The Discontinuity Guide
The New Adventures

Happy Endings

May 1996

Author: Paul Cornell

Editor: Rebecca Levene

Roots: Old Davy gives Bernice a copy of The Hobbit. Neil Penswick's contribution features Death from the Sandman comic (although he denies this).

Goofs: Benton is called "Sergeant".

Technobabble: Romana rescues the eight-twelves from The Highest Science by adding a time baffle from her TARDIS and reversing the flow of chronons around the slow-time converter's circuitry, thus reversing time around the Chelonians and eight-twelves until a point just before the vials of poison were broken. Her TARDIS then appears as a brick wall between the Chelonians and Humans.

Continuity: Romana has been elected President of Gallifrey by "53% to 47%. A surprise result". Her predecessor [Flavia] was removed from office for being found "drunk in charge of the Sash of Rassilon". She sets up an embassy for the Tharils. Spandrell is still Castellan. He says that "Historically the Land of Fiction has always been part of the Matrix", which seems to contradict Conundrum [perhaps he's speaking politically - the Time Lords will pretend that it has always been part of it]. About a quarter of Gallifrey's population worship the higher Eternals such as Death and Time. "The Feast of Omega" is a Gallifreyan holiday.

Following the rescue of the eight-twelves by Romana, Jinkwa dies as a result of his injuries [see technobabble]. Romana's TARDIS also appears as a beach hut.

The Master deliberately causes the slow-time converter from The Highest Science to malfunction, allowing him to create enough if a diversion to steal the Loom of Rassilon's Mouse, one of the Artefacts. Because of the high level of incidence caused by a Fortean Flicker, Benny's wedding takes place in the same time and location as the Master's experiments. It also causes a "narrow beam of chronons, aligned perfectly with the marginal plane of reality" that allows Muldwych to escape Antykhon. The Master has been using Bloom, a chemical used in the Kilbraken technique for growing flesh from DNA, to create a new body using the head of Hemmings (from Timewyrm: Exodus), which is still buried in Cheldon Boniface's graveyard [In a continuity fix, Hemmings is refered to as Anthony Rupert Hemmings - he was named Anthony in Timewyrm: Exodus, but mistakenly called Rupert in Timewyrm: Revelation. This is ideal for his needs, because of the levels of interstitial and psionic energy to which it has been exposed. This body is designed to be indestructible [despite his new regenerative cycle, the Master is trying to create "a more sturdy body than the one he inhabits now". Possibly, he realises that his dangerous lifestyle is likely to rapidly use up regenerations, which appears to have happened by Doctor Who]. He had persuaded environmentalist Lord Tasham to stockpile stores of Bloom "years ago" to prevent it from being used, and to store it in a barn which is actually the Master's TARDIS. His TARDIS is "in stealth mode" to prevent the Doctor from detecting it [since Sherlock Holmes and Watson actually enter the "barn", this might involve removing the Time Vector Generator]. As a result of the Master's experiments, there are occasional eruptions of Bloom in the churchyard, in one of which the Doctor and his friends are caught, thus creating short-lived clones of them. In an attempt to keep people away from the church by disrupting the wedding, the Master creates a clone of Jason to flirt with Ace, thus causing pre-marital strife between Benny and the real Jason. He also plants on the roof of the inn a device that shorts out disguise systems, thus destroying Keri and Kitai's holo-projector images to reveal the aliens and scare the villagers. He also creates an android called James which contains Tzun mind-alteration technology to further case mistrust. However, the Doctor is also using Tzun technology to create holofields and this interacts with the Master's, causing it to malfunction and make people behave oddly. The Master is still using his TCE and possesses a Tzun memory-wiping beam.

Ishtar is able to use the power of the Timewyrm but doesn't know how she does this. She has unwittingly been draining Emily's psychic abilities in the process. Time calls Emily Hutchings "Grandmother".

The Doctor announces that he knows who killed the Kennedys and what became of the Pythia. There is "plenty of fresh air and countryside and mice inside the TARDIS". Ace is 31 years old by now. She boosted her time-jump device to get to the wedding. A lorry should have killed Danny Pain in February 1998. Because the Isley Brothers listen to their song "Summer Breeze" before they actually wrote it, it becomes a song written by time and this causes Danny to avoid the path of the lorry. Amongst the people whom Ace has slept with are Sabalom Glitz, Jan, a Neanderthal called Arnkush, a dentist named Peter, and Count Nikolai Sorin. She and Sorin pretended to be married, so she is now a Sorina. Ace likes the Stone Rose.

Ace reconciles with her mother, who is dating Robin Yeadon. The Charrl, who now worship the Doctor, bring the Doctor's original TARDIS to the wedding - it escaped destruction in the Time Ram from Blood Heat thanks to the effects of the Fortean Flicker. Muldwych takes it at the end, intending to drop the Doctor off at a suitable planet. He suggests using a merge program to transfer the rooms and contents of the original TARDIS to the Doctor's new one. [As in Birthright, there are strong hints that Muldwych is a future incarnation of the Doctor. He intends to visit Raphael, and he also avoids contact with the Doctor, possibly to avoid an effect like that seen in Mawdryn Undead (although the Doctors shake hands in both The Three Doctors and The Five Doctors, perhaps due to Time Lord intervention). Muldwych's grey hair is streaked with red, perhaps linking him with the Merlin seen at the start of the novelisation of Battlefield].

Professor Bernice Summerfield and Jason Kane marry, becoming Professor Bernice Summerfield-Kane, and Jason Kane-Summerfield. Bernice Doras gives Benny Oskar Steinmann's diary (Just War).

Roz is given a note from feLixi (The Also People).

Spraybed is a Pakhar product that allows the creation of a nest in seconds, which then lasts for days. Pakhars are allergic to pollen, which makes them sneeze and hallucinate.

Mike Yates is gay and living with a man called Tom. Ruby Duvall is working with Hamish Macbeth, who now writes books about UFOs. He broke into a UNIT cheese and wine do five years previously and was forcibly ejected by the Brigadier. The Brigadier is able to place a D-notice with a twenty-kilometer radius on Cheldon Boniface. He is dying from cancer and has only weeks to live, but due to the effects of the Fortean Flicker he is rejuvenated by the destruction of the Master's Bloom-creature, much to the Doctor's surprise [This story is chronologically set after Minuet in Hell].

Links: Happy Endings features at least one character from almost every previous New Adventure, most of them at Benny's wedding. For completions sake, these are listed below:

Location: Cheldon Bonniface, England, 2010; Hogsumm, some time after the events of The Highest Science.

Unrecorded Adventures: The Fifth Doctor spent a summer in Cheldon Boniface, where he helped the locals to win the cricket league.

The Bottom Line: Packed with gratuitous guest-stars and with a chapter containing segments written by all the previous New Adventures authors except Jim Mortimore, Happy Endings is notoriously self-indulgent. But as the fiftieth novel in the range, it is entitled to be, and is rather entertaining. It also features a key moment for the range in the marriage of Benny and Jason.

Discontinuity Guide by Paul Clarke