Roots: Connie claims "the Jubilee Line was like Dawn of the Dead", asks a nonplussed Brewster if he "Considered Himself At Home" (Oliver!), compares her 'perfect' work colleagues to "pod people" (Invasion of the Bodysnatchers) and the 'perfect' version of her world to a Richard Curtis film. She calls the Doctor 'Bertie Wooster' The temporal maintenance workers recall the agency Indigo Prime from the self-titled comic strip in 2000AD. Her 'perfect' workmate Sophie reads The Brothers Karamazov. Mention is made of the Kaiser Chiefs.

Goofs: The Doctor's suspicion regarding Brewster's nonplussed attitude to the sights and sounds of 2008 might hold more water if they hadn't both previously visited prehistoric Earth ruled by intelligent scorpions and a reef made of space coral.

Technobabble: Not materialising a TARDIS properly causes a quantum fissure in wave time with Connie as its focal nexus. Finding Connie is imperative before the whole wave function collapses.

Dialogue Triumphs: Brewster and Connie on the polar ice caps melting: "...Which is bad, right?"

"-Yeah, it confuses the penguins."

"You're all pod people from the planet Knitwear!"

Connie and the Doctor: "It's bigger on the inside!" (muttering)"-Yes, you're the first to notice"

"Life isn't perfect. Take away the opportunity for getting things wrong and you take away the reason for getting things right. Being human is all about the mistakes, the imperfections, the failures - burning the toast, losing your keys, getting off at the wrong stop. For some people small pointless blunders are what life is all about."

Continuity: Existential Maintenance are 'plumbers' in time, getting a 'Code 9' (an emergency repair which cannot be ignored) through the sub-ether on the opening of a temporal fissure. One of their tools is an interstitial waveform reticulation spanner. Work comes with a fourteen-day no-quibble warrantee.

Brewster likes coffee, particularly caramel macchiato. He seems to have his own room in the TARDIS.

The Doctor explains that he gave his solicitor strict instructions not to sell or let the property and he still has the title deed somewhere. He gives the proceeds of its sale to Brewster.

Links: The Haunting of Thomas Brewster, Time Reef. The Doctor paraphrases his big speech from Earthshock (see: Dialogue Triumphs). Connie's close call with a car may be a foreshadowing of her fate, revealed in The Crimes of Thomas Brewster.

Location: London/s, 2008.

The Bottom Line: "Life doesn't come with a satisfaction guarantee."

A timely resolution then to a mercurial companion who, like the original TARDIS 'Artful Dodger', never really found a stable character. The Doctor's uncharacteristic generosity to him in giving him a sizeable fortune to see him right in 2008 adds to the overall imbalance of sentiment (some notable longer-staying and better-behaved companions could well grumble at that). If you're prepared to overlook that, it's rather witty and quite sweet. After a story like this you could almost miss Brewster.