BASIC PLOT
On a planet where strange mutations appear to be occuring, the Doctor is sent on a mission to find a menagerie that might contain clues about this mutation. Meanwhile, Jamie is held prisoner and Zoe is sold to the circus.

DOCTOR
Second.

COMPANIONS
Jamie and Zoe.

MATERIALISATION CIRCUIT
An alleyway, the unnamed planet (page 262).

PREPARATORY READING
None.

CONTINUITY REFERENCES
Pg 5 "'I do believe that Project Mecrim could have a crucial effect on the war' [...] She tried to imagine the monsters let loose in cities swarming with Draconian women and children" This is probably the Earth-Draconia war from Frontier in Space.

Pg 24 "I'm glad to see the back of the LIZ." The Space Pirates.

"I know you can't stand the TARDIS food machine, Jamie" First seen in The Daleks.

Pg 38 Reference to Daleks.

Pg 39 "Perhaps without me this city would have been destroyed by the Quarks" The Dominators.

Pg 53 "There were no monsters, no guns, no baffling invisible doors." This might be a reference to the invisible TARDIS in The Invasion, but is more likely a reference to the invisible forcefield Jamie and Thomni encounter in The Abominable Snowmen.

"Even his flight from the guards had brought back memories of the Redcoats." The Highlanders.

Pg 58 "I once had a friend [...] We had everything in common - everything. But he enjoyed being scared of the dark a little too much. It swallowed him. I doubt that I shall ever see him again." This is a reference to the Master and fits in extraordinarily well with The Dark Path, despite the fact that this is the first second Doctor Missing Adventure and that was the last.

Pg 61 "Perhaps he should look within himself for some of the peace of Det-Sen." The Abominable Snowmen.

Pg 67 "Such an emotional response would have been frowned upon by her tutors at the Earth School of Parapsychology, but to hell with them." The Wheel in Space.

Pg 161 "The Interplanetary Mining Corporation - formerly the Issigri Mining Corporation - spent millions of credits on high-tech solutions to mining problems." IMC featured in Colony in Space and the Issigris appeared in The Space Pirates.

Pg 225 "DNA owned and licensed by the Butler Institute." Cat's Cradle: Warhead.

Pg 226 "Zoe remembered that soon after she met the Doctor he had shown her a mind-projected account of his most recent encounter with the Daleks." Evil of the Daleks, shown to Zoe at the end of The Wheel in Space.

Pg 249 "Does it work like the jeeps we saw when we battled the Cybermen?" The Invasion.

Pg 262 "A tutor of mine once said that sometimes it is more important to strive than to achieve." This was probably Borusa who said this, though it may not have been.

OLD FRIENDS AND OLD ENEMIES
None.

NEW FRIENDS AND NEW ENEMIES
Defrabax, Kaquaan, Raitak, Reisaz, Araboam.

CONTINUITY COCK-UPS

1. Cover: The Mecrim is coming out of a clearly man-made hole, with a circular ring and everything. Except that the scene on Page 3 describing it clearly states that the creature had tunnelled under the floor and pushed its way through.
2. Pg 60 "'Always a pleasure to breath good air,' he said." I personally get more pleasure when I breathe good air.
3. Pg 134 "Only the Doctor's head was free, allowing him to breath." Too bad it didn't allow him to breathe.
4. Pg 175 Zoe is being chased by a Mecrim (the creature on the cover) and deduces that it hunts by heat alone (Page 130). This is later confirmed in the historical records: the Mecrim see heat, rather than light (Page 225). So why, when there’s a haze are we told the creature can no longer see Diseaeda or the twins?
5. Pg 176 "Even at its present output it will explode in less than five minutes" That's very thrilling! Some considerable dialogue and two pages later, we're told "'Shut this place down, obeying all safety protocols. How long will that take?' 'Approximately fifteen minutes to shut down major systems.'" Oh, so everyone is doomed then?
6. Pg 183 "The Dugraq scout knew of a secondary system of caves and tunnels that lead on to the surface" Or perhaps they led there?

PLUGGING THE HOLES [Fan-wank theorizing of how to fix continuity cock-ups]

1. Miraculously, when the Mecrim pushed its way through the floor, it did so in a perfectly circular pattern.
2. The air is so bad down there that it's affecting the character's ability to pronounce words.
3. The bad air is even affecting the Doctor. And presumably the author.
4. The narrative is using "see" as a shorthand for "can't see".
5. The Doctor died in a fiery nuclear explosion and never got to the end of The Menagerie. The lucky bastard.
6. They only lead out in the present tense.

FEATURED ALIEN RACES
The Mecrim, six limbed bipeds with an armoured head, no skin, four-clawed hands and feet and two more primitive hooked claws (see page 225 and the cover).

An android (usually referred to as a homonculus). It is enormous, the colour of clay and soil, with a pendant hanging from its neck merging with its oily skin (page 166).

The Rocarbies, large ape-like bipeds with no necks and striped fur (page 35).

Trained monkeys (page 82).

Two conjoined women, with a single pair of legs, but two complete upper bodies (page 83).

Page 91: A variety of circus freaks, including a tall man, a man with no eyes, a bearded woman and a variety of caged and grazing creatures.

The bones of a dragon, maybe (page 92).

The mummified body of a giant insect (page 92).

A rat-like thing (page 102).

The Taculbain, giant moths with bony orange and grey wings (page 114).

The modified soldier Taculbain have huge attacking jaws, copunter-balanced by a bony ridge extending from the back of the head and wings covered with a hard carapace (page 201)

Dugraqs, short bipedal shrews with orange-brown fur (page 136).

A savannah-walker, a white-furred elephant-sized creature with large eyes (page 139).

FEATURED LOCATIONS
An unnamed city on an unnamed planet, in the far future.

IN SUMMARY - Robert Smith?
The Menagerie is fairly poor, starting the run of second Doctor books as most of them would end up, by being dull and having poorly characterised regulars. It's not quite as bad as its reputation would suggest, but that might be because it now fits right in to the poor standard of second Doctor books. The whole things feels contrived, as though it were written solely to justify the linking of IMC to the Issigri Mining Company. The story itself is almost wholly uninteresting, ending up a bit like The Web Planet, but in novel form. And Jamie getting it on with his friend's girlfriend only moments after telling her of said friend's death is just wrong.