Walking to Babylon

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Walking to Babylon

Author	Kate Orman
Cover artist	Mark Salwowski
Series	Doctor Who book: The New Adventures
Release number	10
Subject	Featuring: Bernice Summerfield
Publisher	Virgin Books
Publication date	February 1998
ISBN	0-426-20521-9
Preceded by	Tempest
Followed by	Oblivion

Walking to Babylon is a 1998 novel by Kate Orman.^[1] It is set in the Virgin New Adventures series and features the fictional archaeologist Bernice Summerfield (known as Benny).

The New Adventures were a spin-off from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who, but after the publisher Virgin Books lost the license to do Doctor Who stories from the BBC, the New Adventures continued, centred on the character of Benny and further characters and settings created for the series. Walking to Babylon is the tenth Benny-led New Adventure.

Orman had previously written several Doctor Who New Adventures, but this was her first for the post-Doctor Who series. As characterises her work, the novel mixes hard science fiction with strong characters. The book also contains some scenes of a sexual nature, reflecting Virgin's willingness to include more adult content than the BBC had allowed for the Doctor Who New Adventures.

The story features the People, an alien race were created in the Doctor Who New Adventure The Also People and subsequently appeared in many of the Bernice Summerfield New Adventures. The novel also indirectly refers to the Time Lords, a race from Doctor Who; this was to avoid any copyright disputes with the BBC.

The book opens by positing the conduct of a war between two super-powerful, time-travelling groups. A similar idea was being developed by fellow New Adventure author Lawrence Miles (which eventually saw its fullest exploration in his Faction Paradox stories), although Orman has said this was purely by coincidence. Miles has said his later New Adventure Dead Romance was in part inspired by his dislike of elements of Walking to Babylon.