''Heritage'' is a

BBC Books BBC Books (also formerly known as BBC Publishing) is an imprint majority-owned and managed by Penguin Random House through its Ebury Publishing division. The minority shareholder is BBC Studios, the commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasti ...

original novel written by first time novelist Dale Smith and based on the long-running British

science fiction television Science fiction first appeared in television programming in the late 1930s, during what is called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Special effects and other production techniques allow creators to present a living visual image of an imaginary ...

series '' Doctor Who''. It features the

Seventh Doctor The Seventh Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the BBC science fiction television series '' Doctor Who'', and the final incarnation of the original Doctor Who series. He is portrayed by Scottish actor Sylvester McCoy. ...

and

Ace An ace is a playing card, die or domino with a single pip. In the standard French deck, an ace has a single suit symbol (a heart, diamond, spade, or club) located in the middle of the card, sometimes large and decorated, especially in the c ...

Plot

The

and

arrive on Heritage in the year 6048 to visit the Heyworths, who are old friends of the Doctor's. Nobody seems to want them on the planet, and certainly not poking their noses in. But they are stuck there until the next day. The Doctor doesn't want to get involved, but Ace can't help herself: by talking to Lee Marks she finds out that the Heyworths were murdered by the townsfolk, because they threatened to disrupt Professor Wakeling's experiments into cloning. Without the cloning technology, Heritage would have nothing going for it at all. The Doctor suspects all this, and also that the Heyworth's surviving daughter Sweetness is a clone of her mother created by Professor Wakeling. What he doesn't tell Ace is that Sweetness's mother is his old companion

Melanie Bush Mel, also sometimes referred to as Melanie, is a fictional character played by Bonnie Langford in the long-running British science fiction television series '' Doctor Who''. A computer programmer from the 20th century who is a companion of the ...

. The Doctor confronts Wakeling and ruins his chances of announcing his discoveries to the universe. As Wakeling tries to take revenge on the Doctor, he is caught in a landslide and probably killed.

Continuity

* The story forms part of an ongoing story arc planned by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry, involving the apparent death of Ace. The other books in the arc are '' Prime Time'' and ''

Loving the Alien "Loving the Alien" is a song written and recorded by David Bowie. It was the opening track to his sixteenth studio album ''Tonight''. One of two tracks on the album written solely by Bowie, an edited version of the song was released as a singl ...

''. This in turn feeds into a larger arc involving the apparent deaths of many of the Doctor's companions running through the Past Doctor Adventures and the

Eighth Doctor Adventures The ''Eighth Doctor Adventures'' (sometimes abbreviated as EDA or referred to as the EDAs) are a series of spin off novels based on the long running BBC science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' and published under the BBC Books impr ...

. * Following the events of

Justin Richards Justin Richards (born 14 September 1961) is a British writer. He has written science fiction and fantasy novels, including series set in Victorian or early-20th-century London, and also adventure stories set in the present day. He has written ...

's novel '' Sometime Never...'', it is uncertain whether or not the events of ''Heritage'' take place as described, or whether Mel Bush is still alive. Dale Smith has stated that the novel contains a "get-out" clause for allowing Mel to still be alive. * Although the novel's chapters provide specific dates for all of the action, the later novel ''

Halflife Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable ato ...

retcons Retroactive continuity, or retcon for short, is a literary device in which established diegetic facts in the plot of a fictional work (those established through the narrative itself) are adjusted, ignored, supplemented, or contradicted by a subse ...

the action to take place several centuries earlier in an attempt to make the lack of stable cloning technology more acceptable. However, the author has pointed out that the novels states that Wakeling was not the first person to develop cloning technology, and that the era was chosen to tie in with the '' Doctor Who'' television serial '' The Invisible Enemy''.

Outside References

* The novel was dedicated to "Cathy Howkins", who turns up as a character in the author's later work '' The Albino's Dancer''. * The avian alien Hadoke who piloted the shuttle that was to take the Doctor and Ace away from Heritage was named after the comedian

Toby Hadoke Toby is a popular, usually male, name in many English speaking countries. The name is from the Middle English vernacular form of Tobias. Tobias itself is the Greek transliteration of the Hebrew טוביה ''Toviah'', which translates to ''Good i ...

, who attended

Manchester University , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

with Dale Smith.

References

External links

The Cloister Library - ''Heritage''
{{Seventh Doctor stories, selected=Books 2002 British novels 2002 science fiction novels Novels by Dale Smith Past Doctor Adventures Seventh Doctor novels