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| By: | michael, Hobart,Tasmania,Australia |
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| Date: | Tuesday 18 May 2004 |
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| Rating: |   9 |
This book has the quintessential elements that a Dr Who novel should (only no quarry scenes)there are goodies who are bad, there are baddies who are very very bad, and there is the Doctor trying to save the universe.
Hey what else does a bloke/chick want from a Dr Who story?
The introduction of Chris and Ros is a fairly interesting occurance in the sceme of things, worth it just for Chris's body-bebble.
| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 8 May 2025 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Having strayed very far from the domains of the Doctor Who television series, the New Adventures series finally, 30+ novels in, gives us a story with all the elements of a classic Doctor Who television serial, with none of the excruciating crossover nonsense. The story is pretty straightforward. The Doctor and Bernice get into some trouble on the planet Oolis, and a dying Hith tells Benny not to travel to Earth in the 30th century. This piques the Doctor's curiosity, so off they go. In the 30th century, Earth is in its expansionist empire phase, conquering alien worlds for the "benefit" of the aliens, and terraforming the aliens' planets. Earth itself is a radically split society made up of floating "over cities" where the middle and upper classes live, and the degenerating lower cities, the remains of the old world, on the ground below. The left out and left behind live in the lower cities, scrambling for existence. Yes, it is some political messaging, but not out of character for Doctor Who. Earth is being hit by an outbreak of senseless, violent murders. As with most empire cultures, Earth is a police state managed by "adjudicators." The rest of the empire is controlled by the military elite Landsknecht. Both organizations are pretty harsh and murderous, and both have been corrupted by a shadowy figure lurking in the background, a figure who knows The Doctor of old, and who desperately wants the TARDIS.
Andy Lane has good control of the pacing for the most part, although things get a bit hectic in the last 20 pages. He characterizes The Doctor and Benny pretty well. This is Doctor 7 of 1989 in manner and attitude, not the broody, whiny, self-absorbed do-nothing of so many of the previous New Adventures novels. And, thankfully, he isn't the master schemer either. This is The Doctor most fans like, making it up as he goes along, getting caught up in something he doesn't quite understand, and spending most of the story figuring out what he's involved in. Another pleasing aspect of this novel is that while there is much violent death, Lane does not dwell on it like previous New Adventures writers who had to describe in slow-motion detail every drop of blood, every severed limb, every implement of torture and destruction, and every exact pain they cause.
Where I have my reservations is mostly in the science that Lane describes. Much of it is pure nonsense. For instance, the events of the novel take place over the course of about two days. In that time, The Doctor manages to visit two additional planets, not by TARDIS, but by good old hyperdrive spaceship, as if a trip across lightyears takes only an hour or so. Even in the Earth settings, Lane has no sense of the time it would take to travel from one point to another. Similarly, he introduces a mysterious kind of radiation as the cause of the murder spree. This radiation acts like no radiation currently known. Another area of reservation is that so many characters are just so ready to commit murder without it much bothering them that the murder spree and the evil baddies do not seem all that much out of the norm for Earth in the 30th century. No military organization that I know of could operate like the Landsknecht and last for very long.
In total, Original Sin gives a Doctor Who fan some relief from the excesses and mistakes of previous New Adventures novels. It's quite readable, and the problematic parts do not spoil the story as a whole. It makes a good introduction to the two new companions as well: Roz and Chris.
