Spiral Scratch
Carsus: the largest repository of knowledge in the universe – in any universe, for there is an infinite number of potential universes, or rather, there should be. So why are there now just 117, 863? And why, every so often, does anotherone just wink out of existence?
The Doctor and Mel arrive on Carsus to see The Doctor’s old friend Professor Rummas – but he has been murdered. Can they solve the mystery of a contracting multiverse, and expose the murderer?
With the ties that bind the Lamprey family to the past, present and future coming unravelled around him, only The Doctor can stop the descent into temporal chaos. But he is lost on Janus 8. And Schyllus. And a twentieth-century Earth where Rome never fell. And…
coming soon
- Spiral Scratch was the seventy-first BBC Past Doctor Adventures novel. It was written by Gary Russell. It featured the Sixth Doctor and Mel. This was the final novel featuring the Sixth Doctor. It is also the final Sixth Doctor adventure overall, as the ending leads directly into the television story Time and the Rani.
The novel reveals the circumstances behind The Doctor’s regeneration into his seventh incarnation, which were left a mystery in the televised version of the event. According to the novel, the Sixth Doctor was already dying by the time The Rani boarded his TARDIS after the events of this story, and her attack propagated the Sixth Doctor’s inevitable death sooner than it would have occurred. As of 2013, it is the only account of the regeneration in a BBC-licensed venue.
- Rummas is a Time Lord and a friend of the Doctor who lives on Carsus.
- An alternate version of Peri Brown is said to have sacrificed her life for her version of The Doctor.
- Before arriving on Carsus, The Doctor encounters one of his future incarnations outside the TARDIS Library. It is not specified which incarnation it is.
- Mel witnesses several different versions of the Doctor, including one with a penguin, presumably Frobisher. Two Doctors wear blue coats. Both are accompanied by a lady in her fifties, who is meant to be Evelyn Smythe
- The Spiral Chamber is a portal to the spiral in the Time Vortex.
- In an alternate timeline, The Doctor visited Huttan in 2267, Narrah in 2721, Ch’zzz in 3263, Schyllus in 4387 and Helios 3 in 5738.
