What do you think?
Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures #23
Doctor Who: No Future
'This time, anarchy's real. There are power cuts and Wilson's resignation, a great upheaval of unease. But now there's real fear too. Real panic. And that's not how it's supposed to be.'
Somebody has been toying with the Doctor's past, testing him, threatening him, leading him on a chase that has brought the TARDIS to London in 1976 -- where reality has been altered once again.
Black Star terrorists foment riots in the streets. The Queen barely escapes assassination. A fearful tension is rising. Something is going to happen. Something bad.
Meanwhile, Benny's the lead singer in a punk band. Ace can't talk to her or the Doctor without an argument starting, so she's made murderous plans of her own. The Doctor's alone -- he doesn't know who his enemy is, and even the Brigadier has disowned him.
As usual, it's up to the Doctor to protect the world. And he can't even protect himself.
Somebody has been toying with the Doctor's past, testing him, threatening him, leading him on a chase that has brought the TARDIS to London in 1976 -- where reality has been altered once again.
Black Star terrorists foment riots in the streets. The Queen barely escapes assassination. A fearful tension is rising. Something is going to happen. Something bad.
Meanwhile, Benny's the lead singer in a punk band. Ace can't talk to her or the Doctor without an argument starting, so she's made murderous plans of her own. The Doctor's alone -- he doesn't know who his enemy is, and even the Brigadier has disowned him.
As usual, it's up to the Doctor to protect the world. And he can't even protect himself.
272 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 1994
About the author
Paul Cornell
624 books1,523 followersPaul Cornell is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy prose, comics and television. He's been Hugo Award-nominated for all three media, and has won the BSFA Award for his short fiction, and the Eagle Award for his comics. He's the writer of Saucer Country for Vertigo, Demon Knights for DC, and has written for the Doctor Who TV series. His new urban fantasy novel is London Falling, out from Tor on December 6th.
via Wikipedia @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cor...
via Wikipedia @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cor...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
January 29, 2012
This book holds a lot of memories and I haven't read it for at least 15 years, maybe more.
Here I am at a time in my life when I needed some easy comfort reading. My daughter, my first child, is only a newborn and I don't have much time. But I have to read. I am never not reading something. Sure, I'm also reading her stuff, but it's all picture books. Of course I go for my comfort read of a Doctor Who book and The New Adventures. These were my time of finding Doctor Who. I had watched it for as long as I can remember, but 1993-1994, when I was 13 was the perfect time to nerd it on up as a fan. The local video store had a lot of Doctor WHo videos that I could hire and even a coupon to hire 7 for $7 which my grandparents funded every school holiday. And there were Target novelisations aplenty in the local library and then there were the New Adventures in the bookstore. I used my Christmas gift money to purchase this volume and a few others. I remember reading and enjoying this volume, but I didn't appreciate the history that was here or the music.
Now I'm an oldie and I know the music, I know more about the times and I really did enjoy this reread because the book paints an image of the time and the place that matches every other reference I have read or seen about this time. And it's fun. And it's a culmination of character arcs between the Seventh and Ace. And it doesn't take itself too seriously. It's just good clean Doctor Who fun.
I'm glad I revisited this.
Here I am at a time in my life when I needed some easy comfort reading. My daughter, my first child, is only a newborn and I don't have much time. But I have to read. I am never not reading something. Sure, I'm also reading her stuff, but it's all picture books. Of course I go for my comfort read of a Doctor Who book and The New Adventures. These were my time of finding Doctor Who. I had watched it for as long as I can remember, but 1993-1994, when I was 13 was the perfect time to nerd it on up as a fan. The local video store had a lot of Doctor WHo videos that I could hire and even a coupon to hire 7 for $7 which my grandparents funded every school holiday. And there were Target novelisations aplenty in the local library and then there were the New Adventures in the bookstore. I used my Christmas gift money to purchase this volume and a few others. I remember reading and enjoying this volume, but I didn't appreciate the history that was here or the music.
Now I'm an oldie and I know the music, I know more about the times and I really did enjoy this reread because the book paints an image of the time and the place that matches every other reference I have read or seen about this time. And it's fun. And it's a culmination of character arcs between the Seventh and Ace. And it doesn't take itself too seriously. It's just good clean Doctor Who fun.
I'm glad I revisited this.
March 20, 2017
This is the fifth book in the series which started with Blood Heat. Paul Cornell's No Future is the perfect end to this fantastic series. I enjoyed seeing UNIT again and the Vardans were very scary too. I am currently reading the VNAs again and I recommend this book highly. The plot has some twists i wasn't expecting when i first read it back in 1994. I liked the black star terrorist aspect too, it added a hint of menace to the novel. Ace and Bernice are having a tough time with each other, and for once the Doctor is in the dark about what's been manipulating reality. The punk band has some good characters which add substance to the ongoing narrative. To all Who fans , i would highly recommend reading the VNA books.
July 5, 2015
Because the Virgin Doctor Who books were a long ongoing series, with two books a month and many epic plotlines and huge character arcs, picking one book nearly at random and reading it out of context is a little like coming into a TV episode halfway through. Yes, it’s Doctor Who, so there’s a lot I already know, but there’s also quite a bit which is ‘Huh!?’ True, Cornell proves himself adept at solving that conundrum which used to worry old Bertie Wooster: namely how much of the continuing plot one needs to recap to get the new readers up to speed, but to do it in such a way that doesn’t bore the constant readers rigid. As such I’m okay with the plot. It’s the characters I’m struggling with. Clearly there’s being developments with these characters since I last saw them, strange nuances and odd wrinkles added – and the result is like looking at someone you know and realising that maybe – gulp! – you don’t really know them that well anymore.
We’re in a faux Pertwee UNIT story set in 1976, with The Doctor, Ace and Benny involved with punk rock, art terrorists and – of course – an oncoming end of the world as we know it. There’s good British fun to be had: we have another rogue timelord, situationists, a female prime minister who isn’t the one we were expecting, an oddly subdued Tony Benn, an actual attack on BBC TV studios (via the ‘Blue Peter’ garden no less) and a fantastic Dr Who/Paul McCartney & Wings joke. A flaw? The punk on display here isn’t all that gritty, and the final performance – if anything – seems like it’d be more progrock – so it’s the glamrock aesthetic of UNIT which prevails. But I guess this is The Doctor and The Brigadier and that’s how it should be.
Let’s be honest, if the main thing I’m taking away is which of these 1970s musical stylings is dominant in the text, then clearly this is a book which in no way takes itself seriously and is all the better for it.
We’re in a faux Pertwee UNIT story set in 1976, with The Doctor, Ace and Benny involved with punk rock, art terrorists and – of course – an oncoming end of the world as we know it. There’s good British fun to be had: we have another rogue timelord, situationists, a female prime minister who isn’t the one we were expecting, an oddly subdued Tony Benn, an actual attack on BBC TV studios (via the ‘Blue Peter’ garden no less) and a fantastic Dr Who/Paul McCartney & Wings joke. A flaw? The punk on display here isn’t all that gritty, and the final performance – if anything – seems like it’d be more progrock – so it’s the glamrock aesthetic of UNIT which prevails. But I guess this is The Doctor and The Brigadier and that’s how it should be.
Let’s be honest, if the main thing I’m taking away is which of these 1970s musical stylings is dominant in the text, then clearly this is a book which in no way takes itself seriously and is all the better for it.
June 21, 2019
I haven't left actual reviews for most of these stories. Doctor Who fans will understand them and enjoy them, others maybe not so much.
Because this series of books has been written by so many different authors with different styles, it's hard to keep consistency. They've done a great job for the most part.
What I've discovered is that I really, really dislike the Doctor's new companion, the archaeologist Bernice Summerfield. She's well-written but she grates on me. I prefer the scenes and stories with Ace and the Doctor rather than with Bernice and the Doctor. When all three are together, they spend most of their time arguing.
Consider this a sort of collective review for the series, although I don't have all of them in my collection. I've read from 1 to 23 and I still have 33 and 60 to be read.
Because this series of books has been written by so many different authors with different styles, it's hard to keep consistency. They've done a great job for the most part.
What I've discovered is that I really, really dislike the Doctor's new companion, the archaeologist Bernice Summerfield. She's well-written but she grates on me. I prefer the scenes and stories with Ace and the Doctor rather than with Bernice and the Doctor. When all three are together, they spend most of their time arguing.
Consider this a sort of collective review for the series, although I don't have all of them in my collection. I've read from 1 to 23 and I still have 33 and 60 to be read.
January 17, 2012
Since the last few Doctor Who New Adventures I read were all part of the same arc, and No Future was its finale AND written by my personal man crush Paul Cornell, how could I not fly through it this week? Granted, it has the worst cover of any Doctor Who book ever, but the insides are pretty great, especially for a Who nerd like me. It's 1976, an era which combines punk rock with UNIT, with old foes coming out of the woodwork, and Cornell bringing closure not only to the Alternate History cycle, but to the enmity between Ace and his beloved creation, Bernice Summerfield. What I found most remarkable is that a few pages before any kind of revelation, I was thinking "oh my God, THIS is what's happening, isn't it?" and then it was. A superbly executed high wire act between surprise and predictability.
July 18, 2020
3.5?
A good romp of a novel! Featuring one of Doctor who's least favourite monsters the Vardans and the conclusion of the alternative reality arc featuring the meddling monk and Artemis!
I loved the Benny teaming up with the Brigadier and Benton and Mike Yates and I love how she joined a punk band which is a very Benny thing to do. Also, Romana and the Doctor meeting David Bowie? Paul Cornell, you can't leave us hanging like that!
Danny pain got on my nerves a bit, and where he was a razor blade necklace around his neck was stupid af so I was glad he didn't feature too heavily.
Also, Ace surprised me in many ways and I glad we got to see her grow towards the end and stray from her terrible attitude from before. But still, Ace pissed me off quite a bit in this book which normally I do love Ace but the way she treated Benny even if it was all part of being undercover was a no go for me.
A good romp of a novel! Featuring one of Doctor who's least favourite monsters the Vardans and the conclusion of the alternative reality arc featuring the meddling monk and Artemis!
I loved the Benny teaming up with the Brigadier and Benton and Mike Yates and I love how she joined a punk band which is a very Benny thing to do. Also, Romana and the Doctor meeting David Bowie? Paul Cornell, you can't leave us hanging like that!
Danny pain got on my nerves a bit, and where he was a razor blade necklace around his neck was stupid af so I was glad he didn't feature too heavily.
Also, Ace surprised me in many ways and I glad we got to see her grow towards the end and stray from her terrible attitude from before. But still, Ace pissed me off quite a bit in this book which normally I do love Ace but the way she treated Benny even if it was all part of being undercover was a no go for me.
May 31, 2009
...and once again, Paul Cornell shows us how a NA should be done.
This is spectacular from start to finish. It evokes a period that is integral to the history of Who - the Pertwee / early Baker UNIT years, but combines it with an approach to the political and social history of the era that takes the whole spirit of the seventies and spins it around.
I can imagine that for those readers who weren't even born in the 70s (or even the 80s come to that!), then a lot of this will make very little sense indeed, particularly the slightly self-indulgent "Mediasphere" episode. But for those of us who grew up at that time with Who - and everything else on tv, this is terrific. And only Cornell could get away with "Chap with Wings, five rounds rapid!" (although "Don't tell him, Pike!" comes close.)
On top of that, he delivers a genuine character-based story. We finally meet the antagonist who has (theoretically) been behind the whole recent story arc, and even though most fans will have guessed that it was the Meddling Monk, one of the first other Time Lords encountered in the original series, there is room to explore his character properly, and for us to almost sympathise with him (unlike "Epsilon Delta" from The Dimension Riders, who was merely a plot device.) And Bernice (who Cornell originally created) gets her own fifteen minutes of fame too.
But this story is all about Ace. And it delivers in spades. Like a good whodunnit, all the clues are hidden in plain sight, so that when the showdown finally takes place, it all works even though it still seems properly surprising. And she gets proper closure to the story that Cornell himself started back in Love and War.
I think you can tell that I loved this one. It's everything that the NAs had shaped themselves into by this point and yet still manages to be innovative and unexpected. Almost perfect.
This is spectacular from start to finish. It evokes a period that is integral to the history of Who - the Pertwee / early Baker UNIT years, but combines it with an approach to the political and social history of the era that takes the whole spirit of the seventies and spins it around.
I can imagine that for those readers who weren't even born in the 70s (or even the 80s come to that!), then a lot of this will make very little sense indeed, particularly the slightly self-indulgent "Mediasphere" episode. But for those of us who grew up at that time with Who - and everything else on tv, this is terrific. And only Cornell could get away with "Chap with Wings, five rounds rapid!" (although "Don't tell him, Pike!" comes close.)
On top of that, he delivers a genuine character-based story. We finally meet the antagonist who has (theoretically) been behind the whole recent story arc, and even though most fans will have guessed that it was the Meddling Monk, one of the first other Time Lords encountered in the original series, there is room to explore his character properly, and for us to almost sympathise with him (unlike "Epsilon Delta" from The Dimension Riders, who was merely a plot device.) And Bernice (who Cornell originally created) gets her own fifteen minutes of fame too.
But this story is all about Ace. And it delivers in spades. Like a good whodunnit, all the clues are hidden in plain sight, so that when the showdown finally takes place, it all works even though it still seems properly surprising. And she gets proper closure to the story that Cornell himself started back in Love and War.
I think you can tell that I loved this one. It's everything that the NAs had shaped themselves into by this point and yet still manages to be innovative and unexpected. Almost perfect.
June 12, 2013
Far more than just a Doctor Who book, this is an excellent stand-alone novel in its own right.
December 30, 2025
Cornell has a better grasp of style than most VNA authors, but the plot here was a bit dull. The Ace/Benny teen drama dynamic will never not be tedious.
December 2, 2023
Ah, let's be real, I liked this a lot. I understood a lot of the unspoken references (like the Tomorrow People scene), and Cornell mentions Ozric Tentacles at the end (been listening to a lot of Ozric lately). Five stars for being very entertaining.
Read
September 10, 2026Following on immediately from a book that showed the New Adventures’ potential for fresh, effervescent storytelling, No Future seems to be on a mission to remind everyone of all the tedious pitfalls the range usually opts for instead.
Let’s run through them:
Slavish dependency on continuity - tick. And I note that the litany of references to televised episodes (Eternals, Daemons, the Gods of Ragnarok, Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Gallifrey Gallifrey Gallifrey, Harry Sullivan, and too many UNIT and Brigadier references to list thanks to their presence in the story) have now been joined by worldbuilding from the New Adventures range, not just the previous books in this arc (already more continuity than I care to keep track of) but many earlier ones (Professor Nightshades chucked about with abandon as if to demonstrate how cleverly this close-knit group of ambitious young writers have constructed their Whoniverse for the 90s). Good luck jumping on here, new readers.
The plot itself rests on more continuity; I think even if it hadn’t been universally spoilered, the presence of the Meddling Monk had become pretty obvious by this point in the arc (why is he still a Monk who refers to everyone as ‘my child’? Don’t worry, the book adds some new Gallifrey-based continuity to explain that!), and to those in the know it becomes very, very clear early on where the next tier of villainy resides, which makes the decision to hold back the revelation laughable in at least two ways (only non-fans wouldn't see it coming a mile off, and I don't know what kind of reaction is anticipated from them) (as if non-fans were ever going to read this!). Cornell then seems unsure how to handle his Big Bad - are they a joke or a genuine threat? - and opts for doing both at the same time, which is confusing to say the least.
The book is so stuffed with continuity that it is unclear whether Brigadier’s response to a request to use his VCR with ‘Liberty hall, Doctor’ is an in-joke or part of the New Adventures writer’s instinct to fill the mouths of characters with a jumbled montage of things they said once on television. There are plenty of definite in-jokes as well, ranging from mildly insufferable to completely insufferable. But in context the Brigadier’s ‘Lots of ops round here during that Yeti business, right down to Tooting Bec’ comes across as an attempt to canonise Jon Pertwee’s oft-repeated jokey phrase, and the contrived ‘chap with wings’ joke wasn’t in with a chance of earning a chuckle since I had reached continuity saturation several chapters earlier.
What else? Unnecessary violence - tick. More than I care to recount, but as per usual the effect of putting beloved characters in the midst of graphic atrocities is invariably to leave a sour taste in your mouth.
Angst - tick. Oh my goodness, the angst. Mercifully sidelined in Conundrum, the soap opera melodrama that is the TARDIS team reaches new heights here, Ace as usual reduced to a walking set of cliches and Benny almost as poorly served by her creator. The Doctor, too, experiences all kinds of inner turmoil, racked with guilt at what he has put his companions through and how his has lost the innocent teenager that was Ace (she has all grown up Doctor, and she wasn’t that nice before...). For a considerable part of this book we are supposed to believe that Ace has betrayed the Doctor, and I duly did, because this is a character now written with so little consistency or plausibility that I could believe she would do pretty much anything.
In spite of which, the sentence ‘sometimes I think of putting a gun in my mouth’ is not something I wished to hear a Doctor Who companion say, ever - even a companion as ludicrous as this.
Wanky surrealism - tick. Almost as though Cornell is a bit cross that Lyons got the Land of Fiction gig, he has a go at it himself, and demonstrates why Lyons was so much better at it. Instead of the effortless, witty harnessing of archetypes to tell a story, here we have 70s pop culture employed as an exercise in pure padding, its specificity limiting its reach only to those who grew up amidst a certain television landscape - The Good Life, The Goodies and Frankie Howerd are recreated perfectly authentically and enjoyably, but even as an aficionado of classic television I was lost by descriptions of other characters I was clearly supposed to recognise. This idea was much more successfully executed in Doctor Who Magazine’s 20th anniversary special comic strip TV Action!, where the occasion and context made references that might go over a reader’s head forgivable; in the expositionary chapter of this involved narrative it is self-indulgent to the point of being deeply irritating.
On which subject: pop culture references, tick. I’m sure I missed a lot of clever 70s pop and punk stuff, but I couldn’t be bothered to look it up (the final chapter and epilogue throw in names and possibilities that I think are meant to register as relevant, but they might equally just be nods to Cornell’s mates at the Fitzroy Tavern, which I gather is also a thing they did).
Convoluted plot - tick. Exacerbated by a large cast of characters it becomes impossible to keep track of (particularly as some of them have various aliases), participating in events so involved that it’s impossible to tell what they’re doing. At the point where some of them turn out to be alien imposters all bets are off - one character is so obviously not who he is supposed to be that the revelation that he was not not who he is supposed to be took me by surprise itself (were we not meant to know that already?!). Characters disappear and reappear, get killed and come back to life, and by about two thirds of the way through I gave up keeping track of who was human, who was alien, who was dead and who was alive, partly because I often turned out to be wrong but mostly because I just didn’t care. Any more than I cared that Big Ben had been blown up, the Queen had been shot, aliens were taking over Stonehenge... and so on. Stuff happens. And keeps happening. Some of it happens in dreams, some of it happens in magic worlds in the TARDIS, some of it even happens in the real world, and it is all equally weightless. The narrative itself (such as it is) is so impenetrable that it requires an entire chapter of explanation and even then remains incomprehensible.
The biggest pity is that this mess is clearly in the hands of a writer with huge potential who, unburdened from the requirement to tie up a narrative arc with a million fan references and describe events that defy description, clearly shows the capability to write something spectacular. My suspicion is that he was landed with this task because he was (rightly) assessed to be one of the few regular New Adventures contributors capable of pulling it off at all. More’s the pity.
The lengthy tying up thankfully includes a resolution to the yawnfest that has been the dysfunction between the Doctor, Ace and Benny, and in a denouement that goes on forever we also get an epilogue in which the TARDIS team finally seems to be a group of people you might want to read about. In a brazen pressing of the reset button, Ace divests herself of her macho costume and those silly mirrored sunglasses and is suddenly full of teenage wonder again, the Doctor decides not to manipulate things any more, and he takes a hammer to the chameleon circuit (something that makes no sense at all as a fictional decision, but we can’t deprive Doctor Who of its essential iconography, can we?). Laboured though this all is, it is a relief: maybe now the range can get back to spinning some baggage-free honest ripping yarns again. And hopefully give Paul Cornell the chance to do the same.
NB: one unintentionally enjoyable feature is that the Monk’s record company is called Priory. The actual Priory Records, est. 1980, is a homespun outfit specialising in liturgical and organ music, which churns out CDs for church music fans with little apparent concern for audio quality. The idea that the Monk would front such a cynical moneymaking operation was one plot point I could absolutely get behind.
Let’s run through them:
Slavish dependency on continuity - tick. And I note that the litany of references to televised episodes (Eternals, Daemons, the Gods of Ragnarok, Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans, Gallifrey Gallifrey Gallifrey, Harry Sullivan, and too many UNIT and Brigadier references to list thanks to their presence in the story) have now been joined by worldbuilding from the New Adventures range, not just the previous books in this arc (already more continuity than I care to keep track of) but many earlier ones (Professor Nightshades chucked about with abandon as if to demonstrate how cleverly this close-knit group of ambitious young writers have constructed their Whoniverse for the 90s). Good luck jumping on here, new readers.
The plot itself rests on more continuity; I think even if it hadn’t been universally spoilered, the presence of the Meddling Monk had become pretty obvious by this point in the arc (why is he still a Monk who refers to everyone as ‘my child’? Don’t worry, the book adds some new Gallifrey-based continuity to explain that!), and to those in the know it becomes very, very clear early on where the next tier of villainy resides, which makes the decision to hold back the revelation laughable in at least two ways (only non-fans wouldn't see it coming a mile off, and I don't know what kind of reaction is anticipated from them) (as if non-fans were ever going to read this!). Cornell then seems unsure how to handle his Big Bad - are they a joke or a genuine threat? - and opts for doing both at the same time, which is confusing to say the least.
The book is so stuffed with continuity that it is unclear whether Brigadier’s response to a request to use his VCR with ‘Liberty hall, Doctor’ is an in-joke or part of the New Adventures writer’s instinct to fill the mouths of characters with a jumbled montage of things they said once on television. There are plenty of definite in-jokes as well, ranging from mildly insufferable to completely insufferable. But in context the Brigadier’s ‘Lots of ops round here during that Yeti business, right down to Tooting Bec’ comes across as an attempt to canonise Jon Pertwee’s oft-repeated jokey phrase, and the contrived ‘chap with wings’ joke wasn’t in with a chance of earning a chuckle since I had reached continuity saturation several chapters earlier.
What else? Unnecessary violence - tick. More than I care to recount, but as per usual the effect of putting beloved characters in the midst of graphic atrocities is invariably to leave a sour taste in your mouth.
Angst - tick. Oh my goodness, the angst. Mercifully sidelined in Conundrum, the soap opera melodrama that is the TARDIS team reaches new heights here, Ace as usual reduced to a walking set of cliches and Benny almost as poorly served by her creator. The Doctor, too, experiences all kinds of inner turmoil, racked with guilt at what he has put his companions through and how his has lost the innocent teenager that was Ace (she has all grown up Doctor, and she wasn’t that nice before...). For a considerable part of this book we are supposed to believe that Ace has betrayed the Doctor, and I duly did, because this is a character now written with so little consistency or plausibility that I could believe she would do pretty much anything.
In spite of which, the sentence ‘sometimes I think of putting a gun in my mouth’ is not something I wished to hear a Doctor Who companion say, ever - even a companion as ludicrous as this.
Wanky surrealism - tick. Almost as though Cornell is a bit cross that Lyons got the Land of Fiction gig, he has a go at it himself, and demonstrates why Lyons was so much better at it. Instead of the effortless, witty harnessing of archetypes to tell a story, here we have 70s pop culture employed as an exercise in pure padding, its specificity limiting its reach only to those who grew up amidst a certain television landscape - The Good Life, The Goodies and Frankie Howerd are recreated perfectly authentically and enjoyably, but even as an aficionado of classic television I was lost by descriptions of other characters I was clearly supposed to recognise. This idea was much more successfully executed in Doctor Who Magazine’s 20th anniversary special comic strip TV Action!, where the occasion and context made references that might go over a reader’s head forgivable; in the expositionary chapter of this involved narrative it is self-indulgent to the point of being deeply irritating.
On which subject: pop culture references, tick. I’m sure I missed a lot of clever 70s pop and punk stuff, but I couldn’t be bothered to look it up (the final chapter and epilogue throw in names and possibilities that I think are meant to register as relevant, but they might equally just be nods to Cornell’s mates at the Fitzroy Tavern, which I gather is also a thing they did).
Convoluted plot - tick. Exacerbated by a large cast of characters it becomes impossible to keep track of (particularly as some of them have various aliases), participating in events so involved that it’s impossible to tell what they’re doing. At the point where some of them turn out to be alien imposters all bets are off - one character is so obviously not who he is supposed to be that the revelation that he was not not who he is supposed to be took me by surprise itself (were we not meant to know that already?!). Characters disappear and reappear, get killed and come back to life, and by about two thirds of the way through I gave up keeping track of who was human, who was alien, who was dead and who was alive, partly because I often turned out to be wrong but mostly because I just didn’t care. Any more than I cared that Big Ben had been blown up, the Queen had been shot, aliens were taking over Stonehenge... and so on. Stuff happens. And keeps happening. Some of it happens in dreams, some of it happens in magic worlds in the TARDIS, some of it even happens in the real world, and it is all equally weightless. The narrative itself (such as it is) is so impenetrable that it requires an entire chapter of explanation and even then remains incomprehensible.
The biggest pity is that this mess is clearly in the hands of a writer with huge potential who, unburdened from the requirement to tie up a narrative arc with a million fan references and describe events that defy description, clearly shows the capability to write something spectacular. My suspicion is that he was landed with this task because he was (rightly) assessed to be one of the few regular New Adventures contributors capable of pulling it off at all. More’s the pity.
The lengthy tying up thankfully includes a resolution to the yawnfest that has been the dysfunction between the Doctor, Ace and Benny, and in a denouement that goes on forever we also get an epilogue in which the TARDIS team finally seems to be a group of people you might want to read about. In a brazen pressing of the reset button, Ace divests herself of her macho costume and those silly mirrored sunglasses and is suddenly full of teenage wonder again, the Doctor decides not to manipulate things any more, and he takes a hammer to the chameleon circuit (something that makes no sense at all as a fictional decision, but we can’t deprive Doctor Who of its essential iconography, can we?). Laboured though this all is, it is a relief: maybe now the range can get back to spinning some baggage-free honest ripping yarns again. And hopefully give Paul Cornell the chance to do the same.
NB: one unintentionally enjoyable feature is that the Monk’s record company is called Priory. The actual Priory Records, est. 1980, is a homespun outfit specialising in liturgical and organ music, which churns out CDs for church music fans with little apparent concern for audio quality. The idea that the Monk would front such a cynical moneymaking operation was one plot point I could absolutely get behind.
June 1, 2016
This is probably my favourite of the Virgin New Adventures despite its owner pretty much disowning it in recent years - a mistake, in my opinion, for why annoy a section of your readership by attacking a book they liked that you wrote?
The dog days of the 1970s, punk, heat, London, and in walks Ace, blasted and done with it all in this series. She wants out, she wants away from the Doctor, she thinks she finds what she wants in a Sex Pistols or Clash equivalent band, but is it love or infatuation?
McCoy's doctor is masterfully done, wandering through this story understated for much of its length, discovering things that are wrong - ghetto blasters, CDs, all out of, or ahead of, their time.
Things come to a head, and in walk UNIT strangely complicit as things seem.
There's nothing not to love in this book - which makes Cornell's hatred of his own creation even more bizarre.
The dog days of the 1970s, punk, heat, London, and in walks Ace, blasted and done with it all in this series. She wants out, she wants away from the Doctor, she thinks she finds what she wants in a Sex Pistols or Clash equivalent band, but is it love or infatuation?
McCoy's doctor is masterfully done, wandering through this story understated for much of its length, discovering things that are wrong - ghetto blasters, CDs, all out of, or ahead of, their time.
Things come to a head, and in walk UNIT strangely complicit as things seem.
There's nothing not to love in this book - which makes Cornell's hatred of his own creation even more bizarre.
June 29, 2021
Ah, Paul Cornell, the writer of two of the best early Virgin New Adventures and now he’s back to wrap up the Alternate History Cycle in his third novel, No Future. Comparing No Future to Cornell’s other work it is definitely the weakest of the three, but saying that it is still a really good novel that continues the streak of good novels that the Alternate History Cycle brought to us, bar The Dimension Riders which sticks out like a sore thumb. But I’m not here to talk about the Alternate History Cycle, but No Future. No Future sees the Doctor, Ace and Benny land in 1976 where the Brigadier doesn’t seem to remember who the Doctor was and even has hired a new scientific advisor while there is an alien invasion on amidst punk rock, Benny being in a band and Ace betraying the Doctor and working for an enemy from the distant past who has meddled too much.
No Future is a novel that continues from the tense ending of Conundrum only to ramp up the tension as anyone can actually die and the Laws of Time don’t matter as one of the three enemies of this story is Artemis, one of the Chronovores, who lives outside of time so Cornell could do whatever he wants. Ok so he doesn’t do any of that and I will go into some of the problems that brings about later on, but just knowing that it could happen is enough to keep tension going. The Doctor has to confront what he does over the course of his novel and ask himself if his meddling is any better than the meddling of our primary villain, Mortimus also known as The Meddling Monk. They do the same thing, changing future into the way they see it should be and often cause some of the same damages, so the conflict between the two of them is some of the best that I’ve seen from the Virgin New Adventures and is up there with his confrontations with the Master throughout the Pertwee era and The Deadly Assassin. The way Cornell decides to resolve the conflict is also great as Mortimus does what he does with the fatal flaw of hubris whilst the Doctor is doing it because there is injustice in the universe that he needs to fight. This is apparent during the climax of the novel where Mortimu has become powerless and his meddling has spiraled out of his control.
Moving on we have the character of Benny. In this novel, Cornell doesn’t know what to do with Benny and he knows full well, even commenting on how she hasn’t had much to do with this story. So he lets her serve the purpose of comic relief which is honestly for the best considering a lot of this novel parodies Doctor Who as a whole and the Virgin New Adventures in particular with a cameo from Professor X and his TASID. Benny’s characterization is honestly the best it’s been throughout the novels and even within the background she has some great dialogue and witty responses to situations.
Now with Benny taking a backseat in this novel, Ace is able to take center stage where we get the novel’s glaring problems. No Future shows signs of being a novel where Ace is to sacrifice herself, content that the Doctor has been there to help her and not harm her. This novel wraps up her character arc and makes her more content with the Doctor’s meddling in her affairs and it would be great if she left. Instead she cops out and resolves the plot with some clever wordplay keeping the Chronovore trapped. She betrays the Doctor to help the Monk who is just as bad as the Doctor in the manipulation department, praying on her love of Jan from Love and War, and treating her like his own personal pet. Her development into appreciating the Doctor is so perfect she should have left it here and Benny should have become the sole companion. That said I still love Ace to bits as a character and I hope they find some other way to develop her in forthcoming novels.
The supporting characters of this novel are of course the UNIT Family reunited with the Brigadier, Benton and Mike Yates all together again for one last adventure. For them this takes place after Terror of the Zygons and you can really tell how their glory days are over as new people are going up in the ranks. They are definitely at their best in the first third of the novel where they act like they don’t know who the Doctor is as you see exactly how harsh UNIT can be. It is also a great way to introduce the tertiary villains of the piece, the Vardans, those tin foil aliens from The Invasion of Time. Unlike their appearance in The Invasion of Time they are an actual threat here, even if Cornell continues to point out how asinine the Vardans were for being fooled by the Sontarans. The only other character who actually gets some good development is Danny Pain who is the person the Doctor was sent looking for at the end of Conundrum. He’s best when he’s with Benny. Their best scene is when they wake up naked in the same bed which is just one hilarious gag after another.
To summarize No Future is a story that gets to see the evolution of characters from way back in the Third Doctor era and some great development for Ace. There is a great story and the villains are some of the most complex since those in Blood Heat. The Doctor and Benny have some of their best development even when Benny is shoved in the background. The only problem is that it misses a lot of the opportunities with Ace’s development, yet is still able to wrap up the Alternate History Cycle in a near perfect way.
No Future is a novel that continues from the tense ending of Conundrum only to ramp up the tension as anyone can actually die and the Laws of Time don’t matter as one of the three enemies of this story is Artemis, one of the Chronovores, who lives outside of time so Cornell could do whatever he wants. Ok so he doesn’t do any of that and I will go into some of the problems that brings about later on, but just knowing that it could happen is enough to keep tension going. The Doctor has to confront what he does over the course of his novel and ask himself if his meddling is any better than the meddling of our primary villain, Mortimus also known as The Meddling Monk. They do the same thing, changing future into the way they see it should be and often cause some of the same damages, so the conflict between the two of them is some of the best that I’ve seen from the Virgin New Adventures and is up there with his confrontations with the Master throughout the Pertwee era and The Deadly Assassin. The way Cornell decides to resolve the conflict is also great as Mortimus does what he does with the fatal flaw of hubris whilst the Doctor is doing it because there is injustice in the universe that he needs to fight. This is apparent during the climax of the novel where Mortimu has become powerless and his meddling has spiraled out of his control.
Moving on we have the character of Benny. In this novel, Cornell doesn’t know what to do with Benny and he knows full well, even commenting on how she hasn’t had much to do with this story. So he lets her serve the purpose of comic relief which is honestly for the best considering a lot of this novel parodies Doctor Who as a whole and the Virgin New Adventures in particular with a cameo from Professor X and his TASID. Benny’s characterization is honestly the best it’s been throughout the novels and even within the background she has some great dialogue and witty responses to situations.
Now with Benny taking a backseat in this novel, Ace is able to take center stage where we get the novel’s glaring problems. No Future shows signs of being a novel where Ace is to sacrifice herself, content that the Doctor has been there to help her and not harm her. This novel wraps up her character arc and makes her more content with the Doctor’s meddling in her affairs and it would be great if she left. Instead she cops out and resolves the plot with some clever wordplay keeping the Chronovore trapped. She betrays the Doctor to help the Monk who is just as bad as the Doctor in the manipulation department, praying on her love of Jan from Love and War, and treating her like his own personal pet. Her development into appreciating the Doctor is so perfect she should have left it here and Benny should have become the sole companion. That said I still love Ace to bits as a character and I hope they find some other way to develop her in forthcoming novels.
The supporting characters of this novel are of course the UNIT Family reunited with the Brigadier, Benton and Mike Yates all together again for one last adventure. For them this takes place after Terror of the Zygons and you can really tell how their glory days are over as new people are going up in the ranks. They are definitely at their best in the first third of the novel where they act like they don’t know who the Doctor is as you see exactly how harsh UNIT can be. It is also a great way to introduce the tertiary villains of the piece, the Vardans, those tin foil aliens from The Invasion of Time. Unlike their appearance in The Invasion of Time they are an actual threat here, even if Cornell continues to point out how asinine the Vardans were for being fooled by the Sontarans. The only other character who actually gets some good development is Danny Pain who is the person the Doctor was sent looking for at the end of Conundrum. He’s best when he’s with Benny. Their best scene is when they wake up naked in the same bed which is just one hilarious gag after another.
To summarize No Future is a story that gets to see the evolution of characters from way back in the Third Doctor era and some great development for Ace. There is a great story and the villains are some of the most complex since those in Blood Heat. The Doctor and Benny have some of their best development even when Benny is shoved in the background. The only problem is that it misses a lot of the opportunities with Ace’s development, yet is still able to wrap up the Alternate History Cycle in a near perfect way.
June 23, 2011
I was frequently confused by some of the details of the plot, since this was the conclusion to an ongoing storyline that had run through several previous novels. However, it was written so well, with such excellent characterization, that this did not hurt my enjoyment of the book in the slightest. Really enjoyed the novel as a whole actually.
June 29, 2013
I am not sure I could ever make a list of my favourite VNAs without this being right near the top. It rounds off the opening era really well, with our TARDIS team friends once again. But also asks interesting questions about the nature of The Doctor and the value of pop cultural archetypes. Along with fascinating ideas and moments of real joy, it is a true pleasure to read.
June 1, 2025
The character work is the highlight of this book for me, finally getting a (partial) resolution to the breakdown of the Ace/Seven relationship through both flipping their object/subject relationship by having Ace betray the Monk without the Doctor’s knowledge, and having both the Doctor and Ace confronted with the Monk’s meddling, which casts Seven’s character in a new light for both of them (convincing the Doctor that he should stop interfering so much, and demonstrating to Ace that the Doctor has her interests at heart even if his methods have been opaque). Moving beyond their fractured relationship feels great, and makes me realise that the character arc worked better than I thought - this payoff was meaningful and I really believed the characters throughout this book and the previous post-L&W ones. The story itself does have a tendency to fade into the background a little, especially due to the sheer number of threads being dealt with (the reveal of the Monk as the source of the time disturbances, his control (and loss of control) of a Chronovore, the Vardan army, the sketch of the punk scene) and it can feel quite fannish and referential at times, although not distractingly so. The Vardans were a cold villain to choose considering the politics of media manipulation of the time, although they did feel slightly instrumentalised and not entirely at home in the plot. Overall a great novel - and important to note that the scenes with both Broadsword and the punks were well done, feeling quite genuine even with the development of UNIT post-Baker (with their break up caused by Vardan interference, the Brig becoming a Buddhist and Mike becoming a revolutionary - it all felt natural despite the ideas being a bit stupid at face value). The ending was a bit too neat though - works emotionally, with Ace using Artemis’ wish to bring the Brig back to life for the Doctor and preventing her past self from unleashing her, sorting out the timeline in the process, but it came across as a bit of a sci-fi hand wave, especially given the demonstrations of Artemis’ power previously.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 19, 2024
Paul Cornell's "No Future" finishes the alternate history arc begun with "Blood Heat." We finally get told who is playing with The Doctor's timeline and why. Set in London, 1976, things are once again historically not quite right. The government's losing control, riots and mob violence are escalating, and certain technologies, such as the cd, are available too soon. Yet, The Doctor seems hardly concerned with any of that. Instead, he is concerned with Ace, who has now pretty much completely broken with both him and Benny, and with inserting Benny as lead vocalist of a punk rock band so that she can keep an eye on the lead guitarist, Danny Pain, who in some undefined way is "important" to the future. The novel starts out well enough and moves through its paces fairly smoothly, until about 3/4 in when all the battles and flashy things start happening. At that point, like many of his predecessors, Cornell loses control of the story. In this novel, Ace is more insufferable than ever, while Benny has apparently decided that her fate rests with The Doctor. The real problem of this novel for me is that the outcome rests on magic, in this case a super-powerful being that, godlike, can stop and start time, change reality on a whim, and do just about anything else. When such beings come into a story, I stop investing in the story, because at that point anything goes. The writer can do as they like, fix any problem, and generally short-circuit the entire first part of the novel. And that is exactly what Cornell does. He also indulges his usual everything and the kitchen sink fan winks. The denouement is mostly just The Doctor giving a long explanation of how clever he had been. Given the reasonably good start of this novel, I was hoping for much better than what I got at the end.
August 16, 2026
Bit of a confusing mess of a story, which is a shame considering the usual high standards of Paul Cornell's books.
It starts off very unenticingly indeed, with a lot of stuff about punk music that I just wasn't interested in. Eventually we come to learn this is (another) parallel universe story, at which point it gets really stodgy, with all manner of throwbacks. We have Vardans, UNIT (including the Brig, Yates and Benton), the Meddling Monk, anarchists, punk bands and a Chronovore; I feel the author should have pruned some of these strands and would perhaps have got a much tighter story if he had done so. The link to punk music, in particular, was incredibly tenuous when the grand reveal occurred.
The Doctor/Ace storyline is probably the best thing about the book, especially how it ties back to Cornell's excellent "Love and War"; though for all that, the relationship does still resolve itself a little too neatly.
For all its faults, there is a decent enough story here, but it's lost beneath layers of unnecessary plot and dull musicians who just aren't very interesting.
It starts off very unenticingly indeed, with a lot of stuff about punk music that I just wasn't interested in. Eventually we come to learn this is (another) parallel universe story, at which point it gets really stodgy, with all manner of throwbacks. We have Vardans, UNIT (including the Brig, Yates and Benton), the Meddling Monk, anarchists, punk bands and a Chronovore; I feel the author should have pruned some of these strands and would perhaps have got a much tighter story if he had done so. The link to punk music, in particular, was incredibly tenuous when the grand reveal occurred.
The Doctor/Ace storyline is probably the best thing about the book, especially how it ties back to Cornell's excellent "Love and War"; though for all that, the relationship does still resolve itself a little too neatly.
For all its faults, there is a decent enough story here, but it's lost beneath layers of unnecessary plot and dull musicians who just aren't very interesting.
April 15, 2025
I really believe this to be an underrated gem of the VNAs. Cornell is mostly appreciated for "Human Nature", but I'd dare say this one is just as good, if not better.
The dynamic between The Doctor and Ace shifts drastically (or so it seems) and the alternate realities arc comes to a head. Bernice is also written strongly, Cornell clearly being the best author for his own character, as would be expected.
There's a welcome cameo from the Cybermen as well as two major villains returning from the classic series.
In a roundabout way, this book also acts as a de-facto prequel to "Mawdryn Undead", but you'll have to read the full thing to get what I mean.
I couldn't ask for anything more. "No Future" has everything I'd want a Doctor Who story to be and it is exactly the perfect level of adult reading the Virgin New Adventures set out to be, without getting 'frisky' to the extent than "Transit" or "Timewyrm: Genesys" did.
The dynamic between The Doctor and Ace shifts drastically (or so it seems) and the alternate realities arc comes to a head. Bernice is also written strongly, Cornell clearly being the best author for his own character, as would be expected.
There's a welcome cameo from the Cybermen as well as two major villains returning from the classic series.
In a roundabout way, this book also acts as a de-facto prequel to "Mawdryn Undead", but you'll have to read the full thing to get what I mean.
I couldn't ask for anything more. "No Future" has everything I'd want a Doctor Who story to be and it is exactly the perfect level of adult reading the Virgin New Adventures set out to be, without getting 'frisky' to the extent than "Transit" or "Timewyrm: Genesys" did.
September 24, 2019
Not sure why this book is so hated. Parts are a tad tricky (Im not sure how the Doctor escaped the monk trapping him and Im not completely clear on the resolution) but it was well written, engaging, and basically the only successful use of “New Ace” as a character that Ive seen. Id definitely reckomend
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 20, 2023
It’s been a LONG while since I read any VNA stories, but I remembered this being the nadir of Angry Ace and Bitch Benny, but honestly it’s not as bad as I remember, I forgot who the main villain was, and Cornell always rights a compelling story.
Though there is a lot of Seven exposing how clever he is at the end.
Still a fun read. Guess I’m reading more NA stories this year…
Though there is a lot of Seven exposing how clever he is at the end.
Still a fun read. Guess I’m reading more NA stories this year…
August 16, 2024
One of the more Marmitey New Adventures. I quite like it, but I think I like it as much as I do because I recognise the Michael Moorcock source material it's riffing on. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...
December 5, 2023
Entertaining enough in its central plot of someone manipulating the populus through TV and a punk band, but also a dog's breakfast of Who continuity - three returning baddies and UNIT - and 70s pop culture references which made it a bit of a chore. At least it resolves the grumpy Ace plot.
December 5, 2024
As one of the few New Adventures authors who would go on to write for the series revival in 2005, Paul Cornell is clearly a writer with some chops, but, in these early novels, he can't seem to stay away from the distracting fan service.
July 31, 2021
An odd combination of the virgin New Adventures gritty style mixed with a 70s Unit story. Seems to wprk well with great characters and plot twists.
July 6, 2022
Quite a bit of fun. Lots of punk references and the best use of "Chap with wings, there. Five rounds rapid." since the original.
August 12, 2023
Absolutely adored this book! Fun villain intriguing plot and an absolutely amazing examination of Ace as a character and her relationship to the Doctor.
November 30, 2024
Excellent example of how the New Adventures could get it so right.
May 9, 2026
The Paul McCartney joke is terrible. The rest of the book is great.
July 25, 2011
No Future represents the end of the Alternate History arc of the New Adventures novel. While it has a mixed reputation in fan circles I came to it with an open mind about how good it would be. That said I had high hopes considering the fact it was written by favorite Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell and I wasn't disappointed.
Cornell takes five novels worth of character development for the seventh Doctor, Benny and Ace to an incredible conclusion. The manipulative seventh Doctor is pushed to his own personal edge of destruction, Benny suffers a bit of an identity crises and Ace confronts the pain she's been suffering from since the New Adventure Love And War (also written by Cornell incidentally). In particular Ace's relationship with the Doctor and Benny is at the forefront of No Future especially during chapters twelve through fifteen. In those chapters the readers are left seriously wondering if the relationship between the Doctor and his companions as come to the ultimate breaking point. No Future proves once again that Cornell knows how to get into the heads of his lead characters.
Then Cornell brings back the UNIT family. It seems fitting that the Alternate History arc started off with an alternative UNIT and ended with a return to the UNIT family. Cornell brings back The Brigadier, Benton and even Mike Yates and shows that while the stories have grown up the UNIT family has as well even managing to create a true sense for loss when one of those characters meets an (apparent) end. Cornell also manages to flesh out the other characters of the novel as well including the villains of the story, new members of the UNIT family and the various punks roaming around a rather odd version of 1976 London.
The plot is an interesting one. Not only does this novel wind up the Alternate History arc but acts as a sequel to elements of the UNIT TV stories plus TV stories like The Time Meddler and The Invasion Of Time. Like other Doctor Who stories (novels and otherwise) such as War Of The Daleks that are heavily based in the continuity of the series, if you don't know much about the series you are likely to get a bit lost in the midst of the continuity references. Unlike War Of The Daleks though No Future doesn't cheat its audience with by rewriting a good chunk of Doctor Who continuity for the sheer thrill of it. There is a moment though towards the end of the novel does feel like a bit of a cheat for what it does to the Brigadier just to fit into continuity. Yet it is one bad moment in an otherwise good novel.
While it is top heavy with continuity references, No Future is an otherwise good Doctor Who novel. With its excellent characterization of the seventh Doctor, his companions, the UNIT family and the other characters Cornell creates one of the most emotional Doctor Who novels ever. If you are fan and know quite a bit about the continuity of the series then there should be plenty to enjoy, especially if you have read the other novels of the Alternate History arc. It might not be on the same level of Human Nature but No Future is a good novel all the same.
Cornell takes five novels worth of character development for the seventh Doctor, Benny and Ace to an incredible conclusion. The manipulative seventh Doctor is pushed to his own personal edge of destruction, Benny suffers a bit of an identity crises and Ace confronts the pain she's been suffering from since the New Adventure Love And War (also written by Cornell incidentally). In particular Ace's relationship with the Doctor and Benny is at the forefront of No Future especially during chapters twelve through fifteen. In those chapters the readers are left seriously wondering if the relationship between the Doctor and his companions as come to the ultimate breaking point. No Future proves once again that Cornell knows how to get into the heads of his lead characters.
Then Cornell brings back the UNIT family. It seems fitting that the Alternate History arc started off with an alternative UNIT and ended with a return to the UNIT family. Cornell brings back The Brigadier, Benton and even Mike Yates and shows that while the stories have grown up the UNIT family has as well even managing to create a true sense for loss when one of those characters meets an (apparent) end. Cornell also manages to flesh out the other characters of the novel as well including the villains of the story, new members of the UNIT family and the various punks roaming around a rather odd version of 1976 London.
The plot is an interesting one. Not only does this novel wind up the Alternate History arc but acts as a sequel to elements of the UNIT TV stories plus TV stories like The Time Meddler and The Invasion Of Time. Like other Doctor Who stories (novels and otherwise) such as War Of The Daleks that are heavily based in the continuity of the series, if you don't know much about the series you are likely to get a bit lost in the midst of the continuity references. Unlike War Of The Daleks though No Future doesn't cheat its audience with by rewriting a good chunk of Doctor Who continuity for the sheer thrill of it. There is a moment though towards the end of the novel does feel like a bit of a cheat for what it does to the Brigadier just to fit into continuity. Yet it is one bad moment in an otherwise good novel.
While it is top heavy with continuity references, No Future is an otherwise good Doctor Who novel. With its excellent characterization of the seventh Doctor, his companions, the UNIT family and the other characters Cornell creates one of the most emotional Doctor Who novels ever. If you are fan and know quite a bit about the continuity of the series then there should be plenty to enjoy, especially if you have read the other novels of the Alternate History arc. It might not be on the same level of Human Nature but No Future is a good novel all the same.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews