audio stories, Nigel Fairs's The Choice. However, due to BBV Productions' contract to use K9 in the original audios not having covered adaptations in other media and a failure to renegotiate with the rightsholders, it replaced K9 entirely with a new robotic companion for the Mistress, B.E.S..
== Publisher's summary ==
Throughout all of known Ecto-Space, tyranny in all its forms has been opposed – and often humiliated – by a small, bionic ferret named B.E.S.. and her mysterious Mistress. However, when you and your best friend are space-faring heroes fighting evil, you tend to make a few powerful enemies along the way and from time to time, you need to lay low.
Having recently defeated the despot known as Kebek, B.E.S. and her Mistress have been hiding out on the planet Jokastarna, enjoying a life of luxury at Emperor Lukor's palace. Yet the Mistress longs to return to a life of adventure. But when she tests out her unstable time machine, the duo are plunged into an underworld populated by superstitious, disease-ridden beings who worship unseen masters.
It isn't long until B.E.S. and her Mistress find themselves in danger from all corners from tyrants and ghosts!
== Deviations from audio story ==
* Throughout, K9 is replaced by B.E.S. as the Mistress's companion (something B.E.S. Begins would later address in-universe as a temporal phenomenon).
* A lengthy prologue is added, taking place over a month prior to the events related in the audio version, and elaborating on multiple anecdotes about her recent adventures in Ecto-Space mentioned by the Mistress. Lukor and the Court Historian attend a diplomatic conference of the Trune'Rook Yim planetary alliance, held on the planet Xashroth, to welcome the Hanamat system into the alliance. The alliance is crashed by Caladru Kebek who attempts bioweapon-based blackmail on the Hanamat system. The Mistress and B.E.S. are able to develop a vaccine for the disease, and then head to Kebek's ship alongside Lukor, claiming to surrender, while actually planning to sneak a computer virus into his systems and slow down his reprisals.
* The Hanamar system is instead referred to as the Hanamat system.
* The warrior-bird ships are instead referred to as warbirds.
* The Court Historian's name is given as Grode'Corm, and Burns is given the first name Josef.
* It is stated that prior to her stay on Jokastarna, the Mistress travelled in a spacecraft called the Odette. It is following its destruction by Kebek that she starts work on her time machine, which is here named as the Odette Mark II.
* The caveys are depicted not as a single species, but as a race made up of groups of slaves imported to Jokastarna from many other planets. For example, Nathanien and Lenora are shown to be feline in appearance, being D'Roon'Klim from the planet R'Inderfred 88. It is revealed that Lukor made a deal with Kebek so he would supply him with the slaves in exchange for Lukor helping Kebek get the technology to build his warbirds.
* The beginning of Nathanien's ill-fated attempt to escape the cave system with Thenora (here called Phenora) is depicted on-page, rather than merely alluded to in dialogue by his mother. It is clarified that Phenora was not just Nathanien's friend, but his sister.
* The device used by Burns to communicate with his superiors is explicitly a smartphone.
* When the Mistress falls unconscious, the narrative follows her dream or hallucination. She briefly hallucinates that she under attack by a squad of Cyberons, then by a "horrible, horned creature with red eyes". However, she then has a psychic conversation with the gestalt intelligence in the walls of the Inner Kingdom, clarified to be the "atomic shadows" of the minds of previous generations who died in Lukor's concentration camps. When speaking to her, they take the form of the Mistress's mentor, described as a "tall man with wild hair and an oversized coat".
* When she pretends to play along with Lukor's wish to marry her for political gain, the Mistress does not merely play the part he expects, but lets him know she is building a time machine and claim that after it's complete, he and her can go back to the beginning of Time and set themselves up as "the God and Goddess of All of Time and Space".
* When the Mistress exposes Lukor's crimes and he, in turn, reveals that he had the caveys destroyed, Lukor attempts to stab her with a dagger right there and then, but she dodges the blow and punches him in the nose. She then makes a dramatic exit by summoning the Odette Mark II to materialise around her, "block by block".
* Accordingly, her crisis of conscience about whether she could have prevented the caveys' genocide occurs aboard the ship rather than on Jokastarna.
* An additional scene follows on from this, with the Mistress speaking one last time with the collective ghost of Lukor's victims, now appearing as a visible ghost inside her ship, still wearing her old mentor's appearance. The ghost assures her that she did the best she could and that they are still grateful to her for bringing down Lukor and exposing his crimes.
* Having been successfully cheered up by the ghost's forgiveness, the story leaves the Mistress on a more enthusiastic note as she prepares to attack one of Kebek's warbirds in hopes of getting a new power-source for the Odette II, which she speculates is, in its current state, only capable of twelve trips before breaking down again.
* An epilogue is added in which the Dominie appears, visiting Jokastarna decades after the Mistress's visit. It is strongly implied that he and the Mistress's mentor are one and the same. He discovers that Lukor was eventually deposed and the empire has now become a parliamentary commonwealth, and foils the assassination of a surviving cavey by a remaining Lukor loyalist, Erukin, at a lecture meant to be held at the same University of Arintanqex that also served as the setting of the prologue.
== Characters ==
* The Mistress
* B.E.S.
* Emperor Lukor
* Grode'Corm
* Josef Burns
* Lenora
* Nathanien
* Tra'Gorn
* Glomik
* Archcancellor R'One Tulkar
* Professor Beg'Linthen
* Caladru Kebek
* Phenora
* Garren
* Dro'Ken
* DROPS 33
* The Dominie
* Tris'Tean
== Worldbuilding ==
* At some point prior to the Hanamat system's joining the Trune'Rook Yim planetary alliance, they fought a devastating war with the Trintextael galaxy.
* Lukor jokes that the Court Historian "drinks like a Mertul beast".
* Lukor calls Caladru Kebek a "son of a Q'Weg".
* When she landed by chance on Xashroth just in time to foil Kebek's plans, the Mistress was trying to find her way to R'Inderfred 88.
* At one point, the Mistress begins to give her name as "Lady R—" before she is interrupted by B.E.S..
* Sergeant Dro'Ken recalls how she battled "the vampiric headhunters of Strix 16, the occultic forces Ska'ath Thrish at the siege of Qon'Grub and helped fend off the attempted Cyberon invasion of Ecto-Space".
== Notes ==
to be added
== Continuity ==
* The Mistress recalls how she originally had a different, male robot companion. (AUDIO: The Choice)
* The briefly-mentioned Ska'ath Thrish would be seen more prominently in AUDIO: B.E.S. Begins.
== External links ==
Category:Novelisations in Time & Space novels
Category:2022 novels