Continuity
The epilogue of the novel offers a possible explanation to the fan asked question of how The Doctor can still exist after the destruction of Gallifrey in The Ancestor Cell. In that novel, time is reversed to stop Gallifrey or the Time Lords from ever existing, provoking confusion among fans. This novel shows The Doctor giving one of the council of Eight (Soul) some of his life energy to keep him alive. When Soul, with Miranda's daughter Zezanne leave in Sabbath's time ship (the Jonah), he takes on the form of an old man who resembles the First Doctor, they both lose their memories, but they believe they are the First Doctor and Susan and the Jonah arrives, disguised as a Police Box in 1963, with Octan's Starkiller (replacing the Hand of Omega). This potentially retcons the entire series, giving an alternative explanation to the Doctor's origins without the Time Lords. This however contradicts the revelations about Gallifrey's destruction in The Gallifrey Chronicles, where it is revealed that while Gallifrey was destroyed, the Time Lords were not erased from history. However, the cataclysm set up an event horizon in time that prevented anyone from entering Gallifrey's relative past or travelling from it to the present or future. The Time Lords also survived within the Matrix, which had been downloaded into the Eighth Doctor's mind, with the intention of restoring the Time Lords and Gallifrey.
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Famous quotes containing the word continuity:
“There is never a beginning, there is never an end, to the inexplicable continuity of this web of God, but always circular power returning into itself.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“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)
“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)