Interference - Book Two (novel)

Interference - Book Two (The Hour of the Geek) was the second volume of Lawrence Miles' two-part multi-Doctor novel Interference. Like the first volume, 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.
This was the final book to feature Sam Jones as a regular companion, and it includes one of the only prose-based regenerations of the Doctor.
== Publisher's summary ==
They call it the Dead Frontier. It's as far from home as the human race ever went, the planet where mankind dumped the waste of its thousand-year empire and left its culture out in the sun to rot.
But while one Doctor faces both his past and his future on the Frontier, another finds himself on Earth in 1996, where the seeds of the empire are only just being sown. The past is meeting the present, cause is meeting effect, and the TARDIS crew is about to be caught in the crossfire.
The Third Doctor. The Eighth Doctor. Sam. Fitz. Sarah Jane Smith. Soon, one of them will be dead; one of them will belong to the enemy; and one of them will be something less than human...
== Plot ==
== Characters ==
=== What Happened on Earth (Part Two) ===
* Eighth Doctor
* Sam Jones
* Fitz Kreiner
* Sarah Jane Smith
* K9 Mark III
* Kode
* Compassion
* Nathaniel Guest
* Laura Tobin
* 
=== What Happened on Dust (Part Two) ===
* Third Doctor
* Sarah Jane Smith
* Magdelana Bishop
* I.M. Foreman
* Father Kreiner
== Worldbuilding ==
=== Books ===
* Kode reads Genetic Politics Beyond the Thirdzone while in the TARDIS.
* Sarah finds a magazine in the TARDIS called House and TARDIS.
* The Doctor tries to read The Time Machine once an incarnation.
=== The Doctor ===
* When the Doctor was younger, some of his friends learnt the skill of internal chronometry.
* The Eighth Doctor spends ten days trapped in Saudi Arabia.
* The Third Doctor is shot by Magdelana Bishop with a shotgun and regenerates on Dust. In the process, not only is his history altered, but he is infected by Faction Paradox's biodata virus.
=== The Doctor's items ===
* There's a street aboard the TARDIS along which several thousand volumes of the TARDIS Instruction Manual are kept.
=== Drugs and medicines ===
* Kode smokes cigarettes while on Earth but isn't quite sure why.
=== Faction Paradox ===
* The Justinian was the ship that originally brought the first settlers to Ordifica. It was used by the Faction Paradox to take them away from the colony prior to its destruction by the High Council.
::Laura Tobin, Guest and Fitz Kreiner were all together on this ship.
* The Justinian is sent via a time jump to the late 18th century: Anathema in 1799.
* The Faction Paradox leaves biosphere manipulation technology with the Remote in 1799.
* A Faction Warship (created from the body of a Dæmon) travels to the planet Dust to deliver the Faction virus and watch as events unfold there.
=== Gallifrey ===
* The Seal of Rassilon is an omniscate.
=== Gallifreyan technology ===
* The Cold is the Time Lord warship's computer system. By releasing it, it detonates the ship (which is a planet-sized bomb) and therefore destroys the Earth.
* During one of the narrative constructs Sam experiences in the Media, the Doctor mentions a time ring.
=== Individual Gallifreyans and Time Lords ===
* Regeneration away from a TARDIS is slow and clumsy.
=== Groups ===
* The Enemy came from Earth originally.
=== Individuals ===
* Sam mentions wanting to see Fitz, saying, "We did have sex and everything," though adding, "It was a parallel-universe-alternative-reality kind of thing."
* The makes a brief appearance in Sarah's Seeing Eye documentary as UNIT's special scientific advisor.
* Fitz Kreiner joins the Faction Paradox and ends up becoming Father Kreiner.
* Kode is restored by the TARDIS using a remembrance tank to become what the TARDIS remembered Fitz to be.
* The Doctor bought Sarah her stuffed owl at a jumble sale in Brighton in 1948.
* Sarah can't remember the Doctor's regeneration properly.
* Sarah isn't sure if she was on Dust.
* Sarah reflects on the two incidents where she met the Doctor (or the things related to the Doctor) in 1983 and 1995.
* After leaving Ordifica, Nathaniel Guest goes by the name of Guest while on Earth.
* Laura Tobin used to crack her knuckles. She gave Fitz the nickname "code-boy".
* Father Kreiner is who Fitz Kreiner became after a century (or more) with the Faction Paradox and the Remote.
=== Locations ===
* The Doctor's TARDIS was left in the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
* Anathema is the Remote's city, located on the side of a Time Lord warship.
=== Objects ===
* Father Kreiner has a glove made of dwarf star alloy.
=== Planets ===
* I.M. Foreman's show once stopped off on New Mars.
* I.M. Foreman's favourite planet is Mars.
=== Species ===
* Sarah's memories of the Doctor are a bit fuzzy. She keeps getting her Krynoids mixed up with her Pescatons.
=== TARDIS ===
* The Doctor discusses I.M. Foreman's One-Species Nongenetically Engineered Travelling Show.
=== Technology ===
* Zoe picked up a mask of James Stewart at the Grand Festival of Zymymys Midamor. It's made of a memory polymer.
* The Remote's receivers pump active temporal biodata into the colonists bodies.
* The Cold is probably validium based.
* Sarah used the Remote's "TARDIS tracker" to find the Doctor's TARDIS.
* Faction Paradox warships are made from the bones of Dæmons.
* Sam Jones gets put in the Media.
* K9 Mark III is made out of a ZX-81.
=== Theories and concepts ===
* Sarah mentions the "Blinovitch Limitation wotsit."
=== Dates ===
* Anathema 1799 is out of reach by the High Council.
* Between 1799 and 1800 the Remote build the transmission tower on Anathema.
* By 1801 on Anathema Fitz and the rest of the Remote are sterile.
* The 20th century is when Earth starts to turn itself into a major galactic power.
* The events on Dust occur a thousand years after the fall of the Earth Empire.
=== Vehicles ===
* The Doctor has an S-reg Mini Metro parked in the TARDIS console room to replace his destroyed Volkswagen Beetle.
== Notes ==
* This novel is notable for being the only novel to outright change the circumstances of one of the Doctor's regenerations, with the Third Doctor dying on Dust, instead of Earth. While it was made clear that most of the Doctor's timeline after the change proceeded as normal, the effects the change had on the events of TV: Planet of the Spiders, were not made clear. PROSE: The Ancestor Cell implies that the Doctor's involvement was averted, as the Eighth Doctor encountered spiders aboard the Edifice, and had the feeling he should fear them, but didn't know why. Fortunately, thanks to the events in The Ancestor Cell, the original timeline was restored, with the Third Doctor never being diverted to Dust. This has the effect of leaving the true version of events on the planet, involving I.M. Foreman, unknown.
== Continuity ==
* Sam reflects that the Doctor has told her the 'real' story of Jack the Ripper, a possible reference to the events of PROSE: Matrix.
* Sarah recalls being poisoned by the Cybermen. (TV: Revenge of the Cybermen)
* The Doctor recalls and compares his imprisonment to his experiences in PROSE: Seeing I.
* PROSE: Alien Bodies was the first appearance of the Faction Paradox.
* Sam found out her life was stage-managed by the Faction Paradox and that a (sort of) alternate version of herself had sex with Fitz in PROSE: Unnatural History.
* At the end of PROSE: Autumn Mist Sam told the Doctor the next time the TARDIS landed on Earth close to her time she would be leaving him.
* PROSE: The Blue Angel is the next novel and the first novel to show Compassion as a genuine companion.
* PROSE: The Ancestor Cell brings all that happens in this novel (and those in between) to a conclusion.
* TV: Silver Nemesis introduces validium.
* PROSE: The Gallifrey Chronicles attempts to explain / re-interpret many of the events that lead up to and followed this novel.
* Sarah mentions mixing up Pescatons and Krynoids. They are from AUDIO: Doctor Who and the Pescatons and TV: The Seeds of Doom.
* The two events Sarah remembers from 1983 and 1995 are TV: The Five Doctors and PROSE: Downtime respectfully.
* The dialogue "Drop the sonic device, Time Lord," is a reference to TV: The Visitation.
* There are some references to the Time Lords escaping to a universe in a bottle which is seen in PROSE: Dead Romance.
* During Iris Wildthyme's interview she mentions a "space wheel" (TV: The Wheel in Space) and people in Geneva wanting to put bases on the Moon, which would come to pass in TV: The Moonbase and The Seeds of Death.
* Sarah and Sam swap companion stories, just as Rose and Sarah do in TV: School Reunion.
* Before the Third Doctor regenerates, he says the same thing he did in TV: Planet of the Spiders: "A tear, Sarah Jane?"
* The Doctor promises Sarah that he will attend her wedding, something he does in TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith.
* The Time Lord warship on which Anathema is built features briefly in PROSE: The Infinity Doctors when Voran suggest using it to destroy the Needle.
* The Doctor tells Sarah that she should see K9 Mark IV. Eventually, in 2007, the Tenth Doctor will leave Mark IV to Sarah following the destruction of her Mark III. (TV: School Reunion)
== External links ==
* 
* The Cloister Library: Interference - Book Two
Category:EDA novels
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Category:Third Doctor novels
Category:Sarah Jane Smith novels
Category:Faction Paradox stories
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