‘What on earth do you mean?’

The frown faded from the Doctor’s face and he grinned again. ‘Do you know, I haven’t the slightest idea.’

The two friends wandered off into the city to find tea and crumpets and warmth.

And somewhere in the sky overhead, for an instant before they dissolved into mist, two snowflakes were the same. Long ago in an English spring.

Author’s Notes

Introduction

Human Nature arose out of my frustration with how bad my previous Doctor Who New Adventure, No Future, was. That novel had been an attempt to do the ultimate Who story. It was huge in scope, far reaching in intent. It collapsed onto its face. It was never going to fly.

So my next book, I thought, would be small and personal, and not set its sights too high. I had to finish off the ‘seasons’ theme that had united the first three of my New Adventures. I also had to deal with Bernice’s horror and grief at the end of the previous book in the series, Dave McIntee’s Sanctuary.

In that book, Benny’s lover, Guy de Carnac, is last seen charging into overwhelming odds, surrounded by armed knights, the implication being that he’s almost certainly killed by them, while Bernice escapes with the Doctor. And at the end of the book, I had to make sure that our heroes were on their way to meet their new companions in Andy Lane’s book, which would follow.

I was 27, living in Aylesbury with my girlfriend of that time, Penny List, who the book’s dedicated to. Most of it was written with me lying flat in front of my computer on the lounge floor, because I wanted all the amenities handy and didn’t have a desk. We had a burglary during that time, but the thieves stepped right over my computer to take the TV, and left the machine, manuscript and all.

I also took a long holiday in Australia during the time I was working on the plot, during which Kate Orman and I came up with many versions of how things should go. This is one of the two New Adventures we plotted together, the other being her Return of the Living Dad.

In many ways, it all started when I got onto the wrong train at Aylesbury station, and ended up waiting around at the wrong halt, with a copy of Peter David’s Star Trek: The Next Generation novel, Imzadi. Gareth Roberts and I had been talking about the possibilities of trashing continuity altogether, doing something that just ignored the series’ accumulation of stuff.