Author Notes

Ogilvy notes how scientifically implausible the Ice Warriors are.

The crown falls off Xznaal’s head – symbolic, but also a way of making sure the crown isn’t on the mothership in the last chapter.

The Hay Wain has appeared a few times throughout the book – the first time as a design on a tray owned by the Doctor. Here Xznaal uses the real thing as a tray.

Benny is giving as good as she gets here, but note that all her banter isn’t actually changing anything. She’s not talking Xznaal out of his plan, as the Doctor might, just making him more resolute.

‘It’s bows and arrows against the lightning’ is a quote from War of the Worlds – a soldier commenting on the futility of fighting the Martians. The line about only two Martians and one human being left is a paraphrase of an American general in the sixties discussing the Cold War and Communists. The image of the Ice Warrior Benny has was a description of the cover of the original Virgin edition of the book.

The reason for the giant hologram is a convoluted one. Originally, I asked for the cover to be a mirror image of the first New Adventure, Genesys. That had four elements – a monster in the foreground, a full-length image of a man, with a temple wall in the background... and a ghostly floating face of the Doctor. The book covers had moved towards a literal depiction of a scene from the book since then. So I had to have a specific scene with a monster confronting a full length Benny in front of a castle wall, with a giant floating ghostly Doctor head in at some point! In the end, the idea of mirroring the original cover was dropped, because it didn’t fit the new cover format. But the version that was used still has echoes of the Genesys cover.

Benny’s ‘last words’ are actually taken from an unpublished fan story I wrote with Mark Clapham, where they were given to the Doctor’s companion there, Iffy.