This is rather a good Eighth Doctor novel, with the Doctor and the steadily improving Compassion trying to navigate a military regime which is better realised than most of the many such regimes in Who books, while Fitz (who I think is actually in more individual stories, taken across all media, than any other companion), having got separated off, settles into an ambiguous and ultimately dangerous utopia. Some of the ideas here seem to be drawn from The Matrix, though I'm not sure if the timing works out (the film came out in 1999; this book was published in 2000 and must have been in the works for a while). Stephen Cole rarely disappoints, and I don't know what Dallaire's contribution was, but I thought the characterisation of the non-regulars here was a notch above the usual standards for Who books of any era.