Faction Paradox

Faction Paradox is a fictional time travelling voodoo cult/rebel group/organized crime syndicate created by Lawrence Miles. The family/organization were originally featured as recurring villians in the BBC Doctor Who Eighth Doctor Adventures novels, but have since featured in their own (critically acclaimed) continuing tales. Although the Faction Paradox stories outside of the BBC Books share situations and characters in common with the Doctor Who universe, the two continuities are similar but aesthetically distinct.

Overview

The Faction Paradox universe is centered around the "War in Heaven", a history-spanning conflict between the "Great Houses" and the "Enemy". Originally a subplot in the Eighth Doctor Adventures, the War features characters and concepts evolved from the original Doctor Who set-up, in several cases with names changed or obscured for reasons literary (most of the groups or items mentioned are described in rather different terms with a different emphasis on certain aspects) and legal (the Faction and The Enemy are Miles's creations, but other elements are not — the Great Houses are the new series's equivalent to the Doctor Who universe's Time Lords). Faction Paradox themselves are not the Enemy, and play a relatively small, neutral part in the War, willing to act against both sides in their own interests. Lawrence Miles has described them as "a ritualistic time-travelling guerrilla organisation".

The semi-mythical founder of Faction Paradox is Grandfather Paradox, named after the grandfather paradox of time travel theory. Originally a member of the Great Houses himself, the Grandfather created a new group after he became frustrated with the ways of the Great Houses. Faction Paradox therefore takes a good deal of pleasure in irritating the Great Houses, and many of their traditions and rituals are aligned in direct opposition to the way the Great Houses do things. It is also possible that Grandfather Paradox may be an alternate future form of the Doctor. In the Eighth Doctor Adventure novel The Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin it is stated that Grandfather Paradox is everyone's possible future self, and his origins tied to Gallifreyan myth.

Faction Paradox also take a perverse pride in causing time paradoxes (something that is against the laws of the Great Houses) and achieving impossible or absurd effects for their own sake. For instance, they typically wear ritual skull masks which are in fact the skulls of creatures that, in the Great Houses' version of history, never existed. Their stronghold on Earth exists in a version of London, within what they call "The Eleven-Day Empire", bought from the British government in 1752. In that year, the British Empire first adopted the Gregorian calendar, and in so doing had to correct their dating scheme by eleven days (September 2, 1752 being followed by September 14, 1752). Faction Paradox claimed the missing eleven days as their base (even though, logically, only the numbering scheme changed and no days were actually "missing").

Books

Doctor Who (BBC Books)

Faction Paradox debuted and appeared repeatedly in the Eighth Doctor Adventures, a series of Doctor Who novels published by BBC Books featuring the Eighth Doctor (as portrayed by Paul McGann). The most relevant books to the Faction Paradox Universe are:

Alien Bodies — Lawrence Miles (1997)
Unnatural History — Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman (1999)
Interference Books 1 & 2 — Lawrence Miles (1999)
Taking of Planet Five — Simon Bucher Jones and Mark Clapham (1999)
Shadows of Avalon — Paul Cornell (2000)
The Ancestor Cell — Stephen Cole and Peter Anghelides (2000). (Lawrence Miles has stated that the events of The Ancestor Cell will be ignored in all of the Faction Paradox spin-offs.)
The Adventuress Of Henrietta Street — Lawrence Miles (2001).

(Although it is not technically a Faction Paradox book, it features the character of Sabbath who has since made appearances in the Faction Paradox audio adventures.)

Faction Paradox (Mad Norwegian Press)

In 2002 the Faction started appearing in a series of books of their own, as published by Mad Norwegian Press. These novels roam the ongoing War in Heaven; the Faction and its members are sometimes only featured as minor characters. The books have also featured characters from the Doctor Who novels, including Chris Cwej and Compassion (who was introduced in Lawrence Miles's book Interference).

The Book of the War — A hypertext multi-author novel presented in the form of an encyclopedia of the first 50 years of the War. Edited by Lawrence Miles and written by Miles, Simon Bucher-Jones, Daniel O'Mahony, Ian McIntire, Mags L. Halliday, Helen Fayle, Philip Purser-Hallard, Kelly Hale, Jonathan Dennis and Mark Clapham (2002)

An ongoing series of novels has so far included:

This Town Will Never Let us Go — Lawrence Miles (2003)
Of the City of the Saved... — Philip Purser-Hallard (2004)
Warlords of Utopia — Lance Parkin (2004)
Warring States — Mags L Halliday (2005)
Erasing Sherlock — Kelly Hale (slated for publication in 2006)

Other

Christmas On A Rational Planet — Lawrence Miles

This Virgin New Adventures novel contains the earliest (though only a passing) reference to the Faction, at least in the form of its founder Grandfather Paradox.

Dead Romance — Lawrence Miles

Originally published by Virgin Publishing in 1999 as something of a standalone part of their Virgin New Adventures line, Mad Norwegian Press later republished this novel, which features several characters and concepts connected to the Faction Paradox universe.

Audio

A series of full-cast audio dramas dubbed The Faction Paradox Protocols was produced by BBV between 2001 and 2004. All were written by Lawrence Miles. These stories centred around two Cousins of the Faction, Justine and Eliza. The first two stories were set in the Eleven-Day Empire, the second two in 18th Century London, and the last two split between a version of Shada, the Time Lords' prison planet from the unfinished Doctor Who episode by Douglas Adams, and Cousin Justine's past before joining the Faction. Although there were six releases and an ongoing story, each pair (usually released close together) formed a two-part story. In order they were:

The Eleven-Day Empire
The Shadow Play
Sabbath Dei
In the Year of the Cat
Movers
A Labyrinth of Histories

In 2004 Magic Bullet Productions, known for their Kaldor City audio dramas, obtained the license to produce further Faction Paradox audios, dubbed The True History of Faction Paradox. The narrative of this series continued from the BBV releases, although the first CD was also written to be accessible to newcomers. Like the BBV audios, these stories focused on Cousin Justine and Cousin Eliza, but the characters were recast. The first drama in the series, released in July 2005, is:

Coming To Dust (guest starring Julian Glover, and Gabriel Woolf as Sutekh)

A second CD, The Ship of a Billion Years, also starring Glover and Woolf, will be released on 15 April 2006.

Comics

In 2003 the first two issues of a Faction Paradox comic were produced by Mad Norwegian and published by Image Comics, but it was subsequently cancelled. Mad Norwegian gave the explanation that as a method for storytelling, they felt comics were not an effective use of man-hours. The comic was written by Lawrence Miles with art from Jim Calafiore, and inks by Peter Palmiotti. It was set after the events of the War in Heaven, though, since the series didn't get very far, it is impossible to give much detail of this post-War universe. Mad Norwegian have stated that they intend to complete the story in some form at some point in the future.

External links

Faction Paradox.co.uk - maintained by Thomas Pratchett
Faction Paradox at Mad Norwegian Press - maintained by Lars Pearson
Discussion forum - moderated by Mags L Halliday
The History of the Time Lords: Future Gallifrey - The War in Heaven - chronicles The War, Faction Paradox and the Future of Gallifrey as maintained by William B. Swift