Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible is an original novel written by Marc Platt and based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features the Seventh Doctor and Ace.
Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible was the first Virgin novel to examine Gallifrey in any depth, and presented a Gallifreyan society somewhat unlike that seen on television.
Synopsis
The TARDIS is invaded by an alien presence, and is then destroyed, while the Doctor himself disappears and leaves Ace, lost and alone, in a strange deserted city ruled by the leech-like Process. She discovers voyagers from Ancient Gallifrey - early time travellers from the distant past - who perform obsessive rituals in the ruins of the city.
Plot
On Gallifrey, civilization is reaching a crossroads. The venerable Pythia, ruler of Gallifrey, is coming to the end of her reign without a successor. Meanwhile, Rassilon and his Cult of Reason are gaining political influence, as early time travel experiments begin to bear fruit. But during the latest such experiment, the Time Scaphe collides with a strange blue box hurtling through space-time. Both craft are destroyed, leaving the crew of Chronauts stranded on a gray alien world.
Elsewhere (specifically Ealing Broadway in the early 1990s), the Doctor and Ace are enjoying a quiet lunch in a café when the whole of reality suddenly breaks down. They manage to get into the TARDIS, though it now lacks even a door. Convinced there is an intruder, the Doctor leaves Ace in the console room while he goes to look. The console releases a parchment to Ace, then the TARDIS collides with a primitive time ship and is destroyed.
Ace finds herself alone in a barren, grey landscape. Ace sees a far larger version of the creature that infiltrated the TARDIS, and begins to work out what happened. She encounters a young man named Shonnzi who seems to know her and the Doctor already. Shonnzi takes her to meet the Phazels, the former crew of the Gallifreyan Time Scaphe, who were stranded on this world, betrayed by their former comrade Vael, and enslaved by the Process. Now, they work to find the future, which was stolen by the Doctor at the beginning of the World. Right before the Doctor died.
Ace, by interacting with the Phazels, begins to cause changes to the established pattern of time in the World City, a disruption which is detected by the Process in its Watch Tower. The Process sends Vael to investigate. When Vael and the Process’s insect-like guards arrive, the Phazels help Ace to escape. She and Shonnzi get away and discover a ghost-like image of the Doctor. Believing him to be dead, Ace begins to grieve. But Shonnzi tells her that he has been given many of the Doctor’s memories. Ace and Shonnzi are forced to split up as they are discovered by the guards. Vael manages to capture Shonnzi and take him back to the Process, but Ace escapes across a mercury river.
Across the river, Ace realizes that she is in the same place she was before, but at an earlier time. She witnesses the arrival of the Chronauts and the death of the Doctor at the hands of the Process. Believing that she and the Doctor are to blame for their predicament, the Chronauts turn on Ace and hand her over to the Process. Vael betrays his fellow Chronauts, who are enslaved by the Process and sent to search for the Future stolen by the Doctor.
Vael drags Ace back to the Watch Tower, where the Younger Process prepares to eliminate her. But it is interrupted by the arrival of the Older Process, who has come to discover why the past is no longer as it remembers. The Doctor’s ghost appears, which allows Ace to escape. She comes across a silver cat that leads her to the top of the Watch Tower. There, Ace discovers that the World exists on the inner surface of a hollow sphere, and there are three different Cities existing at three discrete moments in time stretching out from the Watch Tower. She also finds Shonnzi imprisoned in a cocoon and releases him. As Vael chases them, the cat trips Ace, causing her to fall from the top of the Watch Tower. She is caught by some sort of force field and begins to slowly descend toward the ground. Shonnzi jumps after her and is also protected. Ace concludes that the TARDIS must still exist, somewhere, and must be protecting them.
Back on Gallifrey, the Pythia's prophetic powers suddenly desert her, and she becomes fanatically obsessed with locating her male successor, who she believes to be Vael. In reality, her promised successor his Rassilon.