Doc Oho's Reviews

Prisoner of the Daleks written by Trevor Baxendale

2011-12-19T08:37:00.003Z

Plot: When the TARDIS jumps a time track lands back in the height of the Dalek Empire, the Doctor has to use all of his wits to prevent his greatest enemies from using time travel to turn the tide of Dalek history and irrevocably change the events of the Time War…

Mockney Wanderer: A huge glob of spit in the eye for all those people that dismiss the NSAs as having poor or no characterisation of the Doctor. Not only does Trevor Baxendale perfectly capture David Tennant’s wide-eyed Mockney Doctor but he also manages to scare us with the Doctor’s uncontrollable terror of the Daleks. There are some beautiful observations about the relationship between the Doctor and Daleks and the humans behave in equally obscene ways to the point where the Doctor begins to feel sympathy for one of the tortured creatures. It’s a remarkably intense portrayal of the Doctor and one of his best in print. Exceptionally good.

At the beginning of the book the Doctor and the TARDIS are having something of a domestic and she refuses to take him anywhere interesting anymore. I loved the observation that the Doctor has gotten on the wrong side of enough spiders in his time to keep well clear. It is noted that he wears a very tight fitting suit (ummm). His escape method is to tap out a morse code with a teaspoon! When he sees something of Martha and Donna in Stella the Doctor feels a longing for her to go with him. He never truly understands what happens to people when they die. He has too many bad memories, too many nightmares about the Daleks to feel anything but revulsion for them. He understands the creatures implacably, ‘They want to drag you into a long drawn out war because that’s what they like. Destruction, killing, slaughter, extermination. It’s what they do.’ The Doctor gets angry when he sees the remains of Auros; he finds it a stupid waste to destroy the planet since a self-inflicted wound of this intensity saves the Daleks from bothering. It’s the Doctor’s cold, quiet terror of the Daleks that makes them so frightening. His violent, suicidal rant at Bowman is genuinely disturbing. When the humans start tormenting the Dalek mutant the Doctor questions whether the Daleks have already won, losing their humanity. When the Dalek lets rip its first agonising scream the Doctor sinks to his knees in the corridor – this is some remarkably vivid characterisation. He longs for his companions of old, somebody who understands. He understands perfectly when Koral admits she is the last of her kind and if she dies there is nothing left of her civilisation. The Dalek prisoner thinks the Doctor has come to gloat at the end of its life. He tells the creature that their reign of destruction will end in burning and that there is a storm coming. In a rare moment of levity the Doctor is thrilled at the very notion that he is seeing something new that he has never seen before when they land on Arkheon. Apparently he hates name dropping (yeah, right) and is deeply embarrassed that he has to tell the Daleks who he is! It’s a great moment, he whispers his name to a Dalek and its headlamps flash involuntarily and its gun stick twitches. The Doctor is clearly revered within the Dalek echelons since the meeting between him and the Inquisitor General is made with a shivering thrill. The Doctor likes impossible. Dalek X sums up the Doctor as having above average intelligence, continually changing his appearance to avoid detection and relying on fortuity. He hates continuity (yay!). I loved Bowman’s comment, ‘Don’t cry, you’ll set the Doctor off, you know what a wimp he is.’ Its great to see the relationship between the Doctor and Bowman, how he is forced into respecting the Time Lord by his sheer drive of positivity and determination to survive. He insults, abuses and generally distrusts the Doctor throughout but before the end of the book they exchange slight smiles. There is a great image of the unrelenting tenth Doctor visiting Dalek X trapped beneath the surface of Arkheon never to be discovered and telling him that the Daleks always lose because they never learn, because everybody in the universe is better than them. I questioned the logic of having the Doctor travelling alone for the last of the Tennant books but Prisoner of the Daleks totally justifies the idea. He is a lonely force of nature and absolutely riveting to read about.

Foreboding: The Time War is mentioned several times. It must be tempting for the Doctor to tweak events whilst he has managed impossibly skip back before the War and change things in the Time Lords favour.

Twists: That’s a fantastic cover; it had me practically salivating when I first saw it! There is a delicious Nation-esque beginning set in a macho location with the doctor falling into a logic trap like a fly caught in honey. The mention of the Dalek heartbeat and the awesome comic strip Dalek font caused a fan boy thrill to ripple through me. Stella has a piece of exploded fuel tank jutting from her thigh and bleeds profusely before being exterminated; this is one book that does not respect its nice characters. What about the image of the icy Dalek, dripping with icicles. Dalek armour learns and adapts. Bounty hunters receive a bonus for every Dalek eyestalk they bring back. The Dalek Generation are orphans who have lost their parents in the Dalek War with the Earth Empire. There are enough self-destruct explosives inside a Dalek to keep a bomb disposal squad busy for a month. Spooks are Earth military intelligence agents. We are greeted by Auros on fire, the planet burning and breaking apart. The Osterhagen Principle is to detonate warheads to stop the enemy getting hold of the planet. In an inevitable moment of mass slaughter the Daleks surround the Auron fleet and destroy the lead ship as an example of why they should surrender. Page 78 features a truly spine chilling revelation about the Daleks, that they can blast a human to death in a split second but they deliberately turn down their weapons when exterminating their victims to make sure it hurts and lasts. The Dalek mutant is described as ‘something pale and wet moved like a slug amongst the exposed machinery.’ They gouge the mutant free of its housing like an oyster from a shell and its accompanied by a foul stench of pure wrongness. The dying Dalek is a ‘distended brain sac lying like a rotten melon, squid like arms coiled around the carcass.’ The Arkheon Threshold is a tear in time and space at the heart of a planet torn asunder by the Daleks. A pale, wraith like world, shrouded in mists and shimmering ice with one half of the planet a glowing molten core exposed to space like a luminous scab. The Dalek planet splitters are like hitting an apple with an axe. Imagine reaching the mist shrouded molten rock at the edge of a planet? The exposed molten core of Arkheon broils and spits cauldrons of fire into space. Daleks love prisoners; humiliation, torment and slavery are their thing. The Dalek experimentation facility is called the Black Hole because once you go in you never come out. How scary is the thought of Daleks with surgical instruments instead of suckers? The Wayfarer is blown up in front of Bowman and its remains scars the snow for hundreds of metres. The truth is that the Daleks are losing and they want to use the Arkheon Threshold to change time and turn things in their favour. Anger is something that every Dalek knows. One truly magnificent scene sees a Dalek crushed by an invisible magnetic fist and the creature inside is forced through the splits in the metal armour! The story ends on a fantastic planet-bursting explosion, which ruptures and disembowels the most devastating Dalek warship.

Funny Bits: Tenten 10 is the decimal planet!
‘Between them an your lot, it’s a wonder there are any planets left in the galaxy!’
Apparently the TARDIS is designed to blend in and come and go like a whisper in the night…what went wrong?

Result: A fantastic read. Unexpectedly adult and graphic with some devastating psychological moments, this is a cut way above your average NSA. What I really loved about this story was the mention of the mock sixties things like ‘Space Major’ and some of the more Saward-esque macho dialogue, it’s a real love letter to the Dalekmania that spread through the classic series whilst never forgetting the fantastic innovations of the new series. The Doctor is really put through the wringer and makes some fascinating observations about the Daleks and we learn so many new and wonderful things about the creatures beyond their ability to exterminate. Add to all of this Trevor Baxendale’s most accomplished prose to date, some stunning imagery and a cracking final scene and you have a book which scores very highly on every count. I wouldn’t want every book to be this intense but it makes for a gripping change of pace: 10/10

Spiral Scratch written by Gary Russell

2011-12-16T08:07:00.003Z

Plot: Lampreys, Doctor’s and Mel’s…oh my! The sixth Doctor has to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the whole of space and time, over and over and over and over and over and over…

Theatrical Traveller: Gary Russell has always been able to capture the sixth Doctor really well. I think he has a definitive image of this much criticised incarnation, one that is far fluffier and cuddlier than the guy we saw on the television. He pushed him in that direction with Big Finish but Colin Baker was still on hand there to give the Doctor some bite and he has really let this far more pleasant Doctor flourish in his novels and yet he still can’t resist leaking in some of his more theatrical and annoying extremes. They are part and parcel of the character no matter how much you try and dress him up as something more approachable. This is perhaps the ultimate sixth Doctor novel (don’t mistake that with the best), a multi Doctor story that finally has the guts to be about various assortments of the same Doctor and we are introduced to some intriguing alternatives. I could bang about the problems with this novel as long as you want to hear them I still couldn’t deny that Spiral Scratch leads up to a moment of self sacrifice with emotional consequences rarely seen in the books and with a final chapter that beautifully explores how much we have come to love the sixth Doctor. It may contradict Head Games (who cares?) but this is a very worthy final end for my favourite Doctor.

The Doctor always won arguments. What on Earth was he wearing? The Doctor has a nice smile even if his fashion sense borders on the disastrous. When he beams it is easy to feel warm and comfortable around him. One of the alternate Doctors is black cloaked with a scar on his face and comes from a universe where England is still an Empire with Empress Magararita is on the throne. The Doctor has a Tigger look and curly hair like Diana Ross! He can be a big baby sometimes. He threatens to punch Rummas on the nose for all of his interference. Sophisticated, elegant and remarkable or a blowfish with an over inflated sense of self importance. The Doctor would happily sacrifice himself, use himself as bait. I love the myriad of sixth Doctor’s from alternative realities – a little touch of magic when we see the Doctor and Evelyn and the Doctor and Frobisher. I know some people get upset when writes suggest these different ranges exist in different universes but as an excuse to bring together all these wonderful sixth Doctor’s we have been privy to I can think of worse storytelling techniques. All of them are sacrificing themselves to save reality – what a guy. Each an every sixth Doctor is giving his life to ensure that his personal timeline will live on. Looking at the stars he has saved the Doctor thinks his sacrifice was worth it. He feels he has had a good innings and cannot complain this time.

Screaming Violet: Its really odd that Gary Russell, champion of Melanie Bush in the Doctor Who novels should get her so totally wrong in her last book. The Mel we saw on TV was a bubbly, perky, melodramatic fitness freak with a lust for adventure and totally in love with both of her Doctor’s. The Mel of Spiral Scratch is a depressed, downbeat, miserable, bitchy, swearing, moaning sort of girl who argues with everything the Doctor says. It’s the worst thing about the book by far and a real shame because had this been corrected Spiral Scratch would have scored even higher. Russell tries to fill in a lot of the gaps in Mel’s life but a lot of it doesn’t ring very true (the Shag Palace!!!).

Described as a wrapped up boiled sweet, Mel is wearing her pink and white puffed up costume from Time and the Rani which should give you a clue as to where this is leading. With Mel its all black and white unlike the Doctor who can really spin a yarn. Lately Mel has had a pang for Sussex and her parents, a comfortable living room at Christmas, dates, walnuts and figgy pudding. She’s also have odd memories of a troublesome sister… Oddly whilst Helen Lamprey is being friend Mel’s only thought are to punch her lights out and thinks lovely thoughts like ‘die bitch die!’ When they first moved South Mel’s mum always threw impressive dinner parties to try and fit in. I rather like Melina the slave, its an intriguing take on the Doctor/Mel dynamic. There’s a lovely scene where we think we are with our Mel and the Doctor but it transpires it is Melanie Baal the Silurian! Mel sneakily tries to find out about her own future. Does Mel have a sister called Anabel that she knows nothing about? For Mel Pease Pottage is the home that says love and the TARDIS is the home that says friendship. Mel broke her eighteen month sister like a biscuit? She isn’t sure what happened to Peri and she isn’t sure the Doctor knows either. I really liked it when Mel, Melanie Baal and Melina all join forces to save the Doctor – the madness starts to cohere. The Doctor is a father figure to Mel, they needed each other.

Foreboding: Lakertya is on the edge of this system. Turns out the Doctor was dying all along when the Rani’s tractor beam buffers the TARDIS!

Twists: Chapter one is surreal but it certainly peaked my interest. The story of Dominique and Julien is lovely, a fairytale of two green children who turned up in a village to cure its ills. I could have read a whole book in this vein. Several versions of the Doctor turn up in the console room to warn him of the Lamprey. Chapter four is actually a very beautiful piece of writing, probably the best thing Russell had written to date as Mel’s parents say goodbye to her dead sister before moving away. Rummas obtained a TARDIS and nips into burning buildings and saves books that would otherwise be lost. Lots of dead Rummas’ and dead Doctor’s? There are temporal shenanigans centring on the library on Carsus, a pan dimensional rip, a scratch right through the groove of the vortex spiral causing jumps and gashes. When a Lamprey snatches away somebody time makes adjustments and installs a new person to take their place and fiddles with the details to make sure everybody thinks that has always been the case. Maddeningly (but also quite fun) you can’t tell if you are reading about the same character from scene to scene or one from a different universe! In one universe we visit Utopiana City wrecked by the Lamprey, chewing up concrete towers and spitting out the rubble to crush the inhabitants. Chapter seven is a moonlit flit through various realities whilst the lamprey devours the best of each reality. Cleverly the story crosses through interstitial time and tells the same narrative with different versions of the Doctor and Mel. The lamprey devour time, extinguishing entire multiverse of realities just to fed. It needs a focus, someone to home in on and break through into that reality and they seek out time sensitives and use them as an anchor when they arrive. Rummas has stolen a Spiral Chamber from Gallifrey. I like how Russell plays the same scenes over from the POV of the opposing characters – pages 137-139 are the same as 41-43. If the Spiral were to become damaged and allow leakage within realties all creation could descend into chaos and only the Lampreys would survive. Monica is the green girl from the opening chapters, the female Lamprey. Sir Bertrand is also a Lamprey who blocked his memories so he could forget who he is. Chapter sixteen features Helen’s party again but this time its told on a space station rather than a country manor house – these parallels are boggling! Rummas caused the moment where chaos was unleashed upon creation. Every action he has taken to go back and prevent what he has caused has been anticipated and negated by the Lampreys. This filth is going to destroy everything, past, present and future just to its bloated existence. The chronon energy the Doctors have built up tears free and kills all of the sixth Doctor’s and the Lampreys.

Embarrassing Bits: A cover more garish than the sixth Doctor’s coat, Simon walked into the bathroom whilst I was reading this in a steamy bath and asked why I was reading a murray mint! Why doesn’t Russell learn from the mistakes of his previous books, like Instruments of Darkness come chapter three there are too many characters and choppy scenes with no momentum. Sometimes the prose is just…yuck (page 100 –‘clearly facing the same treacle effect’). The Last Resort did rather a better job of playing the trick of shifting to a different universe from scene to scene and built up t a spectacularly surreal and exciting climax but then I simply think Paul Leonard’s prose is superior which automatically makes things easier. The Earth Empire, the evil Nazi’s and their space conquering Fuhrer were finally destroyed – given the imagination he displays here surely this is the least imaginative alternative universe imaginable? 117,863 Mel’s – the mind boggles! Oh come on…Mel used to live in ‘the shag palace’ when she was at university and whilst she pretended to be prim and proper she secretly loved it! Mel saying ‘Screw you. Bitch!’ is just plain wrong and following that up with a right hook is even worse! ‘Why are you so pissy all the time?’ is a another horrible Mel line.

Funny Bits:
· We get to read an extract of Benny’s view of the Time Lords – ‘Time Lords are like that. Gits. Pompous gits of the highest order. No one likes them very much. Because they’re gits. Big, fat smelly ones.’ The Doctor mentions it is ‘written I believe by some grumpy Professor or other.’ Mel likes her which is ironic consider she would hate her in Head Games!
· The Doctor wrote ‘The History of Gumblejack fishing in the eighth galaxy’, did signings, dinner speeches and made a fortune and donated it to charities the universe over! He became known as the Great Benefactor! This might be a lie.
· ‘Sometimes you can be infuriating!’ ‘Only sometimes? I’m slipping…’
· Page 153: ‘I’m waiting thirty minutes for your response and using software to speed up your words so I can understand them.’ ‘Oh.’ ‘That wasn’t worth waiting for!’
· ‘It’s alright I always get a twinge when I discover myself dead. I think its times way of telling me to watch myself.’

Result: Ignore the odd horrendous Russell turn of phrase, this book is a kaleidoscope of wacky imagination and clever ideas. There are problems for sure but considering this range has already flogged the alternative universe angle to death Russell manages to find lots more interesting things to do with the premise including a multi Doctor story with the same Doctor, some delicious end of the universe action which feels genuinely apocalyptic and a truly climatic finale with a deeply moving finale chapter. The story is not especially well structured, each chapter feels like a short story in an anthology with some being rather good and others not so but astonishingly there is the odd dribble but on the whole a distinct lack of fan wank. ‘It’s very complicated’ says Mel – too complicated, you could happily snip a handful of characters, dodge a few pointless revelations and make this story a smoother ride. Spiral Scratch is ambitious and brave and even if the author doesn’t quite have the skill to pull off the insanity of the ideas coherently there is still a great deal of fun to be had here: 7/10

The Sleep of Reason by Martin Day

2011-10-04T10:21:00.002+01:00

Plot: Caroline is a perfectly healthy young girl, except she takes a razor to her wrists with alarming regularity. She dreams of a sinister house and to her surprise finds herself admitted to it, the Retreat, a home for the mentally ill. There she finds herself under the scrutiny of the mysterious Dr Smith and his two assistants…

Top Doc: I always applaud experiments and here Martin Day surpasses himself, writing the book entirely from the POV of the guest characters. It affords a unique view from the outsiders POV of the Doctor and his friends and their crazy adventures.

He is described as two parts Lord Byron and one part Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen. He is brilliant one moment and almost an idiot savant the next. He seems trouble when asked if he has ever been married (Mary, Debbie) but merely states that he is an observer of such things and watches from afar. He has no ear for gossip. The Doctor cannot bear to be in the same place for more than five minutes. With the Doctor days can feel like weeks and months can pass by in the blink of an eye. The Doctor hates labels (Jungian, Freudian) because they limit potential, ring fence freedom and stamp out individuality. One morning he can believe one thing, the evening something completely different. He believes in truth – justice and prejudice, freedom and slavery, good and evil. He is intimately familiar with people but powerless without permission to proceed. You could never imagine him doing anything as mundane as sleeping, eating or scratching his balls. He tries not to dream because he has nightmares. His touch is not sexual or abusive but more sensual and powerful. He is attracted to weird things which he tries to put right, has power but he chooses to turn away from evil. The Doctor, the man who is most human of all is not human at all. The Doctor is very protective towards the time continuum. He attracts the Sholem-Luz because of all the pain and anguish he has carried over the years. He might be odd and distant at times, but he is full of marvellous insight and irrepressible energy.

Best of all of this marvellous insight into his character is his admission that his time in the Retreat will probably amount to very little but sometimes all you can do is make a difference to a few lives. For too long now he has been focussing on the ‘bigger picture’ and the details are just as important. People are as fundamental to him as anything. After his universe ending escapades in the alt universe arc, this is some real development for his character…as he was gagging to just spend some time with people in Sometime Never… but he had other, more important priorities. This follows nicely into the next book where he goes all domestic and sets up home and helps out just one family…

Scruffy Git: Described as the dopey bloke and uncombed hair and 5’oclock shadow. Fitz is scared if he goes into therapy (after all the screwing around with his brain!) he might never come out! He is learning from the Doctor, being influenced by him. Unquestioningly loyal and uncomplicatedly honest (that just about sums him up!). When facing death, Fitz is still thinking about sex (I love this guy). You could forgive him anything. Seeing Fitz from other peoples POV makes him seem something of a drop out and totally obedient to the Doctor’s commands.

Identity Tricks: Whilst I don’t agree with wasting Trix’s scarce page space by putting her in the books background it is fascinating how sinister and bullying she seems when seen from other people’s perspective. Described as the bitchy blonde. Terrible things hide behind her eyes. She is as fresh as a daisy and much sexier. Her interests differ from the Doctor and Fitz but they look out for each other. She has many diverse faults but as an agent of intrigue and stealth, Trix cannot be faulted. She is from the bull in the china shop school of tact.

Twists: The first scene featuring the Doctor (?) locked up in a mental asylum are intriguing to say the least. Caroline’s introduction is featured in the first chapter which is shockingly brutal and real, slicing her wrists open, the slice of metal throbbing with possibility, able to berth her into a more adult world. The scenes from Laska’s POV with the Doctor are excellent as she tries to work out the rules of their mental battles. Laska’s dream in the bath of the hound trying to naw through the bathroom door and waking up with vicious red bite marks, is hypnotically scary. Terrifying mental struggles ensue with Miss Thorne as she recounts having her child taken from her, externalising her frustration and anger by having a row with her lost child. Equally disturbing is Fern kicking Mary Jones until she cannot speak, pinning her down between her breasts with his boot and bashing her skull open with a rock whilst spouting religious dogma. Tracy Wade has her car flipped over and is savaged by the death hound. Dr Christie, doused with oil, glistening like a newborn phantasm of evil, plans to set fire to himself, the bodies and all of Masoulus House. The Sholem-Luz are attracted to the insane, creating tunnels through the fabric of time and space, obeying their biological imperative. They infected a lower species (in this case a dog) who bites one of the asylum workers….who sets about burning the bodies of dead, producing more seeds to scatter on the time winds and infect other places and times. We discover Lis was the one who helped Laska’s father die in a mercy killing. She catches her husband straddling one of the nurses and kicks him in the nuts! Ms Thorne turns out to be Laska’s great, great grandmother and we witness her passing away in Dr Christie’s arms over her father’s grave in a very moving scene. In the busy climax Fits and Trix are trapped in the basement with the patients whilst James (the Sholem-Luz infected host) threatens to feed them to the flames. The Doctor uses his dark memories to attract the Sholem Luz after him into the past and they die in the fire of their own making in Masoulus House. Brilliantly we discover the Doctor was responsible for saving the lives of Christie, Macksay and Torby, the very journal we have been reading throughout is infected with his presence. To avoid waiting another century to see his friends (again!) he sleeps in a sarcophagus in the basement and makes a superb entrance (“How is anyone supposed to sleep through all this racket?”) in the climax! I loved Laska’s last line, when you realise she joined the Retreat a year ago as Laska but is going home Caroline, the Doctor having touched her life in a most profound way.

Funny bits: Finally somebody points out how hideous Fitz and Trix’s names are!

Result: The second of two back-to-back classics and firm proof that the EDAs aren’t going to go out quietly. The Sleep of Reason is my idea of an adult book, one that deals with serious and disturbing issues with sensitivity and emotion and looks at its characters deeply, allowing the reader to get under their skin and understand what makes them tick. It is a dark and mature piece that grips you with the quality of the characterisation and the density of the prose. The characters feel like real people, nothing is sensationalised and the feelings brewed up are painfully real. Refusing to allow us access to the regulars thoughts is another superb plus point, allowing some unexpected and delightful characterisation (especially the Doctor who has rarely been as glowing). A dark, mature and frightening book and a winner in every sense of the term: 10/10

The Story of Martha by Dan Abnett (with short stories by David Roden, Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis, Robert Shearman and Simon Jowett)

2011-08-31T08:14:00.004+01:00

Plot: One year. Martha Jones is on the run from the psychotic despot that has murdered one tenth of the world’s population. She has a mission. This is her story…

The Story of Martha bridges the gap between The Sound of Drums and The Last of the Time Lords and thus potentially makes this the most important NSA yet. You could also throw in the reverse argument that because the entire invasion is unwound at the end of the series three this is the least important book because for everybody except Martha none of these events ever took place! Personally I think it is fascinating to see what happened to Martha during her year on the run. I have never made any secret of the fact that I think Russell T Davies is the ultimate build up storyteller, he can get you more excited than practically any other writer and I found The Sound of Drums utterly spellbinding. Alas Davies is also the absolute worst writer when it comes to concluding his stories and he very often uses narrative cheats such as the deadly Voyager reset button (as he did with the conclusion of this three parter). I am extremely grateful that The Story of Martha was written because not only were people taking the books seriously again but it gives the duff concept of the people of the Earth turning the Doctor back into his usual self with the power of hope some real weight. Given what we see here the Earth is a truly haunting place to live and the stories that Martha tells really are uplifting and heart-warming. Congratulations to Dan Abnett for taking something that was fudged in the TV series and making it work in the novels.

Mockney Dude: Considering he only appears in one paragraph in the main storyline the Doctor makes a massive impression on this book. Martha is out there telling wonderful stories of her life with the Doctor and his name is used as a badge of hope. Its one of the best examples of his impact on the Earth, the fact that the mere mention of his name means salvation, can raise a smile and suggest that things will one day get better. Telling this story through Martha’s eyes who clearly adores him far more than she should allows people to fall in love with him the way she does. The Doctor never pays attention to warnings; paying attention is for cats and he’s more the golden retriever type blundering in all happy and excited! He passes through eternity with no end in sight. The comings, goings and losses fade somehow. He hides it. Once it was a struggle to remember. He had family once but they were lost to the inferno. The Doctor always finds the cleverest way to fight and its never with guns and bombs. I love the sequence where the nameless snowy wraiths want to feed on the Doctor’s hopes and desires and where he has explored and he tells them ‘if you want a feast, you better be hungry.’ Rob Shearman really understands the Doctor and sums him up beautifully in his short story; on his planet, maps never said here there be dragons because his people had been everywhere and explored everything. When he was a child he wanted to be an explorer but there was nowhere left to discover and they told him what was the point? He’d found a point. And whenever he’d forgot it he’d close his eyes and dream again and there it would be. Fantastic stuff.

Delicious Doctor: Along with The Last Dodo this is Martha’s best book. Here we experience her resource, intelligence, skill, warmth and determination. If there was any doubt that Martha Jones could hold up a book on her own this is a bop on the nose to any doubters. Her characterisation speaks for itself. Whatever this books merits are in the literally sense it is an awesome coming of age story for Martha because although everybody else has their mind wiped of these awful events, she remembers. This is what makes the woman that would go on to command forces in UNIT, be left with the responsibility of the entire planet and face down the Daleks.

Martha had acquired an extraordinary amount of fame that really bothered her. People treated her like a saint and would willingly lay down their lives for her. Leo had been an enthusiast of Commando comic so Martha knew all about Dunkirk. This year hangs on her like a dead weight and she wishes she could cast it off. Martha considers Jack’s teleport bracelet one of the top five most painful ways to die. Martha never ran from a fight but she knew when a fight was lost. She’s proper easy on the eyes. Being on the run from armed thugs felt unpleasantly real. She almost hates the Doctor for asking so much of her. Martha is totally, strangely focussed when she is in the most danger. Weatcher tells Martha that the Doctor is ‘not the one.’ Telling the stories reminded Martha of what really mattered. Rob Shearman also aces Martha and the first two pages of The Frozen Wastes say more about her character than anything else I have read. When she was younger Leo pushed her too hard and she fell to the ground with a sharp crack. She was too excited for tears, she was visiting the hospital and it was an adventure. Martha was confused by her x-ray, her arm so strange and ghostly, she wasn’t facing the pain bravely, she was genuinely curious about this secret world underneath her skin. Her mum thought her obsession with the human body was a bit grisly but she kept studying and thinking about the Doctor she would be one day. Martha underestimated the Master’s venom and for the first time in a year she breaks down watching the islands of Japan burn to death.

Great Ideas: Probably my favourite cover, both the Doctor and Martha look edible and the Toclafane (great design) hang over the Earth setting it alight. There is some great world building that really sells the apocalypse; it’s the one book where they can take things as far as they like. The islands of Japan are set on fire, New York is in ruins, the Caspian is poisoned, the Nile frozen and what was once Russia is now Shipyard One. Six billion cybernetic globes were singing childish songs of murder and malice. Planet Earth was dying, one tenth of the population exterminated. The human race are being turned into slaves. The United Containment Forces are the Master’s executors of martial law. Griffin shoots six people dead just to make an impression. He is the man in charge of bring down Martha Jones. He pets a dog and shoots it dead. 20 people are shot down in a flash market in a sports centre. Effigies of the Master dominated the world; he had even carved himself into Mount Rushmore. Packs of feral, hungry dos roam the streets. Abnett manages to trick Griffin into thinking he will catch Martha and trick the reader into thinking we will see the Brigadier! The Master treats the human race with violence and oppression and expects them to react in a similar way. Martha plans to use the Archangel network against him, it was how he got his grip on the planet and it would also be the thing that would punch him away. The Aka labour camp consists of thousands of men and women packed into a caged city, bloody and scarred and overworked, tiny bunks to sleep on, sore and scabbed, nothing but a number. You are shot down if you make a wrong move. Griffin turning up in the workhouse is highly suspicious. The Seague is an artificially produced tear in the fabric of space-time, like a bolt of lightning moving in slow motion. The Drast Speculation Initiative Fourteen were conducting a clandestine assessment of the Earth, charged to initiate economic takeover when the Master’s invasion taskforce arrived. It’s a long complex operation that leads to their running of an entire world without anyone noticing. When the Master took control we were already being invaded – that is a genius idea! The Earth’s suffering will be over soon when the Drast open the Seague and disintegrate the planet! As soon as the Master learns that the Drast are at work in Japan he orders in the Toclafane to deliver laser death. The islands burn a horrible death. Griffin is sliced apart by the Toclafane.

Agaleos is a forgotten, majestic, empty city swept into a corner gathering snow. Shimmering aurora borealis in the sky, shooting stars, ion cascades and delicate colours painting the heavens. One of the furthest outposts of the Second and Great Bountiful Human Empire. The lighthouse beacon was set up to warn people from coming. The wormhole has irradiated the people, infected them with thousands of types of DNA and evolved them into feral creatures. Weatcher chooses to change and be with his people. A hot air balloon over the snowy wastes of the Artic, what a magical idea. White above, white blow, white everywhere. It distorts time, running the same seconds back over and over and over. Literally frozen in them, the perfect larder, the meat stays fresh and never runs out. Hundreds of balloons, a whole flotilla of the same balloon blotting out the sky. Pierre repeating his attempt to conquer the Artic, the being feeding from human ambition. Sometimes the destination isn’t half as interesting as to ambition to get there. The Breed are vat-grown clones for ship wide maintenance but the mass produced drones have become individuals and given themselves names. Artificials are forbidden to fall in love with colonists; the Steering Council believe genetic purity must be preserved. When the cryosystem failed, the shock killed most of the colonists outright, The Pilot System downloaded the colonists personality prints into Artificials.

The Wasting has a lovely mournful tone and an uplifting ending even if it is slightly predictable. Breathing Space is the weakest of the four, little more than an archetypal Doctor Who alien takeover run-around with no time for any thoughtful characterisation but I really like the ending – the aliens didn’t completely clear the atmosphere but they have given the human race some breathing space so use it. The Frozen Wastes is gorgeously written; elegant, thoughtful and smartly characterised. Star Crossed has more than a hint of The Doctor’s Daughter about it with two factions in conflict, the Doctor with one side and Martha with the other and both trying to find a device that will bring it all to an end. It’s a lot more fun and brief than TDD and manages to tell its pleasant story very economically.

Embarrassing Bits: My one complaint (aside from Breathing Space) would be that the ending is really rushed and the destruction of Japan, Martha’s escape and Griffin’s death is skipped over in a few paragraphs when I would have liked to have seen all three explored in a lot more detail considering the build up. It really does feel like Abnett was so excited with the story he was telling…and ran out of space.

Result: Very nice. The Story of Martha is not what a lot of people thought it was but I thought it filled its gap between two unforgettable television episodes with some confidence and gusto. Its unremittedly grim and violent, relieved only by Martha’s tales of her travels with the Doctor. I really like the world of horror that Dan Abnett creates, he doesn’t skimp on detail and really drives home the idea that Martha is on the run for her life. Ms Jones gets some awesome characterisation and is really pushed to the limit, exhausted, pursued, battered, beaten and worked to death, she really shows what she made of here. The short stories were a neat touch and the hit rate is good, from my point of view there’s one excellent tale, two good ones and only one which lets the side down (unfortunately its right in the middle of the book, not ideally placed). This book was billed as something a bit special and I’m not sure if it is out of the ordinary enough to really grab peoples attention but as a slice of apocalyptic drama with some pleasing moments of levity I rushed through this little delight in two days: 8/10

World Game written by Terrance Dicks

2011-08-26T05:01:00.002+01:00

Plot: Those dastardly Players are back and this time they are fiddling about with the lives of Napoleon, Wellington and Nelson to ensure a devastating future for the planet Earth and a game that will play on until the entire human race is plunged into war.

Oh My Giddy Aunt: The characterisation of Troughton’s Doctor is as good as you would expect from the script editor of his last season and the co-writer of his last story. What Dicks achieves here is nothing short of a miracle; he is no longer a renegade, not yet and exile, the Doctor is an unwitting agent of the CIA on Gallifrey You have got to admire the gall of the man, literally having his own cake and eating it, weaving together his own continuity from The War Games and his and Robert Holmes’ blatant disregard for it in The Five Doctors and The Two Doctors. Here he manages to open out a whole new series of adventures for the second Doctor, one where he has no ties, a functioning Type 97 TARDIS and is kept on a leash by the Time Lords. Frankly the possibilities are endless and whilst he has the Doctor head off to Space Station Camera to visit Dastari at the end of World Game it is a real shame the Past Doctor Adventures ended when they did because I could imagine a few more stories of this ilk chronically his post Trial, pre exile escapades!

He never stole the TARDIS, he just borrowed it. The Doctor is a person of great intelligence, courage and ability with a soft and gentle face. The Doctor blames the eighth incarnation for convincing him to contact the Time Lords that leads to his capture (The Eight Doctors). One of his motives for leaving Gallifrey was to escape the endless intrigue, back stabbing and double crossing. Serena is from one of the oldest and most respected family’s on Gallifrey and he objects to her presence on his mission. Cheekily he plans to steal the TARDIS and strand Serena at the first opportunity, figuring that a contract made under sentence of death cannot be morally binding. Brilliantly he is described as shooting into a room as if fired from a canon! He prefers his perpetual TARDIS without the functioning chameleon circuit as it would extremely embarrassing to lose your ship because you have forgotten what it looks like! He finds humans fascinating because you can never tell what they are capable of. I love it when he guzzles down champagne because he has never been on an expense account before! He treats Serena to shopping and dining and she is worried by his incorrigible frivolity! The Doctor is reckless and insanely brave and in this novel he manages add saving Wellington, Napoleon and Nelson to his CV. A mysterious wizard with dark knowledge at his fingertips? The Doctor is often tempted to use his fore knowledge of the future to save lives. There are scenes between the Doctor and Napoleon that I would have loved to have seen on screen where they circle each other like a pair of wary dogs. It is lovely hoe he comes to value Serena’s companionship as they dine and share tales of their pasts. He adores tinkering with the submarine. I love how he is written very much in the post War Games mould, this is a Doctor who has got nothing to lose any more so he leaps forward to a month after Waterloo to see if they succeed in stopping the Countess and even more frivolously he takes Tallyrand well into to the future to show him what will become of the Earth if they do not stop her. The Doctor’s furious anger at Serena’s death matches the readers own and the way he handles his grief, sitting on a stone bench throughout the night as the city prepares for war around him, is very moving. I adored the moment when with surprising and worrying ease the Doctor crushes his conscience and doesn’t step forward to help Serena’s killer. His suicidal plan to impersonate Napoleon on the battlefield and confuse the French troops is priceless! He ponders as to why he can never truly hate who he is supposed to or like those he should look up to. I love his wily ways, bargaining with the CIA to ensure a formal tribute is made for Serena, her death publicly acknowledged and memorialised and her name added to the Gallifreyan Roll of Honour. Just go back and read this paragraph again, that is some fine characterisation. Where has this Terrance Dicks been hiding since Players?

Foreboding: The Doctor asks for his TARDIS back and seeks out his own companion, Jamie, and asks for him to have his memory altered so he thinks they have left Victoria studying graphology which leads very nicely into The Two Doctors. A Time Ring is mentioned but he wouldn’t get to use one until Genesis of the Daleks. World Game is blissfully confident with how it handles its continuity and throws in a Raston Warrior Robot (The Five Doctors), mentions of the Eighth Doctor (The Eight Doctors), the Players (who the sixth and Eighth Doctor’s would come up against in Players and Endgame) and he even finds time to introduce the Doctor’s psychic paper for the very first time (2005 NuWho). Oh and the Doctor keeps his Napoleon ensemble…which he puts on again in Time and the Rani! He cuts and splices all this continuity together in a way only somebody who is intimately involved in the series could do and by shamelessly making his points and not labouring them.

Twists: That is a truly memorable wrap around cover – Troughton dressed up like Napoleon – finally a good use of photoshop! An Oubliette is a superior Time Lord cell for important prisoners. Temporal dissolution is to never have existed at all. I loved the description of the Revolution devouring its children, many a head rolling due to fake charges. The Countess attempts to assassinate Wellington and Nelson during the one time that they met and thus altering the events of Trafalgar and Waterloo. She then attempts to build a submarine and offer it to Napoleon to sink the British fleet. I loved the scenes with the Raston Warrior Robot – it fires so many javelins into a barrel it looks like a hedgehog, fires one straight through a soldiers heart and extends its arm into a blade, Terminator 2 style, and decapitates a character! The Doctor manages to blow it up from one of the submarine torpedoes but being indestructible as it is it simply reforms like quicksilver. We get to visit a world where the Countess has one, it is an apocalyptic ruin with the whole world firing rockets at each other. The Grand Design is to mastermind the Earth into a chess game of war with the countries as the different species. That’s pretty obscene actually. He killed Serena…I cannot believe that Dicks had the courage to kill off a character that we were starting to grow fond off! Anybody who is used to his sugary nostalgia trip novels will be aware that this is not the sort of underhanded shock that he deploys and this subversion of his usual storytelling provides the best shock in one of his novels for many a year. The Historical Notes are a lovely, thoughtful touch, a coda that allows us to see these historical figures to their deaths.

Funny Bits: Serena snootily tells the Doctor that she will be his supervisor. You can imagine his reaction.
The spanking new Type 97 is apparently a massive improvement on the Doctor’s old relic!
‘I was saved by Napoleon’s chicken pies!’
Luco the traitor is dragged away down the corridor and we here ‘No! No! Not the Mind Probe!’ floating back. You have to love how Dicks takes the piss out of his own work!

Embarrassing Bits: Did we really need to pop back to The War Games and meet up with Lady Jennifer and Carstairs again? The Players seem to pluck dangers from the Doctor’s mind to use against him and fortunately they seem to have been watching a few Terrance Dicks stories too! The Vampire and the Raston Warrior Robot both seemed like a step to far into self plagiarism and yet the former is handled with a great gag (see funny bits) the latter features in some of the books best scenes. Go figure.

Result: An extremely entertaining and quick read returning to us the Terrance Dicks who wrote Target books that we used to wrap ourselves up in our duvets to devour. This is far and away his best book for the BBC and matches his best work for Virgin as well, it’s a gorgeous trip through some very rich history that brings to life some great mythic figures and leaves you gasping at how fabulous this would have been on the telly. Dicks’ prose is as light as champagne and its effect is just as effervescent, it is deliriously enjoyable. He manages to tell a fast paced traditional Doctor Who story within an innovative new life for the second Doctor. This is my Terrance Dicks writing Doctor Who books again; efficiently plotted, well characterised and pleasingly educational. A joy to read: 8/10

The Tomorrow Windows by Jonathan Morris

2011-08-16T23:20:00.003+01:00

Plot: Alien auctions for planets, Tate Modern blown up, nuclear blasts, God worship, sinister lava lams, killer cars, politics, ghostly apparitions, crappy effects, mind reading, deep freezed superstars, pirate cities, Dalek and Cybermen knock offs….this book has it all. And a chapter set in Lewisham.

Top Doc: He has really found the fun since sorting out the trouble with the broken down universe hasn’t he? This marks as real development because the Doctor has come through his trauma with a brand new lust for life and it is extremely infectious. It is wonderful to see him having fun with some of his confused memories and he is utterly delighted to be told that he defeated the Yeti’s in the Underground, the shop window dummies at Ealing and the Dinosaurs in St James’ Park! His relationship with the Kendroid ('Ken we had a deal, I defeat the aliens from outer space, you get the buses running on time!') is really gigglesome. However he has lost none of his bite and he is extremely sarcastic and edgy at times ('Mankind will learn and it can’t do that if it can flick to the back of the book and look up the answers'). His philosophy: 'Why waste time when you can do it all in a mad rush?' His anger at feeling powerless to stop a planet being destroyed is extremely palpable ('You stupid, stupid fools!'). Saving planets never makes up for the ones he has lost. He has a nagging feeling he is in deficit, that he is seeking redemption. He feels there is always a way and when one doesn’t present itself he gets very angry. The Doctor’s favourite place to be lost is his thoughts. He condemns Prubert for introducing the selfish memes ('Do you have any idea what this idiot has done?'). He is never cruel and he cares for all. He and Trix finally bridge their differences, he realises how Martin has violated her and kisses her, stroking her hair and comforting her.

Scruffy Git: Fitz is still going super strong even after all this time. He looks into a Tomorrow Window and sees a toothless old man…then it shifts to a handsome chap with an olive skinned bride. It gets him thinking about the future and he is very unsure. He has been living in the moment for so long he has forgotten to think beyond it. He’s scared if he leaves the Doctor he will regret what he has left behind. One day, maybe soon he will get a life. He doesn’t know where he belongs, he has no family, no career, no way of determining his life. His adventures being hypnotised by a car would be patently absurd if it was written with such frightening conviction. His Poirot scene (more on that later) is truly excellent and easily the best Fitz moment in his entire run until this point, displaying his wit, his intelligence and his physical ability. Oh and its hilarious too!

Identity Tricks: What started out as a one trick wonder is slowly developing into one of the more interesting companions the eighth Doctor has ever travelled with. What I love about Trix is that she is clearly so vulnerable underneath her bravado, it is very appealing, especially because you only see it when her guard is down such as it is in the latter stages of this novel. Saving planets is what she does. Delightfully (and imaginatively…when you find out the reason why) the book adopts a first person narrative for Trix’s scenes, which allows us to get closer to her than ever before. She is confronted with a cot full of mutilated babies about to be slaughtered and tries desperately to grasp a persona who can deal with the horror, further proof she is hiding from reality in these acts of hers. She cannot remember which story she is supposed to tell, she has spent so long trying not to remember that sometimes she can almost forget (which later transpires to be a deadly secret about her father, who was rushed to hospital after a confrontation, Trix angry and ashamed at what she had done). Annoyingly the Doctor can see through all of her disguises (even the Trix Macmillan one, which we later discover is genuinely an act and not who she really is) and see her, the real her. When it transpires that Martin has been reading her thoughts throughout, getting off her secrets Trix feels sick to the stomach that her privacy has once again been abused (after this and Reo she feels a girl cannot call her mind her own anymore!). She isn’t even sure if she remembers her past anymore because she has spent so long trying to bury it. In her best scene to date she manages to convince Martin that he is the most gorgeous bloke in the universe (with her thoughts alone) just long enough to get close to him and kick him in the nuts.

Foreboding: The Doctor looks into the Tomorrow Window and sees many possible futures but the image finally settles on…Christopher Eccleston!!! Trix’s confrontation with her father will return to haunt her in The Gallifrey Chronicles.

Twists: The Tomorrow Windows have been set up in Tate Modern to give people the ‘Gist of Things to Come’. Brilliantly when the Doctor looks into one it shows him several ‘possible’ futures (including Rowan Atkinson, Alan Davies, Eddie Izzard, Michael Jayston) and also some events (the Daleks/ the Time War?, the Nimon (Seasons of Fear). After making a speech Ken Livingstone’s head splits to reveal an electron bomb (leading to the brilliant line, 'The Mayor of London is about to explode!') and Tate Modern is reduced to rubble (hurrah!). The tribal war dance on Valuensis is brilliant. I love the ‘only God can save us now’ situation because all the jokes become suddenly, terrifyingly real and you realise these people are really willing to destroy their entire planet for one more glimpse at their God and that the Doctor can do nothing to prevent it. I love the Ceccecs, what a fabulously scary idea. All the auctioneers are marvellous creations and they all get a funny (in the spirit of taking the piss…Alien Bodies also gets ribbed!) introductory chapter (my favourite was Question Intonation: ‘Why have the creatures chosen to name themselves after a mode of speech. It is my firmly held belief that they do it to be annoying.'). The visit to Welwyn’s Gaia Sphere is brief but memorable, especially when he realises it has reached puberty! The Aztales are very memorable, their never neding conflict and their pretense of humanity is frightening. The Astral Flower, one of the natural wonders of the universe, is beautifully depicted in print and it destruction is tragic but similarly beautiful. The cause of all these planets having their populations wiped out is all down to the loathsome Martin, who is 14,000 years old and (basically) wants a load of cash to settle down (with Trix!). He wants to sell all the planets on the Galactic Heritage list but the troublesome populations need to be dealt with first so he employed Prubert Gastridge to pretend to be the God of these worlds and introduce selfish memes into their meme pools that will ultimately bring about their destruction. Then Dittero Shandy can take the auctioneers on a tour of the galaxy and get the bidding rolling! Gotta love Fitz’s Poirot sequence; proving peoples innocence ('I’m sorry Vorshagg, as much as you’d like to be I’m afraid you are not the murderer'), someone pointing out absurdities ('What would a lava lamp want with a planet?') and revealing the murderer to be Dittero himself ('I had to get the highest possible price by any mean necessary! I am an estate agent!'). Absolute genius. The pain Trix goes through is horrible but her revenge ('Well Mr Mind Reader, listen to this, you disgusting, effluent creep. I would rather die than kiss you. I can think of nothing more revolting then you, your face and your body. You sick, nasty pervert. I think I’ll kick you again') is very sweet. Martin fulfils Astrabel’s prophecy that he will die on Gadrahadrahon and shoots him but Charlton is there to show the younger Astrabel his notes.

Funny bits: Zoberly Chesterfield’s breasts seem to be forming an escape attempt from her brassiere. Prubert Gastridge is a hilarious reminder of all those ex-Doctor Who actors…once famous and now relegated to doing panto at seaside resorts and voice work! When it comes to saving planets from spooky alien tentacles stuff the Doctor is so 'da man!' 'What sort of person leaves a nuclear bomb unguarded? I mean its just shoddy, what is the universe coming to?' / 'God has excellent time managing skills.' / 'Any sudden moves and its hors d’oevres!' All the chatter about Earth is hilarious, especially, 'No other planet in the universe has produced a Rolf Harris!' and 'Ooh a moon…what do they call it?' 'They call it "the moon".' The line, 'The people get the government they deserve' is marvellously apt. One chapter is called The Tomorrow Peephole. The running joke about Gallifrey is perhaps the funniest thing in a book full of laugh out loud jokes…talk about taking the p*ss in style!

Result: Screaming with imagination, excitement, fantastic jokes and with a sense of whimsy that is impossible to dislike, this is one of those rare Doctor Who books that deserves its chart topping position. Every page has gags, dialogue and plot revelations that sparkled and the sheer number of ideas thrown at you is breathtaking. It is deceptively simple to read but contains a lot to think about when you are done rolling about on the floor with laughter, much of the humour having a touch of horror about it. The regulars gleam with interest, especially Trix who (again) is treated to some fascinating developments. Johnny Morris is one of my top three Doctor Who authors, he makes his novels look so effortless and yet clearly a lot of work has been put in here. Sublime humour (“None may sup the sacred soup!”) and a twisty turny plot make this a ruthlessly entertaining book. A top five (of all ranges) book: 10/10

The Pirate Loop by Simon Guerrier

2011-07-30T23:49:00.002+01:00

Plot: The Doctor and Martha decided to unravel the mystery of the Starship Brilliant and during the course of their investigations they discover that death is the best deterrent to war and upon learning that they both lose their lives…

Mockney Wanderer: You have got to love the Doctor’s track record these days, only four hours after landing at Milky Pink City (love that name!) he has broken the robots programming, incited civil war and brokered a peace through the power of Mika. What a guy! Martha finds his wide grin and enthusiasm infectious. He is really disappointed that he solved the mystery of the Brilliant in five minutes, after all a good mystery should take at least an hour. Everything was brilliant with him. He’s something of a rogue vigilante for the missing Time Lords these days, he claims if they had access to the time vortex he would have to stop them. He loves fixing things. He’s always going on about being the last of the Time Lords but on this occasion he just about manages to stop himself in time. He normally needs other people to point out that he is rude. Upon learning that Martha had been killed his thoughts turn darkly to how he feels duty bound to find her body and take her home to Francine and face the family’s tide of grief and anger. Once it never would have occurred to him to brave something like that if he could avoid it. Authority types trusted the Doctor because he was so useful. The transmat was so painful the Doctor has to check to see if he has regenerated. Stepping over the TARDIS threshold always put him at ease.

Doctor in Training: Some really nice characterisation of Martha in this novel, even if at times her empathy with the underdog is turned up to extremes. However even that is subverted when she is stabbed in the gut by the very creature she was cooing over. That’ll learn yer. Martha can remember some miserable family holidays and Tish the Tart chatting up the creeps. This novel is set after Human Nature and Martha has come to accept that the Doctor does not feel the same way about her even if he does give her the odd look to suggest otherwise. Francine’s house smells of strong to and cleanliness. She remembers playing late poker with the porters at the hospital. She hates being pushed in front of other people, her mum used to do that at functions and declare her ‘the middle one.’ The Doctor likes it when she shows initiative. Martha is a real Doctor even if the Doctor isn’t and she feels the need to help people even if the precious laws of time say otherwise. She hates being the centre of attention, especially at parties, she prefers to be invisible. The Doctor thinks she is clever and able and has got lovely hair! Tish had taught Martha the art of torturing boys and making them wait. Thinking her dead the Doctor says she always made things better and was going to do brilliant things. Her Dad told her not to worry about things you can’t control, the other stuff would happy regardless. Now she has met the Doctor she cannot sit idle.

Foreboding: Martha ponders leaving the Doctor soon, for her own sake.

Twists: There is a lovely bit of nonsense at the beginning of the book before things get fatalistic where the Doctor and Martha liberate a colony of robots built to amuse. Its worthy of a Roger Langridge comic. The Starship Brilliant vanished on the cusp of a galactic war. There are mouthless slaves in the engine room who can take instructions and not answer back. The Brilliant travels impossibly, skimming like a stone across the time vortex, travelling huge areas and missing the distance! Time weed is the stuff that lives in the gaps between moments. The Badger Pirates are quite scary simply because they act like idiot kids that hang outside the co-op at night, children playing at murder. Martha stabbed in the gut is a shocking moment even when you are expecting it. I loved all the discussion about cheesy pineapple sticks because it manages to comment on the class system just as Mick Lewis’ Rags did but without the flaying and eviscerations. You know there is something wrong when Mrs Wingworth antagonises the terrorists until she is murdered and as though she has won the class war she looks down on them as they shoot her. I loved the image of the pirate ship being a huge spiky peach whose spikes were invading shuttles that shot away like arrows and pierced the belly of the ships they were looting. Brilliantly once the badgers realised that they couldn’t die and that their bodies would be discreetly returned they see this as a lucrative opportunity and murder each other endlessly to replicate their gold earrings! The Brilliant has a rough idea of how things are supposed to be and ensure it fixes all problems, even death. They are sand banked in time, the bridge crew in another time zone, only four minutes after the attack. If you take the transmat you would be torn between two separate time zones! The badgers were genetically created to be slaves under the name of nature preservation. Ironically whilst they are killing each other over and over they have discovered the perfect recipe for peace ‘If they can’t kill each other they might as well get on!’ In an exciting moment Martha is almost sucked into space and thinks that the badgers are going spare some lives, when they slip their ship from the gut of the ship and let them get ejected into space. The Doctor commits suicide hoping that the loop will start again and he will be brought back to life! He extends the loop around the pirate ship and the story ends beautifully with an agonising choice. Escape the loop and be free in a galaxy at war or stay, trapped and safe inside the loop where the party never ends.

Funny Bits: ‘Humans doing what you do, daring to be brown and blue and violet sky!’
You can have a drink inside an ‘immature Mim!’
When Martha goes to shake hands she is asked ‘Is there something wrong with your paw?’
‘I don’t mean to be rude but didn’t I see you die?’
‘Its good that we’re such a close family really, it makes it much easier to hand out the subpoenas.’

Result: A small chunk of loveliness, The Pirate Loop handles some pretty weighty science fiction ideas but manages to keep the story bubbly and manageable. Once you have finished the book you realise this book has about as much death as the average Jim Mortimore and two of the best moments feature both the Doctor and Martha meeting their end. The story stays in one location and you could see how this could be realised on screen with lots of timey wimey cleverness. I love how Guerrier comments on slavery, the class system and mortality whilst still managing to make you laugh at the ironic tragedy of the situation. The ending is especially good, leaving the reader with some quiet thoughts about what they would do in the same situation. A real winner, bursting with intelligence: 8/10

The Eighth Doctor Adventures

2011-07-26T00:25:00.004+01:00

Revolution Man: A mature piece of work and Paul Leonard’s best novel yet. Basing a book on drug taking was always going to be risky but Leonard pulls it off with real style, mainly because his prose has always had that sort of trippy, hypnotic feel to it that makes the scenes here of people intoxicated so powerful. The regulars are divine and it is astonishing to think it has taken this long to get them this right, but all three of them are vivid and used to drive the story along. The heavily bashed conclusion where the Doctor shoots Ed Hill is anything but disappointing, it’s the sort of sting in the tail these books should all have. Only the relative shortness of the book works against it, this is a storyline that deserves more time to let it breathe. All told, fantastic: 9/10

Full Review here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/06/revolution-man-by-paul-leonard.html

Dominion: Sporadically brilliant and dull. If you can get past the first terminally dull 50 pages things improve radically with some lovely gruesome set pieces, marvellous characterisation (you have a pair of excellent wannabe companions in Kerstin and Nagle, both competing for the position of replacement for Sam) and a great exploration of the Doctor’s character. Unfortunately the scenes set in the Dominion are mostly boring, a little too weird for my tastes and not giving you enough to care about. The prose is faultless but not risky enough (plain English…emphasis on the PLAIN) but for a debut novel this shows a lot of imagination and fresh ideas and marks Nick Walters as one to watch out for in the future: 6/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/06/dominion-by-nick-walters.html

Unnatural History: There are lots of plot threads, some good (the Faction stuff), some not so good (Griffin and his technobabble hell) and it feels really disjointed because for once in a OrmanBlum book the plot rivals the character stuff for importance. The threats are not intertwined; rather they are like a check list that is ticked off one by one. There are the usual genuine character moments that typify this author’s work but considering they usually torture the Doctor and his companions in horrific ways the three of them get off pretty lightly here, the book unwilling to take the appropriate risks. Dark Sam is a huge let down after so much build up, I was expecting something horrible but instead she just a slightly rougher version of the Sam we usually hang with. I once called this book actively bad and whilst that might have been a bit ingenuous it certainly isn’t good by any means and it is by far the weakest novel to be churned out by the great OrmanBlum machine. Awkward: 4/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/06/unnatural-history-by-kate-orman-and.html

Autumn Mist: Bland, clichéd characterisation and sluggish, awkward prose combine with a woefully inadequate plot to make this one of the weakest EDAs yet. It tries to mix the militaristic and the magical but the writer doesn’t have the skill to pull it off (weird because he does so wonderfully in The Eleventh Tiger) and the result is deathly shallow and worse, boring. This was coming out when McIntee was churning out book after book and his natural storytelling capability was bleeding dry, he doesn’t even get the regulars right here which is usually a given in his books. I cannot remember being excited once during this read: 2/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/07/autumn-mist-by-david-mcintee.html

Interference Book I: A book that feels really important, that is adult, intelligent and covers a lot of ground. Lawrence Miles is an ideas genius but once again he forgets to write plot around his massive concepts. It’s all set up and no pay off, 300 pages of character/ideas introductions with little happening but finding out more about them. It does get a little dry in places but the prose is mostly excellent with some excellent narrative devices there to make the journey easier (you’ve got lip reading binoculars, scripting, Sarah’s notes, an omnipresent narrator, one scene told from six POVs). Sam is dealt with very maturely, Sarah is amazingly written and it is worth reading just to find out what happens to poor Fitz. It’s a book that cleverly demands that you read the second half and really feels as if it is entering dangerous territory. It isn’t perfect but after a small lull in the EDAs it feels like a massive step in the right direction: 8/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/07/interference-by-lawrence-miles.html

Interference Book Two: A very satisfying wrapping up of the zillion clever ideas already set up in book one. The developments for the characters and the EDAs are astonishing, going beyond anything Virgin ever gave us in the ‘Oh my God I cannot believe that just happened to…’ stakes. Fitz’s story is horrible but brilliantly compelling and all the other characters get sparkling moments. The way the third and eighth Doctor’s life melts together is jaw dropping and the amount of surprises is unbeaten by any Doctor Who book to this point. I still have some reservations about the books length (it could have been a 400 page book with some of its flabbiness cut away) but for the sheer breadth of ideas (Miles is confirmed as the ultimate risk taker) this is one of the best Doctor Who novels ever written. A twisted, dangerous masterwork, which was severely underrated at the time and makes for impulsive reading in the twilight of the EDAs: 9/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/07/interference-by-lawrence-miles.html

The Blue Angel: Sheer genius from the first page to last, I adored every second of this complex, challenging slice of whimsy. Half of it refuses to make sense, it denies you a satisfying ending and in places it seems to be going off on tangents just for the hell of it but these are reasons to celebrate the book, as it takes risks with its narration and wins through with superb style. All the (brilliant) threads converge in the packed climax and then the whole thing stops, leaving the reader as gobsmacked as the Doctor at how the writers could be so cruel. I have rarely been as eager to find out what happened next or been as happy to be refused that knowledge, I pieced together my own ending with the wickedly playful twenty questions at the end. It is so nice to see the EDAs having some fun; this book is gorgeously written with some stunning set pieces and an infectious sense of adventure. Delightful: 10/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/08/blue-angel-by-paul-magrs-and-jeremy.html
The Taking of Planet Five: Great set pieces, terrible narrative, this is a book of a thousand wonderful ideas bound up in near-impenetrable prose. It took me two weeks to read this because it required so much concentration (my average time to read a book is two days) and in places I really struggled to go on. Saying that the best parts of this book are extremely brave, clever and rewarding. I’m sure with some tighter editing this would have been a lot more accessible but it wouldn’t feel half as risky or as unique as it does. This is a bold experiment in a time when the books were finally exploring exciting new ground; it reminds me of the best and the worst of Virgin’s output, challenging work but not recognisably Doctor Who. Maybe that’s a good thing though, I certainly don’t regret polishing this off and I may return to it again one day to see just how daring the books could be: 7/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/08/taking-of-planet-five-by-simon-bucher.html

Frontier Worlds: A huge step up from Kursaal, this is an entirely character driven book and on that level it is brilliant, with the regulars being fleshed out with some considerable skill. It is long past time the EDAs had a line up of regulars as good as this, kicking the ass of the Virgin ones because they are not lumbered with soppy Chris Cwej and hard bitch Ace. The plot is made up of lots of gripping and entertaining set pieces which ensure the piece roars by in fine style. It is a fun piece with loads of cool bits (if you get bored just read a few more pages and something enjoyable will happen) and the prose itself is pretty wholesome. Compassion and the axe is so cool it deserves mentioning again: 8/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/09/frontier-worlds-by-peter-anghelides.html

Parallel 59: A massively undervalued book. For once an EDA bothers to have an equal amount of solid characterisation AND plot and both prove to be quite surprising in places (Anya’s heartbreaking attempts to get Fitz’s attention, the sudden appearance of the ship from Haltiel). The book is a little flabby in the middle, having set up an intriguing mystery it runs on the spot for a little while offering hints and scraps at what is to come. I never felt this was the work of two separate writers and the prose is very readable, made even simpler by those friendly short chapters (48 in a 282 page book!). The regulars are handled very well and the last 80 pages rocket by effortlessly, full of excitement and great twists. Even the ending is perfect, tragic (the loss of life) and yet strangely uplifting (the loss of the militaristic regime and the suggestions of humility, rebuilding and reunion). I devoured this in a day, aware of a few problems but pretty impressed by the end result: 7/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/09/parallel-59-by-natalie-dellaire-and.html

The Shadows of Avalon: It might be a bit awkward in spots but that doesn’t matter at all as this is one of the few EDAs to this point to be touched by a sense of magnificence. For a start the prose is beautiful, rich with magical sights and dripping with emotion and the characterisation is the best we have seen in this series (outside of a Kate Orman novel) with the reader going through every stage of the Brigadier’s tragic road to recovery. The EDAs get a wonderful kick up the ass and it is so joyous to reach the last page (that is meant as a compliment) because I was desperate to know what happened next. It is the novel where the eighth Doctor is finally nailed, as a people person who saves the day by getting close to people and the dawning realisation that this fascinating character can actually work in print is the icing on the cake. Very encouraging: 9/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/10/shadows-of-avalon-by-paul-cornell.html

The Fall of Yquatine: Another winner in what is turning out to be a great little run of EDAs. Fitz and Compassion take centre stage again and rarely have book companions been this fascinating, powering their separate plotlines with real style. The set up of having to experience the attack on Yquatine twice is exploited for all the drama its worth and the book never wastes a page in getting into its characters heads and revealing new colours. You can feel how much Nick Walters has improved since Dominion, his plot and characterisation much sharper and clutches of prose that whip the mat from under your feet. It is only the odd cartoonish moment that lets this book down and some moments of overplayed drama. I gobbled this down in a day, it is a remarkably easy book to read and will definitely surprise you at least once. Another confident, well plotted entry and a book that not only exploits the treasures unearthed in The Shadows of Avalon but actually improves them: 8/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/11/plot-fitz-is-stranded-on-planet-of.html

Coldheart: Predictable and safe and yet somehow strangely likable, despite the feeling of laziness in the plotting and content it ticks all the right boxes for a ‘classic’ Doctor Who TV adventure (and lets face it, that’s what got us into this lark in the first place!). It is barely endowed with innovation and you can guess pretty much every single twist that’s coming, characterisation is pretty sketchy and the prose is nothing to shout home about but Trevor Baxendale clearly LOVES Doctor Who and his enthusiasm for his material is quite infectious. From no-where the last fifty pages are genuinely excellent, the book kicks into high gear, the deaths are extremely memorable and the plot is tied up very nicely. It is the weakest book for an age, which goes to show how good they have been lately because regardless of its unimaginativeness it is still enjoyable and passes the time: 6/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/11/coldheart-by-trevor-baxendale.html

The Space Age: Oh. My. God. This rubbed me up the wrong from the first scene and coming from the usually reliable pen of Steve Lyons it is a double shock. The premise is ridiculous and the book is full of stupid, illogical twists, the characterisation is poor (The Sandra/Alec thing could really have been exploited but it felt really unnatural) and the regulars barely register. There were a few moments where I perked up, mostly when Compassion turned up, even muted as she is here she pisses over all the other characters. This should have thrown in the slag heap the second it hit Steve Lyons desk, the prose is basic, storyline prosaic and considering its placing (in a pretty decent run of books) it sticks out like a sore thumb. Something could have been made of the Makers but not attached to this plot. One of the weakest EDAs I have read yet: 1/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/12/space-age-by-steve-lyons.html

The Banquo Legacy: I’m so glad this came along when it did, a complex and compelling read, the penultimate book of the Stephen Cole edited era and helping to round it off with some real style. It reminds me of one of those rare TV Doctor Who stories where everything comes together… and not a foot is placed wrong here from the mix of authors, the choice of narrative device, the pace, the setting, the plot, the gorgeous descriptive prose…it is a pleasure to read from the very first page. The amount of detail is extraordinary and the 18th Century is brewed up with atmospheric ease, I loved every single one of the characters and the horror content lives up to its name beautifully. The first two thirds are like the best Agatha Christie story ever written and the last third is pure Doctor Who madness done with real verve and nastiness. And the fact that it segues into the ongoing EDA arc unobtrusively but pushing along the plot and leaving you desperate to read the next book is the icing on the cake: 10/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2009/12/banquo-legacy-by-andy-lane-and-justin.html
The Ancestor Cell: A chaotic book, needlessly complex but full of fabulous ideas and ridiculously entertaining throughout. Considering what it has to achieve, it dovetails loads of stray plotlines together really well and nothing seems to have been forgotten and for a long term reader there is much here that is rewarding. I loved the pace of the book and found many scenes to be exhilarating and dramatic. Saying that it threatens to lose the reader under too much continuity in spots and the ending does feel like things have gotten out of control for the writers and they wanted to sweep the whole lot under the rug. The writing itself is pretty basic but the dialogue is scorching and many long awaited character confrontations are as electrifying as they should be. It needs one more draft to make it truly excellent (there are some bizarre plotting choices, hopping from one location to another, from one plotline to another) but I have to admit I raced through it in less than a day and found my excitement mounting exponentially towards the climax. A fascinating end to an uneven era, which encapsulates the best and the worst of its period: 8/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/01/ancestor-cell-by-peter-anghelides-and.html

The Burning: Glorious, a book that looks to the future (offering us a fantastic new take on the eighth Doctor) and looks back to the past (giving us a traditional Doctor Who story with ALL the trimmings) in all the best ways. This is Justin Richards’ most surprising book, predictable as hell (which he rarely is) but containing some truly atmospheric prose (which he rarely is either!). The characterisation is fantastic and the book is packed full of memorable moments, the enemy is vivid and terrifying and there are a number of deaths that really shock you. This is exactly how the eighth Doctor books should have originally started, with a genuinely unsettling Doctor, some delicious scares and lots of intelligent detail. I really couldn’t put this down. A re-format that works on every level, and leaves you hungry for the next instalment: 9/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/01/burning-by-justin-richards.html

Casualties of War: A debut novel to be proud of and a book which continues the Doctor’s 100 year exile with something very special. The story has a quartet of characters (Mary, Cromby, Briggs and Banham) who feel so real they bring the story alive with their thoughts and feelings. It’s a horror story with some real scares, potent moments that will leave you terrified to turn the light out and it isn’t afraid to examine the war with some psychological depth. The prose is gorgeous throughout and the setting comes alive in vivid detail. The real heart behind the book is the Doctor/Mary relationship which is in turns playful, awkward and heart-warming. It is a little light on plot but after some of the complex plotting of the Faction Paradox arc that comes as a most refreshing change. This is a novel about people and on that lever it is a total success: 9/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/02/casualties-of-war-by-steve-emmerson.html

Wolfsbane: One of the sparkling diamonds in the rough of an extremely inconsistent year for Doctor Who fiction (2003), this is one of those stories, which reminds you perfectly of why you fell in love with this silly show in the first place. It is blisteringly entertaining with lots well observed comedy moments but that never gets in the way of what is essentially a touching horror story about a lone werewolf. Some moments are astonishingly dark (especially when Sarah gets buried alive…) and Jacqueline Rayner’s descriptive prose is at its peak, immersed in nature and magic. The potentially catastrophic idea of pairing up the eighth Doctor with Harry is pulled off like a dream and they read like they were made for each other. The dual plotlines add suspense to the tale, Sarah discovering more and more horrors just ahead of us experiencing them! Top it all of with fantastic dialogue all around and you have a little gem which rightfully belongs in this (so far) astonishing Earth arc: 9/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/02/wolfsbane-by-jacqueline-rayner.html

The Turing Test: Easily the best eighth Doctor book to this point and perhaps (in terms of literary achievement) the best Doctor Who novel of all time. It comes as a shock that something this good comes from the pen of Paul Leonard, not because he is a bad author (far from it) but because he is usually such a strong plot writer rather than a character man and the reason this book works so fantastically is because it examines its characters in such complex and probing ways. Leonard captures three distinct voices beautifully and the dialogue and observations they make take this book into a world of its own. The Doctor has never been more prominent or fascinating and his comeuppance at the climax is both poignant and rewarding. The plot starts off slow but builds to an incredibly memorable finish and the atmosphere of the second world war is captured more atmospherically than any other Doctor Who book I can remember. The eighth Doctor adventures have struck a pot of gold with the Caught on Earth Arc and this is the pinnacle of a five-book stretch of wonderful stories. Stark, brutal and unexpectedly emotional, I love this novel to pieces and ask myself what you are doing reading this silly thread when you could be immersed in its pages. In a way I’m very pleased Uncle Terry is up next because I’m running out of superlatives: 10/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/02/turing-test-by-paul-leonard.html

Endgame: And it was going so well…but I suppose we had to be brought back to Earth sooner or later and be reminded that this is a Doctor Who book series where childish, patronising storytelling runs free. This is a quick read if you are after nothing more than fluff but the Earth Arc to this point have been so much more than that. Terrance barely injects any effort into this; it feels as though he reeled it off in a day or two with his standard descriptions and plot mechanics. There is some fun to be had seeing the Doctor meeting up with so many historical figures but much of their characterisation is piss poor, especially compared to the depth of the previous book. The Players are hardly the most fascinating villains to begin with and their worldwide struggle could have been far more interesting than this cartoonish game they play here. A huge misstep for the range, shallow and uninvolving for the most part and wasting time when there is clearly so much more to the Doctor’s exile to explore: 3/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/03/endgame-by-terrance-dicks.html

Father Time: Powerful, deep, beautifully written and populated with characters so real you feel as if you know them, this is something very special indeed. It is full of elements that feel traditionally Doctor Who (the alien dictator/rebels conflict, robots, lasers, spaceships…) and yet there is so much here that is fresh and interesting (the heartfelt relationships, Miranda’s coming of age, setting the book over a decade of history) and the mix is quite intoxicating. Peppered with beautiful moments (the rose petal tower, the hover discs rising over the snowy village), genuine emotion (I defy you not to feel something when Debbie is killed!) and cracking dialogue throughout (“The gun works…but it is useless”), this is how good every Doctor Who book should be. This is the EDA equivalent of Human Nature, it feels absolutely right in every respect. I adore it: 10/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/04/father-time-by-lance-parkin.html

Escape Velocity: Oh. My. God. Who on Earth thought closing one of the best arcs in any novel range with this ****e? Lance Parkin showed us how traditional Doctor could be done in the novel series with his beautiful Father Time and now Colin Brake demonstrates perfectly why the books shouldn’t mimic the TV series too much. This is bland muck; written so a six year old would feel insulted, with some seriously shallow characterisation, a yawnathon plot, some tedious aliens and a climax that is awful it has to be read to be believed. As an introduction to Anji it sucks (and probably has much to do with her reputation) because it is so poor and she reads as nothing more than a character profile. I cringed with embarrassment throughout most of this book, wanting for it to be over so I could move on to something more interesting. A serious error of judgement, ending the arc on this one, leaving a bitter taste in the mouth after all that sweetness: 2/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/05/escape-velocity-by-colin-brake.html

Earthworld: Jac Rayner is clearly finding her feet as an author but there is so much here that is good it is clear she will go on to great things. Her treatment of the regulars is exemplary and she manages to update the new readers about the Doctor and Fitz and re-introduces (as a real person) Anji with effortless ease. She does this without resorting to cheap tricks, getting us close to these people and their insecurities and allowing us to see how much they have lost but how much they gained by finding each other. The book is blissfully funny in places and the main plot regarding the trips is well worth sticking with for the heartbreaking conclusion. The only criticism I have is the prose, which is far too chatty for its own good and the plot, which is thin but made up for by the top-notch characterisation. The end result is an extremely entertaining book, one that clears up a lot of backstory for the regulars and sets them forward for some fab adventures. I found it pretty addictive, especially in the excellent second half and fell in love with Anji all over again: 8/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/05/earthworld-by-jacqueline-rayner.html

Fear Itself: One of the best Doctor Who books. A rock superbly plotted thriller, which is loaded with twist after twist that will leave you reeling at its conclusion. There are loads of exciting set pieces, a cast of guest characters that come alive like you wouldn’t believe, a host of fantastic, imaginative ideas, suspense and drama. All this and there is still room to take three fascinating regulars, put them through hell, get up close and personal, and see them emerge stronger and more interesting than they were. The amount of detail that has gone into writing this is rare for a Doctor Who book, the three time zones come alive with astonishing clarity and the prose itself is full of great observations, strong descriptions and a terrifying pace. It really is one of the best Doctor Who books you are likely to read and the one I would personally recommend to non fans who love science fiction. A blistering read: 10/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/05/fear-itself-by-nick-wallace.html

Vanishing Point: Reading much fan opinion (stupid me) I expected this to be terrible so imagine my delight at discovering how good it was! My only real complaints surface at the end when you think through some of the answers that were given and realise how underdeveloped they were but considering all the other treats on offer that is hardly the greatest sin. It is surprisingly sensitive in places with some lovely character work that really draws you close to these people and starts to exploit the great potential in the engaging Doctor/Fitz/Anji team. The Doctor has rarely been this fascinating in print. There is much intelligent dialogue too, religious debate that really gets you thinking and some world building that proves quite detailed when seen through the eyes of Etty and Dark, two thoroughly convincing, flawed (in a good way!) characters. The pace of the book is great and there are some wonderfully fun set pieces. Stephen Cole might not be the most sophisticated writer on the planet but by God he can spin a good yarn and ensure that there is never a dull moment and some gob smackingly good ones allow the way: 8/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/06/vanishing-point-by-stephen-cole.html

Eater of Wasps: A thoroughly engaging read and packed full of grisly moments that make you go “eugh!” Probably the most traditional Doctor Who story the EDAs have offered up yet but it doesn’t suffer in the way others in this vain have because Trevor Baxendale has latched onto the two elements that make it work, a terrifying possession and an unpredictable Doctor. Lets face it the (guest) characterisation is pretty basic and the location is straight out of the Barry Letts book of Who but those things just don’t matter because the wasps are the star of this book and they are just plain terrifying. There is an abundance of sickly moments that made me squirm and the action never lets up, not for one moment, piling problem after problem. Trevor’s prose is much improved and Rigby’s horrific transformation is described in disgusting detail. The time travellers add another dimension to the book and offer tantalising glimpse into the future. Its so nice to have a book this unpretentious, one that isn’t trying to prove a point or make you go ‘ooh isn’t that clever’ symptomatic of so many EDAs, this is just a bloody good read from cover to cover. Enough said: 9/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/07/eater-of-wasps-by-trevor-baxendale.html

The Year of Intelligent Tigers: What an amazing book this is. Kate Orman effortlessly breathes music into her story and creates a world that comes alive in so many ways, more than making up for the fact that we have stuck on Earth for so long. The book is peppered with beautiful descriptions, evocative locations and startling emotion. The regulars are defined magnificently, especially the Doctor who is such a far cry from his earlier persona (for the better) it is impossible to reconcile the two. His negotiations between two explosive camps and his despair at their violent reactions is riveting to read. The Tigers, an idea that could have been so naff, turn out to be one of the best ‘alien’ races we have ever met and the mystery surrounding their origins is well worth sticking around for. I read this in half a day, unable to put it down, captivated by the striking narration and vivid characterisation. It’s a unique piece, nuanced and sensitive, slow and sensual. My favourite Kate Orman book by miles: 10/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/08/year-of-intelligent-tigers-by-kate.html

The Slow Empire: I just don’t know what to say. It is not good. There are flashes of imagination and the some cracking jokes but this doesn’t make up for 240 odd pages of nonsense we have to endure. There are some great ideas in here but they are wasted on a slooooow plot and writer who is so far up his own arse he thinks he can get away with prevaricating with pointless asides over and over and over and treat characters as a bunch of random observations. I was waiting for a revelation that would tie this altogether and make it all make sense (in that it isn’t just a bunch of random observations shoved in between two covers…the front one of which is utterly hideous too!) but it never happened and the answers we do get are pretty lame considering the everlasting wait for them. Saying all that, Dave Stone has a mastery over language which verges on the genius with lots of horrifically complicated words cropping up…its just a shame he didn’t bother to use them to write a plot with characters and a point. A huge let down for the range, Stone’s unique view of Doctor Who can be a breathless, invigorating experience but this isn’t going to please either camp, it is neither brilliantly camp and insane or purely traditional and functional…its just sort of there. Achieving nothing: 2/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/08/slow-empire-by-dave-stone.html

Dark Progeny: The two problems with Dark Progeny are that after the arresting opening chapter nothing happens until the climax AND it writes out its regulars for 2/3rds of the action, two huge errors that leave the middle sections of this book a real slog. A shame because the plot concerning the alien children is genuinely involving and the characterisation of the Doctor is once again fabulous. Emmerson’s guest characters hold up most of the book, especially Josef and Veta who get a sub plot that deserved much more attention. Some scenes are gorgeously written (such as the telepathic Anji hearing Fitz and the Doctor’s thoughts) which annoys because there is so little plot to get your teeth into but with some major tightening up this could have been superb. There are some wonderful concepts introduced at the end that could have done with exploring further too (the Gaia planet). All in all, a bit of struggle to enjoy because you can see clearly how it could be done so much better: 5/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/09/dark-progeny-by-steve-emmerson.html

The City of the Dead: Easily one of the best eighth Doctor book to this point and strong contender for the best original Doctor Who book, this is everything you could want from a novel and more. Lloyd Rose’s prose is a revelation, intelligent, sensual, evocative and risky…she brings New Orleans to life with a real sense of beauty and detail, the city of the dead opens up around you within this books pages. She plants the Doctor at the centre of the novel and allows us closer to him than ever before, his characterisation is absolutely phenomenal throughout and it is clear that although he leaps over this particular hurdle there are still more horrors to come. The plotting is airtight; the characters (even the smaller ones like Flood, Thales and Pierre Bal) come alive in unexpected ways and the levels of emotion the book expresses is extremely potent. Half the time it doesn’t read like Doctor Who at all and that can only be a good thing, this is a stunning novel that restores absolute faith in the range after a couple of clunkers: 10/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/09/city-of-dead-by-lloyd-rose.html

Grimm Reality: Imaginative, with a real sense of dark whimsy, I’m glad I gave this book another chance because I have been far too hard on it in the past. It takes a while to figure out Albert but when you do there is a lot of fun to be had here, especially being able to see these dirty fairytales, kids stories seen from the POV of adults is fascinating. The regulars are captured beautifully and get loads to do and the plot is full of memorable sights, challenges and riddles. Against that the book keeps reverting to an interminably boring sub plot on a merchants ship that takes you away from all the fun on the planet and the separate voices of two authors can be easily discerned as the book pulls you in far too many directions to be entirely coherent. Packed with laughs and creativity though, I would still give it a thumbs up and I adored the sections of the plot that lapsed into fairytale style prose: 8/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/10/grimm-reality-or-marvellous-adventures.html

The Adventuress of Henrietta Street: Terrifying (in terms of its content and in terms of its content) and unforgettable, this is the ultimate eighth Doctor experience. Defining the exciting, unpredictable new universe the Doctor has found himself in (delightful because Miles has clearly put some real thought into what horrors might lie in a universe without the Time Lords) like no other; this is the sort of book that has been crafted, not written. Packed with sickening images, detailed historical atmosphere, adult relationships and amazing developments, this is my favourite Doctor Who book. Bar none. This is Lawrence Miles’ true masterpiece and the highest level of sophistication the EDAs have ever reached. Challenging and intelligent, it doesn’t get much better than this: 10/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/10/adventuress-of-henrietta-street-by.html

Mad Dogs and Englishmen: Delightfully funny and extremely comfortable with its own campness, this is a marvellously brisk read after the fairly torturous Adventuress. You can’t really take any of it seriously but that’s not what we’re here for, Paul Magrs knows how to show you a good time better than any other Doctor Who writer and I haven’t giggled this much in a long time. The regulars are at their all time loosest and we really get to see enjoying themselves and the guest characters (especially the marvellous Flossie and the Noel Coward) all contribute much entertainment. There is quite a complex little plot rattling along here when you dig beneath the candyfloss surface, which ties up beautifully at the end. It isn’t as richly written as The Scarlet Empress or as experimental and risky as The Blue Angel but it is far funnier and easier to read than either of them, making it Magrs’ most accessible book. As long as you can accept the poodles… Another corker in what is turning out to be another very good little run of books: 9/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/10/mad-dogs-and-englishmen-by-paul-magrs.html

Hope: Clearly the work of an author trying to impress on his debut solo novel, there are loads of great ideas in here and the plot never stops developing. Hope itself is a beautifully well thought out Doctor Who location full of danger and atmosphere, a deadly setting for this tale of betrayal and conquest. It’s almost a shame that Silver has to become such a predictable villain in the end because he is such a memorable character and for once there is a character that matches the charisma and intelligence of the Doctor. The prose is a little choppy in places and the plot does hop about a bit but none of these matters because the character work is brilliant. Anji is finally treated to a novel that pushes her centre stage and she is every bit as compelling and thoughtful as I new she would be, Mark Clapham should be extremely proud of taking this much loathed character and making her seem more real and complex than any other writer. Her plot brought tears to my eyes at the end. All in all, a compelling read, not an absolute classic (there’s a bit too much going on and with an extended page count it could be explored more thoroughly) but a confident, intelligent read with plenty to admire and enjoy: 8/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/11/hope-by-mark-clapham.html

Anachrophobia: The most ingenious use of time travel yet, this is a hugely imaginative and terrifying tale which recaptures all the shadowy horror of those Troughton base under siege stories with an extra dash of gore that makes all the more scary. The book is brilliantly written with a well thought out plot, some marvellously spine tingling moments and spot characterisation of the regulars. The shift of location at the climax is well placed and the Doctor’s final solution is excellent. It is a little hard going in places because the tone is unremittingly grim but I refuse to criticise a book on the grounds that it sticks to its guns (to frighten) and doesn’t try to add any superfluous ‘entertaining’ moments. The last two pages provide a final, electrifying shock and top a nourishing read, full of graphic imagery and a terrorizing atmosphere. It says something about Jonathan Morris' writing that this is the weakest of his three Doctor Who books and its still bloody excellent: 9/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2010/11/anachrophobia-by-jonathan-morris.html

Trading Futures: About as deep as a very tiny puddle, this is the perfect holiday Who novel. There is a fast paced, easily digestible plot, marvellous switches of location, witty lines and some damn good world building. I skipped through it in less than a day, at a loss at how wonderful the team of the Doctor, Fitz and Anji are these days. One thing niggled me, I’m not the greatest Bond fan (which this book is heavily based on) but that is a matter of personal preference rather than a comment on the books quality. Lots of action for those who enjoy it, some cool hardware on display and a great world encompassing war being brewed…its pleasing to note this is one Bond story with a bit of brains, with Anji dissecting the conflict and the players motivations. Enjoyable and funny, although the space Rhino’s were perhaps one joke too many: 7/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/01/trading-futures-by-lance-parkin.html

The Book of the Still: How can a book imbued with this much energy have such a mundane first half? The drug-induced prose guides you through effortlessly but it contains nothing but a number of protracted chase sequences! Once the Unnoticed arrives, so does the plot and the second half is excellent, filled with amazing scenes that will make you laugh, cry and tear your head out with the sheer madness of it! This feels like Dave Stone for a more accessible audience and has all the humour, imagination and mind boggling moments that made the former author so popular but connects to its audience with a real sense of heart too, which makes all the difference. Forget the confusing climax and get high on the wealth of memorable moments and hair raising writing style: 8/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/01/book-of-still-by-paul-ebbs.html

The Crooked World: The last time I reviewed a Steve Lyons book in the mighty eighth Doctor marathon I considered the worst Doctor Who book I had ever read so how odd that his next entry should be such an amazing piece of writing. Its one of the all time classic Doctor Who books, such a fantastic idea and pulled off with such incredible style. The writing is extremely adult without ever being patronising but still manages to thrill the child in you, with loads of laugh out loud hilarious scenes. The regulars are vital to the plot and each contribute much to the story and characterised (once again) with supreme confidence and the secondary characters all transcend their stereotypes to become living, breathing people who it is impossible not to fall in love with (even the villains). It shares some themes with the film Pleasantville and is just as touching and magical, coming of age never seemed so frightening and delightful. I am extremely pleased with the imagination and humour the range is displaying at the moment, this is another little masterpiece in a consistently excellent run of books: 10/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/02/crooked-world-by-steve-lyons.html

History 101: A book which is not afraid of flaunting its intelligence and will leave those behind who wont put the right amount of effort. Saying that, the rewards a manifold; a complex and fascinating plot, some startling ideas, a brilliantly original way of going about exploring a historical event, another excellent use of the regulars… Following hot on the heels of a book that couldn’t be more different, this is an equally thoughtful book which prefers to contemplate rather than thrill and succeeds in intimately exploring the many viewpoints of the Spanish Civil War and continue the eighth Doctor arc plot with Sabbath proving as elusive and dangerous as ever. People say the book has a dry edge to it with documental rather than sensual prose but isn’t that rather the point? By allowing us to see history from so many viewpoints the plot does veer off in far too many directions but I doubt it would be as interesting without this unusual technique. It is a striking debut, layered with meaning and educational, I took my time with it and found it revealing experience: 8/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/02/history-101-by-mags-l-halliday.html

Camera Obscura: A magnificent novel, one of the best Doctor Who books published and a really tasty historical with so many memorable passages I would be recounting much of the book to list them all. After you have finished it you realise that the plot is actually quite thin, nothing more than a protracted chase after a time machine but how the book works its way into the running arc of the EDAs turns it into so much more. This book succeeds on the astonishing strength of characterisation and brutally thoughtful moments. The Doctor and Sabbath are explored in considerable depth and any scene featuring the pair is instantly classic, bouncing off each other beautifully. The prose is stimulating, the sheer beauty of the writing results in an effortless read. It the pinnacle of a great run of books, matching Rose’s debut step for step and being the all round best achiever of the ranger since Adventuress. Powerful and involving, read this now: 10/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/03/camera-obscura-by-lloyd-rose.html

Time Zero: Shockingly brutal and gripping, this novel has three equally good action plots wrapping around each other beautifully. Written by the range editor, the regulars are every bit as fulfilling as you would expect and given a healthy dose of development. The tone is certainly dramatic, helped enormously by the reverse numbered chapters, which give the constant impression the book is building up to something. Some people complain about the heavy science in the last third but to be honest that was my favourite part, with some mind-expanding concepts being used to strengthen the character drama. The plotting is flawless and the content very adult and the whole thing is enhanced by that superb, almost photographic, cover. Easily the best thing Justin Richards has written to date; I love this book just for the stuff with Anji on the plane: 9/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/04/time-zero-by-justin-richards.html

The Infinity Race: The Infinity Race has the unfortunate feeling of being made up as it goes along, the author has sections where he is full of ideas and others where he is bored tit-less and can’t wait to finish the thing off. Consequently the resulting novel is hilarious, boring, imaginative and slow. The switching narrative is distinctive but annoying and it feels like Messingham is trying to be too clever for his own good. Compared to the drama of the last four books this is distinctly substandard with huge stretches of nothing happening to prolong the (admittedly) dramatic climax. I cannot bring myself to loathe the book as individual scenes are pretty good (such as the nasty rich folk riot and the native hunt) but as a whole they just don’t gel as well as they should. Sabbath has lots of great descriptions but this is the first time he has really come across as a pantomime villain. In true season eight fashion, you know he will be back in the next story: 4/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/04/infinity-race-by-simon-messingham.html

The Domino Effect: Illogical, unsubtle and so stupid in places it defies logic; this has to be one of the sloppiest Doctor Who books ever written. A fascist state, altered reality, history re-written; clichés all and yet the setting is the strongest thing about the book and its unflinching brutality is quite engrossing in places. The characterisation is weaker than my boyfriend’s tea (yuck) and the prose hardly deserves the term, it is practically the transcript of an untransmitted script! Marvel at the banal dialogue, gasp at the inexplicable climax (how the hell does killing one man destroy an entire reality?) and remind yourself that Doctor Who books are just for really stupid kids after all. Almost so bad its good in places, this continues the shocking decline started in The Infinity Race and proves that this whole altered universe idea was really misconceived: 3/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/05/domino-effect-by-david-bishop.html

Reckless Engineering: A massive improvement on the last two books, this is a deftly written piece that takes the alternative reality idea by the horns and shakes so hard lots of interesting ideas and dilemmas pop out. The setting is amazing, a cruel and stark post apocalyptic Bristol lovingly described by Nick Walters in some atmospheric passages. The first half is a strong character piece with some terrifying set pieces and the second, whilst not quite as gripping, is a fascinating trip into temporal madness. The regulars really get put through the wringer here and it is nice to see Fitz given some healthy development, although the dangerous Doctor is a great improvement on the last two books too. The only really annoying aspect is the ending, which is inexplicable and insultingly easy. Despite this, I will still champion this book for its strong prose, excellent dialogue and cleverly crafted plot. This is the book which should have come directly after Time Zero: 8/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/05/reckless-engineering-by-nick-walters.html

The Last Resort: The trouble with The Last Resort is that it refuses to conform to standard narrative…you don’t follow characters along a linear storyline. What you have to acccept is that from one scene to the next you might not just be reading about the same character, but a different version of the same character. A fascinating device, confusing as hell, but brilliantly exploiting the alternative universe concept. What makes this book so special is what makes it so impenetrable, if you don’t dissect this hardcore puzzle book completely you’ll miss out on all the rewards. A wealth of brain bursting ideas, a satisfying fractured plot (of which the threads link together beautifully) and a genuine adrenaline rush of tragedy, sacrifice and hopelessness. The stakes have never been this high before and it is pleasing to see some real pay off from this misguided arc. The last third is my favourite, packed with imagination and shocking images. Breathtakingly experimental: 9/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/last-resort-by-paul-leonard.html

Timeless: Just as the NAs worked when they concentrated on building their own version of the future, the EDAs do their best work on Earth in domestic settings (Vampire Science, Revolution Man The Banquo Legacy, The Burning, Casualties of War, The Turing Test, Father Time, City of the Dead, Advenuress, Camera Obscura, The Sleep of Reason, The Deadstone Memorial and The Gallifrey Chronicles are some the best this range has produced). The Doctor has a cast of wonderfully trendy twenty-somethings here backing him up (Anji, Fitz, Trix, Stacey and Guy work astonishingly well together) and the urban surroundings add a touch of reality to a range, which was slowly going SF crazy (or possibly just crazy). It is another richly plotted story, Timeless has lovely clues planted everywhere and plot threads dovetail together effortlessly. Finally this mighty eighth Doctor arc is building up to its conclusion and the second half of the book is one energetic twist after another (The Time Lords! Sabbath’s plan!). Add to this mix some sizzling dialogue, interesting characterisation (for her last story Anji gets to shine) and lots of moments that remind you how marvellous the central character can be (the Doctor on the boat), this is a confident and stylish piece of storytelling and about as far from the tired hackneyed range as is reputed: 9/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/timeless-by-stephen-cole.html

Emotional Chemistry: It pains me to punish an author for effort but there is far too much going on in Emotional Chemistry, with a flourish of characters, settings and events that command the readers attention and Forward (agonisingly) injects sumptuous detail into each of them. I just could not concentrate so hard on everything with equal vigour and lost myself in a few places. This is a fascinating experiment with many great, great moments and another excellent plot, which weaves brilliantly through (and justifies) its three time zones. The prose is extremely imaginative and thoughtful, so noticeably colourful that it adds an extra layer of polish to the book. The characterisation rocks and there isn’t one person who rings false (if only there weren’t so bloody many of them!) and the regulars all shine apart from each other, especially Trix who has the ability to convince in all three time periods. Thick with incident, this is a flawed but worthwhile attempt at capturing the feel of Russian literature, unfairly placed between two arc novels and well worth taking your time with: 7/10

Full Review Here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/06/emotional-chemistry-by-simon-forward.html

Sometime Never…: Just because its written by Justin Richards that doesn’t make it a bad thing and whilst the grand baddies who have been plaguing the universe these few years or so are revealed to be a bunch of old crystal men who are hardly thrill a minute, that is perhaps the only major disappointment in this otherwise brilliantly climatic novel. It is perhaps the best-plotted Doctor Who book I have ever read, re-reading it proves how not a scene is wasted, every moment is vital to the overall story. The settings here might be small scale but the amount of Doctor Who fiction this encompasses is extraordinary, dragging in plot points from years back (and PDAs too) and turning the entire range into a cohesive whole. The ideas are mind blowing and the revelations in the last third reward the reader for being so patient with this arc and the range(s) in general. Sabbath gets the exit he fully deserves, the Doctor doesn’t escape scott free and there is a real surprise waiting in the last scene (which could potentially annoy but I found it charming). The prose and characterisation is not the best the EDAs can offer (both were better in Emotional Chemistry) but I am willing skip over them because this book got me so damn excited and involved. As a lover of deconstructing narrative, the way everything falls into place is quite, quite stunning: 9/10

Full Review here: http://docohosreviews.blogspot.com/2011/07/sometime-never-by-justin-richards.html

Halflife by Mark Michalowski

2011-07-25T11:38:00.002+01:00

Plot: The Doctor’s lost his bloody memory again! He’s smoking, he’s drinking, he’s swearing and eyeing up the girls. Fitz on the other hand is acting all intelligent and casual, which is a sure sign that something is up. Cut loose from her friends Trix is tricked into surrendering herself to an alien control device, her desire for change resulting in her never being herself again…

Top Doc: Now this is what I’m talking about! There are some very interesting things being done with the Doctor, all of which work a charm (especially coming after the dangerous, doom and gloom Doctor of the alternative universe arc). Firstly his memory loss allows the series to finally dismiss all those folks who whinge on about when he’s going to get his memory back. He isn’t, and this would have been the perfect opportunity. What is explored is why he doesn’t want his memories back, even when they are offered to him on plate. He is happy with who he is and where his life is and he doesn’t want to get his old life back only to discover he is not a very nice person. He knows he’s done something bad, something big so it does make him seem like something of a coward but the way he explains himself, he makes his amnesia sound like blessing (something of a spring clean). He doesn’t want to be who he was, he wants to be who he is. Another fascinating experiment taken here is his mind swap with Fitz which allows the Doctor an intimate look at how uncertain and scared Fitz is in their adventures and he realises just how lucky he is to have loyal friends who stick by him no matter what he drags them into. This is all excellent, healthy development and long overdue. His status in this book as an offworlder endows him with all the charisma of a sewage worker coming off his shift. He and Fitz are boyishly enthusiastic together. Losing his memory here is a pleasure because it is the most relaxed and happy we have seen the Doctor in a long time. His Fitz like qualities, dying for a ciggie, eyeing up Camalee and swearing a lot (Too bloody right you’re not!”) are all hilarious. He is just a big child and he LOVES weird. After speaking to Madame Xing he starts to remember Miranda’s death and grips the table, desperate to escape the memory. We discover that after he death he brooded in the TARDIS for days. He waves a spell around his companions that makes them inconspicuous. There is a wonderful scene where he is all energy, stealing a pavement artists chalks and sketches away part of the plot. He has a lightness, a casual disregard for proprietary and formality. One minute he was the laid back bon viver, the next all dashing scientist and man of mystery…and the next he is just a nutter! The Doctor likes humans because of their hunger for what they don’t have, their potential. He gets to experience real fear and indecision and he doesn’t like it one bit. He acknowledges that he, Fitz and Trix are hardly a model family.

Scruffy Git: If they were to rely on his wits they were doomed. This book has been a long time coming, the one which reminds us just why Fitz has lasted so damn long and why he is such a special friend to the Doctor. There has been some animosity between Fitz and the Doctor of late and it was high time it was addressed; finally they start having fun together again! He is not a coward and can stand his ground. For various reasons (Interference, Earthworld), Fitz’s memory has become a bit vague about the huge details in his past but thanks to gaining some of the Doctor’s personality it here it pushes them to surface. He remembers the Doctor destroying Gallifrey and his own personal history where he was ‘remembered’. Such a revelation is this last one, he manages to use it to help create an ingenious scheme and save the day and although being remembered might have made him throw up in the past he is surprisingly comfortable with it now. At the end Fitz asks Tain to not give the Doctor the memory of back of him destroying Gallifrey, he decides it is his turn to carry around the heavy stuff and he wants to protect the Doctor from the truth. Fitz hopes Trix will warm to them soon.

Identity Tricks: Oh my God! It was quite surprising just how much why find out about Trix and this easily the best adventure with her yet, one which using her desire for changing identities to create some top drama. When he is not finding a use for her or telling her at the next stop she would have to leave, the Doctor pretty much ignores her. Fitz has taken to her in a puppyish way. She is not good with bodily injuries. She bathes and takes care of Fitz when he is found lying half dead out side the TARDIS. She hates feeling conspicuous and is just starting to feel at home in the TARDIS, although she is still awkward around the Doctor. She had never felt so coward, so ashamed and so shit than when they leave the night beast to be ripped apart by the xenophobic Esperons. She doesn’t ‘do’ kids, a parental role is not one she would like to take on permanently. She feels frustrated that on Espero she has no choice but to be herself, she knows she gets obsessed with role-playing but as long as she has got to Caucasian she might as well be Trix. The thought of Reo’s shape changing toy excites her. She has never been happy with her body feeling it is too mousey, too flat, too dull. Trix feels a longing for Fitz in this story. Taking (stealing) interesting things was somewhere between a hobby and an obsession with her. Trix was so desperate to be anyone other than herself, she realises that she will never be herself again as Reo starts to delete her personality. The thought of never having the option to be herself again terrifies her. There is a lovely dilemma at the climax which means if the bioship gets his wish to commit suicide, Trix will die as well and it is good to see the Doctor agonise over her potential death, we finally get to see the depth of feeling he has for Trix. She refuses to mourn the death of Joshua, she learnt a long time ago that that didn’t bring the dead back to life. She hopes that she has become a hard-nosed bitch. Shit happens, especially around the Doctor and she accepts that she is going to have to get used to the death if she was to keep travelling with him. If you did bad stuff you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder. Never, she thought, the past is never going to catch up with me.

Foreboding: You have Fitz re-discovering about Gallifrey and himself, which sets him up for his confrontation with the Doctor in The Gallifrey Chronicles. Trix’s identity crisis continues to be explored in The Tomorrow Windows. Madame Xing’s offer would be brought up again in The Gallifrey Chronicles.

Twists: There is an intriguing first chapter where an alien is discovered, shot and his spaceship burnt. The Doctor’s explanation of what happened at the palace, “ There was something about the way they said ‘question me later’ that sounded like ‘beat me with sticks’ so I decided to leg it.” The Doctor has lost his memory…again! And Fitz! The set up on Espero is beautiful, with God giving them a second chance at Eden, the Ecumenical Council moving to the planet and taking their faith but not their history. The climate was too hot, the minerals too deep and the neighbouring planets shunned them and as such Espero withdrew into something racist and deeply religious. There is a lovely discussion between the Doctor and Father Roberto which is about the Esperons and their situation but is really discussing the current status of the Doctor in the range (“How can we get where we are going if we don’t know where we’ve been?” “We can’t live in the past forever.” “It would be nice if we could start living in the present.”). The ground starts to get covered in seething bubbling goo…the Gaian wave is well foreshadowed, breaking down everything and building it up again. When the Doctor meets with Madame Xing it is clear that she is Compassion (her voice was female but there was a mechanical edge to it) and she offers him all his memories back (which she would have…see The Gallifrey Chronicles). A night beast is casually ripped to pieces. Trix is cornered in an alley by three drunken Esperons who get off on beating up alien shit like her. The scenes where Trix is trapped within her own mind by Reo are genuinely suffocating. Sensimi has been training a night beast to associate food with the smell of her mother and brother. The Imperator has been offered immortality by Mr Trove. The scene with the maggots eating through the forest and the forest eating the maggots is very memorable. There are some lovely concepts here, none especially original but presented in a fresh way. Tain is a bioship that landed on Espero a year ago, fleeing a war between the Oon and the Makers. The Oon implanted a Trojan device in Tain to subvert his systems and turn him to their side and make soldiers for them and he has been fighting it ever since. He has fought 412 battles and created 95,000 soldiers. He has activated his Gain phase, which will turn the entire planet into a massive gestalt entity, the Oon and the Makers will either have to leave him or kill him, either way he won’t be their killing device anymore. The Doctor has to decide whether to let Tain die (thus killing Trix) or letting him become a slave of war again but Fitz comes up with the scheme to download Tain’s memory into Camalee’s mokey thus allowing them to mind rub the Trojan out of existence before downloading him back. The drawback is that Tain loses most of his memories, which in itself is a good thing because it allows him to have fresh start, unencumbered with the memories of the pain he has caused in the past.

Funny bits: This is a book full of sunshine and hard not to like. The guest cast are highly amusing, especially the Imperator, Tannalis. He gets all the best lines (“It was a beautiful day until you dragged your raddled out carcass in here!” and “I’m too old for all that jiggy jiggy business! Ask my wife, the shrivelled up old mare!”). The Doctor shouting, “Sod off!” is much funnier than it should be! There is a dream sequence where the Doctor and Fitz are standing naked in the TARDIS rubbing butt cheeks together which is so totally disturbing and yet hilarious at the same time I cannot find it in me to put it in the embarrassing bits column. The Doctor’s explanation for the TARDIS is, “Transcendental thingamajig. Pocket Universes. Plasmic Shells. Bibbybobblyboo.”

Embarrassing bits: Mark Michalowski goes to all the trouble of presenting us with a gorgeous planet and a great guest cast and oddly they all seem superfluous to the plot…the only reason the book is set here in the end is because Tain happened to land on this planet! The pacing is way off, with a nice relaxed pace throughout the first two thirds and than a mad rush to tie the plot up at the end. Oh and the line “Ya boo! to you Mr Trove!” which is by far the most cringe worthy thing I have ever read.

Result: A popular book and with good reason. It is great to see the EDAs letting their hair down again and the relaxed pace and character development are most welcome after the doom and gloom of the alternative universe arc. Michalowski’s command over the regulars is breathtaking, the Doctor and Fitz are captured perfectly and learn much from each other but it is Trix who is the standout here, it’s the first time I can see real potential in her character being explored and she is far more interesting than we have seen before. The prose is lovely, creating one of those planets that you would just love to visit. It’s a breezy read, thoroughly engaging and hints at great things for the future. Full of sunshine: 8/10

The Algebra of Ice by Lloyd Rose

2011-07-17T09:15:00.003+01:00

Plot: Crop shapes have been cut into the Kentish countryside, filled with ice. The Doctor joins forces with a maths nerd and a webzine publisher to take on a force which wants to drain the Earths energy and hack the TARDIS to squeeze the life out of time and space…

Master Manipulator: A fascinating portrayal of the seventh Doctor, particularly in a book that is trying to emulate the best of the New Adventures. As has been pointed out before it doesn’t entirely succeed at this, it’s actually better. Whilst the New Adventures spent so much time building up a mythology around the Doctor he was a cold and impenetrable beast but Rose never lets us forget that he s a person. That makes all the difference because all the New Adventures traits are here, the angst, the manipulation, the possibility of murder but it is tempered by a sense of guilt that truly makes you feel for the guy. Not only that but we actually get to see what the Doctor gets up to behind the scenes, a rare treat. I honestly cannot imagine a more emotional or comprehensive novel focussing on the seventh Doctor than this. Top marks.

Lately the Doctor has been distant, indulging in nostalgia. Firelight bronzed the Doctor’s eyes and made his eyes glitter. He has a surprising, crooked smile. He was too mysterious by half. The Doctor had his own way of doing things and the Brigadier couldn’t get used to this stern, tense, troubled incarnation. He doesn’t like to be contactable. When the 4th Doctor had chosen not to murder the Daleks how many had died for his virtue? When the 7th Doctor had made the choice years later how many had died for his sins? He had started out as an explorer anxious for new experiences. When had he started playing on a larger board, descending on a planet and ‘fixing’ things? He guarded the universe. He destroyed worlds. He felt he understood sin now and prayed he would never again exterminate an entire race. He wonders if he has a death wish, the creatures had reached out to him and something inside him had responded. Ace loves him so much she can’t see the bad things he has done. The Doctor was slippery, he embodied the unexpected. He wore that stupid hate to encourage you into thinking he was an idiot. He never looked back if he could help it. The Doctor, like the white rabbit, crawls down a hole into a world of magic and fear. The 7th Doctor is the responsible one; he is the only one who replaces the tea at Allen Road. ‘It was time for them to go’ he says of the Daleks. He hates it when the universe comes within a hair of blinking out, it gives him a ‘So glad I cancelled my trip on the Titanic’ shiver. The Doctor’s silent jealousy of Ethan is astonishing. The scene where Ethan realises the Doctor is going to kill him (‘You little monster!’) made me hair stand on end and the dialogue is fantastic (‘You’re trying to take it off you. Murder without murdering. You think I’m going to make it easy?’). He decides to sacrifice himself instead, becoming an energy bullet and murdering the creatures. Without Ace the Doctor doesn’t know what he would be. What he would become.

Oh Wicked: Just as marvellous is the characterisation of Ace who, had she been written for this strongly throughout the New Adventures I would have been a very happy bunny. As this is the bridge between the TV series, BBC Books and the Virgin New Adventures it is perfectly apt that she retains the air of an embarrassing teen she was on screen whilst indulging in sex and a more thoughtful mindfuck relationship with the Doctor so pursued by the books. It is a surprisingly interesting mix, at some moments Ace is painfully childish and explosive and at others she is shockingly mature and humane.

She always trusted the Doctor to be right but was frustrated when he stopped her from helping people. After being around the Doctor other people seemed flat and dull. Ace enjoyed breaking and entering and the Doctor always gave her good reasons to do it. Where the book gets really interesting is Ace’s involvement with Ethan. Initially distrustful and insulting to each other, things reach a crescendo where they end up in bed together. Freely admitting they have nothing in common but the sex, it is interesting to see Ace shift her love for the Doctor onto somebody else for the first time. Watching her pussy foot around him, embarrassed by his embarrassment is surprisingly affecting. Also Ace’s attempts to reach out to Ethan, to learn from him, shows her at her best. Protection insults Ace but the Doctor shields her from the worst of the life she has chosen with him. She tells Ethan while he sleeps: ‘This isn’t life. Life can be wonderful.’ Perceptively Ethan sums up Ace in a few sentences: all she wants to do is smash something and sometimes she acts as though she is 13. Fighting Ace is like fighting an animal. Ace, a stupid little girl that the Doctor has made a fool of. If she knew about the Doctor it would hurt her for the rest of her life. The Doctor on Ace: ‘She loves me. She trusts me. Perhaps she shouldn’t.’ She manages to save the Doctor by being alive, hugging onto him and crying until her feels something. Brilliantly Ace visits Ethan many times throughout the last four years of his life and is holding his hand in hospital when he dies.

Foreboding: In a way this book is the ultimate foreboding experience. A precursor to the New Adventures it features Ace’s burgeoning sexuality, her desire for a female friend to confide in (Bernice), the first glimpses of how much the Doctor shields her from (with hints of what will happen in Love and War when she finds out how far he will go) and the book sets its conclusion just after Timewyrm: Revelation. The Doctor admits he would like to be handsome one day and thinks how nice it would be to wipe the slate clean and forget all his responsibilities. Hmm…

Twists: There is a worrying, fulsome first chapter that effortlessly fits in the death of Edgar Allen Poe, the destruction of Vesuvius and the sacrifice of Captain Oates…several times except they keep being rewritten and settling on a different version than what we know. The TARDIS had never looked so dramatic, its dark blue exterior the only colour in the bleakness of snow. Molecross’ withered, black frostbitten hand is quite disgusting. A shining, intense darkness tries to carry the Doctor away. There is some thinness between universes, crop shapes are like a keyhole into our universe that the Doctor can spoil by adding random shapes to it. Ethan can see the aliens that exist in the spaces between seconds. Ace and Ethan’s soap opera clinch – who would have guessed? There is a fabulous description of ideas on page 112: ‘An alphabet is static until it forms words, and the words refer to concepts, and the concepts move in the mind and become speech, and speech forms the world.’ Brett’s sadistic unprovoked abuse of Ethan is uncomfortable. The membrane is not as thin in the Swiss Alps but passable. Brett hitting the Doctor again and again until his face is just blood is really horrible. Brett’s nihilistic speech on page 188 is revolting. Unwin’s second set of equations was for hacking into the TARDIS. The creatures want to harvest existence slowly, thread by thread, they want all of time and space. The entity segueing in and out of Brett, a whirlwind of triangles and rhombuses, would look wonderful on screen. Molecross, absurdly happy to have meet the Doctor and experience the wonder he knew was out there, sacrifices himself as an energy bullet. The Doctor realises that his first instinct, to kill Ethan, would have murdered him and defeated his purpose. The last chapter might be the finest chunk of Doctor Who prose as the Doctor quietly visits a dying mans mind to make amends for threatening his life and touchingly gives him a gift of proof of the Riemann theorem, what he has always sought.

Funny Bits: Or that naff marmot planet. Of course The Doctor had defended the marmots. Said they were “humble”.
If this story had been televised Ethan would so have been played by Daniel Radcliffe!
Lethbridge-Stewart: responsible, intelligent and almost certainly without imagination.
The Doctor cross legged on the piano is such a perfect image it made me chuckle.
Ace trying to convince Molecross that the Doctor is not a government spy: ‘Oh bollocks! What are you on about? This is my Uncle John. He’s not a Doctor. He sells cheese.’
‘I think his lot reproduce by being woven by DNA or something naff like that.’
Page 196, Molecross’ reaction when the Doctor walks into the TARDIS: ‘It’s you!’
‘Ace I’ve told you that this borrowing of American slang must stop. Your speech is indecipherable enough as it is!’
I love the idea of the Doctor keeping all of his previous incarnations clothes in a wardrobe in Allen Road.
The UNIT file on the Doctor, personal statistics: variable!

Result: A rite of passage between BBC Books and Virgin which has been coming on for some time, The Algebra of Ice combines the most successful elements of both to create a very satisfying read. Like snow falling and covering a scene Lloyd’s prose is simple, elegant and beautiful. A book about mathematics and the cold, hard logic of the universe had the danger of being clinical and flat but this novel is laced with moments of warmth and beauty and some starkly emotional beats. It is a fantastic book for the 7th Doctor who is explored in some depth, amazing when you think of the word count this guy has had lavished on him but with hindsight it picks up on many elements of the NAs and elaborates and fleshes them out. His scenes with Ethan, Molecross, Brett and Unwin all shine, he orbits them and they reveal new shades of his character, be it jealousy, pity, revulsion or sorrow. It’s a book that mixes existentialism, sex, philosophy, torture and emotional development to grand effect. Quietly masterful and compelling: 9/10

Sometime Never… by Justin Richards

2011-07-14T10:10:00.003+01:00

Plot: The stage is set for the Doctor to finally meet the creatures who have been plaguing his adventures for many years. A crystal skeleton is being unearthed, an impossible palace in the Vortex discovered, Time Agents nudging history in the right direction and Sabbath admitting he has been on the wrong side…what on Earth could connect these disparate events. As events draw to a climax the Doctor realises that the entire history of Earth is at stake for the survival of his enemies...

Top Doc: What is fascinating about this book is how the enemies view the Doctor as the villain of the piece and they are just struggling to survive. He is the Rogue Element, he infects everything and everyone he touches making them unpredictable…he needs to be removed from Time like the cancer that he is. It is captivating to see him from the point of view of a desperate race trying to survive.

The truth of the matter is, of course, quite different. The Doctor is tired and fed of living his life on the run (and the last half dozen adventures I can’t say I blame him!) and he wishes there was time to sit and talk and make friends and be happy. He uses wit to cover his deeper emotions and anger. He admits there are such things as happy co-incidences, although he doesn’t trust them. Turns out when the Doctor’s heart withered and blackened it was because the Council of Eight had tried to control him but his heart rejected their control. He is reunited with his daughter here and is not afraid to show his intimacy with her in front of other people. There share an extremely tender moment where he tells her he loves her and she makes him promise that he will not let them use her against him when it comes to the fate of the universe or her daughter. Poignantly, the Doctor just holds her and cries. He grows homicidally angry when she is threatened (“Harm her in the slightest you’ll be the one screaming forever!”/ “If you harm her in the slightest I will surely kill you.”) and tries to deal with her death internally (considering there is so much going on…the death of history and all that) but cannot manage (“You killed my daughter…for nothing!”). His relationship with Sabbath is hilarious; especially now Sabbath is humbled and apologetic although the Doctor seems to have some genuine affection for him, trying to talk him out of killing himself. Even better is his chat with the Master at the story’s close, where he tiredly admits to saving the universe again but is sick of the cost involved.

Scruffy Git: Resident thicko whose talent for the stating the obvious borders on genius. It’s an annoying habit brought about by his inability to grasp the basic principles. After all this time, he still cannot predict the Doctor’s actions. A real pro, according to himself. Hilariously he attempts to gatecrash a party Trix has organised! When time freezes he invents his own time technology…a scrunched up hankie…which he throws ahead of himself to see if time is frozen there (you’ve gotta love him haven’t you?). He thrives on danger, he admits, whilst trying to duck out of joining the Doctor in entering the villain’s lair. He admits it was a mistake leaving the Doctor alone for a century and dreads to think what he got up to in that time (I’ll lend him the Caught on Earth arc!). Fitz is the proof that not everything alive has a purpose.

Identity Tricks: Once again Trix is extremely resourceful, successfully infiltrating the Middle Ages to discover the source of the emission. Her scenes with the Princes in the Tower are very necessary, not only because it is the first time we have seen Trix selflessly trying to make somebody feel better, but it winds up saving their lives in the climax when Octan attempts to arm them and tells them to kill her and the Doctor. Sweetly, she is honest with them and admits that happy ever after doesn’t exist and that their Uncle was killed. She admits in a quiet moment that she is concerned about her mother. During a particularly dangerous moment the Doctor has to bribe her to risk her life for others! Cruelly she gives Fleetward Anji’s name, as a friend for the boys he is adopting.

Ham Fists: What strikes me most about Sabbath’s final story is how much am going to miss him. He has become part of the furniture with the EDAs and there will be a noticeable absence with his departure. At his best (Adventuress, Anachrophobia, History 101, Camera Obscura, The Last Resort, Timeless…) he was a fascinaitng creation and a worthy foe of the Doctor’s.

He is described as the opposite to the Doctor, ultimately predictable. Every moment of his treachery is mapped out. He admits he doesn’t actually want to kill the Doctor. He has grown fond of the guy and had developed a respect for his abilities and talents and is prepared to tolerate his associates. To this end he shoots the Time Agent and saves their lives. He believed everything he has been doing has been for the best. He has been flattered and played to, lied and betrayed by the Council of Eight. He is self assured and confident in his own abilities. Octan tells him he has been gloriously irrelevant, just there to keep the Doctor on the sidelines. We soon realise this is to anger the chap and force him into a decision that could mean the end of all history. Its delightful that it all comes down to Sabbath, that his very survival is proof of his destiny (because, brilliantly, Octan only sends the Time Agent to save Sabbath from his initiation under the Thames at the end of Sometime Never…!) and that the fate of the universe is in his hands. Laughing at foxing their plans and negating their existence, Sabbath puts the gun to his head and blows his brains out. It’s a memorable end for a memorable character.

Foreboding: Miranda’s death has ramifications in the next book (Halflife). The Master is still stored in the TARDIS (The Gallifrey Chronicles). The Daleks are watching the Doctor’s adventures in the vortex (The Gallifrey Chronicles).

Twists: Lets start with the cover, which is excellent, one of the best the range has ever offered. The crystals that were spread throughout all time (in Timeless) were transmitters (thanks Fitz), transmitting to a structure within the Vortex (and again Fitz). Inside are the Council of Eight, a race made of crystal who mapping out every moment in history. They admit to have driven out the clock monsters from the Vortex (Anachrophobia). The clever plotting is immediately apparent with new emissions starting up and swamping all the other data (2004 being the exact sum of these emissions put together, building up over several years). Which turns out to be a parts of a skeleton, scattered over the world, which the Doctor and Professor Fleetward start assembling over years (and complete for display in 2004). The creature weighing the precise amount of snow to cause an avalanche (and kill Louis Vogues and his premature theories of evolution) is super cool. Crystal Devine does not exist (the Doctor tells Trix “It should be well within your capabilities”, a great clue but we don’t realise its her until much later!). A time agent plants an article of Patterson (which we later discover is Octan in disguise). Early in the book Sabbath’s hourglass (they are linked to peoples lives, the grains falling like heartbeats) is nearly empty, pre-empting his death. We discover the Council of Eight are simply trying to survive, and if they prediction events wrong they could very well cease to exist. The complete skeleton breaks from its case and lunges after them! The book astonishing grabs the PDAs surrounding and inserts them effortlessly into the story, the Council having cut out the Doctor’s tainted companions from time…Mel her life cut short early (Heritage), Harry killed by a warewolf (Wolfsbane), Sarah shot in Hong Kong (Bullet Time), Ace shot and dumped into a river (Loving the Alien), Sam Jones dying of an overdose (Interference), Jo kidnapped from the Brazilian rainforest (The Green Death) and placing them in Schrondinger cells (they power the Vortex station, the potential lives of these people unfulfilled and the energy of those lives to be harnessed) to blackmail him. The Council of Eight wanted the multiverse collapsed into a single timeline so that a certain event that will ensure their survival is inescapable (Time Zero, The Infinity Race, The Domino Effect, Reckless Engineering, The Last Resort, Timeless). The Council kidnapped Miranda and her daughter to use against the Doctor but Zezanne drops out into time early because the Doctor miscalibrated and as he tries to open the portal to get rid of the time agent Miranda appears (clever, clever…). The eternity corridor is another fab idea, distance stretched out beyond infinity so no matter how far you run you wont get anywhere! As is the Vortex gun (hurled screaming forever in the Vortex, to be tortured for all eternity, aged and re-aged, never dying, never alive). The Council are deriving energy from predicting events throughout time, you harness the energy before the event takes place and if it doesn’t you have to pay it back (with interest). The Council think that the end of the universe is enough of a prediction to provide the energy they need to slip out of existence and set up shop in the Vortex but the universe ends with a whimper, not a bang. The real plan is to predict the death of history itself (Octan planning to use a star killer to ignite the Earth’s sun before man ever has a chance to evolve), the only event big enough to provide the energy for them to push them into the vortex. The fuel this prediction will bring is unimaginable and will be enough for them to bring all their people to the Vortex (“With that power we shall become the Lords of Time!”). The star killer is powered by Sabbath’s choice, kill the Doctor or Octan. Alas he kills himself and the star killer is never powered, thus causing the chain of causality to unravel and the Vortex stations begins to fall apart. They have brought about their own deaths, if only the multiverse was still active they would have survived somewhere, in some universe (hahahaha). There is a lovely image of the Doctor walking through the Vortex station, debris falling, destruction roaring and none of it touching him. Miranda is killed, sacrificing herself to save the Doctor from exceeding to blackmail. It turns out the crystal skeleton was Octan, trying to warn his younger self of the destruction of his people…he is blasted to pieces as his plan falls apart and tumbles into the vortex to be discovered and pieced together by the Doctor and Fleetward (at the beginning of the book…oh my ive gone cross eyed…isn’t this complicated and devilishly clever!!!). The Doctor gives Soul his structure and form to survive but he only takes his first identity, the image of the 1st Doctor (and earlier in the book, brilliantly pre-empting this development he says to the Council, “We spend our lives gathering information, observing and predicting but never actually doing or achieving!”). The hourglass of Soul (‘1’) and Zezanne falls into void as the palace is destroyed and they find themselves on the Jonah, ready to start their adventures together. He thinks his names is the Doctor and she is Susan, a beguilingly brilliant way of explaining how the Doctor can still survive in a Gallifrey-less universe (although to keep the fan boys from dropping dead of revisionist continuity…it is described as taking place in one of the many universe that have now sprung back into existence!). The Daleks are revealed at the end, watching the star killer (Remembrance of the Daleks). And the Master is revealed to be inside the TARDIS, although the Doctor has no clue who he is.

Funny bits: Taking the piss out of Fitz in the TARDIS is gigglesome, he’s so dense he doesn’t realise they are doing it. Fitz attempting to infiltrate the part as Horatio Sponge when he could just have said Fitz Kreiner is hilarious. Trix’s attempts to flirt and manipulative the stupid and burping Lord Scrote raised a laugh. Sam dies, what a pity, well I laughed…what’s more everyone else is returned to life here but The Gallifrey Chronicles reveals…Sam is still dead! Ha bloody ha! After Sabbath’s impassioned speech the Doctor turns on him and says, “That’s a very long winded way of saying you were right and I was wrong.”

Embarrassing bits: No it isn’t the Daleks who were behind everything and yes it is disappointing but thank the Nation Estate for that. The destruction of the Universe is depicted here and it is a shockingly anti climatic event (although that is supposed to be the point!). Just opening a door…not sure if that is an especially satisfying way of restoring the multiverse to life…not after all the hell we’ve been through with it already. But the idea of the Doctor (the first Doctor at that) restoring chaos to the universe is just amazing. Miranda’s appearance is striking but she is totally wasted (in every way!)

Result: Just because its written by Justin Richards that doesn’t make it a bad thing and whilst the grand baddies who have been plaguing the universe these few years or so are revealed to be a bunch of old crystal men who are hardly thrill a minute, that is perhaps the only major disappointment in this otherwise brilliantly climatic novel. It is perhaps the best-plotted Doctor Who book I have ever read, re-reading it proves how not a scene is wasted, every moment is vital to the overall story. The settings here might be small scale but the amount of Doctor Who fiction this encompasses is extraordinary, dragging in plot points from years back (and PDAs too) and turning the entire range into a cohesive whole. The ideas are mind blowing and the revelations in the last third reward the reader for being so patient with this arc and the range(s) in general. Sabbath gets the exit he fully deserves, the Doctor doesn’t escape scott free and there is a real surprise waiting in the last scene (which could potentially annoy but I found it charming). The prose and characterisation is not the best the EDAs can offer (both were better in Emotional Chemistry) but I am willing skip over them because this book got me so damn excited and involved. As a lover of deconstructing narrative, the way everything falls into place is quite, quite stunning: 9/10

Sick Building by Paul Magrs

2011-07-12T10:29:00.003+01:00

Plot: Tiermann’s world is a in a whole bunch of trouble as the Voracious Craw approaches. A giant tapeworm with a mouth the size of Wales, it will suck up and consume a town centre in a few seconds. The Doctor and Martha land to warn the few inhabitants of the planet…

Mockney Dude: The thing that impressed me so much about Paul Magrs’ take on the tenth Doctor was his incredible energy levels throughout. Seriously, he is whizzing about, gabbling away, fiddling and fixing in the first scene and he manages to keep it up until the last scene. He’s like an incredible whirlwind, sometimes a little prejudiced (which is nice, it would be awful if he lost that violently opinionated edge) and stubborn but he always trying to help even if its people that he cannot stand. The one moment where he stops moving is where Tiermann rails on about how the Doctor can never understand what it is like to lose everything, your home and your life. The silence that follows is real edge of the seat stuff and the Doctor just stares with deathly intent. Great stuff.

The Doctor operates more by luck than logic but there is something irresistible about his enthusiasm that makes your grin. He brandishes the sonic screwdriver like a gunslinger does his weapon! I loved the scene where he managed to talk down a hungry tiger with a placating, calming tone, communicating by his sheer strength of will. Does the Doctor not like Tiermann because he is conceited or is it because he is clearly of a similar intellect? Has he ever know luxury or peace of mind? He is intelligent enough to know that one does not lead to another. He believes in always taking his problems to the very to, especially if the very top is the very bottom! Once the Doctor charmed the Beast of Peladon with a Venusian Lullaby and now he calms a ravenous beast with Bohemian Rhapsody! As mentioned above, Tiermann tells the Doctor that he has never lost anything of value and there is a lethal pause in the action. The Doctor gets the verbal runs sometimes but he calls it morale boosting. He regales his friends with tales of Desperate Journeys and Foul Dangers! He has a strange, mysterious symbiotic relationship with the TARDIS. He was getting far too suspicious for his own good, always thinking and expecting the worst. I loved the bit where the Domovoi threatens to burst Solin’s jugular and let him bleed to death all over the TARDIS floor and the Doctor screams back ‘What do I care? He’s only some kid!’ Oooh, harsh.

Delicious Doctor: Not many writers manage to capture that magic of travelling in the TARDIS as well as Magrs and Martha’s observation that they are ‘stepping through those narrow doors into another time and place’ really sells the impossible magic of the TARDIS perfectly. I love her reaction to the bath that offers to top her water up for her! Even though they drove her mad as they were growing up, Martha would never be without her brother and sister. Martha has met her fair share of bullying surgeons and she knows exactly how to deal with people like that. I love how Martha springs into action as a medical Doctor so calmly. In a disaster, she understands her role. Solin has a mad crush on Martha and very politely tells her he would like to snog her! Whilst we don’t root about into Martha’s psyche like other books do we get to see most of the horrors of the Dreamhome through Martha’s eyes and she portrays the destruction and devastation very adeptly to the point that she forgets about the wildlife in the forest and just asks if they can leave once the Dreamhome is destroyed. She wonders what it would be like to stare into the mouth of a creature that can devour words…and later she gets to experience it!

Twists: That mouthy cover is unforgettable! I loved the prologue which set up the dangers really well, told from the POV of a starving sabre toothed tiger charging through the snowy woods, desperate to get back to her cubs as something dangerous tears through the foliage. The Voracious Craw is an awesome concept, a tape worm the size of a space ship that can devour everything on a planet. It is pale, putrid grey-green and its mouth is huge enough to swallow a town centre in one go. To a creature like this human beings are nothing, just there to be pulped and fed indiscriminately into that obscene, palpitating mouth. The Dreamhome is decked out with servo furnishings so that humanity would never have to dirty their hands with menial tasks ever again. It is like a giant tooth with its roots reaching deep underground. The Doctor is thrown down into the base of the root where the rot sets in. Tiermann creates a wall of flames around the Dreamhome to stop the wildlife breaching the barriers. The Domovoi is the spirit of the Dreamhome, the heart and intelligence that controls everything. Her mind is linked to all the servo units but like any decent Goddess she allows them free will. Unfortunately she isn’t happy about Tiermann’s plans to abandon them…and I love the chapter ending where she makes her feelings perfectly clear, trapping them all inside the Dreamhome, locks clicking, shutters clashing to the ground like an executioners block. I love the term ‘soft body’, servo furnishing slang! It’s a terrible taboo, robot killing robot. Tiermann has replaced his innards with servo organs to ‘improve himself.’ The Suckazz are heliscopic hoovers that deposit characters in their huge mountain of filth! It comes as no surprises that when they reach the surface that Tiermann tries to sell them out and escape in the rocket without them but what did shock was when he punched his son in the face and dragged him on board! The Domovoi drags the escaping shuttle back down and it punches a blackened, evil looking crater in the Earth. Amanda Tiermann is a cyborg, she had started out as a normal person but that wasn’t good enough for her husband, he made her better. Her face cracks open like a china doll (ugh). The Voracious Craw approaches; swollen, hungry, not even masticating and letting off a tremendous, revolting noise. Tiermann is such a prick – even when all is lost his ego demands that he stays and fights his creation to the death so the Domovoi reanimates his messy, bloody wife to kill him, nasty. He feeds his own wife into the waste disposal unit and smashes the glass brains of his most trusted servo unit to smithereens. The bloody creator and his deranged creation battle to the death. A possessed Toaster embraces him and uses the last of his radiation, leaving the insane genius a charred, smouldering form, utterly dead and smoking. They manage to scare off the Craw with the most terrifyingly primeval burp in history!

Funny Bits:
· What sort of council tax do you pay on a whole planet?
· Barbara and Toaster are two of the most adorable characters in Doctor Who’s history! A sentient vending machine that keeps trying to offer you chocolate and pop when things get tense (and whose cans rattle when she gets nervous) and a sun bed machine who in his prime could provide an instant sun tan like grilling sausages! He was like a supernova! You long for them to survive this story since they have been paid for a lifetime of servitude by being left behind to their doom in the basement! They live in awe of Tiermann, their creator and don’t feel as though they have the right to survive. ‘Its been a long time since anyone has shown any interest in my comestibles!’ says Barbara. ‘Have a little go with that gadget on my ailing parts.’ After Toaster saves them from the albino bats he declares, ‘All those years I spent just giving people suntans! I could have been a hero! A great warrior!’ Barbara offers to sacrifice herself to the Craw and hopefully she will get stuck in the craw of the voracious beast and choke it!
· ‘It would be such a shame to just let the Dreamhome be sucked up like so much pizza topping!’

Result: Fantastic title, fantastic cover and fantastic premise…a good start! A sentient house that controls all the furnishings, what a delicious idea to trap the Doctor inside and at its mercy! Paul Magrs has taken the kiddie friendly framework of the NSAs and worked in an ingenious premise that manages to be dark, twisted and wildly imaginative. It’s a gripping story, told practically in real time and it matches up to the best of the Target novels for sheer, gleeful thrills. I have rarely been this excited to read a Doctor Who book, marrying Magrs penchant for the surreal with a nastier, bloodier battle to the death. There are lots of inventive touches throughout but what really enthralled me was the relentless pace and the graphic, violent moments that lend the story some real dramatic weight. This is precisely the sort of thing the NSAs should be aiming for, effortlessly readable, pleasingly unputdownable and full of tension and invention. Give it another go: 9/10

Touched By An Angel by Jonathan Morris

2011-07-05T10:14:00.003+01:00

What’s it about: The Doctor has to use all his wits to prevent The Weeping Angels from changing time…

Nutty Professor: One of the finest novels for the geeky eleventh Doctor because he springs from the page exactly as he is on the screen and yet is afforded the sort of depth a novel can allow. He has the voice of a young man but the authority of somebody much older and looks as though he is on the way to a fancy dress party dressed as Albert Einstein! Just because you can rewrite time it doesn’t mean that you should and besides the Doctor is an expert at these things. The Doctor definitely looks like somebody who is off to university, just not in this decade! Naturally he thinks the maths department is the coolest and is described brilliantly as all fringe and tweed. He has absolutely no idea what the monetary value of anything is and I think that’s rather sweet. The Doctor’s gag with the wallet is pure Matt Smith. The TARDIS is a cross between an avant-garde brass sculpture and a child’s activity centre with the child in this case being the Doctor. He darts around the console in his element and Rory had an interesting theory that half the buttons didn’t even do anything – he just pressed them because they made an interesting noise! Astonishingly this book builds to a conclusion where the Doctor has to argue that an innocent woman has to die. The Doctor is a clever bastard as he lures the Angels into a trap under the illusion that they are leading him into a trap.

Scots Tart: Amy has a look that reminds Rory that he is a married man. Rory wonders if he would risk all of time and space if it were Amy who had died and quickly concludes of course he would.

Loyal Roman: As is the norm with the latest series (and in the novels) Rory upstages Amy completely and Morris brings the character to the fore in important moments of the book and allows him to play the hero in his own unique (fairly useless) way. The Doctor says that he knows who Rory is but he full of surprises nonetheless. Chasing after Amy with a long-suffering smile just about sums Rory up. Only Rory could feel jealous of Amy flirting with himself from the future and when he sees himself he notices that he does have a surprisingly large nose and gormless face! He seems to spend his entire life waiting for people – zapped back to 2001 he had to wait for an entire month until a point where he knew the Doctor and his younger self would be.

Twists: The teaser is brilliant because it not only conjures up 2003 in a few sentences (something that Morris excels at in this novel in various years that are visited) with mentions of Iraq and Saddam Hussein but it also manages to stress the horror of the Weeping Angels advancing in the flashing light of the flickering emergency lighting. The idea of the Angels appearing on security monitors but not in reality is really scary and as Mark runs through the town each new screen shows the creature getting closer and closer. Mark reading a note in his own past that he wouldn’t write until the future that tells him he can save his wife’s life is Moffatt’s style of timey wimey cleverness at its emotional best. The Doctor describes Mark’s interference in his own life as the first pebble in an avalanche but how can he fail to warn his mother of his father’s death in a few years? Those insidious Angels have taken Mark back into his own personal timeline to create a paradox and they can feed off of the potential time energy. There is more chilling imagery as the Angels hang from the rafters of a school disco lit up by the pulsing coloured lights. Morris highlights the torture of being in a long-suffering relationship and Mark and Sophie’s time together is described as an obligation to be endured. Mark wins the lottery in his timeline because his older self writers the numbers down so when he goes back in time in the future he will know the numbers and allow his younger self to win! Argh – boss eyed! The lights go out in the museum and the Doctor activates the green glow of the sonic only to reveal an Angel lunging out of the darkness towards him…eek! Imagine if you learnt that every step of your life was manipulated…by you! The Doctor admits that he got it wrong (a rare event!) and the Angels haven’t been trying to get the two Marks together but keep them apart until the right point. The book constantly points to the older Mark affecting his younger selves life and so when the younger Mark discovers the mysterious benefactor in his life and seeks him out it comes as a complete surprise. Best way to stop a car crash between two vehicles? Put something large and very obvious between them. In a moment of astonishing adult drama Mark tells the Doctor that he didn’t warn them about the events of September 11th because he was told not to interfere with history and how much that hurt him. If Mark saves Rebecca he will wipe out the last nine years of his life where he went back in time and pushed his life in the right direction – he might not even meet Rebecca in the first place! When it comes Rebecca’s death is one of the most moving moments in any Doctor Who novel. I love how the book doesn’t take the obvious route of having Mark being inadvertently responsible for Rebecca’s death and far more bravely it comes as a conscious choice which is much more bold and heartbreaking.

Funny bits: Whilst juggling touching character moments and scares, Touched By An Angel is also very funny. There are plenty of examples of Morris’ sparkling wit throughout this book but these are my favourite moments…
· ‘Whenever the space-time continuum goes wibbly it lights up. Or it would if the bulb worked. It also boils eggs. That’s not a fault. It’s a feature.’
· When Mark gets on a train in 1994 Mark can’t understand why it is so quiet when he realises that nobody is chatting on their mobile phones!
· ‘If reasoned argument doesn’t succeed you’ll leave me no choice but to resort to brute force’ says the Doctor before thumping square in the face!
· ‘The Wibble Detector never lies!’
· ‘Do I look like the sort of person who would kidnap a bride on her wedding day in a police box?’
· ‘Really? The whole universe? Depends on me wearing a fez?’

Result: Touched By An Angel is like the best of all worlds. You have the likable human drama favoured by the Davies era; the clever wibbly wobbly timey wimey cleverness of Moffatt’s reign and it is all tied up by Jonathan Morris’ unique brand of imagination and wit. It’s a book that is firing all cylinders, often at once! I love how the clever ideas are all channelled through Mark and his perfectly normal life – its not just cleverness for the sake of it (like the series feels like sometimes) but grounded in character at all times. Being able to explore so much of Mark and Rebecca’s lives through the book they become the most vivid characters we have met since the NSAs began. Rather than use them as a force for action Morris wisely builds up the intelligence of the Angels and uses them as creepy silent observers and it marks their best use since their introduction. The regulars shine, the prose is bubbly, there are constant surprises and you will want to keep picking it up every time you put it down. If this doesn’t convince Steven Moffatt to give Jonathan Morris a shot at writing for the series (ala Gareth Roberts/Only Human) nothing will. Top dollar: 10/10

The Eleventh Tiger by David A. McIntee

2011-06-29T14:10:00.002+01:00

Plot: The TARDIS crew arrive in China, 1865, to find there is more to chaos than human violence and ambition. Legends of ancient vengeance are coming true. Long dead Emperor’s are being resurrected and an army of thousands lays dormant, waiting to be reborn and take over the world…

Hmm: Do the authors try harder when it is a first Doctor book? Many Doctor Who authors have done their best work when writing for the first Doctor. Its like the original Doctor raises everyone’s game because they don’t want to spoil the legend. This is certainly the best thing McIntee has written for BBC Books, beating his previous best The Face of the Enemy and Bullet Time. His treatment of the First Doctor is not as radical as it might seem (given he has a Yoda moment of martial arts) but he writes him perfectly to match Hartnell’s performance and captures his wisdom and magic beautifully. The setting, one of legends and scientific marvels in nature, is the perfect location for the astute first Doctor.

The Doctor, in his Edwardian frock coat and chequered trousers looked almost out of place in the futuristic TARDIS. He is always ready with an explanation and surprisingly youthful enthusiasm. The Doctor sees something of himself and Susan in Vicki. Everyone is important to the Doctor. He has exceptional eyesight for someone of his years. The Doctor being a healer and left in charge of Po Chi Lam just feels right. He can hold his gaze and judge a mans character. He gets very upset when people imply he is too old to do something. The Doctor is indomitable and shows iron in his backbone. He doesn’t belong to one place, he belongs everywhere. Is he searching for the truth? He could be pretty sprightly but always paid for it later. Susan had chosen to leave him already when he locked her out of the TARDIS but she just didn’t realise it so he made the decision for her. It was a far cry from the days when Ian and Barbara saw the Doctor as a cold-blooded kidnapper who abducted them for his granddaughter’s sake. What sort of person would not be capable of doing something stupid in a moment of panic to protect their family? It made the Doctor seem less cold hearted and alien than he otherwise would.

Schoolteachers in love: And never has that been more appropriate! For David’s Face of the Enemy to make sense this story had to happen sooner or later but I’m glad it was years in the making because it makes the developments surprising again. They are simply wonderful characters, a wonderful couple and superb for storytelling purposes. Rarely beaten in Doctor Who ‘companion’ history.

A couple of years ago Ian had thought teaching in Coal Hill and living in a small flat were normal. Now he thought his flat would feel dark and mysterious compared to the familiar sterility of the TARDIS. It felt so natural for Ian to be at Barbara’s side as though she had always been there. Barbara felt, with Ian unconscious, some part of herself had blacked out. Ian and Barbara are already married in their minds – they just don’t know it yet. Barbara had always loved watching the rain. It was such a fresh natural thing, bringing life to trees and flowers. Ian had never been particularly superstitious. Sweetly, Ian proposes he fights Jiang for the Doctor because he is disposable. Barbara’s earnestness surprised him; they had been travelling for two years and know each other pretty well but moments like this kept things fresh and surprising. Barbara admits that she loves Ian and kisses him. When asked if she and Ian are married Barbara replies, “No he’s not my husband. Not yet anyway.” Ian had killed during his time with the Doctor but he had never set out with that intention and had never done so when losing his own was the only alternative. Although he wasn’t particularly religious as an adult he still tried to hold one to the core values of the Ten Commandments he was taught as a kid. Ian and Barbara’s hearts had wed years ago – they were just waiting for their minds to catch up. Ian would kill and be killed for Barbara. At the stories close, after all the worry both has suffered over the other, their feelings bubble over and Barbara asks Ian to marry him when they get home to which he replies, “Yes.”

Space Orphan: Vicki finds this new form of travel exciting. Vicki did not dislike Ian and Barbara but they were so much a ‘couple’ she felt like an intruder when they were around. In a very sweet scene we see that Vicki is very attracted to Fei-Hung. She is pleased she didn’t have to dish out Bennett’s punishment because she doesn’t know if she would have the courage to see it through. She silently learns martial arts during Fei-Hung’s classes. Vicki might be from a more advanced time but she is still a child.

Foreboding: Ooh lots and lots for Ian and Barbara. Their relationship is in full swing and after this adventure they are set to leave the TARDIS more than ever before. Not only has the Doctor given them amazing adventures but he has also let them ‘find’ each other. So, happily, at the end of this book Barbara is making a dress for Vicki who is annoying everybody – the exact circumstances at the beginning of The Chase where Ian and Barbara depart the TARDIS.

Twists: I love the cover which has clearly been photo shopped but there is something wonderfully mythic about it. Cheng and his bunch of bandits stumbling across possessed monks is an atmospheric opening – McIntee writes action like no other writer. What has happened to his writing: “Then a silver arc appeared in the blackness, like the white of an eye appeared as the eyelid parted on waking. It was the moon, emerging from hiding.” How atmospheric! Even a burning town is described with a sense of beauty. Ian is recognised in a restaurant and beaten to bloody pulp. The abbot has Lei-Fang’s eyes and tongue removed for disagreeing with him. The Festival of the Hungry Ghost – the town bathed in dark light – this really is an evocative book. There is a lovely scene where Barbara and Vicki shelter from the rain in a haunted house. The book plays a clever trick on fans – making us think that Major Chesterton is our Ian Chesterton – even to the point of having the amnesiac Major remember making love to a dark haired woman in Italy, just like Ian and Barbara in Rome. The Doctor’s ‘duel’ with Jiang from the point of view of his companions – outwitting rather than fighting – is simply the best PDA scene in an age. Page 230 is beautiful, written with incredible sensitivity. Qin Shi Huangdi, the First Emperor, wanted to rule forever and found a way of having his mind and personality recorded on a ‘stone tape’ – via an intelligence who wants him to do his bidding. In a great race against time we realise that Major Chesterton is in fact Ian’s great-grandfather and what he thinks is suicide for Barbara’s sake is in fact murder – erasing himself from history. The 8,000 are a ready made army awaiting activation by the stone tap energy. The terracotta statues coming to life and being smashed to pieces mid-fight is a fantastic image.

Funny Bits: You have to admire how the Doctor offloads a load of troublesome children onto Ian and Barbara and chuckles as he runs away.
The Doctor – “You know I think this might be why I enjoy the company of you young fellows! You’re just the right people to see the simple solutions!”

Result: Atmospheric throughout, The Eleventh Tiger educates, amuses, emotes and surprises. David A. McIntee has written a real winner because he has taken a long enough break to refresh his writing and some passages in this book are astonishing in their simplicity and beauty. The pace is relaxed but this leaves time to consider all of the regulars and give them all a number of quiet moments that deepens their onscreen characterisation. The plot involving the First Emperor and stone tapes is intriguing enough to hold the interest and the guest cast are great too, a lot of work has been put into what makes this characters work. Even the setting has a character of its own; China comes alive with traditions, myths, rituals and sometimes just with striking descriptions. However this is Ian and Barbara’s book and they consummate their relationship with far more believability than would be thought possible. You just can’t help but wish them luck in the future: 9/10

Emotional Chemistry by Simon A. Forward

2011-06-28T07:21:00.003+01:00

Plot: Just what is it that links Russia in 1812, 2024 and 5000? The Doctor, Fitz and Trix become embroiled in a dangerous tale of time travel and the lengths two people will go to for love. With so many years between them, will Dusha and Kinzhal tear the world apart to find each other?

Top Doc: Frustratingly the Doctor appears in about five (short) scenes until halfway through the book and considering the wealth of characters involved he feels horribly like an extra in his own series. Once he bursts in on Kinzhal, it feels like he has finally entered the book. Once he does get involved however the characterisation is as good as we have see lately, with a shocking trip down memory lane as he meets up with three people (Aphrodite, Bugayev and Kinzhal) who have all met him before his amnesia. He is always bothering the authorities and having a gun pointed at him, despite the novelty, is a familiar scene for the Doctor. His thinking is rarely able to keep up with his feet. His life has been touched by remarkable people lately. He lights up people’s lives with his eye, mind and thoughts. His battle of wills against Garudin is great because it shows how strong willed he is compared to everyone else in the book. When learning that people already have a preconception of who he is, he grows increasingly childish, refusing to conform to other people’s perception of him. He feels it undermines his sense of self. The idea of him defiantly arguing the case for the Magellan and their wish to break the rules and have a child feels so right. Even if he had his memories, would he care to remember them? He considers the possibility that maybe he is an alien with the ability to change his appearance. It is strange to see him so emotional, affected as he is by the strength of two extremely powerful empaths. Fitz admits that the Doctor shares a sort of chemistry with everyone.

Scruffy Git: Fitz falls in love again. Groan I hear you say but this time its different (like Book of the Still) because his desire for Aphrodite is reflected back at him and he is caught in the impossible situation of fighting his feelings for her sake (although technically this makes it failed romance number thirteen!). A very interesting take on the usual shagging he gets up to. He wonders at the end, when he makes his choice to free her if he has made a narrow escape or if he has thrown away the greatest opportunity for love in his life. For the Doctor’s assistant he is not very well informed and Bugayev compares him to Trix’s brilliant performance as Ms Atherton, thinking Fitz is a poor supporting actor, giving them both away immediately. He belongs backstage. It is surprising how a shapely figure can bring out his chivalrous side. A considers himself a selfish coward and admits temptation is far more likely to win him over than torture. He is not a space-time virgin and has unshakable loyalty for the Doctor. He isn’t sure if he counts Trix as a friend yet. Confronted with Garudin’s lustful thoughts he is ashamed of his own baser desires. There is a vulnerability about him that marks him as a protector and not a possessor. He has a soft heart and is genuinely charming. Impossible to think of as a man.

Identity Tricks: The best use of Trix yet as we actually get to share her thoughts. Like any good actress she uses her surroundings to imbue emotion in the part. During her cover story as Ms Atherton she includes details of a robbery, suggesting she was the victim when in fact she was the thief! Cool, with the slender and charismatic eye of a Hollywood starlet, a consummate actress. The person beneath her performance is engaging. It is the first sign that she uses her acting as a means to hide from pain; she tries to tell herself her character is reacting to men being shot to pieces around her. She gets jealously angry of Aphrodite trying to claim her loot. She fears she is losing her touch. She hates constructing personas on the hook without background information. Brilliantly she turns the tables on the Doctor when he accuses of her of obsession with possession, telling him she was after the locket for his need, forcing him to consider he has misjudged her.

Foreboding: The Doctor has the crystal and can get after Sabbath’s mysterious allies…

Twists: Despite being described after the event, the opening, with the Doctor being whisked off into the far future in flames, is arresting enough to grab the attention. The scenes of possession by Misl Vremya are genuinely creepy, leading to a horrific assault of Russia’s UNIT (Bullets raked across the window screen, punching craters in the driver, the lieutenant and the seat in front of him). Kinzhal’s own people are out to assassinate him, fearing his thirst for conquest once the war is over. Garudin is another loathsome bad guy (following up superbly from Basalt in Timeless), breaking Fitz’s fingers to torture information out of him and cracking his secretary’s head open with a hammer. The Misl Vremya is a great time travel idea, sending your mind back along the timeline of an object from the past until you inhabit the mind of somebody who had contact with it. The central idea, Kinzhal and Dusha, two halves of one being, punished for having a daughter (Aphrodite) is a genuinely interesting catalyst for events. Their punishment, heart and mind separated and imprisoned in separate time zones gives the story the excuse to be as epic and timeline spanning as it wants to be. Dusha’s solution, to touch Natasha with a kiss of protection and thus building a bridge through time to Kinzhal, passing her luck on to Tatyana (2003) and Angel (5000) is breathtakingly clever. There is the usual threat to the Earth but even that is subverted, this time from Kinzhal and Dusha whose reunion will set the world on fire. The Doctor’s solution, to transfer Dusha’s mind via the locket to Angel’s mind, is simple but satisfying, especially Kinzhal’s reaction to this new form of intimacy with his other half. The psionic weapon that Trix loses is probably the one, which caused all that bother in the past in Eater of Wasps (who said the EDAs don’t give explanations…like the Burning monsters in Time Zero it comes years later!!!!). Kinzhal is responsible for setting up the time agency who were pursuing Greel from Talons of Weng Chiang.

Embarrassing bits: Without the blurb the first fifty odd pages are terrifyingly confusing with the story hopping from one time zone to another. Justin Richards should be shot for placing Emotional Chemistry where he did, if there was ever two stories that should have followed each other up it is Timeless and Sometime Never… (the build up in Timeless is dissipated by the distance between them) and this leaves Emotional Chemistry feeling (undeservedly) like a distraction. It should have been placed just after Halflife where it would have received the attention it rightfully deserves. The Doctor’s absence in the first half is keenly felt.

Result: It pains me to punish an author for effort but there is far too much going on in Emotional Chemistry, with a flourish of characters, settings and events that command the readers attention and Forward (agonisingly) injects sumptuous detail into each of them. I just could not concentrate so hard on everything with equal vigour and lost myself in a few places. This is a fascinating experiment with many great, great moments and another excellent plot, which weaves brilliantly through (and justifies) its three time zones. The prose is extremely imaginative and thoughtful, so noticeably colourful that it adds an extra layer of polish to the book. The characterisation rocks and there isn’t one person who rings false (if only there weren’t so bloody many of them!) and the regulars all shine apart from each other, especially Trix who has the ability to convince in all three time periods. Thick with incident, this is a flawed but winning attempt at capturing the feel of Russian literature, unfairly placed between two arc novels and well worth taking your time with: 7/10

Forever Autumn by Mark Morris

2011-06-26T13:37:00.002+01:00

Plot: There’s a green pea souper closing in on Blackwood Falls and ancient evil buried beneath the town is about to make sport with their Halloween celebrations. The Hervoken are preparing to leave the Earth and they need human blood and terror to fuel their spaceship…

Mockney Dude: One of the best depictions of the tenth Doctor in print so far, his quirky English madness highlighted especially well against the family atmosphere of the Falls. Mark Morris nails David Tennant’s mannerism and speech patterns perfectly and it takes no effort to see this adventure taking place before your eyes with the Doctor running about like a spiky haired loon, frightening and cute in equal measure. He and Martha make a very effective unit in this story, the pair of them working together very well and understanding each other well enough not to push the other too far. I love how they squabble together like an old married couple at times and yet she trusts him to save her ad nauseum and he trusts her with the very important task of keeping the Necris safe.

He is all bony knees and elbows and spiky, tousled hair fizzing with energy. Martha finds him exhilarating and frustrating. Like a temperamental racehorse sometimes all you can do is hold on for dear life. We get to see the Doctor through the eyes of American kids and he comes across as a babbling lunatic! He still wants to know if the future him is ginger. The Doctor is so utterly naïve he thinks nothing of asking a 12-year-old boy to show him his bedroom. When told he is very forward the Doctor comments he is ‘forwards, backwards and sideways.’ He is genuinely horrified at the thought of quitting, he likes the challenge of the impossible as it sorts out the legends from the wanabees. The Doctor isn’t just smart, he sees everything. He has a dangerous aura about him. He cannot bear to be idle, mooching around, he always has to be doing something. An ideas man and a pockets well filled man! The Doctor gives the Hervoken ship indigestion by feeding it his blood. He will survive, he always does. The Doctor is somehow the most unsettling and reassuring man, a mixture of boyish charm and ancient wisdom. Martha forces the Doctor to stay behind at the end of the novel and make sure everybody is alright, he is still avoiding the consequences of his adventures. Martha wonders if he didn’t stick around because he couldn’t come to terms with the idea that wherever they go people always die. He was haunted by those he didn’t save. I love the remorseless tenth Doctor when he bares his teeth and after giving the Hervoken the chance to leave without murdering anybody and they don’t take it he reduces them to dust without remorse.

Magical Martha: The Doctor likes Martha because she uses her brain and she tries not to be flattered by such a lousy compliments. Martha gives Rick warm tingly feelings despite trying not to! Never stop asking questions, always have an enquiring mind, every day is a school day is what her mum always told her. Whenever the Doctor seemed to talk about Rose (every five minutes or so) she tried to steer him away. Martha had had enough witches to last her a lifetime. When asked if she is the Doctor’s floozy she answers, ‘I’m nobody’s floozy.’ She didn’t expect the Doctor to profess his undying love t her but a little chivalry wouldn’t go amiss. There is a sequence where Martha eats alone in an American diner that somehow drove home the possibilities of travel with the Doctor for me more than any alien world ever could. I love Martha’s ruminations on time travel, what if she phoned him and it was the future and something awful had happened or what if she phoned before she left and she was with whomever she was speaking to? She feels like the luckiest girl alive to get the chance to travel with the Doctor. Martha has to remind herself, whilst terrified, that she kept stepping back into the TARDIS precisely for reasons like this. Given all of the running, Martha wonders if any of the Doctor’s assistants have ever been fat. The Doctor tells the lads when Martha has had a few too many cappuccinos she runs around naked which she refutes but oddly enough they stick around her to find out! Life with the Doctor was meet people, share extraordinary times, move on. Even Martha, no matter how much she might want to, never looked back.

Twists: I love that cover, simple but really effective. Autumn is the smell of dry leaves, wood smoke and mulchy Earth – such an evocative description of my favourite season. The whole sequence of Dr Clayton drunkenly stumbling into the graveyard and watching in horror as a creature with a misshapen clammy face and clicking twig like fingers tearing free of the Earth and drifting after him in the mist is really unnerving. The green mist affects your mind and worms its way into your insecurities and phobias and intensifies them. The creature delicately draws an x in the air and reshapes Clayton’s flesh so he has no mouth. Mini whirlwinds, dry leaves whipped into rough approximations that toss dry leaves through the air like discuses causing deep, slicing cuts. Green light flows from the book like mothers milk into the bellies of many children. The backstory of Glenn and Jim is lovely, a genuinely subtle gay romance…see it can be done! The cat attack is described as a bristling, screeching legion of vicious teeth, unsheathed claws and blazing green eyes. The creature looming out of the mist in the diner is really freaky. The Hervoken are described as fading away like an ‘aspirin dropped into water.’ The wall opens like a huge toothless mouth and Mr Everson disappears inside with a sickening crunch of bones. The Hervoken ship is a tenticular subterranean system with the town’s people living atop like tiny parasites on the back of a giant crab. The Necris is the starter mower of the spaceship and the famous Blackwood is the tip of the ships nose. The Witchy Wars saw the Hervoken take on the Carrionites before they were banished by the Eternals. The ship is powered by pain, terror, distress, contained within the raw matter of blood, bone, brain and sinew. There is a scene of horrendous claustrophobia as the rubber clown mask glues itself to Jim’s face and he becomes a murderous subject of the Hervoken, bursting through the shop window and pursuing Martha through the streets with scythe like claws. Chris lights a toilet roll with a cigarette lighter and sets the cardboard skeleton that has just smashed through their hiding place on fire. Points for saving the day but he is so busted by his mom for having a ciggie lighter. It is lovely to have an alien race that communicates only in gestures, somehow it makes them more menacing. They need the terror and blood so the Hervoken turn the children into their Halloween costumes and get them to murder their parents.

Funny Bits:
· The beginning of chapter five opens with the most terrifying sentence, constructed from as many long words as possible!
· ‘Tell you what Chrissy boy; lets skip all the teenage angsty stuff. Lets just take it as read that you’ve got issues, that no one understands you and that you’re confused about your sexuality.’
· The Doctor to a cat: ‘A word of advice. If you ever get invited to a fancy dress party, don’t go as a nun.’
· The Doctor tries to convince Martha that the Binks clan from Star Wars are real! That George Lucas was picking up a telepathic message from a far away planet and worked it into his story!

Result: I can completely understand why Forever Autumn won the Doctor Who Magazine poll. The writing style is highly engaging and the horror is genuinely frightening in places, Mark Morris feeds on all manner of terrors from not being able to cry out, nasties under the ground, children turning bad and every day items trying to kill you. The Doctor and Martha work very well in the US setting and the guest cast whilst never undergoing any real character development all feel very real in their own way, especially Rick, Etta and Jim. The Hervoken are a great monster and their war with the Carrionites adds depth to a television story and their particular brand of magic and communications makes them terrifyingly vivid. Forever Autumn is an extremely easy book to like and an even easier book to devour, ideal night time reading in the Autumn as I did. One of a few Doctor Who books to actually give me a nightmare: 8/10

Empire of Death by David Bishop

2011-06-15T17:50:00.002+01:00

Plot: Queen Victoria is inconsolable without her husband but a secret séance promises to connect her with him on the Other Side. Is there life after death and can it be reached by those still alive? The Doctor suspects not and heads to Scotland to investigate…

Fair Fellow: It’s frightening how much Peter Davison’s fifth Doctor is growing on me since the novels and audios have been released. Rather than the ineffectual moral coward we saw on the telly they have sought to flesh him out considerably. This is a good attempt by David Bishop to give the fifth Doctor (and Davison) a story he would enjoy with Nyssa as his sole companion.

The Doctor’s attitude towards the TARDIS is like a resident who has lived in the same house far too long – no longer noticing the cracks, the dust, the decline…all too often he is guilty of putting off something that should have been done long ago tomorrow. He is keeping Nyssa at arms length, as if scared to get close to his companions now Adric has died. He is Queen Victoria’s scientific advisor in this, a lovely touch. The Doctor cannot answer the big question as to whether there is life after death – but says when his time comes he would like his spirit to become at peace with nature. He has easy familiarity with Nyssa without with no sign of them being a couple. He has a room full of memento’s to his past companions. He loves kippers!

Alien Orphan: As for Nyssa however I don’t think there has been a PDA that has ever delved into the daughter of Traken this well. I have always been of the opinion that Nyssa was extremely underated, the most understated of the fifth Doctor’s companions and potentially the most interesting. Certainly this book gives us far more scope with Nyssa that Asylum did.

Nyssa has begun writing a journal to better understand her adventures beyond the purely scientific. She is lonely and misses Adric more than she ever thought possible because he was taken from them so abruptly. She finds it hard to relax in the Doctor’s company, at least not how she could with Tegan who was the elder sister Nyssa never had, a willing listener when she was troubled. Is she mature beyond her years? The Doctor reminds Nyssa of her father but the relationship is very different. Traken is as dead to her as her father. Having lost so many of her family and friends and home, Nyssa’s self control has become stronger. She builds walls around her hurt – but is she merely imprisoning herself with the pain? Nyssa has an air of self-assurance and upright posture that suggested regal stature. Plainly she had been raised amongst aristocracy, perhaps even possessed noble blood. When Tremas appears to Nyssa she feels even closer to him now he has gone. On Traken Nyssa had been amongst the brightest and most inquisitive minds of her generation. In a scene that should have been dealt with on the telly Nyssa finally breaks down over her father and Adric’s death. Unable to cope with so much loss she has become ill and withdrawn, pulling herself inwards to escape further hurt. She wants revenge against the Master, wishes she had died instead and blames the Doctor for not saving him. Nyssa meets her mother Lucina who claims that she died during childbirth to save Nyssa. Tellingly once she feels safe through the Rift with her mother and father on Traken Nyssa is quite happy to forget her ‘other’ life. She realises that you cannot save everyone and that death comes to us all.

Foreboding: Nyssa wonders if the Doctor knows her future…which he does if you follow the events of the fourth Doctor adventure Asylum.

Twists: I quite like the mock-Ambassadors of Death cover. The prologue is excellent, a gripping introduction to the story. James Lees falls into the Clyde and encounters a light and upon recovering can take on the personalities of the dead – shockingly exposing a Doctor who has performed abortions and even taking on the aborted personality of his sister who was killed in the womb. Queen Victoria is beautifully written, sensitive but very firm. During the séance Albert implores Victoria to send a convoy to Scotland to the ‘other side’. Bishop imbues his minor characters with a real history. The treatment of STDs for women was to swallow mercury! Others were suspended over baths of mercury so the vapours could burn out the infection. The ghosts who died in the Lock would gather around James in the dark. Every time James reaches out into the spirit world it is like forcing splinters of glass into his brain. Page 136 – see how much realism Bishop can inject into his characters in just one page. On the Other Side, the creature which has taken Tremas’ form admits that his people took images from Nyssa’s mind to shape her ideal afterlife; however, they have ceased trying to find a peaceful resolution to their problems with Earth. The rift first opened when a dead unborn child was cast through the membrane -- one of the aborted foetuses, which Kirkhope had been burying in the swamp -- and ever since, the physical laws of Earth’s Universe have been affecting the Other Side. They intend to invade the Earth before they invade them. The Doctor uses the TARDIS to seal of the rift from both sides.

Embarrassing Bits: There is one really awful scene where the Doctor and Nyssa head into the TARDIS and start spouting off awful technobabble just like they did on the telly. All that promise of ghosts contacting the living….squandered on an alien invasion story!

Result: David Bishop is a good writer but like so many others he gets rarely plays to his strengths. The best Doctor Who authors write the story they want to write and force the Doctor Who format to reshape. Others start writing a story and let the Doctor Who format confine them into a world of invasions and monsters. Empire of Death has a terrific first half, an intriguing mystery and some surprisingly adult period detail mixed with some lovely character development for Nyssa, which is long overdue. I kept wondering why people had such a problem with this book. Then I read the second half. Shapeless beings taking on the shape of the dead to invade our world and take over. Yaaaaaaawn. How very, very disappointing. This could have been a truly frightening ghost story with some shocking implications for the Doctor Who universe but instead everything gets wrapped up nice and cosily with the invasion foiled. What’s more the writing gets less atmospheric as the book continues, as though the writer felt he had set the scene enough and was just getting on with the plot. Queen Victoria’s presence aside, Empire of Death is a huge letdown: 5/10

Timeless by Stephen Cole

2011-06-10T07:37:00.003+01:00

Plot: Timeless offers you the chance to kill with no consequences. After finally breaking back into the right reality the Doctor sets his friends investigating this bloodthirsty organisation. On the way he learns some shocking things about himself, Anji adopts a kid and Sabbath finally reveals his grand Masterplan…

Top Doc: This is a perfect of example of why I enjoy the eighth Doctor books at this point, the characterisation here is fantastic. He is a firework of emotions in this book, from depression to joy, from frustration to punch the air satisfaction. He starts the book hooded and withdrawn, moaning that his life has been too full of guesswork lately. He is doing his predictions party trick again. He works for life, not big on easy answers but the ones he usually comes up with are usually better than the ones you would come up with on your own. Described as crazy and polite, even if his hair is too long. He giggles when he is called a student. He really enjoys pretending to be a copper (“Assaulting an officer, I’ll have you for that!”) and doesn’t take any of the thugs’ pathetic threats seriously, laughing in their faces. He is testing Trix in this book, to see if she can be trusted. When Anji forces the issue that Chloe is from his home planet he tells her to be quiet, terrified of confronting his own past and his fate of her destroyed planet. He celebrates life, protects it, cherishes it, treasures it…but is scared that for all his championing of it, he is the ultimate betrayer of it. Brilliantly (and in a moment that hilariously has fanboys wetting their pants with anger) the Doctor lets his emotions overcome in the face of Daniel Basalt’s crimes and viciously boots him the guts, although he does have the humility to look ashamed afterwards. He holds back the tears at Anji’s party asks her what is he going to do without her.

Scruffy Git: Rather than double the amount of women salivating teaming Fitz up with the (pretty much) identical character Guy works a charm, the pair of them refusing to take everything seriously and adding a great deal of fun to the book. They get to talk laddishly (which isn’t as painful as it should be) and goof around madly in Anji’s car, punching the windscreen out, smashing through warehouse doors and shooting down Sabbath’s apes whilst singing the James Bond theme (Anji later notes her car isn’t covered by acts of total prat). Even better is his interaction with Trix, which is lively and flirtatious and bodes well for the future. I think Fitz is secretly Cole’s favourite regular but due to editorial requirements he gets the least amount to do.

Career Nazi: Pleasingly, Anji’s final appearance is one of her best. Her actual leaving scene is about two lines long because we have building up to this since Time Zero. Her bitchiness towards Trix is hilarious and it is shame she didn’t come out of hiding sooner (Anji thinks she is 100% fake and a dangerous, manipulative psychotic!). She has spent most of her life pushing away her ethnic background. She canot wait to move on, determined that now she had found her Earth she would never leave it again. The scenes between the Doctor and Anji are great, a real mutual respect between them a genuine feeling that she has finally grown out of needing him to protect her. She has given her parents enough reason to chase after her (and certain young men) with a machete! It is great to see her relax, flirt and laugh, she feels normal for a change and she realises that she isn’t used to it anymore, but it feels good. She feels a pang of jealousy of how close Fitz and Trix have grown and gets the urge to run into the TARDIS and slam it into Trix’s face. After snogging Guy at the party she realises there is world of possibilities out there for her. Wrapping up her story in a lovely, almost fairytale manner Trix arranges the adoption of Chloe for her and as we leave her she is introduced to a gorgeous hunk called Greg… I love this, Anji’s story has a definitive beginning, middle and end…and it has been a very satisfying journey. Clearly she has learnt a lot travelling with the Doctor and she is a completely different person to who she was in Escape Velocity. Very nicely done.

Identity Tricks: What a relief it is to see this woman explored in some depth. She has been using the TARDIS for business ventures and loves performing in all guises. She has never been caught before. She has a million and one sob stories at her fingertips to ensnare Fitz. He reckons she has nine lives like a cat. An escort rather than a friend, like somebody paid to respond in a professional way. The way she can make up a convincing history in seconds is really creepy. When she slips on a character she becomes that person so its annoying if you start to like that person. Trix knows people with access to all kinds of things (fake driving licence, passports), the Doctor knows she is illegally stepping into a dead persons shoes (stealing their identity) and trusts her to take care of things. Brilliantly, she sits there filing her nails as though nothing concerns her as the Doctor reveals all. The Doctor has been testing her patience; to see if she could last on a job does not please herself. To Anji’s annoyance, she succeeds. She sees travelling in the TARDIS as too good an opportunity to miss. Claims she is not one of the Doctor’s tame stooges.

Ham Fists: Finally we get to hear Sabbath’s plan and amazingly, after all the build, it isn’t a let down! Halfway through the book he storms in on bully Daniel Basalt, slaps him about a bit and takes over his organisation (what a guy!). The great puppet master, he boasts that the Doctor’s investigations into Timeless has manoeuvred everyone where he needs them (although the Doctor tells him he is a ‘lazy get’). In a moment of punch the air brilliance just as Sabbath’s plan is about to come into fruition, his business partner (the very creepy Kalicum) turns on him and tells him “ My people no longer need you!” We realise Sabbath was trying to seed the human inheritance in the entire universe, wanting to bring stability to a universe that he has been shown could descend into the horrors of raw time. He was shown how the human race could flourish and thus has been their willing pawn ever since, thinking his plotting and scheming would bring about humanity’s prosperity. Now he has been betrayed, he is pissed.

Foreboding: Where to start? Sabbath’s plan work and the crystals are seeded in the universe (Sometime Never). The Doctor is after one of those crystals for study (Emotional Chemistry). Trix and Anji strike up a bargain (The Deadstone Memorial, The Gallifrey Chronicles). Anji has met a nice bloke called Greg (The Gallifrey Chronicles).

Twists: The pre credits sequence is the most ridiculously entertaining sequence this range has produced since The Crooked World. Everyone kill Guy Adams Day is beautifully written. The TARDIS can find its way around the universe because it is a closed system, it has a precise beginning and end and thus the way back into our universe is to go back in time just after the Big Bang and if the TARDIS is ripped apart by the primal forces they know they are home (none of the other universes have a beginning, they have always been there, now and forever). “Hello reality you are cleared to land!”, the Doctor returns the journal to the bookshop in 1938 (Time Zero). I love the idea of the Doctor taking Fitz and Trix all around the world taking snapshots, just to make their cover story more convincing. Basalt really is vile, smacking a woman’s head into a glass frame and cracking them both. Chapter nineteen is lovely, all the plot threads dive into a coherent whole, after lots of clever investigation the plot is revealed…Timeless find a person (as the universes collapse, Chloe saves some of the more unfortunate people, Jamais sucks the soul out and breathes it into the version in our reality) in an alternate reality, brings them here and kill one version (Fitz and Trix’s contribution), the bodies are shipped out and dumped in the sea (the Doctor and Stacey) and the paperwork covering their arses is dealt with by Guy’s office (Anji and Guy). Sabbath’s sudden appearance ups the ante dramatically. Kalicum, Sabbaths employer has sharp, crystal like hands, which butcher Chongy. Stacey has some horrifying dreams about Basalt, her mind telling her that she is one of the Timeless clients, from another universe and he has killed her counterpart. Chloe is revealed to be one of the last surviving Time Lords, her world destroyed (by the Blessed Destroyer), her people rotten…she wandered eternity seeking others of her kind, trying to find the magic of the stellar engineers. The Wraith attacks him been attempts at communication, they are the last line of defence in the Vortex and it has been poisoned, a new presence manifesting itself in space/time…a presence as old as time itself (but it wasn’t there yesterday). Guy is revealed to be a descendant of D’Amantime, Sabbath has genetically altered him so he can prepped for his role in his plan in 2003. The diamonds are to be implanted in Guy’s body, the body placed in a casket, the casket placed before the universe began. When the universe ignites, the casket goes with it and whatever it contains becomes part of the fabric of the universe…the alien essence will be in everything and everyone. Alas Guy is spared but the plan still goes ahead, the diamonds planted in Chloe’s dolly instead. Oh and Sabbath is betrayed by his partners (hahaha).

Funny bits: The Doctor’s torture of Tommo, slowly pulling out strands of his remaining hair, is great. Almost as good is sticking his pencil in another thugs ear and tossing him overboard! Taking the piss out of Sabbath (“Aha! Working as I am for unspecified higher powers, the nature of my misguided plans remains frustratingly obscure! Ha ha!”) is always funny.

Result: Just as the NAs worked when they concentrated on building their own version of the future, the EDAs do their best work on Earth in domestic settings (Vampire Science, Revolution Man The Banquo Legacy, The Burning, Casualties of War, The Turing Test, Father Time, City of the Dead, Advenuress, Camera Obscura, The Sleep of Reason, The Deadstone Memorial and The Gallifrey Chronicles are some the best this range has produced). The Doctor has a cast of wonderfully trendy twenty-somethings here backing him up (Anji, Fitz, Trix, Stacey and Guy work astonishingly well together) and the urban surroundings add a touch of reality to a range, which was slowly going SF crazy (or possibly just crazy). It is another richly plotted story, Timeless has lovely clues planted everywhere and plot threads dovetail together effortlessly. Finally this mighty eighth Doctor arc is building up to its conclusion and the second half of the book is one energetic twist after another (The Time Lords! Sabbath’s plan!). Add to this mix some sizzling dialogue, interesting characterisation (for her last story Anji gets to shine) and lots of moments that remind you how marvellous the central character can be (the Doctor on the boat), this is a confident and stylish piece of storytelling and about as far from the tired hackneyed range as is reputed: 9/10

Wooden Heart by Martin Day

2011-06-09T09:26:00.002+01:00

Plot: The Doctor and Martha land on a derelict prison hanging in a deserted area of space by pick up life signs on board. As they explore they discover a stretch of woodland and a village existing right at the heart of the ship…

Mockney Dude: For the NSAs it is nice to have a prologue that isn’t the Doctor and his companion dancing merrily around the console, for a change they are no where to be seen until the first chapter. Does the Doctor tell the truth or deliberately escalate the conversation into the realms of the absurd? He is a fount of useless information! He walks in big confident steps, steps that want to march into the future and see what’s there, used to living his life at great speed. He dresses in a subdued manner as if wishing to wear nothing that would detract from the expressive force of his personality. From time to time the Doctor needed a human compass to live by. Does the Doctor precipitate chaos or is he simply drawn to it? He matured late, like a fine wine. Even the Doctor has had more than enough of monsters during this adventure. He is more of a hands on teacher that shows you things and lets you make up your own mind. When he confronts the creature skulking about the ship it tugs at his past, into the things he has endured and the things he has had to do, desperate to have the darker side of him. He is infuriating and wonderful and frustrating all at the same time.

Marvellous Martha: Martha enjoys the moments without the Doctor as well, the pauses for breath and some time to take it all in. The events of her life since she had met him has threatened to wash her away completely and sometimes she wishes they could have the moments of beauty without the monsters all the time. Martha means ‘mistress of the house.’ Martha has been on a package holiday to Ibiza! I was very pleased to see Martha turn away from the Doctor and his unfeeling discussion of the people, reminding him of his responsibilities to save everybody. She knows her own mind and I like that that is brought to the fore. They might be archetypes but they have developed and evolved and are a community now. Martha’s need to relieve the suffering of those around even if they aren’t real is touching. Her great grandmother is a businesslike shrivelled old bean of a woman who knows her own mind.

Twists: The prologue straight away suggests that this is going to be deeper than your standard NSA with the awful realisation of losing a child and the haunting suggestion that they will stay forever young in your mind and never grow old. The Doctor makes the aspersion that it is easy to think of the cosmos full of planets and stars when so much of it is actually empty. The location is pleasingly grim and nasty, a prison in space but more like a mausoleum full of bodies now. A stretch of forest in the middle of the ship is a great idea, it might have been nabbed from Paul Finch’s Leviathan unmade tale and was also used in Flesh and Stone but regardless the mystery of why it is here is what generates much tension in this book and Day gives it its most polished outing. If it is an illusion it is a breathtaking one but there is no denying that when the Doctor and Martha landed on the spaceship there was no village, forest or mountains there. There’s a moment where the Doctor steps into a bear trap and it closes around his foot, leaking blood. Children are disappearing from the village and if they are return it is said the village will be destroyed. Day spends some time discussing the nature of reality, suggesting that we create our own personal universe by the evidence of our own eyes and when we sleep that universe blinks out of existence. Martha and Saul are attacked by a truly grotesque creature in a sequence that feels really fast paced and furious – not an easy feat to pull off in a novel. What if the land and the people are one? What if when all the people go to sleep everything else switches off and the whole world stops? If the Castor switches back to night mode whatever is maintaining this world will turn off until morning. There is also the suggestion that the Doctor and Martha go round and round in the forest because the next section of this world isn’t created yet. I thought the moment when Shiga stepped out of the mist to tell her that she lost him to drink long before she was lost to him really haunting. ‘You can change the world with a jolly good map!’ – very true. I remember the first time I read this book the fog shrouded village gave me nightmares, blank lifeless children stepping out of the mist. If there is only so much memory to this world perhaps the creatures are there to stop you venturing any further than actually exists. Thom returns and tells Petr that Saul is his real father in an unexpected twist that shocks Martha as much as the reader. The heart of the Castor contains its ultimate prisoner and its ultimate experiment. A creature that was captured and tortured, taking people of unspeakable evil (the prisoners) and taming them, sucking out all of their bad emotions. It tried to expel that evil and inadvertently created the shadow creature which tore through the facility and killed everybody. The creature created the village as a free place where it could explore, analyse and observe the humanity it had experienced. The children were vanishing because it was running out of energy to maintain the world and they were the greatest drain. The Dazai convincing the creature to live is akin to a subject giving hope to God.

Result: Extremely well written, this is one of the most elegant novels of later years. Martin Day starts with the premise of the village appearing in the ship and manages to maintain the mystery of how and why this ages old civilisation has suddenly come into being throughout. His prose is accessible but sensuous and there are some moments of action that prove to be page turning. For a cast of people who apparently aren’t real the characters from the village are some of the most defined and realistic in the range. Wooden Heart handles some weighty themes from losing a child, the nature of reality and whether the evil is a process of nature or nurture but it never feels like a lecture. This is the NSA I would recommend to readers of the NA/EDAs, a very pleasing mystery with lots of thoughtful moments: 8/10

Deadly Reunion by Terrance Dicks and Barry Letts

2011-06-07T13:02:00.002+01:00

Plot: Just after the Second World War Second Lieutenant Lethbridge-Stewart is confronted with the truth of the Greek gods and finds his heart stolen by Persephone. Years later when he is a Brigadier and head of UNIT the stage is set for a deadly reunion…

Stiff Upper Lip: This book is more about the Brigadier than it is the Doctor and whilst I would have preferred a taut military thriller rather than a travelogue and a Pertwee run-around discovering any information about Alistair Lethbridge Stewart is nice.

Alistair had committed himself to Fiona Campbell and after spotting the delicious Sephie he soon began to regret it. He has managed to scale the North East face of Ben Nevis. He lost his virginity to a girl called Vera the night he was commissioned second lieutenant. He is not sure if he believes in the soul but he definitely does not believe in the devil. Alistair has always had a healthy respect for ghosts and ghouls and things that go bump in the night. He knows how to calm angry dogs. During his training to be an officer he slipped up and condemned a hundred imaginary men to their deaths. Just before he had passed out of Sandhurst he was given a look at his final report – for officer like qualities he received 93% (nobody had ever got 100%) and for leadership he got 90% He seems to think he is always right. Sephie deliberately leads him into the waters of forgetfulness so he will never remember his time in the Underworld. The Brigadier is still reluctant to formally admit the existence of extra terrestrials despite having met some particularly unpleasant specimens.

Good Grief: Could the Doctor be getting used to his exile? And worse – getting to like it, like some long-term institutionalised prisoner? Despite his frequent complaints and grumbles to the Brigadier (just to keep him on his toes) life as UNITs scientific adviser wasn’t bad. He’d always been restless, discontented, sceptical – it was an attitude that had taken him from a position of power and prestige on Gallifrey to become a hunted fugitive. Was he beginning to settle down? Was he tamed? Was he declining into a lovably eccentric boffin? The Doctor and Ernest Hemmingway ran bulls together in Pamplona in the thirties. You wouldn’t call it a friendship between the Doctor and the Master but they might once have been friends. There was something, a certain mutual regard – as if they both felt the universe would be a less interesting place without the other.

Twists: Demeter, Sephie and Hermy are the Greek Gods but in reality, immortal humans (“Of course we’re not really Gods but it was quite fun for a while.”) Homo superior? The Players are the same breed but they use men’s lives as a chess game to while away the never-ending boredom. Sephie is kidnapped by Hades and taken to the Underworld. When Zeus ‘retired’ he handed Sephie his powers and that is why Hades wants her. Hades means to displace Zeus as the God of Gods and become the Supreme Being worshipped by the human race – he intends to start another war, countries tearing each other apart and then he will appear as their saviour. Barry Letts’ monsters are certainly memorable – ‘a giant spiderish thing with far too many legs, a proboscis so full of blood it flopped along the ground like a balloon full of water.’ Hades is Colonel Niclovic! Things become appropriately epic – Hades throws hurricanes at their escape ship and grows to mountainous proportions and is confronted by Poseidon, God of the Sea. Terrance Dicks’ first chapter is shockingly brutal, train crashes, parishioners being gunned down… A decapitated man stumbles towards Jo and the Doctor is confronted by a bull…all in a days work for UNIT! Hippies are spiking drugs with a slow reacting drug which is causing violent incidents up and down the country. A body in the library, the vicar is found with an oriental dagger jammed between his shoulder blades. Upon exploring the Abbey the Doctor discovers Sarg, a deadly alien drug, being grown – whole planets have been ruined by this substance, civilisations collapsing in an orgy of violence. Of course the Master is involved so this really doesn’t belong in this section…but I was so happy when he turned up here he is anyway!

Embarrassing Bits: Who on Earth taught Barry Letts to write?

Funny Bits: Yates looked more like a poet or an intellectual than a soldier.
“I’ll have you know Jo that in my younger days I played lead perigosto stick for the Gallifrey Academy Hot Five – until the faculty closed us down. The Master was on drums.”
The Doctor snapped, “How often do I have to tell people – I am not a pop star!”
“Look at him man, he’s skewered between the shoulder blades, practically pinned to the desk! What do you suppose happened? He got a nasty itch he couldn’t reach?” – I would LOVE to have head Pertwee say that!
“Trap One receiving. Kindly observe proper RT procedure Trap Two.” “Never mind that nonsense Brigadier! Listen to me!”
“My dear Doctor, if everyone in the world was evil I should scarcely stand out in a crowd!”

Result: Anniversary book? Pah! There have been far better PDAs and there will be far better PDAs…why couldn’t the schedules be jiggled up a bit so something worthwhile could have taken this spot? Deadly Reunion is passable fluff but it’s riddled with flaws. The Barry Letts section is the most interesting part but is written with such hilarious ineptness (the writing doesn’t flow, the descriptions are lousy, the guy wants to focus more on the operations of a ship than on, say, plot and character) I struggled through it for nearly a week. The Terrance Dicks section is as brisk and uncomplicated as ever but plays like the ‘Best of…’ of the Pertwee era with nothing new or challenging added. There are some lovely touches in this section but it’s a pure nostalgia rush and thus easy to get bored with when the dire plot attempts to take hold. I can see a violent, psychologically unbalancing wartime thriller starring the Brigadier which pushes his character to the limits and we see through and through why we love him so much. The best this pair could think up was him getting off with a Greek God: 3/10

The Last Resort by Paul Leonard

2011-06-05T11:43:00.004+01:00

Plot: The Doctor is horrified to discover hotels cropping up in every major period of human history, the Good Times Inc offering package holidays and having absolutely no idea what damage they are doing to the fabric of reality. The Doctor, Fitz and Anji are going to have to die a million times over before reality can be saved…

Top Doc: Adding to the experimental nature of the novel the Doctor doesn’t appear until well into the second half. It works on two levels, one to add credence to Sabbath’s claims that the Doctor is dead and two because the second he does get involved (a fact that he was fully aware of) things get a whole lot worse. He is described as Fitz and Anji’s boss and even Anji suggests, now things have become so dangerous, he is more like a manager barking orders to subordinates than a friend. It is a frightening depiction of the Time Lord at the brink of insanity, trying desperately to save reality at whatever the cost. He has killed many times, murdered worlds and whole races of beings are gone because of him. Beyond caring about individual lives anymore. He promises everything, says he can do anything. Chaotic, absent-minded, shifty and totally absorbed, the kindness is fading from his eyes. He looks out at the shifting City as a problem to solved rather than a place full of living, breathing people. Sabbath tells Anji it was the Doctor’s (kind) nature that betrayed everything that is. He is willing to kill himself in order to prove that Good Times is buggering up Time. I don’t know if this is what Justin Richards had in mind when he created this far more unpredictable Doctor but WOW! What a frightening guy. He’s actually a step scarier than the seventh Doctor ever was because he isn’t frightened to get involved and yet he is so unpredictable.

Scruffy Git: No matter how many versions of him that we see here, there is a universal Fitz. The stakes have never been this high before and never has so much been asked of the Doctor’s companions…and here they prove themselves totally. Fitz gets the job at Good Times because they were desperate for staff. He has a childish lack of interest in anything routine, businesslike or tidy…Anji works with him at Good Times for six weeks and the resulting experience makes her respect and like him less. Professional adventurer or waster? He can’t keep his gob shut for five minutes and is humiliated at how much he relies on the Doctor. He feels giddy and sick for much of the second half of the book, scared that he isn’t the ‘real’ Fitz and he will be sacrificed in favour of the real one.

Career Nazi: She is used to wearing suits, smiling in the right places and taking bull. She is used to sudden arrivals and departures and the possibility of never seeing people ever again. Described as seeing people as a set of attributes to be fitted into a pattern. Not unkind. Fitz says of she was trapped in Egypt nothing less than running the Kingdom would satisfy her. One version of Anji figures she isn’t the real one because the Doctor hasn’t rescued her and he would never let her down. She realises it has never been this bad before and whatever they did events would roll over them all. Like an earthquake, events have taken over and her actions and thoughts are irrelevant. Totally impotent. She hasn’t felt at home in the TARDIS for some time now and when asked to sacrifice herself to save the day she accepts the role, albeit with bad grace. She reinforces her opinion from the last book that they are expendable resources in the Doctor’s quest to save reality. Tragically, when it comes down to saving one Anji out of millions, several cannot accept the situation and commit suicide.

Identity Tricks: Evasive, threatening and exasperating, Trix reveals herself to both Jack and Iyeeye. She is fully aware of what is happening outside the TARDIS and is smart enough to stay inside and not get caught up in the temporal buggery. Exaggerated, theatrical, she tries on several accents and hair colours saying she never knows what role she might be called to play. Despite her wily sneaking about, she is discovered by the Doctor at the climax.

Ham Fists: Amazing how much better Sabbath works when he is not under some pathetic alias and involved in the plot from the get go rather than turning up at the end having manipulated all! This is the first time since Camera Obscura that he has been treated as a genuine regular character in the series, one that doesn’t need a crap motive to be involved and guess what…its his best appearance since then too! Likeable, despite his strange accent and cold manner. Brilliantly, when time and space fall apart Sabbath is revealed to be the only person holding the universe together, probably because of his mysterious masters. His methods are clinical but he doesn’t kill without a good reason, although he does wish to murder Jack before he can create time travel and start this horrible mess. He actually seems to enjoy working with the Doctor and is reluctant to see harm come to him. He tells him, “If you travel through time without your so called laws to protect the world, then clearing up afterwards is a necessity, not a luxury.”

Foreboding: Whilst the Doctor has solved the immediate problem of reality falling apart, the multiverse is still in tatters and needs to be resolved…

Twists: The first chapter is deliciously off beat…time travelling tourists in Ancient Egypt? Nike, cameras, McDonalds…what the hell is going on? Jack comes from a world where we have conquered Mars and you can create a time machine in your garage with $5! The repeated chapters (with slight differences) revealing the different universes are excellent. Some of the temporal anomalies, JCBs digging foundations for Pyramids, people having carnal relationships across time zones are very imaginative. The Doctor is revealed as being dead; a clever idea which is backed up by his absence…and ever better isn’t contradicted when the event actually takes place! The scenes from Iyeeye’s POV are a doubled edged sword as they are superbly written (almost Leela-esque) but they confuse an already complicated storyline. Iyeeye’s world turns out to be another alternate Earth, one which the Martian’s invaded when a Jack from the future visited Mars and told them how the Earth had conquered Mars and so they invaded the Earth first. Anji realises with some horror that there is a Jack with her and another with Fitz, both in the same reality. The stakes are raised when Fitz is found dead outside the TARDIS. The ghosts of a possible reality shimmer in the Egyptian sun. Every time you travel in time you are duplicated, cloned. Reality is tearing itself apart, there is a finite amount of energy in the universe and as more and more histories spring into existence the available energy will be spread amongst them until nothing exists any more. The TARDIS won’t travel away from Earth anymore as if the rest of the universe…the Doctor doesn’t finish the thought. The ship is in pain, being divided again and again and again. After setting up a double murder of Cheops to prove that Time is on the brink of collapse, one of the Doctor(s) submits himself to be murdered as definitive proof that copies are being created and killed. The altering history boardroom scenes are brilliant, buildings changing shape, faces and voices shifting, the desk changing material…terrifyingly time and space falls apart around them. As if that wasn’t cool enough we follow that up with millions of TARDISes, Doctor’s, Fitz’s and Anji’s from a million realities all-converging in Egypt, the one safe reality. Crushing, dying, it is an incredible image. The TARDISes encrust around the Other ship until they reach critical mass and explode into a new sun. The Martians are created from Jack’s stomach bacteria, millions of versions of him visited Mars and died in the poisonous atmosphere but his bacteria breed and evolved. To avert this catastrophe, the Doctor and Sabbath need to break all the casual links that lead to reality tearing apart…they kidnap Jack as a baby before he can create a time machine (and his Dad can create Good Times Inc with it) and take him to Ancient Egypt…a woman discovers the baby, cannot read the note and names him Akhenaton (all the bloody identity questions about Jack and Ak earlier and he was him all along!). Trix is finally caught in the act.

Funny bits: Fitz has the Beatles “Help!” as his mobile because only the Doctor and Anji are likely to call him!

Result: The trouble with The Last Resort is that it refuses to conform to standard narrative…you don’t follow characters along a linear storyline. What you have to acccept is that from one scene to the next you might not just be reading about the same character, but a different version of the same character. A fascinating device, confusing as hell, but brilliantly exploiting the alternative universe concept. What makes this book so special is what makes it so impenetrable, if you don’t dissect this hardcore puzzle book completely you’ll miss out on all the rewards. A wealth of brain bursting ideas, a satisfying fractured plot (of which the threads link together beautifully) and a genuine adrenaline rush of tragedy, sacrifice and hopelessness. The stakes have never been this high before and it is pleasing to see some real pay off from this misguided arc. The last third is my favourite, packed with imagination and shocking images. Breathtakingly experimental: 9/10

The Last Dodo by Jacqueline Rayner

2011-06-03T06:16:00.003+01:00

Plot: The Museum of the Last Ones contains the last specimen of each extinct race and somebody is stealing them and selling them on to make a fortune. The Doctor and Martha have to face up to the responsibilities of being the last of each of their respective races…

Mockney Wanderer: Superb characterisation of the tenth Doctor courtesy of Jac Rayner. In one scene she has him tear from the TARDIS, save Martha, disarm Frank, fiddle with his gun, rearm him and mix up several sayings…all in a few seconds. She seems to understand how to get the balance between his dark intensity and his eccentric madness and you can hear Tennant bowling out each and every witty one liner she gives him. Not only that but we get some fascinating ruminations on his overwhelming responsibility as the last of the Time Lords plus some astonishing reflection on his exile to Earth way back when. This is a pretty impressive package overall.

The Doctor is a smiley sort of person; he loves everything, he gets excited at all sorts of things and what is brilliant is that he makes you see how exciting they are too. He doesn’t like zoos because the through of anything being caged hurts him. The Doctor cannot resist the pull of the mystery magnet. I love all the intelligent discussion between the Doctor and Martha about the museum – had this been the ninth Doctor and Rose it would have descended into a slagging off match about ‘different moralities’ but he seems to have learnt his lesson since he regenerated and he treats Martha like the mature adult that she is. The Doctor believes they are stuck in a living death, that humans have mocked nature by wiping out these creatures but the museum doesn’t apologise for it, it laughs at them even more. He doesn’t hate humans whatever he might say, he might dislike some individuals, intolerance, injustice and slaughter but he doesn’t hate people. It’s embarrassing but some of his best friends are people! The last time the Doctor was caged (his exile) it was by his own people and it really hurt. He paced a tiny space, helping people because he had no choice and the people treated him like he was a resource not understanding that their every desire tightened the chain that bound him. Now his people are gone and he is the only one left, he is free. He misses them terribly but he still can’t forgive them for what they did to him. He was a Time Lord in exile…or was he an animal in a zoo? The Doctor has had to do a lot of justifying to his conscience over the centuries. He reacts quickly as though it is programmed in. In a moment that takes your breath away the Doctor offers his freedom, willing to be a museum exhibit no matter how much it would pain him, to save the Earth. He has a grade A in Annoying.

Marvellous Martha: How much did Ms Rayner know about Martha when writing this book? Its actually her first book technically so I am willing to bet she had a few scripts a some rushes from Smith and Jones to go on…but she absolutely nails her. And what’s more this isn’t the generic Martha from some of the other books but an honest to God person with a life to go back to who is thoroughly enjoying this crazy life which has opened out before her. The first person scenes really allow Martha to shine and she narrates her scenes with some wonderful humour and thoughtful asides that make her feel so real. Just read this stuff and trust me…

The TARDIS being able to go anywhere is an enormous concept for Martha to get her head around and her brain wants to explode with the choice. She finds medical dramas laughable now she has worked in a hospital. Martha finds it hard to take in the enormity of a planet-sized museum with 300 billion extinct species that he friend wants to save. Can something be papered in non-paper is just one of a number of brilliant thoughts Martha has that are nothing to do with the plot! She finds it reassuring that there are still doughnuts in the future. Not being able to everything doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do anything, Martha cannot heal everybody in the world but that wont stop her being a Doctor. Martha was always a good runner but lately she had had a lot of practice. She is seeing things that nobody else from her time will see and she’s treating it like a school trip! Trouble is you are so busy running and hiding there’s little time for anything else. Martha thinks she knows the Doctor quite well but she still wouldn’t pick him as her specialist subject on Mastermind. In one awesome moment of guilt Martha Jones realises that it wasn’t plague or climate change that wiped out the dinosaurs, it was her. In a very telling moment Martha thinks about murdering the last of an extinct species, she knows that shouldn’t think that way but it is threatening her life…so easy to justify genocide when you are in the right frame of mind. She had pretty much figured that the Doctor ordered and you obeyed. Martha has no idea why the Doctor calls the last Dodo Dorothea. Martha was the only black girl in her class and she has a student loan that would cripple a small country. Her current idea of stability is to stay in the same time zone for half an hour. When Eve’s plan to destroy the Earth and keep Martha as the one specimen of the planet, Martha realises the awesome responsibility the Doctor holds for the Time Lords. Is she an anonymous spare part (if not why does everybody scream ‘Doctor!’ when they rush into a room rather than ‘Martha!’). Martha’s name emblazes the last page proudly as the first person to ever reach 900,000 points in the I Spyder Species Hunt.

Foreboding: ‘You never met Mickey, did you?’ – nope but she might one day and then wind up marrying him!

Twists: The prologue is wonderful, told from the point of view of the last Dodo as her species is wiped out and she is saved by two strangers. The I Spyder extracts are fun and informative, visually appealing and educational and eventually (the Time Lord extract) very funny. The Museum of the Last Ones is split into planets such as Earth, Mondas, Refusis II, Varos, Raxaxcorifallapatorius, Tara and Gift Shop (oops scrap that…it really is a gift shop). When there is only one specimen left a collection agent teleports to retrieve it. In the last thousand years it has been quite hard to keep up with every species that has been lost on the Earth. We get to meet the last black Rhino with its horn cruelly torn off and looking forlorn and feeble. Gallifrey winked out of existence leaving one lone survivor and Eve feels a desperate desire to obtain the last of the Time Lords for her museum. To possess what nobody else possesses, a Quagga skin jacket, that is what elevates one about mere style (the last of a species used as a coat! Argh! That’s sick!). A thing that can be had by anyone has no value at all. Eve’s fantasism is frightening; she literally beats up the Doctor in order to get him in her collection. Letting something live out its life knowing it is the only one of its kind is cruel fate. The Doctor is trapped in the cage with a shocked, angry expression and a gravity-defying pose. The last three striped turtle almost ended up as a soup! By releasing the Doctor Martha murders 300 billion species, way to go Ms Jones. Sequences with a sabre-toothed tiger prowling around a supermarket as Martha pushes a Dodo in a trolley are unforgettable. Cloning extinct creatures to be sold and killed is obscene, causing their extinction over and over again. Dodos are burying bombs all over the world in an attempt to destroy the planet and cut down on paperwork. Eve is planning on stopping all species from dying out by killing them all! Martha is almost the last human. It transpires that she is an android and the detonator is literally ‘close to hand.’ The Doctor manages to send the extinct creatures back to their natural habitat but years before they died out where there is an abundant number of their own kind. The last of the Cirrians came to this planet after his species was wiped out in interstellar war and built Eve to interact with. The people died of plague and he avowed to make it his life’s work to stop species dying out. Eve took this literally and suspended him as he wept a tear for the last of his people, twice over. Her whole purpose was to preserve the last of every species. Now he plans on rebuilding her and populating the planet with extinct animals.

Funny Bits: This is a screamingly funny book in places.
· The Doctor has a look as though you’ve kicked his puppy!
· ‘Back when the Dodo was as alive as…a Dodo!’ Dodo means ‘fat rear’ so if one asks you if its bum looks big it is best to tactfully fib.
· ‘I knew a lady who made gooseberry conserve. I don’t think there was much in it for the gooseberries.’ The Doctor condemns the museum’s curator, Eve.
· Take the Daleks for instance. They’d wink out of existence in the distant past and emerge again. Their mass extinction has been recorded so many times they have stopped trying to keep track!
· Martha tries not to laugh at the last of species called Quagga but like the words wibble and bibble it is impossible not to raise a smile!
· The whole sequence with ‘I most definitely am not Professor Dougal Dunnock who did not write that revolutionary treatise!’ is a riot. ‘It’s a missing link not the missing link…it didn’t go cod, cod, missing link, badger!’ Rather sweetly, after buying one of the links between sea and land animals Dougal manages to obtain him girlfriends, a goldfish and a hamster because ‘I didn’t know which side of the family he would incline towards.’
· The Doctor without his sonic screwdriver is like Jordan without her lip-gloss!
· The consequences of a dinosaur stepping on a pillar-box are manifold; bills remain unpaid, birthdays are left uncelebrated and a promising romance is broken off amid a storm of rows and allegations!
· The Doctor slips off a Meglasaurus’ back as though he is in the title sequence of the Flintstones!
· After trapping a sabre tooth tiger in tarmac and tackling a dinosaur it would be really embarrassing if the Doctor was mauled to death by a Dodo!
· Time Lords: Commonly found in Europe, especially the United Kingdom. It is now classed as an immigrant species!
· Humans: The only species to voluntarily clothe themselves. At the time of publication the human race is still abundant on Earth.

Embarrassing Bits: Dinosaurs and Dino’s Arent’s…ooh bad taste Doctor! Rhino humour – making ‘a point’ and ‘pointless’ is equally as tasteless.

Result: A fabulous book which has a really important theme that is tackled in a number of really fun and entertaining ways. Whilst she is making us howl with laughter Rayner never lets us forget the very important message and yet still manages to fill every page with sunshine. The Last Dodo packs as much of a punch as the New Adventure Warlock with similar themes of mistreating animals but manages to do so without any of the extremes of violence and still manages to offer you a good time. The Doctor and Martha both spring of the page with effortless zip, the former getting some truly thoughtful moments and the latter especially impressive given how little was known about her. The twist ending that explains how the museum came about puts the entire set up in a whole new light and provides a really poignant closure to proceedings. The I Spyder sections are informative and visually appealing and the last gag, the last line, listing how many certificates have been issued let me turn the last page with a huge grin on my face. I don’t care how much people dismiss these books, The Last Dodo is a cracking read; intelligent, educational and most of all I had a damn good time lost in its pages: 9/10

The Colony of Lies by Colin Brake

2011-06-02T19:13:00.001+01:00

Plot: A colony on the point of extinction. Violent rebels raiding their supplies. Federation evacuees threatening to change their very ideals. Savage aliens waking up with revenge fantasies. The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe must navigate this web of chaos and try and save as many lives as possible…

Oh My Giddy Aunt: The key to getting the Doctor to do what they want is make him think it was his idea in the first place. His voice is low and friendly, full of inexhaustible passion for new experiences. Described as Odd Socks. Always does the unexpected; it keeps people on their toes. He considers himself a connoisseur of secure cells. He is a lot more agile than he might first appear and has a wonderful knack of making you feel things are better than they actually are. Military personnel bring out a playful urge in the Doctor to tease them. He has some ideological differences with his own people. When speaking with his seventh self he asks, “Are they still on your tail?” Whilst we all groan at the Doctor pulling eccentric items from his pockets you know it will be something special with Troughton (a betamax cassette of Hancock’s Half Hour). Earth Gov considers the Doctor a Class A Interloper and there is a huge file on him dating back centuries. If it wasn’t for the erratic passage of his little craft they would have been able track him down long ago.

Who’s the Yahoos: Jamie hated being denied the chance to explore. He trusted the Doctor explicitly and had been travelling with him for what felt like forever. He loves riding horses and even though the Doctor had introduced him to all sorts of exotic creatures and strange machines nothing compared to the freedom of riding a horse. It seemed to Jamie that the further he travelled into the future weapons became more brutal, more destructive and more deadly.

Brainy Babe: Since leaving the Wheel all Zoe seemed to have done is run. She never found much pleasure in exercise, preferring instead to absorb data. She was beginning to tire of monsters. The thought of the TARDIS gave Zoe a warm glow, funny how something so strange and alien could become home. I love how Zoe memorises a manual and suddenly has the ability to fly a fighter. When Zoe gets hooked up to the colony ship and experiences its memories she soon wants to forget that she was ever human. She had little personal experience of passion but perhaps she would one day when she had had enough of travelling.

Twists: A broken colony trying to maintain its morals with rebels who refuse to deny technology and who have found an alien bunker under the soil with predators in suspended animation…how can this not work? No Earth colony is truly independent…after the Dalek Wars there are many refugees who need resettling. The Doctor is contacted by his naughty seventh self, breaking the laws of time to give him a nudge in the right direction. Zoe’s escape in a fighter is very exciting. The Tyrenian is cloaked in the lake…it is revealed that the Tyrenians were on the planet before the colony ship arrived and the reason they were shot down was because of the Tyrenian defensive satellites. The Federation forced Ransom to take a ten strong droid army with him. The Tyrenians are genetic failures from when the Federation was trying to create super soldiers but Ransom let them escape rather than wipe them out. Reluctantly Ransom agreed to take the droids to kill the Tyrenians, the Federation refusing to give him the go ahead for his Back to Basics colony unless he completes this side project first.

Funny Bits: The Tellurian Stain – I find it hilarious that Earth’s spread through history is considered as nothing more than a stain!
“What’s the point of crossing your own time stream if you’re just going to be cryptic?”
“Och” said Jamie, bemused “who let the dogs out?”
“What manner of man am I to become? Playing hop, skip and jump with the laws of Time?”
So sad that one day he was fated to regenerate into such a smug know-it-all!

Embarrassing Bits: The Doctor attempting to sound hip by taking in ‘cool technobabble’ is awful!

Result: Lacking in ambition but full of heart, do I condemn this book for its simplicity or praise it for meaning well? Why the seventh Doctor had to be included is beyond me except to perhaps make this seem more interesting than it actually is. The regulars are treated well and I could happily see this playing out in season six with no struggle with the special effects. Herein lies the problem; the second Doctor novels are a chance to break free of the formula of their era (look at the two Troughton PDAs either side…could you see Combat Rock or The Indestructible Man taking place in the 1960’s?) but this plays out as a 60’s morality tale with all the depth that goes with that. In its defence the writer attempts several layers of danger (above, below and on level with) and it is readable throughout with the occasional moment that makes you stop and think this much more clever than it really is. Brake is an excellent children’s writer but speaking as an adult Colony of Lies never stretched me and features one of the most hideous covers in the range: 5/10

Reckless Engineering by Nick Walters

2011-05-29T18:05:00.003+01:00

Plot: What on Earth caused everybody to age 40 years in a few seconds in 1843? Materialising in Bristol in the new calendar year of 151, the Doctor and friends must traversed the barren wilderness, savaged by cannibalistic children, to uncover the truth behind another fractured reality…

Top Doc: Walters manages to recapture that thrilling dangerousness we haven’t seen in the eighth Doctor for a while, probably because we have had Sabbath to take on that role for some time. He has an aura of danger about him, representing a threat to this reality. Nobody seems to trust him much any more and is it a surprise when he seems to be making things up as he goes alone, sacrificing anyone in order to re-instate ‘our’ reality and stop the destruction of the Vortex. He burns with curiosity and describes his work of rescuing maids as thirsty work! As well as regaining his second heart, the Doctor has regained his homing instincts for the TARDIS. He acts like the weight of the multiverse is resting on his shoulders alone, much to Fitz’s annoyance. The row between him and Fitz is excellent, far better than a similar one with him and Anji in The Domino Effect, because we get to see how responsible he feels to sort things out and just how far he is willing to go and contrasted against Fitz’s natural good nature it is very dramatic and shocking. The Doctor and Brunel make an engaging pair too, I loved it when Brunel demanded to be told how the TARDIS worked and the Doctor shrugged and said, “I don’t know, it just does.” He cold bloodedly hooks up Gotllieb to the TARDIS and holds him down whilst he dies in writhing agony, just to get the TARDIS back to the right place. It is a real slap in the face after the Doctor has been so woefully characterised for the last two books, he may not be completely likable, but by God he is distinctive. He knows he has no right to play God and wipe out whole realities but he has a responsibility.

Scruffy Git: Another great book for Fitz because through him we get to see the potential and drama of the alternative universe idea being played out. This makes all the difference to the first two books in this arc because we finally give a toss about what will happen to this reality, because Fitz does too. He jokes he is getting a taste for torture. He is described as the Doctor’s younger, scruffier, shiftier brother. He likes to sit near exits, all part of his ‘leg it’ policy. He has a dream about Anji and the book hints on more than one occasion that he might be developing feelings for her. He feels they are so close now it could be months and not decades which separates their times back on their Earth. He voices, “What if this is the right reality and we are from the wrong one?” He cannot stand men who bully women. He gets cross because the Doctor thinks he cannot think for himself. Exposing how insidious the multiverse has become, it tries to incorporate Fitz into this version of reality. It is heartbreaking to his history getting re-written and Fitz struggle with his identity. One breathtaking scene sees Fitz sitting on his bed in the TARDIS fighting his Totterdown memories, crying out “This is my home!” At the stories close he feels the Doctor has wiped out his home and cannot trust him anymore.

Career Nazi: Beautiful, intelligent and refined, this is the best depiction of Anji since Time Zero, almost as if the nasty brute of the last two books has been erased from memory. Anji dislikes the salt of the Earth atmosphere of the Totterdown settlement, preferring somewhere altogether more civilised. This reality is so quiet, she longs for the noise of the City. She sees some pretty horrific sights here and proves herself perfectly capable of saving herself when the Wildren attack. She realises with some horror that they are expendable, that the Doctor would go to any lengths to restore reality.

Foreboding: Finally we have concrete proof that Trix is on board the TARDIS, fixing up a sandwich for Malahyde here. When will she come out in the open and reveal herself?

Twists: Most brilliant of all, Sabbath is not behind anything! In face, he doesn’t appear at all! The opening scenes are the best since Time Zero with a great depiction of the Bristol Riots and the Cleansing absolutely horrifying through Emily’s childlike eyes. Chapter One is a masterclass of suspense. The twist that Aboetta has been gone from the settlement for ten years when for her it has only been four months is a good shock. Aboetta and Robin’s relationship is beautifully real, she returns home to find him a different man, surrenders to nostalgia and lust and wakes up after the sweaty part to realise she doesn’t love him at all. In 1843, 40 years passed in a matter of seconds ageing 95% of the population to death. The dream of the Doctor, Fitz and Anji stamping out realities is fab. Chapter Ten is probably my favourite in the whole novel; the Wildren attack through Anji’s eyes is mind numbingly frightening (and graphic…one desperate child gets his brains bashed open in front of her!) and the cliff-hanger (where she is presented with a feast of…human torso and her stomach growls) is unforgettable. The image of the Doctor and Fitz standing back-to-back smashing the skulls of the advancing, ravenous Wildren will disturb me forever. Malahyde’s story clears up a lot of unanswered questions…he was possessed by an alien who claimed to be super evolved humans and told he had to build the Utopian engine in order for their future timeline to take place. When in fact it was to cause the Cleansing, filter the energy of the time acceleration to their dying universe and use the Earth as a great battery whilst systematically wiping it out. Anji is apparently sucked into the Vortex to her death, a dramatic conceit although instead she is later revealed to have been sucked to the Eternines dimension instead. The Vortex is sick, deformed, dying…unable to cope with these multiple realities. The TARDIS and Fitz both show signs of being drawn into this realities timeline…desperate to ensure its survival. Cleverly, the narrative dovetails into the prologue, the Doctor stumbling across Emily and strengthening his resolve to stop the Cleansing. There is a wealth of temporal madness as the Doctor starts making things up as he goes along; Brunel from the future (that wont exist) and Malahyde from the past (which he is trying to prevent) all trapped in another dimension! The Cleansing was supposed to roll on forever, the reason it only lasted fourty years was because the Doctor goes back in time and chucks Malahyde/Watchlar into the machine. This caused Watchlar to detached and caused the time barrier around the house. Watchlar emerges when the Doctor hooks up the TARDIS to the Utopian Engine…and he tries to start the Cleansing up all over again!

Embarrassing bits: Really, Anji is leaving in two books time and they’ve managed to resist the NA idea of companions shagging in the TARDIS up until now…so why suggest anything between Fitz and Anji now? At least it all appears one sided (randy sod). Gottlieb turning on the Utopian Engine is a very unconvincing plot device. The last twenty pages just about work thanks to Walters juggling so much plot comprehensively but a tired reader will be left behind with so many characters and incidents to keep track of. I still have absolutely no idea how the Doctor saves the day; he sort flicks a switch, which for all intents and purposes is labelled RESET BUTTON. He obviously borrowed it from the Starship Voyager.

Result: A massive improvement on the last two books, this is a deftly written piece that takes the alternative reality idea by the horns and shakes so hard lots of interesting ideas and dilemmas pop out. The setting is amazing, a cruel and stark post apocalyptic Bristol lovingly described by Nick Walters in some atmospheric passages. The first half is a strong character piece with some terrifying set pieces and the second, whilst not quite as gripping, is a fascinating trip into temporal madness. The regulars really get put through the wringer here and it is nice to see Fitz given some healthy development, although the dangerous Doctor is a great improvement on the last two books too. The only really annoying aspect is the ending, which is inexplicable and insultingly easy. Despite this, I will still champion this book for its strong prose, excellent dialogue and cleverly crafted plot. This is the book which should have come directly after Time Zero: 8/10

The Art of Destruction by Stephen Cole

2011-05-19T20:45:00.001+01:00

Plot: In the shadows of a dormant volcano lies long hidden art treasures that two races are willing to fight over…

Mockney Dude: There is very little that makes this book a Doctor Who book because the regulars are literally as peripheral as the guest cast – this story could happily play out with any other characters than the Doctor and Rose and that is never a good sign. If you aren’t going to use the situation to explore these characters I think you need to rethink the situation. The Doctor says he is not an aid worker, a journo or an activist. He is embarrassingly enthused at hearing people have been eaten and later is said to collapse in a bony heap. He is appalled that Faltato is willing to provoke widespread slaughter for a mere one percent of the art haul! His special method is to shut up, think positive and get working. ‘Coming Rose’ he says as he surrenders to the molten material and it tempts him into sacrificing himself because she has appeared to have died. He has turned travelling hopefully into an art form.

Chavvy Chick: A much less interesting book for Rose than Cole’s last effort. It struck me as astonishing that she was heavily involved in the action throughout but is constantly reacting to the dangers that we never get any chance to get inside her head or learn anything new about her. She’s just there. Compare and contrast with the delightful work Jac Rayner does with the character, constantly innovating and amusing, and it really pales in comparison. She loves coloured men – an odd observation! She feels a familiar tingle of disbelief at being in the future and realises that some things like poverty will always stay the same. ‘Get off me you muppet!’ she cries at one point, the one example of chav speak.

Twists: A glowing, devouring metal is alive beneath the volcano. They are an agricultural unit farming inside the volcano, sucking the land dry to pay for debt that Africa can never pay off and renting out its land to Europe and America so they can feed their people whilst they go on starving. The one problem with the fungus they are trying to cultivate is that it is poisonous! The molten substance is defensive and turning animals into sentries and a flock of molten bats attacks Rose in what would be an impressive set piece had we seen it on screen. These golems are unthinking servants, creating by alien technology rather than spells. Faltato is described as being spiked like a cactus with a neck that pulsates like a toad, two spindly arms with pincers and many legs that clack together – what an image! He comes from a world of art and class and takes real umbrage to have a ‘skanky pit’ considered its lair! A treasure store of alien art, pictures and sculptures, is being stored beneath the volcano. Faltato has many tongues, one for talking, one for eating and one for flossing! The Valnaxi are an avian race of gifted artists who are connected with their own planet. Brilliantly, mouths open in the base of the Wurm spaceship and vomits a foul smelling muck to cushion its landing and buries the TARDIS. They carry mud guns which spit out gloopy earth with living, devouring things wriggling inside that strip off your skin. Africa has become the final battleground between the Wurms and the Valnaxi and there is a grippingly violent battle between the giant earthworms and the golems as soon as they land. If you attempt to escape the Wurms they will eat you alive – ugh! Whilst the Valnaxi have devoted their life to art the Wurms have devoted their time to destroying it. The Valnaxi wanted to return to their homeworld and walk amongst their enemies in their form. The alien mud turns out to grow anything in it and will revolutionise farming and they file a claim in the name of the African people. People the world over will want to purchase this miracle mud and they can pay for it, pulling Africa out of poverty.

Embarrassing Bits: ‘Some Star Trek style tricorder gadget in her hand’ – since when has this sort of lazy description ever been acceptable in Doctor Who novels? The Doctor grates on your nerves at times by suggesting he is ‘really, really, really, really, reeeeaaaallllyyyy old.’ Cole describes a hole as the size of a ‘chubby Labrador’ – huh? He also suggests that the Wurm make a hissing, straining noise much like ‘an elephant on the loo’ – I have read many Stephen Cole books before but this level of amateurish description was never evident – what the hell is going on? Was this book written in a hurry? Oddly the story seems to be entirely plot driven with only the barest levels of characterisation to add very little depth. In the last third of the novel Cole gets lost in his own insane plotting and there is lots of running away from earthworms and golems and very little plot development. Fynn’s death might have been affecting had we known anything about him in the slightest. Aside from a tiny rant at the very beginning of the book and a miracle cure for poverty at the end of it there is absolutely no reason for this book to be set in Africa – there is so much room for some fascinating ecological and socio-political drama (which is not beyond Doctor Who as both were very much evident in the Pertwee years) that this book ached of wasted potential. The conclusion is very messy and confusing, seeming to suggest that the underdeveloped Valnaxi wanted to both trap the Wurms and take on their image but rather than explore this in any detail it is simply more rushing about. There is a moment when the book seems to suggest that Rose is dead but this is a huge problem with the NSAs that they can never get away with this sort of shock tension because we know the books are slaves to the developments of the TV series.

Funny Bits: Thank God for Faltato and his cohorts the Wurms because they turn up and add some much needed spice to the novel. ‘I live my life surrounded by art treasures so unutterably beautiful that your puny eyes would implode at the mere sight of them and you assume my natural habitat to be a rancid rock hole like this? I was never so insulted! And by a biped!’ cries the middleman! The Wurms are great fun, I especially loved their ‘if you attempt to escape to interfere you will be killed, ingested and excreted!’

Result: Cole’s books continue to be the weakest of the range and The Art of Destruction feels even more hastily written than The Feast of the Drowned. It has an exotic location that adds nothing to story, barely sketched characters that make no impact and a confused and unengaging plot that seems to contain of little more than running around a volcano! Fortunately there are some imaginative aliens that turn up in the middle sections of the book that turn up to kick the crap out of everybody in some exciting scenes and Faltato the indescribably odd looking middleman provides some good laughs. The writing is no where near Cole at his best (go and read Ten Little Aliens for that) with some truly strange descriptions and the Doctor and Rose might as well have not turned up at all since they barely show any personality whatsoever. A poor book with a few redeeming features: 4/10

Loving the Alien by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry

2011-05-17T10:22:00.002+01:00

Plot: Take Ace's death, giant ants, missing pilots, cybernetic apes, an old enemy, a parallel universe and some New Adventures style angst and whip it all up with an explanation for Ace's shifting name and serve out in four brilliant, twisted, flawed and terrible episodes in print...

Master Manipulator: The seventh Doctor has the potential to be the deepest print Doctor. He was the first to feature in full length novels and thus was the first to be explored in such a rigorous fashion. Robert Perry and Mike Tucker clearly adore him (although their treatment of Ace is another matter entirely) and whilst I don't entirely agree with how he is portrayed here he is at least given a clear mission, a friend to protect and lives to save. For once the master manipulator is making things up as they go along and somebody equally cunning has a plan of audaciousness that even the seventh Doctor wouldn't dream of...

When the Doctor is concerned, the TARDIS can sense it. He had landed on Heritage with too much knowledge as usual and even he was shocked at what they found - Mel dead. His concern for his friend has led him to exhume Ace's corpse and perform an autopsy on her. The Doctor thinks it is selfish of him that he never gives the full story and thus puts his friends in danger. His expertise with mazes are an example of his misspent youth. The Doctor seems smaller after Ace's death, shrunken by his loss. For once the Doctor is too tired, too angry with himself to avenge his friend - it takes Cody to remind him he has a duty to his friends - sod the timelines. Staring at death, the Doctor admits, "I've destroyed planets."

Oh Wicked: This is the book that deals with Ace's death, long after it was revealed to us back in Prime Time. Its typical of the PDA/EDA(s) to leave such important plot points far too long (the Doctor's amnesia/Fitz's amnesia were both left for far too long too) but points for not just forgetting it as an embarrassing shock twists. Even more points for using a companions death (along with Harry in Wolfsbane, Mel in Heritage and Sarah in Bullet Time) in such an imaginative way (the Council of Eight snipping the Doctor's companions in the innovative EDA Sometime Never...). PDAs being used not only as books in their own right but entire books being utilised as plot points in a much larger scheme in another Doctor Who range. Who ever knew the death of Ace could be so damn audacious?

Ace actually feels independent of the Doctor - usually she was either running alongside him or searching for him. Here she gets to have some fun, romance, sex and the possibility of a life after the Doctor suddenly becomes less frightening. Safety wasn't in great supply with the Doctor and Ace loved that but running on pure adrenalin for years - sometimes she didn't notice how tiring that was. It was inevitable that she would fall in love one day. Ace's death, a bullet in the head during a mundane moment, is so casual it makes it more of a shock.

Twists: A rocket crashes to Earth but with the wrong pilot at the helm...or rather a very different pilot to who went up. The TARDIS is described as a dull blue brick, spinning as if thrown into the vortex. Giant ants start attacking members of the public. Although you would have to think back a fair while to remember Cody McBride and Mullen, as the Doctor says it is nice to catch up with old friends. There is a typically bust McCoy cliffhanger at the end of 'part' one: a race against time to save Ace from death, an unexploded German bomb AND giant ants...they sure pack it in! Mullen, terrified of cybernetic legs after his experience with the Cybermen is a lovely touch. Kneale's rocket was sucked into a trans-dimensional rift and vaporised and O'Brien's rocket came through the other side. After Illegal Alien the Cybermen were discovered and the Augmentation project began. Drakefell sneaked an important Cyber device into the rocket Wavefinder which is why he sabotaged it to blow up. Tatoo's, toffee apples, sex...Ace's death is beautifully set up. A dimensional stabiliser was used to bore a hole in the fabric of reality so the rocket from another dimension could come to ours. Now there are holes in the fabric of space/time, universes bleeding into each other and giant ants crawling through. The Augmentation Project was based at London Zoo for a while and discovering their secret McBride is locked away with their experiments, apes altered with machinery replacing limbs and organs and hooked to the electric ceiling like dodgems. Supersoldiers attack the downed Wavefinder rocket meaning to destroy it and the Doctor is ejected in an escape pod as it explodes, lighting up the English countryside. The cottage is the bridge, the dimensional walls are thin there and at the spot that corresponds to this in the other reality is an ants nest. Ace's death is revealed as nothing more than George Limb's way of smoking out the Doctor. Limb has done terrible things to time and then gone back and undone them - he even saw his own death. In a truly audacious twist (that I adore) cybertised British troops from another dimension are the ones that were smashing down the walls of reality so they can invade our dimension. Basically because of the augmentation process people are born but nobody dies so they are invading other dimensions to create more of their own kind. George Limb is the prime minister of this dimension. (And if you read this carefully there is much here that is very similar to the NSA The Sound of Drums/The Last of the Time Lords with the Master (Limb) opening a tear in reality and allowing the Toclafane through (the Cybertised Welsh Guard) to rain down over London and cause devastation! Ironically both invasions are via impossible means (paradox machine/dimensional rift) and the aggressors are alternative versions of the people they are attacking (future/other dimension). Bizarre isn't it? The Doctor convincing Crawhammer to put his gun down on page 219 is a wonderful moment. Rita at the augmentation clinic in the other dimension is frightening. The gorrilla ripping off the Prime Ministers head is gruesome! In a fantastic moment Limb attempts to take control of the other reality and discovers, upon shooting himself, his doppelganger is mechanical. Ace was pregnant with Jimmy's child when she was killed. The Doctor gives Limb a revolver to kill himself, the only way he can escape his eventual augmentation. The Cyber-British retreat but Crawhammer has sent his nuclear missiles through the rift. The fate of this other dimension is left unknown...

Funny Bits: The Doctor and Ace were hidden on the moon as Neil Armstrong took his first steps, the Doctor whistling like a clanger. Given what Martha says about watching the moon landing in the New series I have this rather wonderful of image of all of the Doctor’s watching Armstrong from differing strategic positions on the moon. You can decide which companions travelled with each incarnation.
As they take a tour of London Ace spots loads of police boxes, as though lots of Doctor's have all arrived to gang up on an alien menace.
"There's a perfectly simple explanation. We were searching for a friend, then a breach opened in the walls of reality and swarm of giant ants came through."
When George Limb discovers the invaders are led by none other than himself: "At least I was outwitted by someone whose intellect I respect!"

Embarrassing Bits: Colonel Kneale...are we still doing Quatermass jokes?
Crawhammer is an embarrassing stereotype for the most part - were Generals really that bullish?
Jimmy is the actor James Dean? Why? Why? Why?
Ace's death is given such importance in the first half and then practically forgotten in the second half.
The Doctor uses the Cyber-primates as weapons! To buy them some time he hooks them up to car batteries and sends them out to slaughter people!
Is it a co-incidence that this book takes place at the same time as the EDA alternative universe arc (or The Lingering Death of a Series as it is known to some people who aren't me) and Limb is accompanied by enhanced apes just as Sabbath was? Or was this hasty re-writes from a book that was originally in the EDA arc?
The biggest problem with Loving the Alien is there is simply too much going on - too much plot, too many ideas, too much angst, too much drama. The quieter moments are kept to an absolute minimum so we can get to the next shock moment. It never lets up and for a while becomes almost unbearably (or should I say Quantum Archangelly) complicated.

Result: A bit of a dog's dinner but with so much here that is very good it is frustrating that should all get so confusing. Lets look at the good stuff: Ace's forewarned but still shocking death, the chilling CyberApes, the return of McBride, Mullen and Limb (all three working better here than they did in their debut), the shockingly good twist of who is invading our dimension and another excellent cover. What goes wrong is how the authors try and pull all this together. They can't. Its such a disparate set of ideas (especially when you add giant ants, missing rockets, James Dean and augmentation clinics to the mix) that they have to go through so many hoops (and worse, rely on the most implausible of co-incidences) to fit it all in one book. I always admire ambition and so many of these ideas are clever and worth exploring but not all at once. For once there is even a clear demonstration of Tucker and Perry's different writing styles, one being text heavy and the other focussing on dialogue. Loving the Alien is brilliant, twisted, imaginative but its also overstuffed, embarrassing and amateurish...I enjoyed reading it because it opened my mind to some great concepts but I can't say it wasn't a chore in places. Uneven: 5/10

The Domino Effect by David Bishop

2011-05-15T17:03:00.001+01:00

Plot: Within hours of landing in Edinburgh one of the Doctor’s friends is caught in a deadly explosion and another is on the television confessing to the murder of twelve people. The Doctor himself is suffering crippling heart pains and his TARDIS has been stolen. Can anything ever be the same again for our heroic trio…?

Top Doc: Probably the blandest rendition of the Doctor since Stephen Cole was editing the books. There are plenty of descriptions of the Doctor from the POV of other people but he rarely does anything in this book except collapse and get into melodramatic confrontations. He has the ability to turn up at the right place and time. He admits he will miss Anji when she goes, although quite viciously (and out of character) reminds her of her betrayal of him on Hope. He admits he and Alan Turing were more than friends and is upset because changing history will condemn him to his ‘real’ history, committing suicide, an unhappy man. He warns Anji to never tell him what to do and that he has done things that she couldn’t even imagine. He tries to do good but sometimes its just the lesser of two evils. He has considered returning into his own past to discover the cause of his amnesia. He has become cold, paralysed and distant…he sometimes wishes he didn’t care, as it would make things a whole lot easier. An anachronism, a leftover from a previous reality. Is the Doctor’s past trauma coming back to haunt him like a cancer? Very tactile but not romantically inclined.

Scruffy Git: Fitz gets the best characterisation here, suffering so much indignity at the hands of the Service but still managing to hold his head up high. He can crumple an clothing just by looking at it. Described by the Doctor as loyal, friendly, trustworthy and quite courageous but not in the way he thinks. Thinks of himself as a ladies man. His TV broadcast admitting he is a terrorist is heartbreaking; admitting to terrible crimes because he thinks Anji is in danger. Growing up during World War II with a German name taught Fitz to hide his origins. He only remembers his mum in nightmares now. I adored the bit where he realises that the Doctor and Anji are coming to rescue him and he laughs in the face of his torturer, nothing he can do or say makes a difference because his friends are coming for him and nothing can stop them. His faith in them is wonderful.

Career Nazi: Anji suffers from claustrophobia, leading back to a visit to a sensory deprivation tank with Dave. She refuses to stop remembering her former lover as that would feel like denying their time together. To Anji, not asking for help when you need it is a sign of stupidity. Sexism is more of a problem for her than racism but she wont apologise for the colour of her skin and the blatant racism of this universe is like a slap in the face for her, for once she is unique amongst many. She and the Doctor are a formidable pair (apparently). What makes me cross about Anji’s treatment here is that she is far too stroppy and shouty without a good reason, she has been in much worse situations than this and yet she wonders around the book screaming at everyone and making everything ten times worse. Like the book itself, her characterisation has no subtlety at all. An argument springs up in the last third which made me so angry, because rather than springing from natural characterisation Anji simply decides the Doctor can no longer be trusted and that he doesn’t give a toss about her or Fitz. She hasn’t been this harsh without reason since her first few books.

Identity Tricks: Trix turns up here briefly, a striking woman with amazing red hair. She tells Fitz to **ck off and then robs a jewellers. As this is never explained (or even explained that it is Trix) it is a bizarre addition to the book. Guess it’s just to let those avid fans of us that she has sneaked aboard the TARDIS!

Twists: Anji is buried alive by the explosions in the tearooms. Fitz in custody explaining what happened leading up to the terrorist attack is an excellent narrative device. Anji’s adventures in the train station are shockingly unsubtle but the racism she encounters is still remarkably disturbing. Society is being suppressed; history has been altered to hold back scientific advancement. There are some lovely interludes breaking up the main action, trips back into history as important knowledge holders are wiped out to stop their scientific ideas making an impact on the timeline. Alan Turing is revealed to have been arrested for sexual deviancy and his universal machine idea was suppressed, as a result there were no computers/planes/internet, etc and the Earth of 2003 is trapped in the past. Fitz’s numerous beatings are horribly voyeuristic. It is obvious that Dee and the Pentarch are supposed to be alternate versions of Ace and the Brigadier, which helps to visualise them well. The police shooting down the demonstrators is really horrible. The Doctor and Anji have to watch as a man is shot outside the café like a rabid dog on the loose. The TARDIS is tortured and it has a profound effect on the Doctor. Sabbath crops up again, but this time he belongs to this parallel universe and has never left the Earth. Hannah is revealed to be a traitor, probably the books best kept surprise. The Oracle is revealed to be one of the creatures that have invaded the Vortex. He has tricked Sabbath into thinking that manufacturing a focal point on Earth, Alan Turing, and collapsing it would protect the Earth from the Vortex creatures. Instead it destroys this reality completely, past and present and causes the death of several realities surrounding it…possibly causing the death of the Vortex itself! Alternative histories are vying for dominance; they are back where they started except reality is closer to the brink of collapse…

Embarrassing bits: Oh sheesh where do I start? Anji, fully aware that reality has been pulled out of joint recently, wanders around for 50 odd pages wondering why everyone thinks she is a smelly foreigner and why there is no technology. Okay so she does realise that she should have realised sooner but for a (supposedly) clever woman she does come across as a right dozy cow. Characters have the weakest of motivations (Hannah, Frank and Dee all tell us a pathetic story of why they joined the resistance…and this is only characterisation we see out of any of them!). The Doctor and Anji are public enemies numbers one and two and (sigh) decide to go to the pub for a pint because they are bored of hiding out! Pages 214-218 contain the stupidest character to appear in ANY Doctor Who story, a policeman who genuinely believes that hundreds of protestors turned their weapons on themselves and wiped themselves out…oh and that the Doctor is an actor from the telly and not a terrorist! The argument between the Doctor and Anji rings so false. Pages 230-231 are also pant wettingly bad, when the Doctor tries to give himself up and says his name, the guard recognises it and tells his pal of course he knows what the terrorist looks like and then looks at a photo in his pocket, realises it’s the Doctor and goes “I’ve got the terrorist!”…what are we, three-year-old readers or something? The technobabble fused ending makes no sense whatsoever and, frustratingly, takes us back to exactly where we were at the end of Time Zero! The biggest embarrassment for me was my initial review of this book that claims it is some kind of masterpiece (or fricking amazing I think I said)…what the hell was I on back then? Mind altering drugs?

Funny bits: Pretty much all of the embarrassing bits section actually.

Result: Illogical, unsubtle and so stupid in places it defies logic; this has to be one of the sloppiest Doctor Who books ever written. A fascist state, altered reality, history re-written; clichés all and yet the setting is the strongest thing about the book and its unflinching brutality is quite engrossing in places. The characterisation is weaker than my boyfriend’s tea (yuck) and the prose hardly deserves the term, it is practically the transcript of an untransmitted script! Marvel at the banal dialogue, gasp at the inexplicable climax (how the hell does killing one man destroy an entire reality?) and remind yourself that Doctor Who books are just for really stupid kids after all. Almost so bad its good in places, this continues the shocking decline started in The Infinity Race and proves that this whole altered universe idea was really misconceived: 3/10

Blue Box by Kate Orman

2011-05-05T08:07:00.004+01:00

Plot: The internet revolution is about to begin and threatening its explosion of innovation is a piece of technology from an alien world. The Doctor, Peri, a journalist Chick Peters and computer hacker Bob team up to take on the sinister Sarah Swan who will stop at nothing to harness this alien device…

Theatrical Traveller: I’m starting to sound like a broken record but this has actually been an excellent run of adventures when concerning its Doctors. Kate Orman is not the first person you would think of when it comes to writing for the sixth Doctor, primarily because she is so in love with the seventh and eighth incarnations but she brings sixie to life with real affection here. I remember the interviews that were published at the time, Kate confessed her liking for this Doctor and it shines through in the writing. Colin Baker would be proud.

The Doctor never showed a flicker of interest in Peri, he didn’t act like a father, more like an older brother with a serious case of sibling rivalry. Usually the Doctor dressed like a cross between a flower child and a character out of Dickens. It wasn’t unusual for him to talk about the end of the world. He likes charging in and making a bunch of noise, not caring what anybody thinks. He says of himself: “Anybody can do incredible things if they’ve got incredible resources. It takes an artist to make poetry out of bits of string and paper clips.” The Doctor takes up a lot of space and not just because he’s a big man. He moves around a lot. He fills the air with words and gestures. He’s the focal point of any room he’s in. While his people sit back and let the universe go by, the Doctor likes to roll up his sleeves and plunge right in. The Doctor hasn’t been killed because it never occurs that he is in danger. He wants to save the Earth because it’s Peri’s home. He’s a pain in the ass but fun to be around. He can pack Peri’s name with a world of irritation. The Doctor is the smartest person Peri knows. Unfortunately he is also the smartest person he knows. He thinks he is invulnerable and can shout his way out of any trouble. He needs somebody to look after him, he doesn’t have anybody. The Doctor is utterly unselfconscious in his coat – people still take him seriously in it and only he could get away with that. The Doctor speaks in a crisp English accent with relish, as though just pronouncing words was a pleasure in itself.

Busty Babe: Peri’s parents gave her the wanderlust, a mating pair of archaeologists who took her with them from one continent to another through her teenage years. She was looking for a way out and when she met the Doctor she knew she had found it. Peri and the Doctor spend a lot of time in half hearted bickering, usually when one of them made a stupid mistake. He burnt dinner, she got lost, he couldn’t steer, she got attacked by some animal. It felt weird for Peri being surrounded by familiar language, money and food. Peri has been wearing more garish clothes lately, not to compete with the Doctor, but to try and make him realise how outlandish his own outfit was. It isn’t an adventure for Peri anymore, it’s a nightmare like a screwed up version of real life. She can’t do it much longer. This wa sher big chance to go back to living a normal life. You’ve gotta love the scene where Peri goes insane with the flamethrower. Are they best friends because they are thrown into one crisis after another? Peri realises at this story’s close that she likes the Doctor and wants to be with him. When the Doctor regenerated Peri panicked rather than helped. She’s still trying to make that up to him.

Twists: Both the cover and blurb brilliant, an enticing introduction to the book. Compare Blue Box and The King of Terror for their very different perspectives on America…which do you think is more realistic? Bob Salmon is such a charming character you long for him to have been a companion. Peri and Bob’s high tech crime is hilarious…cross-dressing and thieving! You know the Doctor is in trouble when he kicks Swan out of her own system, the first defiant act that builds into a dramatic series of confrontations. The component is one of five parts that assemble into an Eridani super computer. It was travelling to a colony when a flood of radio signals from Earth misled it into thinking it had already reached the colony. The Eridani are trying to reassemble the computer with the Doctor’s help. The Eridani are so desperate to get their parts back they killed a collector who refused to let it go. I love the scene inside the MUD; it’s a visually interesting way to explore the computer world in a novel. The missing component is sentient and alive, its purpose to adapt and analyse technology. It is able to reproduce countless times and forms a close bond with its user that makes you instinctively care for the creature. Breaking the bond can be harmful for the user and the creature. It has the potential to wreck civilisation in a very short amount of time. The Doctor chasing Swan through the Net is gripping. There is something very scary about a device that can turn you psychotically protective of it and when Swan beats Chick with a baseball bat you realise just how insidious the creature is. The twists about Chick’s mixed gender is surprising, not in itself, but because it is a wholly character twist. When attacked, the savant downloads into Luis’ mind, he effectively becomes a blue box for the human mind, he can turn anybody compliant. The Eridani were intending the slow packet to be a gift to be a gift to a rebellious colony to subdue them. The fact that it crashed on Earth is still a welcome test of its abilities.

Funny Bits: The eavesdropping gag on page 46 is great.
“Oh and its Doc. TOR. The second syllable is as precious as the first.”

Result: Set in America, written in the first person and sitting on the cusp of the computer revolution, Blue Box is one of the most innovative PDAs. The book lives and breathes the US, you actually feel as though you are there and Chick’s investigative narration gives the story some edge. There is an examination of the Doctor and Peri that outshines any other and Orman writes a superb sixth Doctor, powerful and emotional, irritating and huggable. There are a number of fascinating concepts (especially the alien computer that hatches) but the book is slightly too relaxed in dealing with them. The pace of the book is leisurely, but this does give the author time to unveil her setting and characters with some clarity. Sarah Swan is the star of the book, a thoroughly human villain but cold and terrifying in all the best ways: 8/10

The Infinity Race by Simon Messingham

2011-04-28T08:30:00.002+01:00

Plot: Stuck in an alternative universe, manipulated by Sabbath and discovering a ship full of dead crew, the Doctor must uncover the secrets of the famous water planet of Selonart. The trans global regatta is about to begin but beneath the cosmetics there is a completely different race taking place, a race for the power over infinity…

Top Doc: Like the book, he works in places and doesn’t in others. Described as the most annoying person in the galaxy, he is extremely verbose in this adventure and seems to get off on the thrill of adventure (hardly the right attitude to take given the state the universe is in at the moment!). It is impossible to be angry with him when he gives one of his warm smiles (at least according to Anji). Unhinged and joyful, like Willie Wonka. The Gene Wilder one. He panics underwater, feels claustrophobic as the silent ocean cocoons around him. With the Doctor, anything could be true. He is a charmer and it is impossible to not like him. He feels a loathing when he comes into contact with Sabbath; his very existence feels like a violation of the Doctor. Described as randomly picking his way through the universe, sticking plasters over wounds her and there. For the Doctor, the adventure is everything. Does good because it flatters his ego?

Scruffy Git: Bizarrely, The Infinity Race chooses to write sections directly from Fitz and Anji’s POV which gives some insight into what goes through their minds whilst running for their lives. He is the enthusiastic child of the TARDIS and looking good is half the battle with him. He has the disarming cow eyes of the truly stupid (can you guess who is thinking this stuff?). He doesn’t like having his opinions dismissed by the others although by his admission he is the action man and the Doctor and Anji are the thinkers. His friendship with Bloom is very sweet and it is proof that Fitz’s mere presence makes a difference as growing close and earning Bloom’s trust makes the Selonart native step forward and save his life and then jump in at the climax and give the Doctor the power to save the day.

Career Nazi: Whilst she is a little overstated at times, Anji’s sections are the best and easily the funniest. Being trapped in an alternate dimension, she feels as though somebody has vandalised her home and no matter how much she re-decorates, she will never feel safe. She was just getting used to living in the ‘normal’ world again. She is the self appointed headmistress of the TARDIS, admonishing the naughty schoolboys for getting too wrapped up in the adventurous spirit of the race! Her mocking of Fitz’s physical ineptitude is hilarious. She wonders if everything she has ever known will ever be the same again. Anji’s sections are lifted by some brilliantly post modern thoughts (‘It all seems so easy on the telly, doesn’t it? You can just cut to the next scene. In the real world there’s all this tiresome travelling stuff to get through’). She admits towards the end how very tired she is and how much she misses her old life. She is terrified of Sabbath and holds the Doctor back when he tries to rescue him.

Ham Fists: An extraordinary man with a strength in him that is tense and dangerous. He is packed tight with muscles and not as decadent as he would like to appear. Brilliantly, he sits and munches an apple as his associate is slaughtered. A beast pretending to be a man? Amoral, ruthless and utterly egocentric, Sabbath sees himself as a crusader. Described as humanity’s final enemy. He still has it in his head that he can crush reality into one definitive timeline, one that he can mould and control, uncluttered and free. He understands violence, its necessity and its glamour but it still was not pleasant to him, such a small concept as it is. He is thought of as a formidable opponent, insane, ambitious, even ridiculous but still a marvel. A man of brutal grace.

Twists: The warlock attacking the Doctor on the yacht is excitingly written; in fact much of their exploration of the dead ship is pretty creepy. The TARDIS is lost to the ocean. The warlocks turn out to be a colonisation crew who were infected by the cancer that is soaked into the bones of the planet Demigest. The scenes underwater are arresting, especially when the sub and Warner start being divided by the crystals. The sailors are split by their infinitives (omigod can you believe he got away with that?), alternate versions all grouping together rather than branching off into a separate timeline. Far scarier than the main plot is the abrupt end to the race, which leads to scenes of vicious, competitive capitalists on the rampage. It transpires that in this universe the Service (of which Sabbath was once a member) still exists and they have a contract out on Sabbath’s life. Horribly, the natives are butchered in from of Anji’s eyes. Selonart was built to help its natives transcend death, to know everything, to join directly with the universe and yet retain a sense of self. That is what Bloom goes through in this book, becoming one with infinity. The Doctor slides the Jonah’s windows open and allows the ocean and the timeberg to blast them. Fitz is killed, his throat slashed open by a Warlock but thanks to Bloom’s help in choosing the variety of paths one can take, he goes back to before his death and changes events. Sabbath is kidnapped by the Warlocks and made to suffer for his actions. The Doctor takes it upon himself to remove the Warlocks’ stain from the universe at the end of the story.

Embarrassing bits: The switching narratives are extremely distracting throughout, especially when Fitz and Anji talk directly to somebody (saying funky things like “Hey folks its Fitz again!”)…who the hell are these fictional characters talking to…us? What’s even weirder is when Messingham starts addressing us too (We return to the Governor much more relaxed than of late…)!!! Bloom’s fractured speech is pretty annoying in places. Anji admits that she is NOT used to death in her adventures when she said the exact opposite in the last book. Sabbath really is a bit of a dunce not to realise he is now in an alternative reality.

What annoys me most is how wonderful Simon Messingham's PDAs are and yet how underwhleming his EDAs turn out to be. This and The Face Eater hardly seem to be by the same writer of the superlative Tomb of Valdemar and The Indestructible Man. Messingham can clearly deliver the goods so what is it about writing for the eighth Doctor that leaves him so lacking?

Funny bits: They say cockroaches are likely to be the most successful survivors of a holocaust but I’m sure junk mail is up there! Anji taking the piss out of Fitz is always funny (“What Fitz did next was excellent…as far as I can tell he made to leap out after me, launched himself forward and smashed his head into the doorframe.”) Marius’ idea of diplomacy is hilarious (“Look tell me what you were doing or I’ll blow your brains out all over this desk!”).

Result: The Infinity Race has the unfortunate feeling of being made up as it goes along, the author has sections where he is full of ideas and others where he is bored tit-less and can’t wait to finish the thing off. Consequently the resulting novel is hilarious, boring, imaginative and slow. The switching narrative is distinctive but annoying and it feels like Messingham is trying to be too clever for his own good. Compared to the drama of the last four books this is distinctly substandard with huge stretches of nothing happening to prolong the (admittedly) dramatic climax. I cannot bring myself to loathe the book as individual scenes are pretty good (such as the nasty rich folk riot and the native hunt) but as a whole they just don’t gel as well as they should. Sabbath has lots of great descriptions but this is the first time he has really come across as a pantomime villain. In true season eight fashion, you know he will be back in the next story: 4/10

The Feast of the Drowned written by Stephen Cole

2011-04-25T23:16:00.002+01:00

What’s it about: Returning to Earth, the Doctor and Rose discover that the recently departed crew members of the Ascendant are returning to haunt their families and to tempt them to take part in the feast of the drowned…

Mockney Dude: I always get the impression that Steve Cole is trying a little too hard to emphasise the already over the top qualities of the new series Doctor’s. His characterisation was always at its best when he was dealing with the original, unpredictable eighth Doctor because he could push him as far as he liked. The tenth Doctor of these New Series Adventures at this point was just there to drive the plots along – it wasn’t until later in the run that they really starting exploring the character. As such the Doctor of The Feast of the Drowned is passable but unmemorable except when he is cracking appalling puns or acting uber hyper active – both of which were pretty irritating. What’s more the smug, exclusive invitation only relationship that he had with Rose during series two is in full effect here and just as annoying as ever. He is pretty indescribable and prone to verbal execrations! He is eager to escape the remnants of Rose’s life but she clings on regardless. The Doctor picks up his assistants on the job and they usually turn out to be very handy. When you meet the Doctor you just go on paying.

Chavvy Chick: I’ve got to give Cole some credit for capturing Billie Piper’s mannerisms and speech patterns perfectly, you can literally hear Piper saying the dialogue that Rose is given in this tale (‘he never!’). He highlights the sheer mundanity of Rose’s life before she joined the Doctor and how much she has changed since travelling with him. All we need the Doctor to do now is to take every single chav from England on a spin in the TARDIS and we might have a productive society once again! Keisha is one of Rose’s clubbing crowd; the wildest, loudest and craziest of the lot. Rose used to have a crush on her brother when she was fourteen but so much has happened since then. Rose is worried that she has become hardened by death and although she has been with the Doctor for some time she still cannot judge his moods. Rose was attracted to Mickey because of his easygoing attitude, his gorgeous smile, his dark skin and playful eyes. These days Mickey digs up stuff he thinks they might be interested in, hoping to make Rose drop in. When Rose went vanishing Keisha pushed things through Mickey’s letterbox and got her mates to beat a confession out of him. Waiting all week for a Friday night to go clubbing is the sort of time travel the Doctor could never understand and yet that all seemed so distant to her now. She was only nineteen but travelling with the Doctor was making her grow up so fast – or was that grow old so fast? Rose remembers how she felt when she discovered how many nightmares skulked in the shadows of her familiar world. Rose feels a horrible sense of wrongness when she discovers that Mickey has been with one of her mates. Swanning about on other planets Rose had thought she had outgrown her former life but this little home truth grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and dumped her right back in the old days. Mickey loves Rose whoever she has become but Keisha cannot forgive her for abandoning her. Rose believes Mickey and apologises for what she put him through when she left. She changed everything so fast with that one decision to leave and they were different people back then…but some things always remain the same like how much they love each other. She even forgives Keisha for lying and wishes her well in her life before well and truly turning her back on her.

Foreboding: Did Russell T Davies like the sound of some of these ideas? You’ve got people being haunted by a dangerous source (Army of Ghosts) and monsters that have water gushing from their mouths (Waters of Mars). ‘We’re going to need Torchwood’ says one soldier.

Twists: They found the Ascendant on the seabed carved up into slices like a Sunday roast. When Rose pushed off Mickey and Keisha drowned their sorrows together and woke up in bed together the next morning – although he cannot remember anything nefarious. People are throwing themselves into the Thames and vanishing. I was so glad when the Doctor crashed the tugboat because the book had been running on the spot for 50 pages repeating the returning ghosts scenario over and over. Huntley’s death is pleasingly graphic, a strong touch of horror for the NSAs. Keisha is characterised as a selfish, self pitying liar and it’s almost as if Steve Cole has met my sister! Its rather wonderful when Vida turns on the Doctor and Rose and their accusatory, pious attitude towards everything. ‘Any scientific technique can become a weapon when there’s a will for it’ – I wish the book had more of that kind of philosophy about it. They are fighting something that has an affinity with water, can harness it and adapt it to suit a purpose and even borrow it from human beings in the vicinity. Pearls are created when oysters are in pain – I never knew that! Crayshaw is 250 years old and he was infected in 1759 when his ship went down. Figures made of water attack and if you escape their grasp they slosh down into a wave and sweep you away! Rose is dragged beneath the Thames and returns to haunt the Doctor and Mickey. It turns out nothing happened between Mickey and Keisha, he rejected her when he was drunk and because getting boys is the one thing she can do she made it all up – wow this really is my sister!

Embarrassing Bits: ‘Take me to your Vida!’ – I hope that wasn’t chosen as her name just so Cole could include this horrendous pun! There are pages and pages of the Doctor trying to be endlessly witty with Vida which should have been pruned down because most of it is cringeworthy. Sometimes there is so much dialogue and so little description you would be perfectly within in your right to think that perhaps you were reading a script. The conclusion of the book is actually extremely dull, what could have been an awesome water army tearing across the city and dehydrating the population is instead the Doctor dumping some scientific nonsense into the water

Funny Bits: ‘H2Omigod!’

Result: Disappointing because I know that Stephen Cole is capable of producing much better than this, The Feast of the Drowned scores in its handling of Rose but as an adventure tale in its own right it is perhaps the epitome of average. There are a number of intriguing ideas (which are stolen by the TV series and handled with far more aplomb) but ultimately the story is little more than a run-around with an unmemorable foe and a technobabble fuelled conclusion. There is plenty of action but the writing is lacking, there is little to make the pace of this story exciting and we keep stopping to ponder on whether Mickey is a whore or not which holds up the action. This was the wrong time to have a period of vanilla for the books but Cole writes two unmemorable books around this period and encourages more people to desert the range. Such a shame because with the arrival of Martha things are about to improve considerably: 5/10

Fear of the Dark by Trevor Baxendale

2011-04-19T08:39:00.001+01:00

Plot: Terrifying happenings when the Doctor, Tegan and Nyssa are lured to the barren moon of Akoshemon. A creature from beyond our universe is attempting to manifest itself in ours, making very good use of the fear of the dark…

Fair Fellow: Shudder! Gasp! Run to the hills…it’s the end of civilisation! It’s a fairly decent rendition of the character of the fifth Doctor as portrayed by Peter Davison! I would have thought it an impossibility. Had he genuinely been written for in this style in season 20 I would be over the moon and possibly find my feelings towards his incarnation swinging in a positive direction. As it is it took the Big Finish adventures before I would even accept that it was a good decision hiring him in the first place.

Sometimes it can be exhilarating riding on his coat tails and sometimes it can be infuriating. He is a strangely inspirational figure. Being with the Doctor means you are going to be scared. He doesn’t fear the Daleks, the Cybermen, etc…but he does fear the harm they intend and the fear and misery and destruction they cause. He also fears being out for a duck! This fifth Doctor has a bit of an edge to him that I like without losing any of his gentle politeness. You’ve got to love how he threatens to hold Oldeman’s medication – threatening the guy with brain damage to extract information from him…and when he cocks and points the gun at himself to prove how pointless it is! His worst fear is losing another companion like he did Adric. In a moment of total despair the Doctor prepares to kill himself and Stoker rather than letting it take over their minds. The Doctor doesn’t fight the future; he fights for the future and protects it from things that thrive in the unknown. Fear. Hostility. Cruelty. Injustice. Adric’s death was still the sharpest thorn in the Doctor’s memory; he could not bear the thought of having to suffer another loss again. Alone he could take necessary risks. Most importantly Fear of the Dark allows us to see the Doctor scared and it doesn’t diminish his character one iota.

Alien Orphan: Nyssa sometimes dreams of Traken but the dream always tipped over into a nightmare. When Traken had been destroyed it had left her the sole remaining survivor. She felt so very alone. She wonders what it must be like to be held very close. Nyssa is made to realise her instincts are every bit as important as her intelligence. Since Tegan has appeared on the scene again the Doctor has shown less interest in Nyssa. There had been a time when it had been a pleasure showing her the complicated control console – she could read star charts and plot a course.

Mouth on Legs: I have a confession to make. Tegan actually comes across (for me) much better in the books than she did on the telly. She is written in the same style but because we get to go beyond surface characterisation there is some motivation and justification for why she is so grumpy. It makes her much more appealing.

Soon after Tegan had blundered into the TARDIS she had despaired of ever seeing the 1980’s again. When she returned she had lost her job and suffered terrible nightmares and depression. The simple truth was when she was with the Doctor she had never felt more alive, she was a practically woman and she liked to help, she loved the chance to make a difference. She wanted to do something with her life. It was an uncomfortable thought that the Doctor and Nyssa were off having adventures without her. Tegan feels a trickle of envy. She realises with a pang of guilt that she has forgotten about Adric. The Doctor admits in a moment of weakness that Tegan has been a problem ever since she entered the TARDIS. It is seriously freaky when Tegan’s childhood fears come back to haunt her when she is trapped in the coffin like stasis chamber.

Foreboding: The Doctor talks of teaching the girls to read the star charts at the end of the book, which leads to their trip to Manussa in Snakedance.

Twists: Minimalist it might be but I actually quite like the cover; I love how the stars slip away into darkness…very in tune with the book. Captain Stoker’s cover story of being archaeologists backfires on them when they discover a lab buried in the moon with five bodies drained of blood. A scientists tried to combine Akoshemon material with human and a creature was born with an insatiable appetite for blood. Jim’s death at the hands of the Bloodhunter is very bloody. Pages 145-147 is a true cliffhanging moment, Bunny’s bloody death comes as a great shock just pages after the first attempt on his life. Stoker is quite surprising as a character, initially a walking cliché but as the book progresses and she loses everything she deepens. In the heart of the planet the Doctor and Nyssa discover a pit of darkness, the Bloodhunter stops at its edge and vomits up all the blood he has collected, feeding the darkness life itself. The Bloodhunter slits Oldeman’s throat and blood gushes into the pit, unleashing an unspeakable horror. The spreading darkness chasing them from the caves is a brilliant idea (and would be so easy to achieve on screen!) – the Doctor’s panic adding much tension. Caldwell wasn’t trying to resurrect the Dark; he was trying to destroy it! The Dark is all that remains of the Void that existed before the Big Bang, the cavity in Time and Space before those forces were first spawned. The Dark was shredded by the forces that created our universe but not destroyed. It managed to reform itself – coalesce amid primal matter that became the planet Akoshemon. Oldeman was influenced by the Dark’s mind and created the Bloodhunter to provide for its master. The Dark takes over Lawrence and as the Admantium takes off he fires his gun into the navigational systems and dramatically the ship crashes into the moon (‘The Admantium was torn wide open and the ships guts were hanging open, loose cabling and chunks of smouldering machinery, flames bleeding from the wound’). The Dark sensed the Doctor in the TARDIS, drew him to the planet and tore thought everything to get to him, his mere presence signing the death warrant of everybody on the moon. The Dark manifests itself with all the strengths and weaknesses of those whose blood it has taken, including Oldeman’s addiction to neuro-electrin. The Doctor pumps the remainder into the Bloodhunter and master and beast feed off each other. It weakens enough for Stoker to shoot it with a Dark Star gun.

Funny Bits: Jim Boyd is looking for a synthetic skin patch big enough to cover Tegan’s mouth!
After suffering a split lip at the hands of Caldwell’s fists the Doctor comments, “I’ve just been beaten up” in disbelief. That really tickled me.

Result: Underated, this is an exciting and well-paced novel. Admittedly it starts off waving the trad banner with a little too much enthusiasm but once the Bloodhunter is wheeled out things pick up immeasurably. Trevor Baxendale writes with such an unpretentious adventurous spirit I cannot bring myself to criticise, this reads like a Terrance Dicks novel with better descriptive prose. It helps that the regulars are characterised with some dignity, far more than they were getting during this televised period. It might be packed with clichés (an evil from another dimension, a starship crew, mining rights, blood sucking creatures) but all of these features are pleasingly subverted (the Dark manifests in shadows, the ship crashes with spectacular results, the Bloodhunter manages to surprise its victim and the reader with regularity). Given its less than stellar reputation (admittedly it doesn’t match up to his superior EDAs…except possibly Coldheart) I was impressed and if this is the sort of novel that is considered a failure then we are in much better shape than the past twenty or so PDAs: 7/10

Time Zero by Justin Richards

2011-04-13T17:19:00.003+01:00

Plot: The whole fabric of reality is threatened when Maxwell Curtis sets us his research outpost in Siberia to try and cure his unusual malady. Soon everybody is on their way there; Fitz as a part of an expedition in 1894, Anji being head hunted by the CIA, the SAS, Sabbath, the Doctor…all in time to see what could be the end of the universe as we know it…

Top Doc: After dropping his companions of to the relevant places, he springs straight back into action, admitting it is far better to be out there, doing something, achieving anything. He is pretty chirpy throughout, using his apparent goofiness to hide his real intentions. When he is around, everything is suddenly, irrationally all right. Where there’s trouble, that’s where he goes. He enjoys Trix’s company and yet bluntly refuses to take her with him at the end. He now has two hearts beating in his chest again. As usual, it is Sabbath who brings out the best in the Doctor and he goes absolutely ape-**** when old ham fists ridicules him, saying that he has no idea what he is doing. He then perversely proves the way Sabbath looks at the universe is wrong and laughs in his face. He says, “There’s nothing creative about killing. Have you ever thought of how much harder it is to preserve and save lives?” He admits he is terrified when Curtis, fully developing into a black hole, comes after them.

Scruffy Git: The quintessential Fitz book. Ever wondered why Fitz is so popular and long lasting, read Time Zero. Anji considers him a real friend, trusts him and has enjoyed their time together and will miss him. Fitz wants to have done something for himself, that’s why he is off to Siberia. He hugs Anji like she is his sister and chokes up as he tries to explain how he feels. Described as inexperienced, unqualified and unable to hammer in a tent peg! He is the stalwart advocate of sarcastic wit. As usual, Fitz is far more capable of looking after himself than people give him credit (Anji says as he needs someone to look after him) and hold his own well on the expedition, fighting off accusations of murder and terrifying dinosaurs. When George tells him he is a decent honest person who would do anything to help if he thought it was for the best and never hurt anyone, that he was dependable and brave and the best friend a man could have…we know it is all true. Sadistically, the book plays on the readers feeling for Fitz, offering several scenes where he could very well have perished.

Career Nazi: Anji has beautifully come full circle, finally returned home and seen coping with life without the Doctor and Fitz. She slowly starts putting Dave’s stuff into boxes and out of sight. Going back to work she realises how much she has changed while everyone else has stayed the same, shallow and pointless…and the biggest shock comes when she realises that her work, which used to be her life and soul…is just work. Her experiences with the Doctor have sharpened her instincts and given her the confidence to make brave decisions. All she ever wanted to do was return home and she realises with a heavy heart that her home is now the TARDIS. She cries for hours when she realises Fitz is dead. She has been back at home for 18 months when she is head hunted by Hartford. Her quick wits allow her to trick the soldiers into thinking she has jumped off the plane. She feels numbed to think of the Doctor or Fitz’s mortality, she is used to death during their adventures but she will never accept it. At the stories climax it becomes clear that the Doctor cannot take Anji home despite her wishes he does so and she and Fitz can barely hide their delight at this.

Anyone who claims the EDAs feature no character development are obviously reading a very different range to me. Compare these three in Earthworld to Time Zero, they just aren’t the same people anymore. The Doctor is far more confident of his abilities and has found an extended family, Fitz has decided he needs to sort his life out and Anji has softened considerably. I think they’re fab.

Identity Tricks: Beatrice Macmillan is introduced in this book, a master of disguise who helps Sabbath manipulate Curtis to fulfil his plans. Loves money but not danger, she wishes she had just grabbed her payment and run. She has honey blond hair and green, catlike eyes. The Doctor follows her to a retirement home where she is using her mother’s clothes to help her disguise. She is very intrigued by the Doctor and asks if she can come with him at the end.

Foreboding: Anji’s friend Mitch has moved up to Edinburgh and invites her to visit (The Domino Effect). Sabbath cuts his hand and wipes it on the Doctor’s handkerchief (Sometime Never…). Sabbath leaves the Doctor a parting gift with the hint, “a race against infinity” (The Infinity Race). The Doctor leaves the TARDIS door open and gives Trix the perfect chance to stow away (Timeless). The Quantum universes have been messed up, they are now overlapping, intersecting, merging, vying for dominance (The Infinity Race-Timeless). The Doctor and co must get the journal back to 1938 in the right universe or the Doctor would not have read it and be on hand to stop Curtis destroying the universe (Timeless).

Twists: The opening scene, featuring Fluppy the puppy having his skull caved in by the Blue Peter totaliser is very memorable. I found the parting of the Doctor, Fitz and Anji poignant. Turns out Compassion wrote the Meet me in St Louis note. Hartford gets involved in the adventure when soldiers flying over Siberia experience lost time, omitting Hawking radiation, allowing Control at CIA to build a time traveller detector, which leads them to Anji and they make her an offer of a job in Siberia. Galloway on Fitz’s expedition is found dead with a tent peg in his head. In several wonderfully tense sequences, Anji discovers she is on a military plane to Siberia, filled with guns and bombs and pretends she has jumped ship. In one of the best “Oh crap!” twists in Doctor Who history she realises the soldiers have jumped after her and have left her alone on the plane, which (as she stares out of the cockpit window) is heading straight for a range of mountains. Fitz and co discovers a portal to another world, and attracts the attention of monsters from the other side. In lots of adrenalin filled scenes worthy of Jurassic Park they are hunted by several ferocious dinosaurs. Hartford proves himself a sadistic bully, determined that there is time travel experiments going on in Siberia (because his sniffer has detected Anji) and shoots lots of people down in cold blood. Schrondinger’s Cat is brilliantly used to expose the Doctor and Sabbath’s view of reality. The Doctor believes in indeterminism, the cat could be either dead or alive…whilst Sabbath believes in certainties, a set timeline where the cat’s fate is always known. Curtis is revealed to be a walking black hole, an absurd idea until it tries to suck you into the event horizon. Sabbath is revealed as the one who set up the research outpost in the first place, manipulating Curtis so he can travel back in time to the Big Bang and have his black hole energy released forwards in time to
create one single, definitive timeline. Proof that his plan is to fail and that Curtis travelling back in time is destabilising reality, the TARDIS is discovered as a ghost inside the glacier, proving that the multiverse is collapsing, existing as a yes, no and maybe…all of these possibilities existing at the same time, in the same universe. Fitz survives because reality is offering up every possibility and the Doctor and Anji refuse to admit he is dead. The Doctor eventually proves that they are living in a single universe…Curtis becoming a black hole at Time Zero is what attracts the light from the O-region to create the time machine…but Curtis cannot get back in time until the time machine is created…a paradox which cannot exist in a set timeline because one of these would always write the other out. The story reaches a dramatic climax as every action ever taken place in every place starts overlapping each other. Touchingly, we realise that George Williamson is the time machine that allows Curtis to travel back to destroy the universe…and in order to stop him George will have to sacrifice himself. The final, wrenching twist comes when we realise the Doctor has quite saved the day at the end and a new timeline has shoved ours out of the way and is currently existing as the ‘real’ reality.

Embarrassing bits: The second Holiday appears and knows the Doctor’s name it is obvious who he is. As I have said, the idea of a man turning into a black hole is absurd but somehow, Justin Richards makes it positively terrifying to witness. That said, the idea is still a bit silly. The murderer of Galloway is really, really obvious. Because she is a new companion (well not yet) Trix is dragged along to Siberia with everyone else but beyond her role as Grand Duchess to fool Curtis, she is redundant to the plot.

Funny bits: The way the Doctor just walks into a murder investigation and takes over is very funny. As is Lionel Correll’s sigh of relief when the Doctor loses the bid for the journal, having upped the stakes to £50,000!

Result: Shockingly brutal and gripping, this novel has three equally good action plots wrapping around each other beautifully. Written by the range editor, the regulars are every bit as fulfilling as you would expect and given a healthy dose of development. The tone is certainly dramatic, helped enormously by the reverse numbered chapters, which give the constant impression the book is building up to something. Some people complain about the heavy science in the last third but to be honest that was my favourite part, with some mind-expanding concepts being used to strengthen the character drama. The plotting is flawless and the content very adult and the whole thing is enhanced by that superb, almost photographic, cover. Easily the best thing Justin Richards has written to date; I would love this book just for the stuff with Anji on the plane: 9/10

The Ressurection Casket by Justin Richards

2011-04-10T15:42:00.003+01:00

Plot: Climb aboard me hearties for a tale of treasure and cutthroat pirates in the space ways! There’s treasure to found, dangers to be unearthed and more murder and mayhem than you could possibly want! There’s even a buxom blonde called Rose to feast your eyes on…

Mockney Dude: For a second I thought I wasn’t going to like Richard’s take on the tenth Doctor…but only for a second. In the prologue the Doctor is fist clenchingly irritating and has the verbal runs like never before, its like someone has taken everything that is annoying about this man and slapped it down on paper! However the second we’re out of the TARDIS and involved in a good old-fashioned pirate adventure the tenth Doctor is revealed to be at the top of his game…

The Doctor has everlasting matches that grow at the same rate they are consumed by fire. He doesn’t run away, he negotiates from a position of strength. The Doctor is such a devious bastard, he knows that there is no treasure to find but he heads out under the pretence of finding it because he has to get the TARDIS out of the zeg. His anger and frustration at visiting the TARDIS each day and being denied access forces him into a sulky rant where he promises to fix the engines and get them out of the zeg quicker. The only thing that gives them an edge and advantage is the Doctor. He refuses to shield Jimm from the dangers they are facing; in fact he shoves them right into his face to show the real horrors of space travel. When McCavity wont listen to reason the Doctor throws the mans feelings aside and really goes in for the kill: ‘She’s gone. For ever. She’d dead. And you killed her.’ He doesn’t know if the lockers are airtight before shoving his friends in them and tossing them into space but thinks it’s going to be exciting and amusing to find out! He gives the robots the option to let everybody live but when they refuse he shrugs and kills them all horribly. The Doctor has an annoying habit of blowing things up the first few times he meets you, your work, the sun, your ship…

Chavvy Chick: Rose is utterly gullible, she really likes Sally when the robot thinks she is a daft bitch!

Great ideas: That is a fine cover with both regulars looking hot under the collar good and a pirate ship gliding through the stars with a ghostly skull and crossbones behind – awesome! The Black Shadow is a curse, a threat, a sentence of death. The opening promises danger and death; eyes burning from the darkness, claws glinting like knifes and a body bleeding in the gutter. What an attractive location – a space port with steam punk technology, half steam ship, half space shuttle! Riveted and jointed robots walk about, puffs of steam blowing from their rods and pistons, the hiss of changing pressure…humanoid steam technology! As a gadgets man this is irresistible. The zeg is a blanket of electromagnetic gravitation that covers the whole system and you need a steamship to get out to the Outreaches. Captain Lockhart was covered in boiling lead after holding out against Hamlek Glint for 17 hours. Glint’s crew were all robots, gleaming, metallic, angular and lethal! There’s Salvo 7-50, broad, short with an arm ending in a vicious looking blade and a face like a skull. Cannon-K was a mark three battle robot. Elvis had flared metal trousers and painted eyebrows. Dusty was an oil drum with machete tipped arms! Stubbs has caterpillar tracks and an electronic eye in the chest. Octo has segmented arms with different attachments. Smithers is a respectable looking metal man leaking dark fluid down his trunk. I love robots! Glint sold his robots to a droid dealer to be melted down as scrap. ‘Hamlek Glint didn’t value life. And I don’t want Jimm growing up with that attitude’ – nicely done. Bobb’s fake treasure is made out of tin cans and metal foil but the Doctor’s reaction suggests something more… Krarks are space sharks that can store oxygen and compress so it can go for months without a fresh supply. It blows out tiny amounts under enormous pressure so it can push itself through space. Sally had repaired herself with bits of people she has murdered, she sees the face of the girl she killed everyday because she is wearing it! The Doctor’s Krark plan depends on his friends being loaded into the escape pod with the TARDIS inside, then he can disengage the pod and when they are out of the zeg and they can fly away. Oh dear, they put them in the other one. A spaceship graveyard of pleasure cruisers and cargo carriers, ships lost to the zeg before it was properly mapped. Larissa spills out of the chest, a blackened fragile skeleton, sightless skull eyes and a bullet hole drilled into her brain. The Captain she had an affair with was burned to death with molten lead and put up as a sculpture! Kevin doesn’t need oxygen, it’s a luxury, like sudoku, it passes the time but he can manage without it. Kevin being set free is really rather poignant. The Ressurection Casket discards the old body and clones a new one – when Glint fell inside he emerge as a baby…Jimm! Sally is torn about by Krarks and McCavity is transformed into a little baby, and lets hope he has a better upbringing next time!

Embarrassing Bits: Kenny, King and Jonesy are so obviously Cannon-K, Elvis and Smithers but Richards doesn’t even bother with the pretence for a whole chapter.

Funny Bits:
· ‘This blaster might look old and rusty and naff but I assure you its in perfect working order!’ the Doctor cries, brandishing his weapon. After he fires and it singularly fails to do anything spectacular: ‘Oh zeg! Zegging hell!’
· ‘Rip you apart, yeah, I mean that’s what I have to do. But I can’t be doing with mess and damage and needless vandalism.’ Kevin the shaggy monster would rather read his stack of books or do another degree than main and murder but jobs a job.
· Dugg, McCavity’s bodyguard furiously scribbles notes taking inspiration from the danger they are in for his novel. Big help.
· ‘Let us claim what’s ours and we’ll leave you in pieces’ ‘Doesn’t she mean peace?’
· Monsters hiding behind the sofa? You see it all in this life!
· ‘Balls!’ Rose and Jimm tear up the snooker table to make a catapult and decapitate Cannon-K with the black! ‘Well that’s just great’ says his disembodied head from the floor.
· ‘Turn every switch, push every lever, press every button and ford every stream. Follow every rainbow until…sorry I got a bit confused there.’ ‘The cells are alive!’ ‘With the sound of music?’ The dialogue is witty and wonderful.
· Rose realises that by hugging Kevin as she does she is in fact clutching his buttocks!

Result: A pirate story! Woohoo! The tone of The Ressurection Casket is perfect, gung ho and full of fun with some space for some delightful innovations and details. It’s gorgeously plotted with some twists you will guess straight away and others that will wind you right up and its great fun seeing if your predictions are right. Any story that juggles up exquisite steam punk technology, cut throat robotic pirates, a polite ravaging monster and a matricidal lunatic is doing something right in my book! The prose is like ice cream, sweet and light and really fun to devour and the dialogue is packed full of fun gags. Some people will tell you that Justin Richards cannot write a fun comedic slice of Doctor Who and this novel is two confident fingers up at them: 8/10

Heritage by Dale Smith

2011-04-08T14:02:00.002+01:00

Plot: Nobody visits Heritage. A failed mining colony too stupid to realise its already dead. Secrets have a way of unearthing themselves when the Doctor’s around and there is a bloody secret waiting for him at the heart of Heritage. A secret that will change his life forever…

Master Manipulator: Possibly the best evocation of the seventh Doctor in print. If you ever wanted to get inside the head of this complex and unfathomable incarnation of the Doctor Heritage is the book for you. It gives you scope and depth not often seen in the books and penetrates the thoughts of the seventh Doctor in a way that the New Adventures only rarely touched upon this effectively. Not only that but Heritage provides an ideal bridge between the playful Doctor of the BBC novels and the master manipulator of the Virgin novels. In a dramatic scene the Doctor reveals why he did not want to find out the dark secret at Heritage’s heart: “Something’s coming Ace, something I might not be able to plan for. I was starting to think that perhaps someone else might be better suited to deal with it. Someone who wasn’t me. Sometimes all I want to do is play the spoons in a jazz band, and pull ferrets from my trousers and make children smile. Mel knew that. But Mel isn’t here anymore. Professor Wakeling took that away from me, perhaps forever. And as he did that he reminded me of something else. He reminded me what evil is, and he reminded me that it has to be fought. No matter what the consequences. Evil cannot prevail.” The Doctor from the beginning of Heritage is moody and completive, disturbed after discovering the truth about Ace’s corpse in Prime Time. Was he considering giving up this lark to protect her? Events from this book reveal that he cannot hide away from the nasty truths in the universe…that he has to play his part in things. After trying to fight himself, the master manipulator takes his first few steps in the universe…and it took the needless death of a friend to give birth to him. What a great idea…

The Doctor’s cold, slate grey eyes hit you before his smile. Who hides themselves behind a title instead of a name? Someone with a guilty past? The Doctor has the air of somebody who knew that all problems could not be solved. He radiated guilt for things he hadn’t done. He is a man of contradictions and had never been able to resist a game. A day could not go by without him treating Ace like a child. The Doctor was not like Ace, but not in a way that other adults weren’t like her. He was alien and there was no way to guess what he would do next. He had lied to her many times, made her cry, stopped her from being Ace…all for a good so great even she had to admit there was no other way. Was he an avenging function of history? Nothing else mattered but setting things right, regardless of casualties. The Doctor could take over the world in a night if that was what he wanted. He’s starting to think he has been getting far too involved in other peoples business. Meddling and tinkering until he has botched the situation to suit his mood. Ace trusted the Doctor to do what needed to be done. If you couldn’t see why that was because you weren’t looking in the same place he was. He likes humans but he doesn’t always trust them. It did Ace good to remember the Doctor wasn’t perfect. There’s a great description of the Doctor on page 268: “He looked so ridiculous, so comical; he was like a clown, a performer escaped from some circus just waiting to twirl his battered umbrella and spin his hat along his arm until it came to rest- satisfied – back on his wiry hair again. And yet…and yet…His words drew blood.”

Oh Wicked: Take what I said about the Doctor at the beginning of his section and repeat for Ace. Heritage is the ultimate examination of Ace, years after her initial conception and after the several billion stories featuring her (this is only a slight exaggeration) we are still seeing new shades to this character. Whilst I do genuinely feel there are more neglected companions that deserve further exploration (Mel herself, Dodo…even Adric…what a line up!) it thrills me to see Ace written for so well here. Anyone who is following my two threads will realise I am writing both a New Adventures and Past Doctor Adventures review thread and it pains me to say the range which occasionally features Ace is doing a far better job of dealing with the character’s evolution than the range that is stuck with her in every novel. For some bizarre reason the New Adventures just cannot get a handle on this character…turning her into a nasty, violent, angst ridden bully as though that would make her appeal to us. Obviously the PDAs have the benefit of hindsight but the Ace of The Hollow Men, Matrix, Relative Dementias, Heritage, The Algebra of Ice and Atom Bomb Blues just rocks. Damage limitation is being performed on the character. And not before time.

Ace is somewhere between plain and good-looking but is different and new which meant she was something of a Goddess on Heritage. She still had a problem with the law. She doesn’t know how to handle being disgusted by the Doctor. Ace is all energy and excitement, fascinating and terrifying in one. The old Ace would have lashed out when she got angry but these days she was more sociable. She wonders if perhaps the Doctor has finally had enough of her and the next trip will be Perivale. Perhaps somewhere a part of her actually wanted that. When angry, Ace snarls like a cat and Lee could believe she became a monster herself in battle. Ace only met Mel briefly and didn’t really get to know her – she was the ex, the previous, the one he would always compare her to. She knew Mel had left…just as she would leave, but when she decided. She would make a decision and step out of the Doctor’s life. Is there something in her always looking for a father figure? Perhaps there was too much past for her to ever shake off and become a new person. The Doctor had slapped her around the face and opened her eyes to the universe – he’d shown her beauty and fun and what injustice really was. He had saved her. She loved him for that. For giving her a chance when no one else had. Go and read pages 201-202…has there ever been a better description of how Ace’s mind works? By killing Mel, they had taken Ace’s invulnerability away, made her think what if it was me?

{Excuse me Mr Heritage, this is the continuity police, can you step out of the car and lay bare all your revisions…

…The fate of Melanie Bush was already dealt with in Steve Lyons’ Head Games, a potent novel that brought Mel into the world of the New Adventures and horrified her at what she saw, particularly the manipulative Doctor and his gun toting companions. So did the Doctor know all about Mel’s death during that adventure? Unlikely…but the blame for this bizarre oversight can be explained somewhat by the Eighth Doctor alternative reality arc. Yes, it gets its dirty paws everywhere, doesn’t it?

In Sometime Never…, the climatic adventure when the Doctor comes face to face with the diabolical Council of Eight who have been chasing his tail for a hell of a time. They have been manipulating the timelines and attempting to surgically remove any actions taken by the Doctor…and anybody he may have touched during his adventures. During a very Sapphire and Steel sequence a young boy is shown through a room full of hourglasses that represent the lives of the Doctor’s companions that they have attempted to snip from the timelines:

“Take this as an example” he said. “It belonged to a lady called Melanie. I say belonged” he told me “as although we are ourselves outside of the normal ebb and flow of time while we are in this station, this ‘Vortex Palace’ if you like, the hourglasses are anchored in real time. And at that point in the relative time of Melanie, her life has been cut short. Ended. The timeline is broken.” He told me about Melanie. “She was tainted. She had a plague, an infection that needed rooting out. There have been so many that he has touched and tainted, we cannot hope to find them all.”

At the end of Sometime Never… the Doctor managed to release a myriad of alternative universe back into existence, defeating the Council of Eight. It is never explicitly stated that Melanie lived or died but it does give an explanation of how both timelines can have existed, if only for a time.

In the end of the day take your pick…do you prefer Heritage’s explanation or Head Games? I’ll go with the former, simply because it provides such a fantastic shoe in for the darker seventh Doctor. Or maybe that nasty Doctor chose not to tell Mel what he knew in store for her future…]

Twists: Prime Time’s revelation that the Ace is going to die soon has clearly had a profound effect on the Doctor. Pages 50-53 contain a breathtaking piece of prose from a crow’s eye view of Heritage. I love the atmosphere of conspiracy, the feeling of dark secrets being hidden. Lee’s reminiscing about Ryan is heartbreaking. Ace creeping around the Heyworth’s burnt out house is seriously creepy. The revelation of Mel’s death is very satisfying after all the build-up and a real shock to Ace and the reader. The Fussy city is such a cute idea. Sweetness is revealed to be Mel’s daughter (oh come on…look at that cover!). Chapter twenty is absolutely astonishing, like a self-contained story of its own. The writing is startlingly mature and the answers that spill – that Wakeling murdered Mel and convinced the town to kill her husband so he could continue doing his research and save the town – are shocking and raw. Ryan killed himself because Lee helped the town to murder Ben. The Doctor discovers the shuttle crew dead, Wakeling trying desperately to stop the Doctor escaping and spilling the planets bloody secrets. Pages 234-236 make you realise just how pathetic Bernard is and how much you feel for him. Mel was going through the menopause and desperately wanted a child – Wakeling cloned her but that was not what she wanted and when she confronted him about it he smashed her skull in with a surgical instrument. He was only interested in the science, not her feelings. The final confrontation with Wakeling is very dramatic, he falls into the mines and the Doctor attempts to pull him up but Sweetness appears at the lip of the hole and throws at him the instrument of her mothers murder, sending him to his death.

Result: Astonishingly adult, both in tone and its mature prose. I have been far too hard on Heritage in the past and have missed the manifest of treasures it buries beneath its simplistic surface. It’s a stunning examination of what makes the Doctor and Ace tick and provides an excellent crossing between the BBC and Virgin seventh Doctor adventures. The central mystery is intriguing, beautifully plotted to surprise and then disgust you as you go deeper into the past and realise just how dirty a game this colony has played. And the characterisation is phenomenal; you will remember Cole and Sheriff, Bernard and Lee long after the last page is turned. It isn’t perfect, all this reflection and introspection means the book moves really slowly and you will need to be patient to get your answers and at times it feels as though the characters cannot actually do anything without thinking through the consequences first. A mature reader will find much to applaud, the death of Mel is shocking and the Doctor’s cold anger towards her murderer provides some truly dramatic moments: 8/10

The Third Zone Issue Two is out now...

2011-03-20T20:04:00.001Z

Issue Two of The Third Zone has arrived... http://the-third-zone.blogspot.com

The latest merchandise has been reviewed. From Big Finish we have The Feast of Axos, The Perpetual Bond and Andy has tackled both The Mutants and The Ark on DVD. Note – we were going to include the latest eighth Doctor audio Lucie Miller but we have decided to review the two-part storyline as a whole.

This months Matter of Perspective sees Steve Lyons popular New Adventure, Conundrum come under the limelight. Reversing our roles from last month, Andy has been reading away and has a good grilling by yours truly.

The Evelyn Escapades seems to have been one of the most popular elements on the site with the most hits (the reviews excepted) and this month we have completed two stories and have posted our responses The Spectre of Lanyon Moor.

Charlotte and Simon, our non-fan cohorts have been watching the William Hartnell classic, Planet of Giants.

This month’s debate is contemporary topic – Amy Pond, heavenly or whore? Andy stands in defence of the Doctor’s latest companion whilst I try and convince you that she doesn’t quite work.

Exciting interviews with two of Big Finish’s most exciting current writers, Jacqueline Rayner (Wolfsbane, Dr Who & the Pirates) and Simon Guerrier (The Perpetual Bond). They share their thoughts on their latest work.

Who Online this month praises the Big Finish review and voting site, The Time Scales.

I look back at Nicholas Courtney's contributions to Doctor Who and include my top five favourite Brigadier stories.

All this plus part two of our exciting three part fiction piece, The Shadows Makers written by Joe Ford and an essay looking at the delightful Big Finish spin off The Companion Chronicles Seasons 1-3

Any comments can be posted on the site or sent to [email]thethirdzone@hotmail.co.uk[/email]

Issue three will be released March 15th – happy reading!

Joe Ford (co editor)

Camera Obscura by Lloyd Rose

2011-03-13T23:45:00.001Z

Plot: There is a time machine causing dangerous instabilities, fracturing people both mentally and physically. Worse, its continued use might see the time continuum chewed up and spat out. The Doctor turns to his sometime ally, sometime enemy Sabbath for help tracking down the machine and along the way discovers some very disturbing things about where his heart is in the matter…

Top Doc: He springs from the page, vivid and electrifying, it’s another astonishing example of why the eighth Doctor is such an amazing character these days. He has never gotten used to his single heart and he never will. He feels it makes him damaged, crippled and worse, human. His memory and heart have both been taken from him but thinking about them is a waste of the time he has too much of. He remembers once being shorter, and taller too! His profile is dramatic rather than beautiful. He gets annoyed at his lack of ability to die but he soon realises Sabbath is ‘using’ his second heart and wakes up screaming, “You son of a bitch!” He is furious at Sabbath’s homicidal tactics and enjoys winding him up, attacking him in his mind with a giant squid simply because he is a ‘jerk’. He takes things far too personally. The Doctor hates his weaknesses, he feels he know longer deserves his heart and wonders if he was responsible for whatever infected and blackened it. He is bored with the ‘empty pockets’ routine, not giving a toss how many yo yos he has (tee hee). He is asked if he ever shuts up. He ponders on why he is so great at saving himself but less successful with others. A sly animal, you never know what he is about. He beautifully sums up what he is about, “Injustice is the rule, but I want justice. Suffering is the rule but I want to end it. Despair accords with reality but I insist on hope. I don’t accept it because it is unacceptable. I say no.” Proving how close to the edge he can be, he is willing to risk a confrontation with Death to stop the time machine being used again. He discovers from her that he has cheated death many times before. Described as a monstrous egotist, insane risk taker, a manipulator and trickster, someone who is radically and completely other. When it comes to women, the Doctor is practically a monk. Heartless, no matter how many beat in his chest. In the exciting climax he suicidally attempts to trick the Chiltern monster into throwing him into the machine and destroy it and despite Sabbath’s attempts to retain it, the Doctor succeeds. He is treated to a stunning array of strange man staring back at him in the mirrors, previous incarnations that he does not recognise. Catalytic, the bringer of fate. Sabbath has destroyed his integrity; he’s neither complete nor incomplete.

Scruffy Git: It is interesting to get to see the reaction of the Doctor’s companions existing on the periphery of the story, kept in the dark about much of what is going on and left to sit by the Doctor’s bedside as he throws himself into one near death experience after another. Fitz is far more sombre than we have seen before and is cut deeply when Jane calls him a loser, forcing him to re-evaluate his life and discover that he is not entirely satisfied trailing after the Doctor. As a result he signs himself up for an expedition to Siberia to search for fossils. Usually pretending to be someone else is relaxing and liberating for him but he finds Victorian London depressing and can’t find any way of picking up girls without visiting a whore house and that is bit a raw even for him. He celebrated his 33rd birthday in Spain (History 101) and is terrified of never reaching 40. His love for the Doctor is proven when he stays by the guy’s side, even when he threatens to break every bone in his body.

Career Nazi: The Doctor’s weakness in this story affects Anji greatly, getting cross with him for being so blasé about his near death experiences. She is tired and tries to stress to the Doctor how hard it is to sit at his side and wonder if he is going to die. She admits how much she cares about him, being with him has made her very protective of him. She is appalled at her own rage towards the Angel Maker for stabbing the Doctor, calling her a bitch and dragging her by her hair. She decides if he survives, she is going home. Anji feels absurd in a sari and doesn’t like being stared at because she is different. She trusts the Doctor’s intentions but sometimes feels he stumbles around in the dark.

Ham Fists: Finally Sabbath gets a book where he is centre stage and it more than lives up to Adventuress. Described as a housekeeper tidying up the universe. He needed to ‘use’ the Doctor’s heart to penetrate Deep Time and is now physically tied to the Doctor. Every time he has been in mortal danger, Sabbath has felt the effects. Brilliant in his own way and used to the finer things in life, he appropriates a mansion and sets about giving a time sensitive an education. Sinister, mysterious and something of a posturing ham. Sabbath feels the Doctor is dangerous, visiting time zones and branching off a new timeline each time he does. The Doctor states he must be stopped by any means. He loves clocks because they translate time into sounds and make it so apprehensible to human senses. In the climax Sabbath tears out the Doctor’s heart, grieving for the loss of the Angel Maker and tells the Doctor that it is not a human heart. It is shocking, the most emotional moment the fella has had yet.

Foreboding: Anji is going home, Fitz is going to Siberia and Sabbath is companionless…all this segues into the next book, Time Zero. Sabbath’s employers want to keep the Doctor from themselves.

Twists: There is a scene from Anji’s POV of Victorian London, which is awesome truly comes alive. Dealing with Miss Jane and her fractured personalities is really creepy. Anji and Fitz’s wandering around Crystal Palace is bedazzling. Octave is revealed to be the same man split into eight parts by the time machine. The eight parts attack the Doctor viciously, smashing a sandbag down on his chest and driving his ribcage through his back into the floorboards. Sabbath is revealed to have stolen the Doctor’s heart and actually implanted into his body, thus saving the Doctor from death at the hands of Octave. He slaughters Octave, thinking it will be the end of the problem. The time machine is revealed as being supremely dangerous, capable of bringing the time period to you and allowing you to step into it. It is designed to be used by many civilisations, user friendly and adapted to in this new universe where time is unregulated. Even with all its parts it could distort time and destroy the universe. The dragging, limping rustling creature that attacks the Doctor in his darkened cell is absolutely terrifying. Chapter Seventeen is fantastic, the pinnacle of Doctor Who prose, frightening, atmospheric and intoxicatingly good. The Doctor thinks Sabbath is trying to strangle reality, pairing down its possibilities. He tricks the Angel Maker into stabbing him through his remaining heart and descends into hell in a truly nightmarish sequence. Sabbath discovers him impaled on a meat hook, part of a clocks mechanism! Chiltern monster is horrific, revealed to be made of eight parts, including a toaster, a rose bush and a rats mouth snapping away instead of an eye. In a shocking climax, Chiltern kills the Angel Maker and Sabbath viciously snaps his neck, killing both him and Nathaniel. Sabbath, disgusted by the Doctor’s otherness, rips the heart from his chest and frees the link between them.

Funny bits: The Doctor cannot resist leaving a whoopee cushion down for Sabbath to sit on. His attempts to pretend to be knocked out and dragged away by Scale are hilarious. The hate-hate relationship between Anji and Sabbath leads to her unkindly suggesting his name is really Melvin. “You know Doctor, even allowing for the, ah, unique circumstances of your last near death experience, it’s extraordinary how often you’re plucked out of trouble at the last minute. Rescuers turn up. Weapons jam. Your companions, who, if you’ll forgive me, don’t strike me as more than usually competent, save the day. Buildings explode immediately after you find the way out. Cities fall just after the TARDIS materialises. Electrical currents short circuit. Evil masterminds make foolish errors. If you fall out of a window, there is someone to catch you. If you’re drowning, a spar floats by. You find your way unsigned out of burning houses. You survive alien mind probes that would boil the average brain in its skull. You are dug unharmed beneath fallen rubble. No one ever shoots you in the head. Deadly drugs turn out not to affect you. Villains tie you up too loosely, and hidebound tyrants’ convictions falter at your rhetoric. In short, in your presence, the odds collapse.”

Result: A magnificent novel, one of the best Doctor Who books published and a really tasty historical with so many memorable passages I would be recounting much of the book to list them all. After you have finished it you realise that the plot is actually quite thin, nothing more than a protracted chase after a time machine but how the book works its way into the running arc of the EDAs turns it into so much more. This book succeeds on the astonishing strength of characterisation and brutally thoughtful moments. The Doctor and Sabbath are explored in considerable depth and any scene featuring the pair is instantly classic, bouncing off each other beautifully. The prose is stimulating, the sheer beauty of the writing results in an effortless read. It the pinnacle of a great run of books, matching Rose’s debut step for step and being the all round best achiever of the ranger since Adventuress. Powerful and involving, read this now: 10/10

The Dying Days by Lance Parkin

2011-03-12T10:00:00.002Z

(Warning! Warning! There are a quartet of very popular new Adventures that I had a reaction akin to a tropical skin rash and The Dying Days is the last of them. The others, if you are interested were Timewyrm; Revelation, Warlock and Return of the Living Dad. Odd that these are authors whose work I would often put with the best of the best but I guess everybody has there off days. Anyway if you don’t want your favourite Doctor Who book torn to pieces before your eyes please avert your eyes now)

Top Doc: So Virgin got to have a spin at producing an eighth Doctor so we can spend an age speculating what they would have done with the character had they been able to keep hold of the Doctor Who licence. Whilst I would go on to have problems with how the BBC used the character for the phase of the EDAs it would appear his true character would be as elusive for the best of the Virgin writers. This is one of the blandest renditions of any Doctor’s in print, he is generic in practically every way and I could not reconcile this depiction with what we saw in the TV Movie. Even if this is set after the EDAs like Parkin suggests in his ebook notes on the BBC website, there is none of the giddy childlike wonder or thoughtful sensitivity that Paul McGann brought to the part. Oddly enough considering this is an alien invasion of Earth the Doctor does absolutely nothing of worth until the finale, he is completely impotent, observing events, shouting a few threats, going underground and then dying. Given that Parkin gave us possibly the most nuanced and dramatic use of the seventh Doctor in the New Adventures in Just War I cannot imagine what happened here.

You couldn’t even rely on the Doctor to be unreliable. He bursts into the house on Allen Road, full of cuddles and gossip. Behind the 7th Doctor’s his tricks, plans and dark expressions there was a little man who thought the universe ought to be a friendlier place. He didn’t have sex appeal or boyish charm. The Doctor once and a while needed protecting from the universe he protected. He finds the idea that a man wanting to see him just because he is attractive absurd. This Doctor rushed into danger without a plan or a scheme. Before he changed the Doctor seemed to know everything about everything. He had no regrets. Why would he? For 1200 years and in every corner of time and space he had helped others to hold back death; he’d helped them go forward in all their beliefs. Then by their own achievements, their own heroism, their own sacrifices, his companions – his friends – had proved his actions right. He could think of no better epitaph. He is half lemming, on his mothers side.

Proving things would have been as overblown and as melodramatic as they could have be with the 7th Doctor, the 8th Doctor, believed dead, bursts back into action with a speech that feels horribly self congratulatory. I hate it when the show bigs up the Doctor as something bigger than the series itself – all those speeches about how fabulous he is in the New Series (especially that one in Voyage of the Damned straight at the camera) and it is particularly loathsome here, especially given his new nickname ‘I am the Eighth Man Bound.’ Oh ¤¤¤¤ off. I don’t need to be told that the Doctor is fabulous, I need to be shown. I nearly threw the book in the bath. I don’t want to sound like a party pooper but in some ways I am glad this sort of nonsense was not followed through.

Boozy Babe: Better, because Bernice is so well set up as a character but again there is nothing here that will blow your socks off. Bernice has convinced a publishing company there is a market for her memoirs. For 33 years she has slept alone so why did she feel lonely waking up with no one beside now Jason has gone. She is shocked to discover the Doctor has no clue what is going on. She has been offered the chair of archaeology at St Oscar’s University on the planet Dellah. Rather wonderfully she dresses up in the clothes as depicted on the Love and War cover.

Foreboding: As the passing of the torch between the series this book serves its purpose. The 7th Doctor is gone. The 8th Doctor is off to get embroiled in a Time War with the BBC and Bernice is about to embark on a War of Gods with Virgin.

Twists: The helicopter crashing down into the garden on Allen Road is a superb way of getting our attention and getting the Doctor and Benny involved in the action – the book should have been full of moments like this. The new TARDIS control room was always the original, the Doctor had just gotten used to the white one (this is slightly contradicted in Lungbarrow where the first Doctor walks into the TARDIS and it is the white control room). The book starts off with a gripping back story of Mars Probe 13 retuning with a dead crew, bodies split open and their eyes missing with Christian sending back mad religious ravings on the journey back to Earth – this sort of vicious psychological horror would have been much preferable to the story that unfolds, suggesting this was all a hoax. I loved the five minute delay with the shuttle – it is a great tension building exercise. The landing site was changed just before the launch and the astronauts were ordered away from the unpopulated areas right into the heart of an area jam packed with Martian buildings. They desecrate and steal from a Marshal’s tomb and the people of Great Britain face summary execution. The Prime Minister being shot is a great shock moment. It is revealed that the Martians were heading for Earth a day and a half before the astronauts set foot on Mars. The Martian spaceship does a spectacular passing over London. Ice Warriors hiss because they are gasping for nitrogen out of their natural atmosphere. For 20 years the British Secret Service has been covering up that any fit man can walk on the surface of Mars. The geeks breaking the government code makes for a good moment. For a Martian breathing Terran air is like drowning in soup. A human being shot by a sonic weapon would suffer entirely internal injuries – every bone in their body would shatter. One of the better moments in the second half of the book comes when the Ice Warriors attack the house on Allen Road, Benny proves very resourceful by chucking a kettle of boiling water at one and covering another in vodka and setting it alight! The Red Death is a sentient gas programmed to hunt the Doctor and it won’t stop killing until he was dead.

Funny Bits: The best thing about The Dying Days is its glimpses of humour which broke through my scowls occasionally…
Who Killed Kennedy had gotten close to compromising UNIT – James Stevens had gone to ground but David Bishop was still in London.
The Doctor, Benny and Bambera being tricked into the alleyway made me chuckle.
Ralph Cornish and his boyfriend?
UNIT defeated invasions by the Drahvins and the Bandrils, basically the ones that were beneath the Doctor’s dignity.
To get Net access Bernice tells the café owner the details of Star Trek X

Embarrassing Bits:
* Reading this review so far you might be convinced that I really liked The Dying Days! Oops! My biggest problem with the book is its approach to an alien invasion. It’s boring. It’s the slowest, least ambitious take over of the planet we have ever witnessed. All of the details have been ironed out before the Ice Warriors get here so they just hover their spaceship over London and hang about there for
several days, doing so little that the human race goes about its business. Then after the Doctor has been surgically removed from the plot (more on that later) we rejoin the story after the invasion has begun and see everything from the resistance trenches. That’s right folks…the invasion actually happens off the page! We never see the Martians attacking, subjugating the human race or doing anything beyond snarling threats. I kept feeling as though I was missing the point of this invasion and wondering when the threat was going to feel real. It never happened. And oddly the Doctor merely disables the Martian warship leaving its destruction to the Royal Air Force. Parkin would have another crack at an alien invasion and would write one that was more visually and intellectually interesting in The Gallifrey Chronicles in about 50 pages.

* The 8th Doctor and Bernice do not have any chemistry. There I said it. Shoot me down in flames. She fancies him, he has no idea what is going on, that’s about all you could say about both of their characters as they trip their way through this novel. They are not witty enough to be diverting or clever enough to be engaging. They just react to the plot in very functional ways. Frankly, for all the good they do it might have been better if Bernice had grabbed the Doctor at the beginning of the story and threw him on the bed and shagged his brains out whilst the human race looked after themselves.

* Xnzaal’s coronation has to be seen to be believed – that was when I finally thought this story had tipped over into farce! When he threatened to take on Jesus Christ in a duel I nearly spat my coffee out!

* What the hell was all that stuff with the Doctor’s death all about? I mean come on…thank God this wasn’t how the Doctor died as it would have been really embarrassing. In a moment of melodrama completely separated to the main plot the Martians release the Red Death to hunt the Doctor down. The Time Lord trips over corpses to save a cat and winds up sacrificing himself. It’s just really odd, and I found myself giggling a bit.

* I realise this is an unfair comment to make because the books came first but there is so much of this book that has been copied and done better in the new series. The politics in this book reminds me of Aliens of London, except that was funnier. The spaceship over London was nicked in its entirety in The Christmas Invasion but somehow it feels meatier on the television. Indeed with this being the introductory story for a Doctor who appears to be dying and who jumps back to life in the last third to save the Earth from an alien invasion by confronting the leader of aliens on his ship that is hovering over London…there is a lot that feels like The Christmas Invasion. This sort of material, visual and dramatic, is ripe for television but feels shallow and underwhelming in print. Doctor Who books have always aimed higher; even when they are less than enthralling there is usually an ambitious idea in there that could not be produced on the television budget. The Dying Days feels like Doctor Who on the telly, which is probably why it was so well received in the wilderness years but now, in the midst of the shows awesome comeback, it feels tired, traditional and frankly quite dull.

Result: Ouch, a real slap in the face for those of us who expect complex things from these novels, The Dying Days is a blockbusting TV script that (oddly for a novel) avoids showing us anything that might break the budget. Featuring the 8th Doctor, Bernice Summerfield Brigadiers Lethbridge Stewart and Bambera and the Ice Warriors, this is an obvious crowd pleaser which doesn’t tackle any of these characters with any depth as the novels usually would. The first third generates some interest with some nice build up and action but the invasion is sidelined and the Doctor and Benny barely penetrate the action. Nothing especially surprising happens throughout, the Ice Warriors arrive, they snarl some threats and they are destroyed. Lance Parkin writes smoothly and adds lots of continuity touches and laughs but with a plot as dumb as this he is fighting a losing battle to keep my interest. What’s really surprising is how boring the material not featuring the Doctor is, I would have thought watching the human race trying to cope with an alien invasion would be astonishing but here it is a real struggle to care about. All of the best material here has been stolen by the TV series and done with far more panache. As a closing story for the Doctor Who New Adventures it exhibits nothing of that series’ ambition or verve and feels more safe and predictable than the TV Movie itself. A real let down: 4/10

The Stone Rose written by Jacqueline Rayner

2011-03-06T10:20:00.003Z

Plot: When Mickey discovers a statue of Rose in a museum, the Doctor takes her back in time 2000 years to make it happen. The truth behind the statue reveals that you should always be careful what you wish for…

Mockney Dude: The Doctor doesn’t do rewards. The Doctor sitting in an orchard under a tree with peach blossom sprinkling is a lovely image. He turns heads wherever he goes; it’s a burden he’s learnt to live with. Doing things that have never been done are his speciality. I love the scene where he half inches Rufus’ horse, first making sure it is morally acceptable! The Doctor is appalled at how many species will make extinct because of the gladiatorial games. How fun are the scenes of the Doctor being promised his freedom and being tricked into the arena where he faces lions, tigers and bears – ‘oh my!’ The Doctor is pretty awesome in the arena, jumping on the bears back and using his pals John, Paul, Ringo and George to defeat the animals without spilling their blood. The crowd wants blood and alas it turns out to be their own as the animals leap into the audience! He’s a terrific showman, bringing statues to life and doing tricks. The Doctor is not known for his forgiving nature. When the Doctor is on a mission there is no way he will be distracted. When he thinks he has killed Rose he hates himself for it. Rose isn’t ordinary and the Doctor wasn’t going to wrap her in cotton wool and protect her from everything. He is caught in stone at his most Doctorish, trying to save somebody’s life. I loved the idea that the Doctor can see things that once happened even if they haven’t happened any more.

Chavvy Chick: Just brilliant, as soon as I am about to write off Rose as a literary character Jac Rayner comes along and proves me completely wrong. Read on… You have got to love Rose’s mother, she is the ultimate chav! Jackie frowns on Rose paying to enter the museum when you don’t have to (plus she wants to find out why the Doctor doesn’t wrinkle and wonders if they can make a quid or two with the secret). Rose quite rightly admits that lying on a sheepskin rug whilst Mickey’s mate pervs over her isn’t quite the same as posing as a Goddess for an ancient Roman. Can you imagine watching Rose in a Winnie the Pooh bedsheet Toga! Both Roman hygiene and their treatment of their slaves really bothers Rose. She thought of her own life at sixteen, GCSE’s, falling in love, dropping out of school and leaving home…it all ended in heartbreak and disaster of course but at least it was living. Rose is slightly nervous about eating a Roman meal but after living with her mum for most of her life she reckoned she could cope with virtually anything down the food line. To the setting sun, the time between where Rose was now and where Rose came from was no more than a blink. To Rose who had seen the both the dawn of humanity and the very end of the Earth it suddenly seemed like an eternity. In a way Rose has achieved a kind of immortality, in 2000 years she would be born and in 200,000 years she’ll be on a space station fighting Daleks and a long time after that she would watch the Earth die. Shareen and Rose got pissed one evening, planning to go to Danny Fennel’s party and they both fell asleep and missed out. Mickey admits that Rose was too good for him and that he didn’t deserve her. He thought he was the luckiest man alive to have her and when she went off with the Doctor he thought she had finally seen through him, realising that she was a winner and he was a loser. Mickey is described as a puppy that has been kicked. I loved the scenes of Rose trying to figure out what her own unconscious wishes have prevented. You have got to love Rose’s imagination, she has a chance to dream up anything into reality and she begins with a bag of chips! Rose worryingly asserts that everything she is experiencing from now is all a product of GENIE’s poking around in her mind! Its wonderful that Rose left a few bits for the Doctor to sort out because she didn’t want him to think she was taking over!

Twists: Rome has a population of a million and Rose compares the market place to Oxford Street at Christmas. Gracilis’ son has gone missing and there is a woman who can tell the future – are the two related? Vanessa knows about Hadrian’s Wall that won’t be built for another years and two places that won’t be named for a few hundred years. Ursus is somehow turning people in real statues. The Doctor realises that he was never meant to find Rose’s statue in the past otherwise she would never have been in the museum in the first place as a catalyst to send them to Rome in the first place! Vanessa simply wished to be in Ancient Rome and abracadabra…she was! Is turning slaves into pieces of art more humane than having them slaughtered in the arena, an interesting point. The reason the Doctor couldn’t find Rose was because he was always going to go back and save her before he started looking! GENIE is a Genetically Engineered Neural Imagination Engine that brought Vanessa to Rome from the future and gave Ursus the ability to create statues with his bear hands. In order to time travel again GENIE needs the intake of 1,718,902 dead bodies! I love all the ‘its hardly my fault if people aren’t precise with their wishes’ scenes, being able to make wish is really made out to be both a blessing and
a curse. Chapter fifteen where the wishing all gets out of hand with naked dancers, concubines, fake Emperors, babies and Rose wishing that both her and Vanessa are safe and everybody disappearing! Through logical progression Rose manages to figure out that GENIE doesn’t have the ability to shape reality but is able to alter the perceptions of the wisher so it appears that they have come true. Just with the prototype GENIE’s things got out of control, spreading all over the planet, the creators failing to consider the strength of envy. Humans are never satisfied and they wound up wishing the planet to death so they went back in time to stop themselves inventing them in the first place. At the climax they have 8 hours to get the phial to the earlier Doctor…but it’ll take 20 hours from where they are so they have to get to the TARDIS and go back in time 12 hours to make sure everything goes smoothly!

Funny Bits:
· It takes Rose a little while to realise she is wading around in Roman piss!
· We have the Doctor’s David by Michelangelo, Rose – Next Top Model and Rose Tyler, Warrior Barbie Doll!
· ‘I remember this brilliant one. There was this bloke, a musician, and he thought he was there to play to the crowd. Then halfway through some tune they let the animals out. He thought it was a mistake and he’s running around, trying to get them to let him out but of course they don’t. So he tries charming the beasts with his playing like he’s Orpheus in the Underworld.’ ‘Did it work?’ ‘Nah, reckon the lion what got him wasn’t much of music lover.’
· ‘Excuse me madam have you seen my as?’
· Mickey on the Doctor: ‘Are man skirts in this season?’
· 'You better not have signed my bottom!’

Result: Jac Rayner is back and has written another brilliant ray of sunshine. The Stone Rose was an absolute delight, not only a fun visit back to Ancient Rome but also a terrific puzzle book that sets up an impossible situation and has great fun trying to get out of it. Both the Doctor and Rose are written out from the action for a while which leaves the other to shine brighter than ever. The first half of the book is quite relaxed but the second half turns absolutely mental with reality twisting around on a sixpence and Rayner having great fun with Rose’s slips of the tongue (oo-er!). People who bemoan that the New Series Adventures are lacking should fuck off and go and read a stodgy, perverted New Adventure – Doctor Who novels have rarely been this fun before and enjoyable as this: 8/10

Combat Rock by Mick Lewis

2011-02-24T10:07:00.002Z

Plot: Ferocious cannibals, deadly swamps, hunting Dogs and tribal mummies await the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria on the island of Papul. Evil is stirring in the jungle and a long fought war between guerrilla tribesmen and colonial troops is about to come to a bloody conclusion…

Oh My Giddy Aunt: Of all the books to get Troughton spot in Combat Rock must come as close to his television portrayal. You can hear Troughton saying the lines, hopping about like a frightened flea, crying out with horror and acting with extreme embarrassment at the whole situation. His concern for Victoria has never felt so real. The Doctor’s face was lined and contoured by a life beyond strange, a facial map bursting with character and mystery. The eyes were dark, benevolent, childlike and slightly scary all at once. He can look comical with a disarming grin and childlike impish eyes. Whenever the Doctor got excited about something it invariably meant trouble. Was the Doctor really as simple as he liked everyone to think? There was something about him that generated respect. There was strength and compassion about him that was unlike anyone else. Keen intelligence and gravity too if the situation calls for it. The Doctor briefly wonders if the jungle is his purgatory, a place where he came to repent for his sins…and he had enough of those! The climax that sees the Doctor bravely face up to and outfox the revolting Krallik feels genuinely right for the second Doctor. Jungles (and the unknown) have always fascinated the him.

Who’s the Yahoo’s: Another superb piece of characterisation, Frazer Hines’ charm leaping from the page with real delight. Spurned on by Victoria’s beauty, Jamie is hornier than ever! However he only loves her like a sister. There is a very long action sequence all told from Jamie’s point of view that expertly sees the Highlander attempting to hold his in all the horror surrounding him. Much of the books humour comes from Jamie too, but head to Funny Bits for some great examples. Feeling helpless was the feeling he hated most in the world. He was always a man of resources, of instant action. He left the thinking to the Doctor whilst he took care of the practicalities.

Screaming Violet: Its another fabulous Victoria book. Combat Rock and Heart of TARDIS between them both present the best of Ms Waterfield and contain some very intelligent writing and using her background to enrich their respective tales. Victoria couldn’t help her straight-laced upbringing – she had been through much hardship. Her father had constantly reminded her she always had a bit of a wild streak and had a penchant for people and things that were out of the ordinary. Victoria feels ashamed of her closeted, imperialist upbringing. Childhood prejudices and impressions were hard to shake, even though she had made some monumental strides to do just that since entering the TARDIS for the first time. Then again she had never been one to adhere to the norm in the first place. Agus’ words remind her of a time of cosy security on her fathers lap beside the fire while he told tales of derring do and British integrity in barbaric climes. Victoria had never been obedient and rarely sensible but she could always be relied on to get herself in a mess. It was because she was brave and noble and did what she really shouldn’t do. Victoria thinks of the Doctor and Jamie bickering in an affectionate way – Jamie exasperated and headstrong – the Doctor daunted by events. She can see through the shallow philosophy of colonialism…what would her father think to hear her having such unfashionable, alien views? Maybe, secretly, he would approve…

Twists: The book opens with a child being shot through the head and snakes leaping from a Mumi and slaughtering a tourist group – a sign of things to come. Revoltingly, Pan shoots a hooker through the head when he’s finished with her. The Kill Crew: Pan, Pretty Boy, Saw, Grave and Clown are all thoroughly loathsome. The sequence where Father Pieter looks over Agat and sees beheaded men and dismembered wives he realises the jungle has reclaimed its children. The Doctor and company is captured by the OPG rebels, those who oppose the Indoni rule of Papal. The image of a reed bed of heads, rising above the water, shrouded in bloody pink mist, is horrible. In a book that is primarily grotesque the scene where Agus takes Victoria to the moonlit beach to show her the wreckage of the Earth/Indoni was is strangely beautiful and haunting. The first scene of cannibalism is stomach churning – Baccha and his wife smashing open a trader’s skull and spooling out grey matter. The Snatcher attacking the bridge is brilliantly tense. We feel every one of Budi’s multiple stab wounds to the neck. In a scene of such obscenity I had to stop reading and catch a breath – Julius questions Pieter’s faith in God and forces him to ‘Eat the flesh, drink the blood’ by working a hole in Thomas’ severed head with his axe and force feeding him brain matter. In a horrifying follow up scene we see Pieter, devastated: “I have eaten God.” Ussman roasting on a spit, one of the cannibals slicing away part of his belly is enough to turn your stomach. Santi is to be their chief’s tenth wife…and Jamie is to be killed and eaten to celebrate! The puppet Krallik is disgusting, head of a missionary, body of a merchant and hands of a prostitute. The Doctor figures the real Krallik is Kepennis, driven mad with revenge at the death of his family and friends at the hands of the Indoni. He set up the Mumi’s to spit out snakes, he set up the OPG and he set up the dissicated Krallik puppet to give his cause a symbol of hatred. Pleasingly, all of the Kill Crew suffer agonising deaths. Except Clown, who in the satisfying last scene kills the evil President Sabit.

Funny Bits: After a cat fight between two ladies over Jamie, Victoria notes: “Well Jamie it seems like you enjoyed a very busy little Highland Fling last night, doesn’t it?”
“Huh, women always get bum deal!” Santi exclaims, after the ladies in the tent are offered a slice of buttock. Oh come on, it is funny in a twisted way.
Jamie’s attempts to avoid being eaten: “I’ve got very tough thighs!”

Result: Wide Sargasso Sea meets Ravenous in this shocking, eviscerating piece of fiction. I thought at first this would be less to my tastes than Rags but Combat Rock is a horror novel that genuinely manages to horrify, a rare feat. This is an intelligently written novel with some excellent world building and complex things to say about colonialism. A book dripping with atmosphere thanks to Lewis’ sweaty, bloodthirsty prose, he manages to make writing about death both repulsive and artful. The plotting appears loose but the climax reveals some nicely hidden clues and twists. It is easily the sickest Doctor Who book ever written, Rags dealt with humans forced to commit terrible acts, the frightening things about Combat Rock is that it deals with genuinely sick people passionate about killing. Disturbingly in this viscera draped setting, the Doctor, Jamie and Victoria shine like never before: 8/10

The Third Zone Issue One Available Now!

2011-02-14T17:04:00.001Z

http://www.the-third-zone.blogspot.com/

It’s the beginning...and the moment has been prepared for. For precisely a month – or at least that’s been the gestation period of issue 1! So here we are, our very first issue of The Third Zone and we have a wealth of wisdom to impart!

We have reviews both by myself and by my esteemed colleague Mr Joe Ford, covering all the latest releases in the worlds of DVD and audio.

We have ‘The Evelyn Escapades’, a look at the Big Finish audios in the manner of ‘The Time Team’, taking one character at a time. No prizes for guessing who’s first up!

There’s fiction in the form of The Shadow Makers, part 1 of a 3 part tale, this month featuring the First Doctor and written by yours truly.

‘A Matter of Perspective’ offers a new look at the world of Who in print, as I quiz Joe this month about Steve Lyons’ The Witch Hunters.

We have not one but two exclusive interviews this month with Big Finish producer David Richardson, and Bernice Summerfield actress and director of Big Finish audios Lisa Bowerman.

The Seventh Doctor’s era comes under the spotlight in our debate section this month, while ‘Who Online’ takes a look at ‘The History of the Doctor’.

There’s ‘Non-Who Opinion’, as both mine and Joe’s other half watch a Doctor Who story and share their thoughts. Be warned, there may be some colourful language!

Last, but by no means least, Joe has written an essay on the joys of the Hartnell historicals – and if that doesn’t convert you, nothing will!

We hope you enjoy reading issue 1 as much as we enjoyed putting it together. Any comments can be added on the site or be sent to thethirdzone@hotmail.co.uk, and we’ll post some next issue.