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** The villains result in several shout-outs to Saturday morning cartoons, at one point setting up a death-trap disguised as a village of happy [[WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs Smurf]]-like creatures.
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** The villains result in several shout-outs to Saturday morning cartoons, at one point setting up a death-trap disguised as a village of happy [[WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs [[Franchise/TheSmurfs Smurf]]-like creatures.
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* SneakySpySpecies: Taken to the point of parody with the Saloi. They are ''all'' spies, and everyone ''knows'' they're all spies, and they ''know'' that everyone knows they're all spies, [[IKnowYouKnowIKnow and so on]]. Or possibly they aren't, and they just find it convenient to let everyone believe that.
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from trope pages
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* ChasteHero: Lampshaded when the Barbarian Queen of the Dakhaari attempts to seduce the Doctor to get him to favor her people in the negotiations. He apparently completely fails to notice her overtures, but also makes a comment on the fact that that always happens, and suggests that it's a deliberate strategy on his part.
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* ChasteHero: Lampshaded when the Barbarian Queen of the Dakhaari attempts to seduce the Doctor to get him to favor her people in the negotiations. He apparently completely fails to notice her overtures, but also makes a comment on the fact that that always happens, and suggests that it's a deliberate strategy of SelectiveObliviousness on his part.
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* TheNounAndTheNoun: The Austen-referencing subtype.
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* PoorCommunicationKills: Once the Doctor gets the three delegations to start actually talking to each other properly, they learn that many of their darkest beliefs about each other are the result of poor translations, such as a legend about the Dakhaari queen sending many men to their death in a single afternoon which was missing the detail that "sending him to his death" was a Dakhaari sexual euphemism. Conversely, it was widely believed that the Saloi were employing euphemisms when they spoke of their secret police keeping society running smoothly by "taking out the garbage", but this was in fact literally one of their important functions.
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from trope pages
* MeetCute: Bernice, separated from the Doctor and his TranslatorMicrobes, is stuck on an multispecies alien planet which she knows has no contact with Earth, trying to communicate with a shifty humanoid alien in pidgin. He's an [[AlienAbduction Alien Abductee]], who is partly fascinated by the first fellow human he's seen in years, but is mostly amusing himself playing along with what he considers her patronising attitude to the natives. She is not happy when she figures it out. BelligerentSexualTension ensues.
* MistakenForAliens: Benny assumes Jason is a HumanAlien when they first meet. It's a reasonable assumption, since they're on an alien planet with no known contact with Earth, but her confident assertion that, to an experienced traveller like her, his body language and so on is clearly off, is a bit embarrassing in retrospect.
* MistakenForAliens: Benny assumes Jason is a HumanAlien when they first meet. It's a reasonable assumption, since they're on an alien planet with no known contact with Earth, but her confident assertion that, to an experienced traveller like her, his body language and so on is clearly off, is a bit embarrassing in retrospect.
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* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: The Czhans.
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* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: The Czhans.Czhans are Proud Soldiers, while the Dakhaari are Proud Warriors to some extent (but stand proud in other more salient ways).
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from trope pages
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* BelligerentSexualTension: Benny and Jason. Eventually Jason's NonHumanSidekick gives them an infuriated psych evaluation on the grounds that "If I hear one more sexually-charged and mutually misunderstood argument I'm going to shoot the pair of you!"
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-->'''The Doctor:''' I'm well-known for failing to notice such things, or getting them slightly but distinctly wrong. It saves so much trouble.
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* SelfDeprecation: The Author's Note at the beginning of this, Dave Stone's second NA, describes his first, ''Sky Pirates!'', as just a joke book, "gags being the lowest form of tragicomedy, but the highest tragicomic form of which this author is capable." He goes on to say that ''Death and Diplomacy'' is a comedy, which is different from jokes because "for one thing, a comedy doesn't have to be funny". The following 280 pages prove him more than capable of doing something that isn't ''just'' gags, while at the same time being extremely funny.
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from trope page
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* FourthDateMarriage: At the point when Bernice and Jason get engaged, they have known each other for maybe a week, including the day or so when she thought he was a creepy alien as well as the later period when she just thought he was a creep.
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from trope pages
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* ChasteHero: Lampshaded when the Barbarian Queen of the Dakhaari attempts to seduce the Doctor to get him to favor her people in the negotiations. He apparently completely fails to notice her overtures, but also makes a comment on the fact that that always happens, and suggests that it's a deliberate strategy on his part.
* CityOfSpies: Spying, deception and intrigue are the [[PlanetOfHats Hat]] of the Saloi, to the point that every Saloi is secretly spying on not only their two enemy cultures, but every other Saloi. (Except it's ''not'' a secret, because everybody ''knows'' that, so maybe that's just what they ''want'' people to think, and so on...)
* CityOfSpies: Spying, deception and intrigue are the [[PlanetOfHats Hat]] of the Saloi, to the point that every Saloi is secretly spying on not only their two enemy cultures, but every other Saloi. (Except it's ''not'' a secret, because everybody ''knows'' that, so maybe that's just what they ''want'' people to think, and so on...)
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from the main series page
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* ExtremeOmnisexual: Jason.
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* ExtremeOmnisexual: Jason.Jason Kane was abducted by aliens at the age of fifteen and didn't see another human being for over a decade; it didn't crimp his social life one bit.
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* IKnowYouKnowIKnow
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* IKnowYouKnowIKnowAFormYouAreComfortableWith: It's implied that the usual technological appearance of the TARDIS interior is this, and that its default appearance is something that would have a terrible effect on the average human brain. At one point in the story the interior camoflage breaks down, and a character who ventures into the TARDIS with the Doctor when he goes to fix it comes out with TraumaInducedAmnesia and ''claw marks''.
* IKnowYouKnowIKnow: Deception is the hat of the Saloi. And everyone knows that. And everyone knows that the Saloi know that everyone knows that. So everyone knows that the Saloi are trying to deceive them in the knowledge that they will assume everything the Saloi say is an attempt to deceive them.
* IKnowYouKnowIKnow: Deception is the hat of the Saloi. And everyone knows that. And everyone knows that the Saloi know that everyone knows that. So everyone knows that the Saloi are trying to deceive them in the knowledge that they will assume everything the Saloi say is an attempt to deceive them.
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from the main series page
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* DecoyLeader: The Saloi emperor doesn't actually do anything. The real leader of the Saloi is an apparently minor official. And the ''real'' leader was his assistant, who didn't know he was the leader.
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* DecoyLeader: The Saloi emperor doesn't actually do anything. The real leader of the Saloi is an apparently minor official. And the ''real'' leader was his assistant, who didn't know he was had had himself mentally conditioned to not be consciously aware that the leader.decoy wasn't really in charge.
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* PlanetOfHats: Deconstructed. Dakhaari, Czhan, and Saloi societies turn out to be more complex than they seem, and most of each empire's characteristic hat is propaganda.
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* OpenSecret: The Saloi are a PlanetOfHats of devious conspirators, as typified by the fact that whatever the official hierarchy charts say, the true reins of power rest in the hands of an apparently minor functionary with the title of Assistant sub-Administratorial Secretary. And every Saloi (as well as most of their enemies) is well aware of this, "for the simple reason that the subject of such a 'secret' would ordinarily have the life expectancy of a snail in a blender unless ''everybody knew about it''."
* PlanetOfHats: Deconstructed. The Dakhaari, Czhan, and Saloi are introduced as the Planet of the [[ExtremeOmnisexual Sex-Obsessed]] [[BarbarianTribe Savages]], the Planet of the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Uptight Military]], and the Planet of the [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder Devious Assassins]] respectively, but their societies turn out to be more complex than they seem, and most of each empire's characteristic hat ispropaganda.propaganda. It's also noted that to the extent the hats are accurate, it's evidence of external manipulation, because no societies would develop like that naturally.
* PocketProtector: Subverted in Jason Kane's cynical anecdote of his grandfather, who went away to war wearing a crucifix of great sentimental value. One day, a bullet fired at him hit the crucifix -- which shattered, aggravating a wound that would otherwise not have been lethal.
* PlanetOfHats: Deconstructed. The Dakhaari, Czhan, and Saloi are introduced as the Planet of the [[ExtremeOmnisexual Sex-Obsessed]] [[BarbarianTribe Savages]], the Planet of the [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Uptight Military]], and the Planet of the [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder Devious Assassins]] respectively, but their societies turn out to be more complex than they seem, and most of each empire's characteristic hat is
* PocketProtector: Subverted in Jason Kane's cynical anecdote of his grandfather, who went away to war wearing a crucifix of great sentimental value. One day, a bullet fired at him hit the crucifix -- which shattered, aggravating a wound that would otherwise not have been lethal.
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* ShoutOut:
** The Czan sergeant is a clear pastiche of Sergeant Major Williams in ''Series/ItAintHalfHotMum'', to the point that at one point he responds to "[[YouNoTakeCandle Is you soldier boys]]?" by claiming to be a concert party.
** The villains result in several shout-outs to Saturday morning cartoons, at one point setting up a death-trap disguised as a village of happy [[WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs Smurf]]-like creatures.
** At the end of the book, when it's revealed the villains are evolutionary-enhanced Gallifreyan rodents, one of them asks what they'll do now; another rants "[[WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain We do what we always do, try to take over the universe!]]"
** The Czan sergeant is a clear pastiche of Sergeant Major Williams in ''Series/ItAintHalfHotMum'', to the point that at one point he responds to "[[YouNoTakeCandle Is you soldier boys]]?" by claiming to be a concert party.
** The villains result in several shout-outs to Saturday morning cartoons, at one point setting up a death-trap disguised as a village of happy [[WesternAnimation/TheSmurfs Smurf]]-like creatures.
** At the end of the book, when it's revealed the villains are evolutionary-enhanced Gallifreyan rodents, one of them asks what they'll do now; another rants "[[WesternAnimation/PinkyAndTheBrain We do what we always do, try to take over the universe!]]"
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* WhatDidIDoLastNight: Bernice finds herself in this situation after an extended drinking session with Jason Kane.
* YouNoTakeCandle: The Plobs, as part of their ObfuscatingStupidity.
* YouNoTakeCandle: The Plobs, as part of their ObfuscatingStupidity.
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Per Spoilers Off, there are no spoilers on recap pages; it's assumed that anyone reading a recap page wants to know what happened in the episode.
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* DecoyLeader: The Saloi emperor doesn't actually do anything. The real leader of the Saloi is an apparently minor official. [[spoiler:And the REAL leader was his assistant, who didn't know he was the leader.]]
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* DecoyLeader: The Saloi emperor doesn't actually do anything. The real leader of the Saloi is an apparently minor official. [[spoiler:And And the REAL ''real'' leader was his assistant, who didn't know he was the leader.]]
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[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/death_and_diplomacy17.jpg]]
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* SlapSlapKiss: Bernice and Jason.
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* SlapSlapKiss: Bernice and Jason.Jason.
----
----
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Three empires, the Saloi, the Dakhaari, and the Czhans, are on the brink of war. The Doctor is commanded by the Hollow Gods to mediate between them. Meanwhile, Chris and Roz pretend to be Czhan officers and Bernice gets caught up
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Three empires, the Saloi, [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder Saloi]], the Dakhaari, [[BarbarianTribe Dakhaari]], and the Czhans, [[ProudWarriorRaceGuy Czhans]], are on the brink of war. The Doctor is commanded by the Hollow Gods to mediate between them. Meanwhile, Chris and Roz pretend to be Czhan officers and Bernice gets caught up
stranded on another planet and has to rely on Jason Kane to help her get back to the Doctor.
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* DecoyLeader: The Saloi emperor doesn't actually do anything. The real leader of the Saloi is an apparently minor official. [[spoiler:And the REAL leader was his assistant, who didn't know he was the leader.]]
* IKnowYouKnowIKnow
* PlanetOfHats: Deconstructed, in that Dakhaari, Czhan, and Saloi societies turn out to be more complex than they seem. [[spoiler:Also because they
*
* IKnowYouKnowIKnow
* PlanetOfHats: Deconstructed, in that Dakhaari, Czhan, and Saloi societies turn out to be more complex than they seem. [[spoiler:Also because they
*
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*DecoyLeader: The Saloi emperor doesn't actually do anything. The real leader of the Saloi is an apparently minor official. [[spoiler:And the REAL leader was his assistant, who didn't know he was the leader.]]
* PlanetOfHats: Deconstructed, in that
*IKnowYouKnowIKnow
*PlanetOfHats: Deconstructed. Dakhaari, Czhan, and Saloi societies turn out to be more complex than they
*
*ProudWarriorRaceGuy: The Czhans.
*SlapSlapKiss: Bernice and Jason.
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Three empires, the Saloi, the Dakhaari, and the Czhans, are on the brink of war. The Doctor is commanded by the Hollow Gods to mediate between them. Meanwhile, Chris and Roz pretend to be Czhan officers and Bernice gets caught up
!!Tropes
*DecoyLeader: The Saloi emperor doesn't actually do anything. The real leader of the Saloi is an apparently minor official. [[spoiler:And the REAL leader was his assistant, who didn't know he was the leader.]]
*IKnowYouKnowIKnow
*PlanetOfHats: Deconstructed, in that Dakhaari, Czhan, and Saloi societies turn out to be more complex than they seem. [[spoiler:Also because they
*
!!Tropes
*DecoyLeader: The Saloi emperor doesn't actually do anything. The real leader of the Saloi is an apparently minor official. [[spoiler:And the REAL leader was his assistant, who didn't know he was the leader.]]
*IKnowYouKnowIKnow
*PlanetOfHats: Deconstructed, in that Dakhaari, Czhan, and Saloi societies turn out to be more complex than they seem. [[spoiler:Also because they
*
