Enter, with the Doctor, Anji and Fitz, an Empire where the laws of physics are quite preposterous — nothing can travel faster than the speed of light and time travel is impossible.
Tropes present in The Slow Empire include:
- And I Must Scream: Jamon's reaction upon being rescued from Goronos's Lotus-Eater Machine.
- Bald of Evil: All of the Ambassadors are bald, not in the sense that they shave their heads, but that they've never had hair to begin with. This is a side-effect of the transferrence, along with distinctive Facial Markings, and not exclusive to the Ambassadorial Corps. Jamon is also bald, for instance.
- Call-Back: To another Doctor Who novel of Dave Stone's, BBC Books' Heart of TARDIS. The Collectors (or at least one, single stranded one) show up again here.
- Continuity Snarl: Not really, but Eight does mention Vortisaurs.
- Destructive Teleportation: Anji likens the teleportation citizens of the Empire use to travel between worlds to suicide, frightening Jamon enough to cause him to slap her.
- For the Evulz: Fitz's description of his behavior while in a failed Lotus-Eater Machine (although what he describes as "evil" never got worse than oblique references to "something in the key of C" which even he wouldn't usually say, hurtful remarks, and trying to smash his guitar on his bandmates before they managed to restrain him).[‘I]t was like, “I’m an evil person and I’m going to do this evil thing because I’m evil, and now I’m going to go and do something else evil over there.” You know what I mean?’
- Lame Pun Reaction:
- Anji and Fitz at Jamon de la Rocas's feeble attempt at wordplay on Fitz's name.
- The Doctor at the Ambassadorial Corpse. According to the footnotes, this was Dave Stone's reaction to realizing he'd accidentally based the whole book on such a terrible pun in the first place.
- Large Ham: Garrulous adventurer and storyteller extraordinaire Jamon de la Rocas.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: The Gonorians have created one massive planet-sized matrix, ostensibly to best care for its citizens, but the actual effects of which are to trap the population in tanks, living dull virtual lives while their bodies are manipulated to run programming and maintenance on the system.
- Time Abyss: Due to the length of time it takes to transport people and objects between worlds. It is called "The Slow Empire".
- Wacky Wayside Tribe: Invoked; Fitz and Anji both remark on how their progress through the Empire has featured a few different adventures in similar circumstances
