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| What: | Genocide (BBC Eighth Doctor novels) |
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| By: | Piers, UK |
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| Date: | Wednesday 26 July 2006 |
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| Rating: |   7 |
This was the first Doctor Who book I'd read in a while, and it really reminded me of what I enjoy about these novels - an interesting story that is not just entertaining, but also makes you think about certain issues. Do we (the human race) deserve the Earth considering how we have treated it? Probably not. Considering the environmental issues that drive this novel, this could easily have been a Third Doctor adventure, which perhaps explains the presence of Jo and the very brief inclusion of UNIT.
Unfortunately these elements are the weakest part of the story: Jo is completely wasted. We learn a little about her current life, but beyond that this character could have been anybody. There was nothing about her that reminded me of Jo from the series, and her interaction with the Eighth Doctor is minimal. Most unforgivable is that there is no goodbye scene at the end; maybe Paul Leonard felt that he couldn't top Jo's leaving scene from 'The Green Death'. Also, a couple of loose ends aren't tied up: who did the anomalous fossilised skull belong to - Rowenna? Jacob?
In short a great story, as long as you don't dwell on a few niggling inconsistencies.
| What: | Doctor Who (BBC classic series videos) |
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| By: | the Traveller, the end of the world |
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| Date: | Tuesday 25 July 2006 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
(actually I'm the Traveller, but...)
Paul McGann makes a fab Doctor, but this Movie is pretty crap. The plot is almost as thin as I am, hah!
By the way Hatman, write your own damn reviews!
| What: | Scream of the Shalka (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | Hatman, get you! |
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| Date: | Tuesday 25 July 2006 |
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| Rating: | 3 |
Look at the score! do you want to read this?
| What: | I am a Dalek (Quick Reads books) |
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| By: | Hatman, ??? |
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| Date: | Tuesday 25 July 2006 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
[insert the traveller's review here]
BUT i've seen the episodes a million times (at least).
I agree with the 1st reviewer on most counts but must say that this set released on DVD would be a must buy. Think of the extra's! Rememberance needs a re-release on DVD, the BBC have done it no justice.
We want a 2-disc edition!!
I was about 3-4 years old when this was released on VHS, and for this reason alone i can't fault it. I had no idea until recently that it wasn't loved by all!
It's Tom's first season, it's got Sarah and Harry. Tom's first season, i think, is one of the best 1st seasons of any of the Doctor's.
The Cybermen have guns in their heads! Don't knock it! As this was my 1st cybermen story i was completely shocked that the "head-guns" were abandoned after this! Madness.
I completely understand other people's criticism's, but for me this is a true classic.
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 | No more Janis thorns (ever) |
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What could of descended into a predictable primitve tribes-people tale is saved by four intelligent and interesting scripts by Chris Boucher. The Doctor is very well written (I'll kill him with this deadly jelly baby) as is his future companion Leela - more than just another savage. The cliffhangers are also quite good, especially the one involving the Doctor surrounded by screaming copies of his own face.
| What: | The Settling (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | the Traveller, the end of the world |
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| Date: | Monday 24 July 2006 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Another great McCoy audio with Hex developing as a real companion. The historical scenes are laced with a sense of desperation and powerlessness at being able to do nothing, and the TARDIS scenes are nicely written. Roll on the next release...
I didn't find this Big Finish production hugely exciting, but it is very well written, acted and produced, so well done to all involved. I agree with the other reviewer of Fires Of Vulcan, Bonnie Langford is ten times better on audio than she was on TV, and Sylvester McCoy was always good anyway.
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| Cool Tomb of the Cybermen |
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The Doctor, Jamie and Victoria join an archaeology team on an expedition to unearth the tomb of the Cybermen on the planet Telos.
The Cybermen look cool and their tombs are well designed, however some scenes now look pathetic rather than frightening and with the exception of Patrick Troughton, the acting quality isn’t great.
A longer, more whaffly review than the one i did for the VHS release:
The TARDIS explodes and the Doctor, Jamie and Zoë are transported to a fantasy realm full of fictional characters controlled by a man named the Master (no not that pantomime villain introduced later on).
Although the first episode, which follows directly on from “The Dominators-Part 5”, is a “tacked-on” addition to the original four part serial, it is (arguably) the most enjoyable, having a sense of strangeness and surrealism. The White Robots that Zoë and Jamie encounter look quite cheap and basic but in a strange way work because it is a complete mystery as to what they are doing in the white void.
After the TARDIS explodes, a pitiful shot that looks exactly like a wooden box being blown open, the Doctor, Zoë and Jamie arrive in a fantasy land which soon becomes a relatively dull if weird place to be. At first, the fictional characters appearing are good ideas, especially the clockwork soldiers. But as soon as the Doctor discovers that to defeat them, the companions simply have to will the characters away, they lose their sense of menace.
Some of the fictional characters look okay although the shot of the moving snakes on the Medusa’s head is laughable. The introduction of Hamish Wilson to play Jamie for the time Frazer Hines was away was a great idea however, allowing the character to remain in the story instead of him suddenly disappearing from the episode.
For the middle few episodes of this serial, the companions and the Doctor basically spend the time meeting familiar fictitious people and ending episodes on cliff-hangers you know they’re going to get out of. When the mastermind behind the land is revealed though, the story picks up again with the Doctor and the Master engaging in a battle of wits using people conjured up with their minds. The end, although adequate enough, is predictable and the equivalent of pressing the reset button. The length of the story as a whole is another point, as the tale drags in places and features too many easily-defeated villains, it could have benefited from being its original four episode duration, despite this being impossible at the time.
Despite having some flaws, this serial boasts plenty of ideas which, had they been worked into a faster, more exciting tale would have been more effective.
Nevertheless, this story is considered as an experimental serial instead of the more traditional Doctor Who stories which, for five weeks took the viewers on a bizarre journey through a strange land to meet characters created in fiction. This story attempted to do something different with the programme, and for some part at least, it succeeded.
A clichéd badly plotted and incredibly slow audio adventure. Barely anything actually happens until episode 3, and by then I’d pretty much lost interest. If you do listen to this audio, take an episode at a time, as anything more I found my attention wandering.
On the plus side, Colin Baker and Maggie Stables are excellent, and Roy Hudd provides a little entertainment
For a short, to the point, guide this is quite effective, offering the reader a synopsis of each episode and a sometimes biased, sometimes observant, sometimes plain silly review – such as the Time-Flight review ‘episode 1’s mildly intriguing but the rest’s crap.’
As a new fan to the show, or someone seeking another’s opinion, this book will more or less satisfy.
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| Yetis on the Underground - Aarrh!!! |
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Not the best story to listen to on audio, but considering most of its televised version is lost, there isn’t much choice. The main problems are the gun fights which probably look great on screen but don’t sound that great on CD. Other than that, the story is a good one, the London Underground setting succeeds in bringing the adventure down to Earth, and Yetis are pretty cool (especially their Cobweb Guns).
Some daft ideas (the foam) and slow episodes let down the creepier aspect of the story, such as Mr. Oak and Mr. Quill.
Superb acting, eerie noises and an effective feeling of claustrophobia contribute to making this a triumph for Big Finish. Well done Trevor Baxendale, who has succeeded in creating convincing characters in a terrifying situation with a palpable sense of danger around the corner.
While I'm only now starting to get into Doctor Who novels (this was only my second one, the first being the EDA's 'Book of the Still') I found this one good fun, gripping, and well written.
The problem I'm having with being a new Who fan is that a lot of the explainations don't really make much sense to me. 'The Book of the Still' left me incredibly confused. I didn't have this problem with 'The Feast of the Drowned' in the slightest. Everything was explained gradually and carefully (probably because it's written for people half my age, but there you go) as opposed to there being this huge 'download' of information at the end to confuse me.
I found that in the first few chapters the Doctor's character didn't really come across properlly, like David, I quickly assumed that this had been written before anyone saw David Tennant acting the role, and I strapped myself in for more of a feat of endurance than an enjoyable experiance. Fortunately, I was wrong, and after the first handful of chapters, Cole seems to get a handle on DT's Doctor and writes him brilliantly.
The whole book is very visual, a little bit scary and really, really good fun. When I picked it up, I knew that it's written for the YA crowd, so I wasn't expecting much, but the book completely surpassed all my expectations and even after only two books I can see that some of the conventions used in the old books (like stating something is explained to someone without actually explaining it to the reader) are starting to sneak their way into the new ones, which can't be a bad thing.
In short, maybe this book would be a little 'young' for the hardened reader of Who novels, but as one of my first, I found it a really, really good introduction and something that's going to soften my entry into reading some of the older books.
| What: | Blood Heat (New Adventures novels) |
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| By: | Whites, Southend, UK |
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| Date: | Tuesday 18 July 2006 |
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| Rating: | 9 |
First time i had read a new adventures in years. Top quality and well worth the read. It's fascinating to read a parallel-universe take on what happened after "DOCTOR WHO AND THE SILURIANS" and i thought the Brig' was portrayed very well. If you're a fan of the UNIT stories i suggest you read this book. Immediatly.
I'll admit that this is the first Doctor Who novel I've read, so maybe I'm not in the best place to be review it, but the other reviewers seem to have picked up on some of the things I noticed to, so I thought I'd chip in.
I was buying into this book right up to the last couple of chapters and read it in just over a day. However, as the end approached I found myself looking at the quickly receeding number of pages left and wondering when the hell all of this was going to be explained to me. When it was, it was explained too fast, made very very little sense to me and left me feeling deeply unsatisfied, which is a shame because up until then I had been really enjoying it. I kept expecting there to be a section where the whole temporal paradox thing was explained for us idiots that still had no idea what was going on, but it just didn't happen, and it was only after much thinking about it (and reading in Wikipedia) that I really began to get my head around what had gone on. Really, it wasn't that that it wasn't explained -well- (although certainly it could have been done better), but more that it seemed all to be explained in a huge 'download' at the end that tried to ram too much into my poor, rusty little brain too fast.
Also, I have to say, though again I'll say this is the first Doctor Who novel I've read, the Doctor did seem to spend most of this book passing out, falling over or just generally getting tied up and tortured, and after a hundred or so pages of that I was starting to get sick of it. He didn't really seem to be in control at any point (with a couple of exceptions) and just drifted along and let stuff happen around him.
All in, I did enjoy this book, but I would have enjoyed it -more- had I been eased into all the explaination at the end a little better.
| What: | Frontios (Target novelisations) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 17 July 2006 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
"Frontios" was not one of my favorites of the Davison TV serials. No matter what, insect villains have never looked right on Doctor Who. And the sight of Turlough slobbering "Tractators" is off-putting all by itself. The name "tractators" simply conjured bizarre images of potatoes dressed up as trains. Bidmead's novelization of his own script, however, makes up for many deficiencies. The reader can create a fully functional and truly frightening tractator in his/her imagination. The plight of the people of Frontios comes through with greater clarity and elicits greater pity from the reader. And the tractator machines ae more terrifying given Bidmead's descriptions. There are some problems, such as no awareness of how gravity actually works. The Chief Orderly seems inconsistent and prone to sudden changes in direction. Nevertheless, reading this novelization will clarify many of the fuzzy issues in the TV serial.
