Republica was the first instalment in the Novelisations in Time & Space series. It was written by Micah K. Spurling, adapted from Mark Gatiss' script for the 1998 audio story of the same name. In addition to the setting which Gatiss had introduced in The Roundheads, the novelisation further tied itself to the conventional Doctor Who universe via the licensed usage of Doctor X from Erimem, and also implied a temporal explanation of the relationship between the BBV "Professor and Ace" and their BBC analogues the Seventh Doctor and Ace.
Publisher's summary[]
The Professor and Ace arrive in present-day London to find the city strangely changed. England is a republic, ruled by an elderly Lord Protector more interested in a mysterious comet than the long-suppressed forces of revolution fomenting in his kingdom.
As political factions vie for power, the travellers become embroiled in the plans of King Charles XIV who stands poised to reclaim the throne. Can they discover who is behind the drastic alteration of history or will the Puritan cause triumph throughout eternity?
Deviations from original story[]
- The novelisation has a framing story of Ace at an alien temple which is unique to it.
- The prelude greatly expands on the opening scene from the audio, naming the criminal, his comrades, and parts of their world. This section notes that it was "Originally Printed in Time Travellers Monthly #265, May 1998", referencing the Virgin New Adventures and their accompanying preludes in Doctor Who Magazine.
- In-universe history book entries attributed to Dr. L. Conwyn flesh out the developing history of the Commonwealth and its world, which were not in the original audio. Minority protestant sects were legally tolerated in 1660, creating a more religiously-unified Britain. Their views on slavery were partially responsible for the slave trade being abolished in 1705, with enslaved Protestants being made citizens, and enslaved Catholics exiled. Technology advanced to the point of space travel being attempted in the 1850s, but religious conflict remained strong: France remained a rival due to Catholicism, the Holy Land was conquered by the Commonwealth, and the medical advances made by the Commonwealth in the 1940s were due to testing on prisoners arrested for "religious offences".
- When time is restored to normal, the book 'restarts' with Chapter One and Cromwell's original death (excerpting a book by "E. Smythe" rather than L. Conwyn, with E. Smythe being a winking reference to Evelyn Smythe.
Characters[]
- The Professor
- Ace
- LeCompte/"The Other"
- Colum Devlin
- Maria Somerset
- The Cleric
more to be added
Worldbuilding[]
- Ace mentions that "the redhead" from the Spice Girls is wearing the wrong dress, and the Professor comments that she's carrying a harp, a reference to the British Republican flag.
- Ace once went out in a suit jacket to a "youth club dance" with Misha and was disparagingly called "queer".
- Doctor X once gave his female sidekick Madame X a larger role, in advance of a planned spinoff. Her foes include the Broonwins.
- A history book called Tapestries: The History and Legacies of Britain is attributed to E. Smythe.
Notes[]
- Although the intent in the original Time Travellers audios was transparently that the Professor was the Seventh Doctor, this is made more ambiguous by this novelisation, which explicitly names the Professor and Ace's spacecraft (carefully unnamed in the audios) as something other than the TARDIS, namely the Cosmos, the public-domain vehicle of Doctor Omega. It is suggested that the Professor's "Ace" is in some sense an alternative counterpart of the conventional BBC Ace: when talking to her, the cleric refers to her as a "myriad" and mentions four personas, including "Dorothy in the cyclone, Alice down the rabbit hole": Dorothy being the BBC Ace's real name, and Alice the BBV Ace's.
Continuity[]
- When called "citizen", the Professor remarks that no one has called him that "since Madame Guillotine". (TV: The Reign of Terror)
- Ace searches for "nitro" in the museum computer. (TV: Dragonfire, et al.)
- The Professor says a documentary about ancient Egypt is wrong. (TV: Pyramids of Mars)
- The Professor asks how he can be a royalist with his accent. (TV: Time and the Rani)
- Ace remembers seeing the Professor for the first time "surrounded and filled by alien blue and white", but she questions her own memories. (TV: Dragonfire)
- Ace remembers experiencing "timeline gibberish". (PROSE: Blood Heat, The Dimension Riders, The Left-Handed Hummingbird, Conundrum, No Future)
External links[]
- Official Republica page at bbvproductions.co.uk
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