Transit (Doctor Who)
Encyclopedia
Transit is an original novel written by Ben Aaronovitch
and based on the long-running British
science fiction television
series Doctor Who
. It features the Seventh Doctor
, Bernice
and the first appearance of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart
. A prelude to the novel, also penned by Aaronovitch, appeared in Doctor Who Magazine
#195.
is experiencing financial difficulty and agrees to deliver a batch of drugs to Old Sam, one of the Floozies, for a local dealer. Old Sam is a veteran of the Ten-thousand Day War against the Martians
and now cannot survive without combat drugs given to him by the army. Having made the drop off and collected a moneypin in payment, Kadiatu joins the Floozies for a wild night out across the Solar System and sleeps with one named Blondie. The following morning, she wakes up in Beijing
, without the moneypin she needs to get home and pay her debts. During the opening ceremony of the Arcturus extension, an unknown force blasts through the tunnel, killing everything in its path. Dodging a ticket inspector, Kadiatu makes her way to King's Cross Station
as the TARDIS materialises. As the Doctor and Bernice exit the TARDIS, the blast wave hits the station—Bernice and the TARDIS are caught in the blast and disappear, but the Doctor pulls Kadiatu to safety.
With the main line shut down till the damage can be repaired, the Doctor cannot retrieve the TARDIS or Benny, and remains with Kadiatu. The pair visit Kadiatu's elderly family friend and blind war veteran, Francine, at her bar on Mars
. She agrees to use her underworld contacts to find Blondie (who Kadiatu assumes stole the moneypin while they were making love), and tells Kadiatu that her new friend has two hearts, confirming her suspicions. Long ago, her father told her stories about his grandfather
and the mysterious time traveller known as the Doctor. The two go to a cafe in Paris, where the Doctor gets drunk and passes out celebrating the universe's 13500020012th birthday.
Benny arrives at Lowell depot a rundown slum on Pluto
and meets two prostitutes, Zamina and Roberta. Unknown to Benny, Roberta is a childhood lover of Blondie who resents him for escaping the slum. Roberta has Kadiatu's moneypin, which she took after having seen her and Blondie making love. Behiaving strangely, Benny demands to be taken to a local gang leader, whom she then encourages to take over the slum. Violence spreads across the slum, killing many including Roberta and eventually leading to military intervention and evacuation of the survivors.
The Doctor awakens in Kadiatu's room at the Lunarversity and, looking through her belongings, realises she has been researching his visits to Earth and that she was genetically engineered. He also discovers that she is close to developing a time machine. Unsure how to act, the Doctor first solves Kadiatu's problem with the drug dealers and then searches for Benny, stowing away on a maintenance train heading to the relief zone on Pluto.
A mysterious train-shaped object begins moving through the tunnels, swallowing passengers and pirate free-surfers (who use special boards to traverse the tunnels illegally). Its victims are re-engineered into mutant soldiers to serve the intelligence that has invaded the tunnels. Francine contacts Old Sam about Blondie, but he convinces them that he knows nothing about the moneypin. Using the tunnel surveillance system, they locate Kadiatu and the Doctor heading for Pluto. Old Sam and Blondie set off to investigate, intending to rescue Kadiatu.
The Doctor finds the TARDIS embedded in a concrete wall at the end of the line. While the Doctor tries to work out a way to free it, the pair are attacked by Benny. The intelligence has possessed her, but it does not recognise the Doctor as a threat. Kadiatu realises that her instinctive response to danger is to kill, and that her punches are capable of causing fatal injuries. Old Sam and Blondie arrive and Benny escapes, joining Zamina on a refugee train heading for Mars. Zamina realises that Benny caused the riots for just this purpose.
Flashbacks reveal that Kadiatu's father, Yembe, is a descendant of Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart and an African woman with whom he had a brief relationship during his service in Africa. Years later Yembe Lethbridge-Stewart had been a soldier in the war against the Martians, where he met Francine. After the war, Francine learnt from a mysterious hacker that a facility outside Leipzig was being used to genetically engineer super-soldiers. Yembe burnt the facility to the ground, but spared a single baby whom he and Francine adopted.
The Doctor, Kadiatu and Blondie return the Doctor's house on Allen Road in Kent. While Kadiatu and Blondie make love, the Doctor constructs a device for hacking into the tunnel network. The Doctor deduces that the intelligence invading the tunnels is from another dimension and operates similarly to a computer virus using a neural computer system. He also learns that the STS system has become self-aware, and communicates with it via a hologram of television anchorman, Yak Harris. The hologram confirms the Doctor's theory, which they then report to the STS executives in London. At the same time, the Floozies identify an energy build up, indicating that the hole between dimensions is about to open again.
On Mars, Benny has gained access to the STS system, but the controlling influence weakens as she gets further from the tunnels. She recovers enough to send Zamina to the Doctor for help. The Doctor and Kadiatu arrive on Mars, in time to see Benny fleeing from the human colony, killing anyone in her way. They follow, and corner her in an Ice Warrior
nest. Benny reveals a gun and Kadiatu shoots her. As the sleeping warriors begin to revive, the Doctor realises that this "Benny" is a duplicate created to distract him. Kadiatu summons Francine to fly them back to the settlement. En route, the craft accidentally activates a missile defence system, but Francine's manages to land the craft. Another duplicate of Benny enters a STS reactor and overloads the power, creating enough energy to open the breach. The Doctor sends the Floozies to the end of the line to build a machine to his specifications and connected to the TARDIS. The group—including Benny, who is disguised as one of the station's staff—come under attack by the mutant creatures, and Blondie is among the fatalities.
The Doctor commandeers a freesurf board and heads through the tunnels to the station, picking up a piece of software hitch-hiking in the system along the way. Barely surviving the landing, the Doctor sees the breach open. The virus was an agent laying the groundwork for the real invader to emerge—it is nameless, but the Doctor calls it Fred. The Doctor uses the machine to fire a burst of artron energy from the TARDIS. Fred retreats through the breach, taking Benny with it and the Doctor follows.
In the other dimension, the Doctor appears before its world's ruler to ask for Benny's return. Unlike Fred, the ruler realises how dangerous the Doctor is, and attempts to destroy him. At that moment, Kadiatu appears, distracting Fred long enough for the Doctor to push the hitch-hiker into Benny's mind, forcing Fred out. The Yak Harris software remains in the alternative dimension achieve its full potential, and the Doctor, Benny and Kadiatu return to their reality moments before the gateway collapses. The Doctor visits the Stone Mountain computer archive and erases evidence of his existence, then sends Old Sam to the Ice Warrior nest, suggesting he offer the reviving warriors a gesture of peace. The surviving Floozies cut the TARDIS from the wall and the Doctor and Benny depart.
Some months latter, Kadiatu has a job at STS, gaining access to the resources she needs to build her time machine. Her work complete, she destroys her research and sets off through the time vortex to catch up with the Doctor.
and Red Dwarf
.
The novel is set in an inter-planetary transport network that evolved out of the London Underground
. Trains teleport through tunnels in the space-time continuum between fixed points at faster-than-light speeds. King's Cross station is the terminus for a Central Line that connects human colonies throughout the solar system. As the story opens, the network is about to be extended to its first extra-solar location, in Arcturus (this is called the "Stunnel", in imitation of the "Chunnel
").
The novel continues from The Seeds of Death
, with the Transit network as an offshoot of the T-Mat system. Though no Ice Warrior
s are encountered, the Doctor and Kadiatu explore one of their dormant nests. Ahistory by Lance Parkin
describes the novel as taking place "at least a generation" after the serial, based on a "future history" document by Aaronovitch.
The mysterious hitch-hiker Francine encounters in cyberspace is the future "Merlin" Doctor, as he is described in Marc Platt
's novelisation of Aaronvitch's serial Battlefield
.
Ben Aaronovitch
Ben Denis Aaronovitch is a London-born British writer who has worked on television series including Doctor Who, Casualty, Jupiter Moon and Dark Knight...
and based on the long-running British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
science fiction television
Science fiction on television
Science fiction first appeared on a television program during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary world not limited by the constraints of reality; this makes television an excellent medium...
series Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
. It features the Seventh Doctor
Seventh Doctor
The Seventh Doctor is the seventh incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by the actor Sylvester McCoy....
, Bernice
Bernice Summerfield
Bernice Surprise Summerfield is a fictional character created by author Paul Cornell as a new companion of the Seventh Doctor in Virgin Publishing's range of original full-length Doctor Who novels, the New Adventures...
and the first appearance of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart
Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart
Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart is a fictional character from the Virgin New Adventures range of spin-offs based on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. She is a descendant of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart....
. A prelude to the novel, also penned by Aaronovitch, appeared in Doctor Who Magazine
Doctor Who Magazine
Doctor Who Magazine is a magazine devoted to the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
#195.
Plot
Human engineers are preparing to open a new section of the Sol Transit System (STS), a mass transit system that uses transmat technology to send trains instantly between planets, from the solar system to Arcturus. The system begins to experience power drains, which the technicians, known as "Floozies", cannot determine the cause. At Lunarversity on the moon, Kadiatu Lethbridge-StewartKadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart
Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart is a fictional character from the Virgin New Adventures range of spin-offs based on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. She is a descendant of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart....
is experiencing financial difficulty and agrees to deliver a batch of drugs to Old Sam, one of the Floozies, for a local dealer. Old Sam is a veteran of the Ten-thousand Day War against the Martians
Ice Warriors
Can refer to:*Ice Warriors , a TV gameshow aired on ITV*Ice Warrior, alien race in the BBC television series Doctor Who**The Ice Warriors, Doctor Who story in which the alien race makes its debut...
and now cannot survive without combat drugs given to him by the army. Having made the drop off and collected a moneypin in payment, Kadiatu joins the Floozies for a wild night out across the Solar System and sleeps with one named Blondie. The following morning, she wakes up in Beijing
Beijing
Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...
, without the moneypin she needs to get home and pay her debts. During the opening ceremony of the Arcturus extension, an unknown force blasts through the tunnel, killing everything in its path. Dodging a ticket inspector, Kadiatu makes her way to King's Cross Station
King's Cross station
King's Cross station may refer to::* London King's Cross railway station in London, England** King's Cross St. Pancras tube station for London Underground lines.** King's Cross Thameslink, a disused railway station in London, England...
as the TARDIS materialises. As the Doctor and Bernice exit the TARDIS, the blast wave hits the station—Bernice and the TARDIS are caught in the blast and disappear, but the Doctor pulls Kadiatu to safety.
With the main line shut down till the damage can be repaired, the Doctor cannot retrieve the TARDIS or Benny, and remains with Kadiatu. The pair visit Kadiatu's elderly family friend and blind war veteran, Francine, at her bar on Mars
Mars
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...
. She agrees to use her underworld contacts to find Blondie (who Kadiatu assumes stole the moneypin while they were making love), and tells Kadiatu that her new friend has two hearts, confirming her suspicions. Long ago, her father told her stories about his grandfather
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
Brigadier Sir Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, generally referred to simply as the Brigadier, is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, played by Nicholas Courtney...
and the mysterious time traveller known as the Doctor. The two go to a cafe in Paris, where the Doctor gets drunk and passes out celebrating the universe's 13500020012th birthday.
Benny arrives at Lowell depot a rundown slum on Pluto
Pluto
Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...
and meets two prostitutes, Zamina and Roberta. Unknown to Benny, Roberta is a childhood lover of Blondie who resents him for escaping the slum. Roberta has Kadiatu's moneypin, which she took after having seen her and Blondie making love. Behiaving strangely, Benny demands to be taken to a local gang leader, whom she then encourages to take over the slum. Violence spreads across the slum, killing many including Roberta and eventually leading to military intervention and evacuation of the survivors.
The Doctor awakens in Kadiatu's room at the Lunarversity and, looking through her belongings, realises she has been researching his visits to Earth and that she was genetically engineered. He also discovers that she is close to developing a time machine. Unsure how to act, the Doctor first solves Kadiatu's problem with the drug dealers and then searches for Benny, stowing away on a maintenance train heading to the relief zone on Pluto.
A mysterious train-shaped object begins moving through the tunnels, swallowing passengers and pirate free-surfers (who use special boards to traverse the tunnels illegally). Its victims are re-engineered into mutant soldiers to serve the intelligence that has invaded the tunnels. Francine contacts Old Sam about Blondie, but he convinces them that he knows nothing about the moneypin. Using the tunnel surveillance system, they locate Kadiatu and the Doctor heading for Pluto. Old Sam and Blondie set off to investigate, intending to rescue Kadiatu.
The Doctor finds the TARDIS embedded in a concrete wall at the end of the line. While the Doctor tries to work out a way to free it, the pair are attacked by Benny. The intelligence has possessed her, but it does not recognise the Doctor as a threat. Kadiatu realises that her instinctive response to danger is to kill, and that her punches are capable of causing fatal injuries. Old Sam and Blondie arrive and Benny escapes, joining Zamina on a refugee train heading for Mars. Zamina realises that Benny caused the riots for just this purpose.
Flashbacks reveal that Kadiatu's father, Yembe, is a descendant of Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart and an African woman with whom he had a brief relationship during his service in Africa. Years later Yembe Lethbridge-Stewart had been a soldier in the war against the Martians, where he met Francine. After the war, Francine learnt from a mysterious hacker that a facility outside Leipzig was being used to genetically engineer super-soldiers. Yembe burnt the facility to the ground, but spared a single baby whom he and Francine adopted.
The Doctor, Kadiatu and Blondie return the Doctor's house on Allen Road in Kent. While Kadiatu and Blondie make love, the Doctor constructs a device for hacking into the tunnel network. The Doctor deduces that the intelligence invading the tunnels is from another dimension and operates similarly to a computer virus using a neural computer system. He also learns that the STS system has become self-aware, and communicates with it via a hologram of television anchorman, Yak Harris. The hologram confirms the Doctor's theory, which they then report to the STS executives in London. At the same time, the Floozies identify an energy build up, indicating that the hole between dimensions is about to open again.
On Mars, Benny has gained access to the STS system, but the controlling influence weakens as she gets further from the tunnels. She recovers enough to send Zamina to the Doctor for help. The Doctor and Kadiatu arrive on Mars, in time to see Benny fleeing from the human colony, killing anyone in her way. They follow, and corner her in an Ice Warrior
Ice Warrior
The Ice Warriors are a fictional extraterrestrial race of reptilian-like humanoids in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The race originated on Mars, and first appeared in the 1967 serial The Ice Warriors where they encountered the Second Doctor and his...
nest. Benny reveals a gun and Kadiatu shoots her. As the sleeping warriors begin to revive, the Doctor realises that this "Benny" is a duplicate created to distract him. Kadiatu summons Francine to fly them back to the settlement. En route, the craft accidentally activates a missile defence system, but Francine's manages to land the craft. Another duplicate of Benny enters a STS reactor and overloads the power, creating enough energy to open the breach. The Doctor sends the Floozies to the end of the line to build a machine to his specifications and connected to the TARDIS. The group—including Benny, who is disguised as one of the station's staff—come under attack by the mutant creatures, and Blondie is among the fatalities.
The Doctor commandeers a freesurf board and heads through the tunnels to the station, picking up a piece of software hitch-hiking in the system along the way. Barely surviving the landing, the Doctor sees the breach open. The virus was an agent laying the groundwork for the real invader to emerge—it is nameless, but the Doctor calls it Fred. The Doctor uses the machine to fire a burst of artron energy from the TARDIS. Fred retreats through the breach, taking Benny with it and the Doctor follows.
In the other dimension, the Doctor appears before its world's ruler to ask for Benny's return. Unlike Fred, the ruler realises how dangerous the Doctor is, and attempts to destroy him. At that moment, Kadiatu appears, distracting Fred long enough for the Doctor to push the hitch-hiker into Benny's mind, forcing Fred out. The Yak Harris software remains in the alternative dimension achieve its full potential, and the Doctor, Benny and Kadiatu return to their reality moments before the gateway collapses. The Doctor visits the Stone Mountain computer archive and erases evidence of his existence, then sends Old Sam to the Ice Warrior nest, suggesting he offer the reviving warriors a gesture of peace. The surviving Floozies cut the TARDIS from the wall and the Doctor and Benny depart.
Some months latter, Kadiatu has a job at STS, gaining access to the resources she needs to build her time machine. Her work complete, she destroys her research and sets off through the time vortex to catch up with the Doctor.
Trivia
The novel was controversial on its initial publication, being the first Doctor Who story in any medium to feature coarse language, drug use, and sex. This reflected the adult readership of the New Adventures, as well as the age of most Doctor Who fans at the time; prior to this, the novels had generally stayed within the same boundaries as the TV series. Aaronvitch noted that previous New Adventures had already alluded to characters having sexual relations and that all he did in this novel was put it "on screen". Complaints about swearing in latter New Adventures eventually resulted in the introduction of the substitute swear word "cruk", in the manner of television series such as PorridgePorridge (TV series)
Porridge is a British situation comedy broadcast on BBC1 from 1974 to 1977, running for three series, two Christmas specials and a feature film. Written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, it stars Ronnie Barker and Richard Beckinsale as two inmates at the fictional HMP Slade in Cumberland...
and Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf
Red Dwarf is a British comedy franchise which primarily comprises eight series of a television science fiction sitcom that aired on BBC Two between 1988 and 1999 and Dave from 2009–present. It gained cult following. It was created by Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, who also wrote the first six series...
.
The novel is set in an inter-planetary transport network that evolved out of the London Underground
London Underground
The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in England...
. Trains teleport through tunnels in the space-time continuum between fixed points at faster-than-light speeds. King's Cross station is the terminus for a Central Line that connects human colonies throughout the solar system. As the story opens, the network is about to be extended to its first extra-solar location, in Arcturus (this is called the "Stunnel", in imitation of the "Chunnel
Channel Tunnel
The Channel Tunnel is a undersea rail tunnel linking Folkestone, Kent in the United Kingdom with Coquelles, Pas-de-Calais near Calais in northern France beneath the English Channel at the Strait of Dover. At its lowest point, it is deep...
").
The novel continues from The Seeds of Death
The Seeds of Death
The Seeds of Death is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which originally aired in six weekly parts from 25 January to 1 March 1969...
, with the Transit network as an offshoot of the T-Mat system. Though no Ice Warrior
Ice Warrior
The Ice Warriors are a fictional extraterrestrial race of reptilian-like humanoids in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The race originated on Mars, and first appeared in the 1967 serial The Ice Warriors where they encountered the Second Doctor and his...
s are encountered, the Doctor and Kadiatu explore one of their dormant nests. Ahistory by Lance Parkin
Lance Parkin
Lance Parkin is a British author, best known for writing fiction and reference books for television series, in particular Doctor Who and Emmerdale...
describes the novel as taking place "at least a generation" after the serial, based on a "future history" document by Aaronovitch.
The mysterious hitch-hiker Francine encounters in cyberspace is the future "Merlin" Doctor, as he is described in Marc Platt
Marc Platt
Marc Platt is a British writer. He is most known for his work with the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.After studying catering at a technical college, Platt worked first for Trust House Forte, and then in administration for the BBC...
's novelisation of Aaronvitch's serial Battlefield
Battlefield (Doctor Who)
Battlefield is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from September 6 to September 27, 1989. It was the last appearance of Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in Doctor Who....
.