Bernice and Jason, having decided to get married, are having a huge wedding party. Nearly every significant character from the New Adventures is invited.
Tropes
- Baseball Episode: The Doctor decides to have a cricket match to ease tensions between the locals and the aliens.
- The Bus Came Back: Having last been seen being time-rammed in “Blood Heat”, the original TARDIS returns here, and the Doctor reclaims it.
- Continuity Porn: As the 50th New Adventure, this features a plethora of returning characters and a festival of loose-end-tying.
- Fountain of Youth: The Brigadier gets rejuvenated to his younger years and cured of his cancer by nano-machines.
- Holographic Disguise: Many of the more alien guests have these. For a combination of reasons, they aren't entirely reliable. And the dressmaker has to be let in on the secret to be reassured that yes, Keri's bridesmaid's dress is supposed to be that size.
- Lampshade Hanging:
- The coincidence of the wedding just happening to take place in the same location where the Master is plotting is explained as one last side-effect of the Fortean Flicker from The Highest Science.
- Towards the end of "Everyone's Welcome at the Wedding", as more and more guests show up for a slice of cake, Benny wonders how they can possibly have enough for everyone.
- Lighter and Softer: This novel pretty much functions as a Breather Episode compared due to the Darker and Edgier tone of the New Adventures series.
-
Milestone Celebration: It's the 50th New Adventures novel. - Round Robin: The chapter "Everybody's Welcome at the Wedding", in which Benny meets various characters from past novels beyond the ones who've already appeared, is co-written by (almost) every other New Adventures writer, each doing a couple of paragraphs featuring a character from one of their books.
- Shout-Out: The musicians Jacquilian and Sanki are based on the characters Julian and Sandy from the sketch comedy series Round the Horne. The scene where the Doctor hires them to play at Benny's wedding follows the standard form of a Julian and Sandy sketch, with the Doctor taking Kenneth Horne's role as the straight man.
- Stable Time Loop: A subplot involves the Doctor, having brought The Isley Brothers into the 21st century to play at the wedding, trying to keep them from hearing any of their own songs that they haven't written yet.
- Wedding Episode: The entire novel revolves around the wedding and the preparations for the wedding.
