Continuity
- Ace returns in the book Deceit, although the fallout from Jan's death lasts for several further books. Her brief departure here was a device of range editor, Peter Darvill-Evans, to allow for a change in her character.
- This book introduces the character of Bernice Summerfield and establishes the main aspects of her character and backstory; such as the death of her mother and disappearance of her father, which is latter resolved in Return of the Living Dad'. She returns to the planet Heaven in the audio play Death and the Daleks, also by Paul Cornell.
- The Doctor describes himself as what monsters have nightmares about. Steven Moffat reuses this description in his short story "Continuity Errors" in the anthology Decalog 3: Consequences and again in the episode "The Girl in the Fireplace". The description of the Doctor as "The Oncoming Storm", is used again by the Ninth Doctor in "The Parting of the Ways", although he attributes it to the Daleks, whereas here it is used by the Draconians.
- The war between Earth, the Draconians and the Daleks, follows on from the events of Frontier in Space. The lunar penal colony in which the Doctor was imprisoned in that serial is also mentioned.
- This novel establishes that the Third Doctor spent ten years lost in the vortex before regenerating in Planet of the Spiders. This is apparently one of the Doctor's worst memories as he was alone and helpless.
- The Doctor's deal with Death is ultimately resolved in the novel version of Human Nature, where Death takes the life of the humanised Doctor, Dr John Smith, in place of Ace here. This is also the first book to mention the concept that the Seventh Doctor deliberately killed his previous self in Time and the Rani, which is further explored in Head Games.
Read more about this topic: Love And War (Doctor Who)
Famous quotes containing the word continuity:
“The dialectic between change and continuity is a painful but deeply instructive one, in personal life as in the life of a people. To “see the light” too often has meant rejecting the treasures found in darkness.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Only the family, society’s smallest unit, can change and yet maintain enough continuity to rear children who will not be “strangers in a strange land,” who will be rooted firmly enough to grow and adapt.”
—Salvador Minuchin (20th century)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)