CHAPTER ONE: FAST AWAKE

When Straker awakens in SHADO's Medical Centre after some sort of ordeal, Dr. Jackson tells him he has a standard V-K series of questions to ask him just to ascertain his state of fitness. On his website, author James Sparrow notes that "V-K" is a nod to the Voight-Kampff machine from Blade Runner (a 1982 science-fiction film), which is used to determine if a person is a human or a replicant (android). This becomes a hint as to the true nature of Straker as he awakens.

Dr. Jackson's title of CMO stands for Chief Medical Officer.

Page 10 reveals that "Douglas Jackson" is not the doctor's birth name. His real name has been secret since joining SHADO.

On page 12, ESP stands for Extrasensory Perception.

As in the TV series, the characters generally use the term "u-foes" for the alien spacecraft instead of the more common "UFOs".

Page 14 reveals that SHADO has a small fleet of Skydiver submarines deployed across the world's oceans.

Page 16 acknowledges the more modern term for "UFOs", "unexplained aerial phenomena" (aka UAPs). Also mentioned are past terms such as "foo fighters" and "sun-dogs". "Foo fighter" was a term used to identify mysterious aerial lights seen by Allied fighter pilots (and also by Axis pilots) during WWII ("foo" is a nonsense word used by American cartoonist Bill Holman in his Smokey Stover fireman comic strip). "Sun dog" is a term for the atmospheric phenomenon of a halo-light of the sun caused by the refraction of sunlight on ice crystals in the air.

As Straker muses on the purpose of the aliens' visits to Earth on pages 16-17, he ponders on the aliens' abductions and killings of human beings, and that perhaps these encounters were precursor to an all-out invasion, or the desperate, predatory acts of a dying interstellar species.

Page 20 states that Foster would have been in charge of SHADO for the three days that Straker was out of commission due to the ESP test. Though Colonel Freeman is the second-in-command of the organization, it is explained later that he has been overseeing the construction of a new SHADO in the United States.

CHAPTER TWO: THE KNOWN UNKNOWN

Page 26 reveals that a secondary SHADO headquarters is being constructed under the Los Angeles branch of Harlington-Straker Studios. Other bases besides the main headquarters in London have been mentioned in past stories, such as an Arctic communications base in "Arctic Affair", a New York base in "A Question of Priorities", a Sao Paulo, Brazil base in "The River of Death", a secret base in Wales in "Let the Aliens Land", and bases under construction in the Gulf of Mexico and Cairo, Egypt in "The Alien Revolution" and "Return of the Pharaoh", respectively.

Colonel Freeman remarks that he and Straker came up during the Cold War. The Cold War is the name given to the tension-filled political and military relationship among the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc nations after WWII until the fall of the Soviet Union (in 1991).

   On page 28, Freeman and Straker muse together on the aliens' makeup and purpose, commenting that they may not even have a corporeal form, have psychic capabilities, and are able to duplicate human bodies. They may be referring to events in "The Cat With Ten Lives", "E.S.P.", and "Reflections in the Water", respectively.

   Freeman's humorous reference to the aliens using a cat catspaw against SHADO is another reference to "The Cat With Ten Lives".

Straker reflects that he believes the aliens would have mustered a huge fleet to attack Earth en masse by now if they could have, mentioning the surge of panic that would erupt if they blasted their way across London, Paris, New York, or Tokyo. He goes on to mention some evidence of factionalism among the aliens, some who may be unable or unwilling to fight. His reference to factionalism may be callback to events in "Survival", "Arctic Affair", "A Question of Priorities", and "The Renegade".

Possibly, the character of Sgt. Bentley, a member of the security team at SHADO HQ, is named for Chris Bentley, author of The Complete Book of Gerry Anderson's UFO, cited in the acknowledgments at the end of this novel.

On page 35, Straker recalls there had been times when SHADO had been breached by insiders turned by outsiders or coerced against their will. Such incidents have occurred a number of times in "Flight Path", "E.S.P.", "Kill Straker!", "The Psychobombs", "Mindbender", "The Man Who Came Back", and "Alien Espionage". Straker also muses that SHADO has never been infiltrated by an actual alien, but that's not quite true: Moonbase was infiltrated by two aliens in "A Near Thing".

CHAPTER THREE: THE SHADOW IN THE GLASS

At the beginning of the chapter, Bentley speculates that maybe Straker has finally cracked up under the strain of leading SHADO, commenting, "And it's not like this is the first time, is it?" He is probably referring to events in "Mindbender".

On page 51, Straker thinks of his old astro colleague, Craig Collins. This was Straker's friend seen in "The Man Who Came Back".

The details of the end of Straker's marriage and the death of his son, as mentioned on pages 51-52, were told in "Confetti Check A-O.K." and "A Question of Priorities".

Page 61 again mentions the American SHADO facility as if there are no others but the ones at London and Los Angeles.

Page 61 explains that SHADair is a second element of SHADO operating in plain sight, outwardly an aerofreight corporation shipping bulk cargo, but is the cover under which SHADO moved operatives and hardware around the world.

CHAPTER FOUR: LOSS OF SIGNAL

On page 64, Straker borrows an Experia automobile from a film shooting at Harlington-Straker. This appears to be a fictitious make of car. From the description ("a sleek, low-slung coupe"), it's possible that an Experia is meant to be the vehicles previously called SHADOcars in "Flight Path". The car Jackson has taken is said to be a "jeep" (with a lowercase j). In the TV series, the so-called SHADO Jeeps were designed on the body of British Motor Corporation's Mini Moke vehicles.

Straker sees a Cyranian Airlines jet taking off from Heathrow Airport on page 64. Cyranian Airlines appeared in "Splashdown", an episode of the 1968-69 Gerry Anderson Supermarionation series Joe 90. 

Page 66 describes the typical SHADair cargo carrier as a Valkyrie. This name may be a nod to the inspiration for the SHADair Seagull model, the North American XB-70 Valkyrie prototype test plane from 1964-1969 of a nuclear-armed deep-penetration supersonic bomber. The SHADair Seagull is also mentioned here, as well as the small Kingfisher.
SHADair Seagull		North American XB-70 Valkyrie
SHADair Kingfisher

Page 70 mentions that SHADair is a United Nations-funded operation. The United Nations is an organization established to facilitate cooperation and peace among the world's many countries.

Straker stows away on the Seagull carrying Dr. Jackson and a flight announcement touts the plane as "Seagull X-ray". This same nomenclature is used in the novelization of "Identified".

Page 72 describes the SHADO sigil, as seen on a file folder here.

The SHADO personnel file on Straker on page 73 reveals he was born on June 11, 1942 at Hope General Hospital in Boston, MA. Hope General Hospital appears to be fictitious.

On page 74, Straker's file has his own statements that he has experienced time-dilation phenomena and complete dream-state manipulation. This probably refers to the events of "Timelash" and "Mindbender".

On page 79, Straker takes over the cockpit of the Seagull, thinking over the old pilot's axiom of any airborne crisis, "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate." This is actually one of the fundamental tenets of aviation.

CHAPTER FIVE: THE MAN WITH MY FACE

The incident of the underwater alien dome that was infiltrated by Straker and Foster to discover doubles of the SHADO HQ personnel, as described on pages 86-87, refers to events in "Reflections in the Water".

Walking across the Harlington-Straker backlot with the Other Straker on page 88, Straker sees inside a prop storage building where one of the props visible is a giant white hand on a wooden base. The giant hand prop was seen in two episodes of the TV series, "Timelash" and "Mindbender".

The Other Straker tells Straker the gun Straker holds contained only blank rounds, adding, "Sound and fury, signifying nothing." This is a line from William Shakespeare's Macbeth.

The death of Straker's son as described on page 95 occurred in "A Question of Priorities".

CHAPTER SIX: RESOLUTIONS

On page 100, Foster remarks there is no Geneva Convention for prisoners of extra-terrestrial origin. The Geneva Convention is a set of protocols signed by members of the United Nations establishing the rules of war and treatment of prisoners taken in battle.

On page 106, Foster complains that SHADO ought to be taking the fight to the aliens instead of always just fighting a defensive game, but Freeman points out that no one, not NASA, the Russians, or EUROSEC have any rockets that could make the flight. Freeman adds that the nuclear-powered designs the World Space Commission is building won't be ready for years. NASA, of course, is the United States' official space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. EUROSEC is the organization seen in Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, the EUROpean Space Exploration Council. The World Space Commission is an Earth organization mentioned in the Space: 1999 episode "Dragon's Domain".

Foster's remarks on page 106 seem to imply that Earth nations are no longer conducting missions to the Moon or building space probes and orbital stations...part of SHADO's cover-up of the alien presence. But in episodes of the TV series, there is a corporate presence on the Moon in the form of the Dalotek company's compound there, as seen in "The Dalotek Affair" (though the installation was essentially destroyed near the end of the episode).