The novel expresses Brunner in a lighter mode than other novels of the period such as Stand on Zanzibar and The Sheep Look Up.
The Fifth Doctor's sequence in the novel The Eight Doctors – featuring the Eighth Doctor going through his own past to meet and assist his other selves – takes place after this episode, the Fifth Doctor travelling to the Eye of Orion to continue their earlier holiday only to be attacked by a renegade Time Lord from the Eighth Doctor's era using the Timescoop, forcing the two Doctors to defeat a Raston Warrior Robot and a Sontaran squadron.