Cold Fusion (novel)

Cold Fusion was the twenty-ninth novel in the Virgin Missing Adventures series. It was written by Lance Parkin. It was the only multi-Doctor story involving televised Doctors ever told by Virgin Books. It involved the unusual pairing of the season 19 Fifth Doctor with the Seventh Doctor near the end of the Virgin New Adventures line.
Originally intended to be published alongside the novel So Vile a Sin to emotionally leverage Roz Forrester's death in that book, delays on Sin meant that people who read the book on publication didn't see this intended aspect of the book.
As a multi-Doctor story, its perspective was unusual. The Seventh Doctor was portrayed as largely disdainful of his earlier self's presence because of the dangers it presented. Though temporal paradoxes and other consequences of two Doctors meeting were touched upon in televised multi-Doctor stories, here they were more central. Moreover, the structure broke with the format of televised multi-Doctor stories, which held that the latest incarnation was the "current" Doctor and therefore the effective headlining "star" of the show. On balance, Fusion was a Fifth Doctor novel that happened to feature the Seventh, rather than a Seventh Doctor novel that used the Fifth.
== Publisher's summary ==
:"The entire universe is at stake and I'm locked in here with another incarnation of myself, and not even one of the good ones!"
More than one TARDIS lands on a barren ice world. The Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan find a once ordered society on the verge of collapse, as rebels wage a dirty war with Scientifica, the ruling elite. All that stands between order and anarchy is the massed presence of an Adjudicator peacekeeping force.
But is peace the only reason for the Adjudicator garrison? What exactly has been discovered deep below the planet's surface? Who are the mysterious Ferutu? And why is telling a ghost story a criminal offence?
The Fifth Doctor sides with the cause of justice and fairness as always. But, as a threat to the universe unfolds, he finds himself in conflict with his past... and his future.
== Plot ==
to be added
== Characters ==
* Fifth Doctor
* Seventh Doctor
* First Doctor
* Adric
* Nyssa
* Tegan Jovanka
* Chris Cwej
* Roz Forrester
* Patience
* Adjudicator Provost-General Tertullian Medford
* Ziyou Wanle
* SAM drone
* Chief Scientist Whitfield
* Quint
* Quant
* Adjudicator Dareau
* Adam
* Falconstock
* Concierge
* Robot
== Worldbuilding ==
=== Cultural references from the real world ===
* Tegan has seen Blake's 7 and can cope with the idea of transmats.
=== Foods and beverages ===
* The Seventh Doctor orders a Dexheimer Spätlase Rädecke, a German eiswein (he normally doesn't touch synthetic wines). His favourite biscuits are chocolate HobNobs.
=== Individuals ===
* Adjudicator Provost-General Tertullian Medford is a secret member of Unitatus.
=== Individual Time Lords ===
* The Fifth Doctor badly remembers his life before his second regeneration.
* Patience was in the house of Blyledge on "Glorious Gallifrey". She had thirteen children.
* Patience's husband was one of the first to explore the Time Vortex.
* In her memory, Patience and her husband's firstborn was soon going to be a father.
* The Doctor's children were culled, but her granddaughter, Susan Foreman, was saved.
* The Master destroyed the constellation of Mandusus with a segment of the Key to Time at some point before the Fourth Doctor's regeneration.
* It is implied that the Doctor had a different name before being the First Doctor, since he doesn't recognise Patience's husband's name as his own, but of a different Time Lord.
*
=== Languages ===
* The Fifth Doctor speaks a sentence in Gallifreyan to Patience.
=== Organisations ===
* Unitatus is what UNIT became; they use the old UNIT logo (a grid within a circle) as their herald.
=== Spacecraft ===
* The colony has a Skybase in orbit.
=== Species ===
* The Ferutu are beings from an alternate universe.
* The Embodiment of Gris is mentioned by the Fifth Doctor.
=== TARDIS ===
* The TARDIS has a lightspeed overdrive.
* The Machine belongs to Patience.
=== Weapons ===
* The Fifth and Seventh Doctors both use a technique which they describe as being "beyond the science of the Humanian Era", namely reversing the polarity of the neutron flow to disarm several fusion bombs.
* A SAM drone is a mass-produced drone.
== Notes ==
* In AHistory, the author Lance Parkin confirms that the husband of Patience, in her memory seen by the Fifth Doctor's telepathic contact with her, is the character portrayed by Douglas Camfield during the mindbending sequence of TV: The Brain of Morbius.
* In Time, Unincorporated: Volume One, it is revealed that the original version of PROSE: The Infinity Doctors would have confirmed that Patience's husband is also the character played by Robert Banks Stewart during the mindbending sequence of TV: The Brain of Morbius.
* This is the only instalment of the Virgin Missing Adventures in which the Seventh Doctor appears.
* The reasons that the Doctor seems to not remember meeting his future selves in other multi-Doctor stories are discussed. In most of the televised adventures, it is credited to the Blinovitch Limitation Effect.
* The Seventh Doctor remembers the events of the novel from the perspective of the Fifth Doctor and uses this knowledge against his younger self. This also occurs in the audio stories Peri and the Piscon Paradox and The Four Doctors and the television story Time Crash in which the Sixth, Eighth and Tenth Doctors respectively likewise remember the events portrayed from the point of view of their fifth incarnation.
* The Seventh Doctor describes his fifth incarnation as being "bland" and "not even one of the good ones." This reflects the Sixth Doctor's low opinion of his immediate predecessor immediately after his regeneration as he told his companion Peri Brown that "he had a sort of feckless charm that simply wasn't [him]." (TV: The Twin Dilemma) The Eighth Doctor was more fond of his fifth incarnation than his two immediate predecessors. He once described him as "terribly polite." (AUDIO: The Four Doctors) By the time of his tenth incarnation, the Doctor expressed a fondness for his time as the Fifth Doctor. He looked upon his fifth incarnation as a turning point in his life. According to the Tenth Doctor, it was during his fifth incarnation that he truly began to enjoy himself. (TV: Time Crash)
* The Gallifreyan sentence recited by the Doctor on page 124 is represented in the text by Greek letters: "Ανδ Ι τυρνεδ αρουνδ ανδ τηεψ ωερε αλλ ωεαρινγ εψεπατχηεσ." The passage doesn't actually mean anything in Greek, but if the symbols are transliterated letter-by-letter using a standard English keyboard layout the passage becomes "And I turned around and they were all wearing eyepatches," a reference to the infamous Eyepatch Story which Nicholas Courtney often told at conventions of cast antics during the filming of Inferno.
* Lance Parkin's charity story Executive Action (published in Walking in Eternity) provides further details for the riots seen in Patience's memories. The Watch were rounding up all Womb-born, the Loom-born determined to become Gallifrey's dominant faction. According to Rema-Du, loomed Gallifreyans were "pale imitations" compared to the naturally born. This is the same story that states Wardog and the others of the Special Executive were prototypes of Rassilon's loom.
== Continuity ==
* "Lightspeed overdrive" is first mentioned in TV: Logopolis.
* The Doctor badly remembers the events of his first two incarnations. (COMIC: The World Shapers)
* PROSE: The Infinity Doctors reveals who Patience is in one universe.
* PROSE: Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible and PROSE: Lungbarrow both gave some idea of the time from which Patience is from.
* The Fifth Doctor is still recovering from the effects of his regeneration three days earlier. (TV: Logopolis, Castrovalva)
* Nyssa refers to her father Tremas. (TV: The Keeper of Traken)
* The Fifth Doctor tells Nyssa that nothing important was lost when they forced to jettison a quarter of the TARDIS during Event One. (TV: Castrovalva)
* Tegan reminds the Fifth Doctor that she never got the chance to be an air hostess. (TV: Logopolis)
* Adric mentions that the Keeper of Traken was able to divert the TARDIS' course. (TV: The Keeper of Traken)
* The Doctor reminds Adric that the Master supposedly died on Castrovalva. (TV: Castrovalva)
* The Fifth Doctor remembers the mindbending battle with Morbius. (TV: The Brain of Morbius)
* Adric has only known the Doctor for several weeks. They first met on Adric's homeworld Alzarius during the 32nd century towards the end of the Doctor's fourth incarnation. (TV: Full Circle)
* Chris refers to Serenity, the last surviving planet of the Traken Union. The Sixth Doctor and Peri Brown visited it on one occasion. (AUDIO: The Guardians of Prophecy)
* The Seventh Doctor refers to his fifth incarnation's numerous failed attempts to return Tegan to Heathrow Airport in 1981. (TV: Four to Doomsday)
* Whitfield refers to the Ice Warrior invasion of Earth in May 1997. (PROSE: The Dying Days)
* The Fifth Doctor mentions that he was once a scientific advisor. (TV: Spearhead from Space, et. al)
* The Fifth Doctor refers to his encounter with Omega. (TV: The Three Doctors)
* Kalkravian nuns are present at the transmat station, and Medford was involved in the Kalkravian Revolution. (PROSE: The Big Hunt, Paydirt, COMIC: Miranda, et al.)
* The Fifth and Seventh Doctors would later meet each other again in AUDIO: The Sirens of Time, prior to the events of AUDIO: The Veiled Leopard and briefly in their eighth incarnation's TARDIS in AUDIO: The Four Doctors, though neither retained any memory of that experience.
* Bernice Summerfield would later encounter the Ferutu on Dellah in 2596. (PROSE: Twilight of the Gods)
== External links ==
* 
* The Cloister Library: Cold Fusion
* Lance Parkin by Paul Scoones (Interview) - TSV 48
Category:Fifth Doctor novels
Category:Seventh Doctor novels
Category:Multi-Doctor novels
Category:MA novels
Category:1996 novels
Category:Stories set in alternate timelines
Category:Regeneration novels
Category:Stories set in 2592
Category:Time Lord novels