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Reviews for Heart of TARDIS

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Annoying

By:Janet Harrison, UK
Date:Friday 13 February 2004
Rating:   1

I don’t mind the odd reference to other TV shows being hidden in a text, but this book is so unrelentingly full of them that it got annoying. Heart of TARDIS isn’t really Doctor Who – it’s a schoolboy spoof on lots of other shows, and it isn’t even a good spoof. The only good thing about this book is its cover - it's a pity the contents didn't live up to it. Avoid.



Two Doctors...who never meet

By:Stephen Carlin, Bangor, Northern Ireland
Date:Tuesday 20 April 2004
Rating:   6

I approached this book with reluctance: Dave Stone has written some of the worst DW books I have ever endured. I dislike his whimsy, his storytelling style and his stories tend to be very poor.

This is not one of the best DW books I have read but nor is it the worst and to be honest I found it much better than Dave Stone's previous output - perhaps he has sobered up a little?

One thing that I enjoyed about the book was that the two Doctors never meet. They are involved in events that are connected - the 2nd Doctor arriving in an American town that seems to be a fusion of the 50s and the 90s, the 4th Doctor arriving in the present day. Quite early on in the book, we are told that Type 1 TARDISes did not always return...so we have an idea as to the nature of the problem.

If, like me, you didn't like Dave Stone's other books and are hesitant about this, you might give it a go. It won't astonish you but it is an improvement.



Unfufilled Potential

By:Bruce Klopfstein, Superior, WI, USA
Date:Monday 31 January 2005
Rating:   5

Dave Stone is definatly not one of my favorite DW writers. His stories have potential but never live up to there fullness and get dragged down by unneed extra story bagage.
By the title of the book I was hopping for more detail on the workings of the TARDIS. It is almost like he took two stories that were to short and combined them to make one larger story.
Not a story I would read again, but definatly read at least once. After all it is DW.



Liked It

By:Jamie, Kent
Date:Sunday 19 November 2006
Rating:   8


A good crossover betweem the second and fourth doctors (albiet they never meet) definatly worth a read.



Two-narrative - it works!

By:JG, Gallifrey, United Kingdom
Date:Thursday 17 February 2011
Rating:   9

First off, most shows/books don't work with a two-way narrative; it's usually one Main Plot, then a Sub-plot. The good things with this book, is that the two-way narrative works brilliantly within these pages - one section/chapter of the Second Doctor with Jamie & Victoria, stuck, trying to find their way out of Lychburg. then one section/chapter with the Fourth Doctor and Romana (I), being either kidnapped, shot at, seperated or all 3! The Second Doctor's narrative is a nice, slow pace just him, Jamie & Victoria finding their way out of the time-convergant, time-folding town of Lychburg. In this, The Doctor's don't actually meet, the closest, encounter they have, is where, the Fourth Doctor, and Romana (I) are hiding under, the Console, in the Second Doctor's Tardis, as the Second Doctor, Jamie & Victoria, come in, discuss, some idea's, then leave, "Pheew, that was close."

My favorite part, must be where, Crowley, & Delbane, are revealed to be, not humans, but as Demons(!) inhabiting, the bodies, of (Fake, synthetic) Crowley, and (Synthetic, but with real human memories) Delbane.

I would've rated this a 10, but becuase of the Second & Fourth, Doctor's never actually meet (Face-to-face). So, it's a 9.



Two + Two Hearts

By:Trevor Smith, Nottingham, United Kingdom
Date:Saturday 16 June 2012
Rating:   6

A good idea that doesn't quite work but is full of fun bits and lovely references to past story's for sados like me.



Stylish but Pointless

By:David Layton, Los Angeles, United States
Date:Sunday 5 March 2017
Rating:   6

Because Dave Stone has a distinctive style and voice for narrating a story, his works can be offputting to those who like a plot delivered straight. Stone's style is of a certain kind of narrator in modern British fiction, one who maintains a long distance between the narrator and the story, commenting ironically on events, stepping in with whimsical observations and seeming non-sequiturs. It's the style of Douglas Adams, Gwyneth Jones, Ford Maddox Ford, and others. A reader looking for some style in the narrative, however, finds this approach rewarding and probably, in the case of Heart of TARDIS, the best thing in the book. The main problem dragging this novel down, though, is the plot. It's as though Stone paid so much attention to the style that he ignored the fact that a novel in a popular genre needs a plot.

The premise is promising enough. Doctor 2, Jamie, and Victoria are having one adventure while Doctor 4 and Romana (K-9 gets only briefly mentioned) are having another, but even though these are at different times and different places they are in some way happening simultaneously and each is affecting the other. The concept is daring, but it requires a writer skilled in maintaining the connections, one who knows at each point what the link is. This is where Heart of TARDIS falls to pieces. We learn that the connection has something to do with a prototype TARDIS gone haywire, and that the proximity of Doctor 2's TARDIS accidentally landing near the anomaly created by the prototype TARDIS sets off a kind of chain reaction. Had the story been left at the level of just this problem, it would have been fine. However, Stone heaps on top of it some extra-dimensional demons acting like Cthulu mythos monsters, a possessed Aleister Crowly with extended life, a secret US military base in England, and a secret government agency infiltrating UNIT. Early parts of the novel work well, keeping the reader guessing as to what is causing events and how they are connected. However, about 3/4 of the way through, Stone loses control of the plot. It becomes "and then reality went all crazy" and "look, an elephant in pyjamas, isn't that weird?" and a giant human pyramid of 250,000 people creating a human analog thing of some kind. Adding to the catastrophe are dozens of off-hand references to popular television scattered throughout the novel - The Simpsons, The X-Files, Queer as Folk, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and on and on. Finishing with an ending that isn't an ending, just "and then it was all over" more or less, the last 1/4 of the book is one of biggest disappointments for a Doctor Who novel. It's sad because given the premise, Heart of TARDIS could have been one of the best Doctor Novels.



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