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 | Very Good, A typical Pertwee Adventure |
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| What: | Catastrophea (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | Dan Mould, Feltham, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Sunday 24 August 2014 |
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| Rating: |   8 |
This book is placed after Planet of the Daleks and flows excellently, with Terrance Dicks's writing casting your mind off to a jungle world that seems a cross between Spiridon with its strange plant and animal life, whilst also encapsulating the deity aspect from Face of Evil, The Aztecs etc. The book answers a lot of questions left over from Frontier in Space, such as the Doctor's rank on Draconia & elaborating on the Draconians' view of the Doctor & the state of the tense relations existing with Earth. Overall, Dicks delivers a strong, suspensive tale that delivers with a well driven plot that leaves you wanting more. A must read for any Pertwee era fans.
| What: | Harvest of Time (BBC prestige novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 18 August 2014 |
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| Rating: | 5 |
This is another in the series of original novels featuring old Doctors, written by "proven" science fiction writers. Alastair Reynolds has credentials, though judging by this book I am not sure why. One reviewer here said the plotting was Doctor Who by the numbers, and I would agree with that assessment. However, the problems are larger than that. Reynolds attempts to write in the mode of the Pertwee UNIT era. This would be fine, except that he copies all the problematic aspects of that era and leaves out many of the better ones. Thus, for instance, UNIT is pretty useless. The Doctor is rather abrupt and dismissive with both the Brigadier and Jo. The Master is too much "I'm a bad guy and I love it." Another problem is that the invasion plot by the Sild is far too complicated, preposterously so. The Sild as an enemy are difficult to get interested in. They want to take over Earth, and that is about as far as it goes. The novel is not irredeemable. There is some interesting dialogue. Jo is a more developed character than she was in the series.
| What: | The Lost Stories: Animal (The Lost Stories audio dramas) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 18 August 2014 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
First, Angela Bruce is awesome. The rest of the production just did not grab me. It has many of the elements of Cartmell's period as script editor. We have the Doctor on a mission of some kind, one that he lets no one in on, including himself. There is some plot - counterplot happening. Much of the background is missing. For instance, how does the health food lunatic know about the aliens to contact them? We are just to take it that he does, and no more is said about it. The killer plants are stuck in as a kind of ruse, with the beginning of the story seemingly all about them, yet they get dropped pretty quickly only to be brought back in because, apparently, it was convenient for the plot. The sergeant who assists Brigadier Bambera is there just to be stupid. That said, there are some pleasant bits. The aliens are interestingly different. We get to learn more about Raine. It has some snappy dialogue. It just did not pull together for me.
| What: | Paradise Towers (BBC classic series DVDs/Blu-rays) |
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| By: | simon blackwell, rotherfield, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Sunday 17 August 2014 |
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| Rating: | 1 |
And that's just Mark Ayers music. this story so far is the worst I've had the misfortune to watch beating by a country mile, gunfighters, castrovalva and Delta and the Bannermen. Shocking, hopefully none of the remaining 3 McCoy stories I am yet to watch will sink to such depths
...of some beautiful pictures & sumptuous art work. Hardly an essential lurches but a thing of beauty.
| What: | The Wheel of Ice (BBC prestige novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 6 August 2014 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
If a Doctor Who movie were made, it might be very much like this novel. Stephen Baxter is a "real" science-fiction writer, award winning and everything. That he has a soft spot for Doctor Who is apparent throughout the book. It has a loving attention to detail regarding the classic Doctor Who series, and in many ways follows the late 60s formula. At the same time, Baxter has updated some of the sensibilities. The novel itself involves the second Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe stuck because of a time anomaly late in the 21st century on a corporate-run colony mining one of Saturn's moons. Strange things are happening, and of course early on the TARDIS crew gets blamed for it, but they soon get on the right side of the good guys and become deeply involved in saving the colony from whatever menaces it. This has all the hallmarks of the classic Who, with a tightly confined setting, a base under siege plot, an officious baddie representing a large institution and making matters worse, and an apparent monster to defeat. The differences from classic Who are that the monster turns out not to be one, and that the scale on which things occur is much larger. It all would have been impossible to make in 1960s TV, and probably would be extremely hard using current TV technology. This is what gives the story a movie-plot sense. Because Baxter is a "real" science-fiction writer, this novel is probably the closest one will ever get to hard-science Doctor Who. Baxter spends quite a bit of time explaining how and why things work on Mnemosyne colony. The Whovian elements, of course, make total commitment to hard science impractical, but wherever he can, Baxter grounds his story in the scientifically plausible and has an engineer's sense of how it would all work. Though slow in parts, the novel nevertheless has an interesting plot, some good character development of the TARDIS crew, especially Zoe, and a believable space-colony community. What holds me back from giving this novel an unqualified rating are the following concerns. The first is that the officious baddie, Florian Hart, is too one-dimensional, and seems bad merely because the story requires certain plot complications. Baxter tries to give her some psychological rationale, but this is really weak and ineffective in explaining why she does what she does. Another is MMAC, the Scots robot. He becomes too cute and irritating, and again the rationale for his personality is not convincing. Finally, there is the scale of the problem. This rests on a five-billion year old piece of damaged hardware. Granted it is highly advanced hardware, but few natural things last that long, let alone any manufactured thing. These qualifications aside, "The Wheel of Ice" is a very good read and well worth getting.
| What: | The Day of the Doctor (BBC new series DVDs/Blu-rays) |
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| By: | Lego Whovian, Bedford, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Wednesday 6 August 2014 |
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| Rating: | 1 |
This episode disgusts me. I boycotted the simulcast, and when I finally got round to watching it on Blu-ray in January I was horrified. The starting sickened me. The ending depressed me. Not a tribute, but an insult to 50 years of Doctor Who. The other anniversary television specials (The Three Doctors, The Five Doctors, Dimensions in Time) make this look like utter crap. All the other 50th anniversary specials (Prisoners of Time, The Light at the End, An Adventure in Space and Time, The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot) showed this for what it really is. No Classics? No 50th!
| What: | Blue Box (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | Trevor Smith, Nottingham, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Tuesday 5 August 2014 |
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| Rating: | 5 |
This is yet another PDA that's well written, very clever and intreging book that for me fails because it just doesn't feel like a Dr Who novel at all. I just can't imagine this being on TV.
Whilst this adaptation of the first doctor who story ever is not extravagant by any means, it does it's job perfectly. It very nicely adapts the events that transpire on screen and relate them on to the page in what is still a very entertaining story. If anything the lack of extravagance in this story actually plays to is its strengths as it means the book is not too long but manages to maintain reader interest.
Having seen the episode myself I believe this to be a very nicely written book that very nicely adapts the episode itself.
A nice little homage to the first episode and making sure people who can't get their hands on the original episode can relive the first few moments of the best show ever with the rest of us.
"The First Sontarans" was scheduled for the 1985 season, but got set aside when Robert Holmes submitted "The Two Doctors." With all respect to Holmes, "The First Sontarans" is the better script. Andrew Smith, who wrote "Full Circle" in 1980, returns with another concept piece. Without giving away too much, I can say that Smith's title is both leading and misleading, and that is not a bad thing. You might think this is an origins story, and for two episodes it isn't, but then it is, but mainly as part of the background. The story itself would have fit well with 1985 Doctor Who. Like "Attack of the Cybermen," it starts small, then gets bigger and bigger. Part 4, though, would probably have blown the TV budget. Other good things in the story are the Doctor-Peri relationship and the characterization of Peri in general. In part 1, Doctor 6 and Peri start as the bickering couple typical of that season, but about 10 minutes in, that is all gone, and instead we see the trust and respect each accords the other. Peri is here played not as the wilting flower type of some of the TV stories, but as smart and even a little over-confident, as wanting to prove herself to the Doctor. With this Peri, one sees why the Doctor would accept her as a travelling companion. Finally, we get to experience a Sontaran vs. Rutan battle. One of the lesser aspects of the story is that once again everyone in the universe seems to know all about the Doctor and Time Lords. For some reason, the Sontarans have time corridor technology, which they do not have in the TV series. I think it is better to limit the numbers of time travellers. If everyone can time travel, there is nothing special about time travel. Those matters aside, "The First Sontarans" is a good example of what the 1985 TV series lacked.
| What: | Foreign Devils (Telos novellas) |
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| By: | Rhonda Knight, Hartsville, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 1 August 2014 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
I enjoyed the Agatha Christie mode of this. Not everything makes sense, but neither do the classic episodes :)
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| Has the author ever seen an episode? |
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| What: | Ghost Ship (Telos novellas) |
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| By: | Rhonda Knight, Hartsville, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 1 August 2014 |
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| Rating: | 3 |
First, 1st person narration with any Doctor is a mistake. This voice esp. does not sound like the Fourth Doctor at all. Too brooding and introspective.
| What: | Time and Relative (Telos novellas) |
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| By: | Rhonda Knight, Hartsville, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 1 August 2014 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Not enough Doctor, but still true to the first episode.
| What: | Decalog (Decalog short story collections) |
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| By: | Chris Arnold, Bundaberg, Australia |
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| Date: | Friday 1 August 2014 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
I quite liked the overarching plot strand of the detective and psychic. On first reading years ago I was genuinely surprised at the twist but on second reading it is a little cliché and easy to spot.
Standout stories for me were Fallen Angel (although I'm not really sold on the Time Lord prison stuff, the characterisations were excellent), The Straw That Broke the Camel's Back (A nice evocation of season 7) and Lackaday Express (I didn't quite get it the first time but is well worth re-reading. A thinker for sure).
Clangers were The Duke of Dominoes (the strange and ethereal plot was confusing) and Prisoners of the Sun (an excellent idea for a story but I found it a little unengaging) with the rest of the group being fairly solid and dependable reads. I kind of liked the humour of the First Doctor Steven and Dodo in The Golden Door, and Peri is served well in Fascination.
Poor old Sixy gets the rough end of the deal, only appearing in The Golden Door (sharing the page count with the aforementioned First Doctor team), but other than that each doctor is represented well. A strong start for the Decalog series and for Doctor Who in the Short Story medium as a whole.
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| Invasion of the Cyborg Termites |
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| What: | Dancing the Code (Missing Adventures novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 31 July 2014 |
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| Rating: | 5 |
"Dancing the Code" is a particularly gory novel that I think is supposed to be an anti-war statement. The story centers on the fictional north African country of Kebiria, which is in the midst of a civil war. The country is run by a typical strong-man dictator who wants to wipe out (read genocide) the tribal peoples fighting against him. He believes he has a novel way to do this by using some alien cyborg insects that have been lying in the desert for centuries. This description perhaps gives away too much, because Leonard keeps so much of the what is going on well hidden. The story does involve the insects making copies of people and technology. This creates much confusion in a country at war.
The main idea itself is interesting, but the story is not well executed. It is all pretty gory and violent, just to begin with. Leonard wants to insist on just how horrible war is by turning the reader's stomach, often. He also describes just about everyone else's turned stomachs. Through the first half of the novel, just about everyone is in a constant state of nausea, apparently. UNIT proves utterly worthless, and pretty much gets wiped out. The Doctor is unduly harsh with the Brigadier, who here proves rather tame. Also, in the last few chapters, Leonard forgets that the Brigadier had a dodgy ankle as a result of a helicopter crash. Leonard's prose is serviceable, but not scintillating. Still, I do have to say that the main idea for the story, of a world over-run by cyborg termites, is handled with some logic.
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| If you like verbal bluster... |
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| What: | Eldrad Must Die! (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 28 July 2014 |
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| Rating: | 6 |
Stephen Thorne still has a magnificent voice. Too bad he's not in much of this story. The story is typical Mark Platt in being needlessly complicated. The TARDIS crew are taking a sea-side swim, but the sea is contaminated with a quartz-like infection. Turlough meets an old school chum who turns out to be another untrustworthy type from Trion. Another Castrian has arrived on Earth, with the job of destroying all remaining fragments of Eldrad. One fragment has turned up in the form of an eye. The crystal infection takes over people's minds, turning them into Castrian warriors, and the executioner and Eldrad are fighting each other through proxies controlled by the crystals. In general, this is very like Doctor Who of the 1980s. Of course, the scale of the catastrophe is bigger, given the freedom of solely audio drama. The TARDIS team are their typical selves - Nyssa is stalwart, Tegan is impulsive, and Turlough is untrustworthy. The story provides much opportunity for pompous monologues and shouty dialogue. It is alright in the general way, just not all that great. Sort of like Hand of Fear in that way.
| What: | Combat Rock (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | C G Harwood, Dunedin, NZ, New Zealand |
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| Date: | Saturday 26 July 2014 |
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| Rating: | 1 |
Oh my god! What was this book? It wasn't Sci-fi? And it defiantly wasn't Dr Who. My main concern with this book though was that I kept thinking 'this is not the 2nd Doctor that I know and love'. maybe mick Lewis was going for a slasher type thing... But the plot was boring (actually the Saw movies have more plot than this thing).
I tried to finish it, I really did... but when you read a bit and put it down for a few day, then read some more and put it down for a few weeks that kinda says to me "start some other book" and I think this time I will listen to the little voice in my head.
| What: | Combat Rock (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | C G Harwood, Dunedin, NZ, New Zealand |
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| Date: | Saturday 26 July 2014 |
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| Rating: | 1 |
Oh my god! What was this book? It wasn't Sci-fi? And it defiantly wasn't Dr Who. My main concern with this book though was that I kept thinking 'this is not the 2nd Doctor that I know and love'. maybe mick Lewis was going for a slasher type thing... But the plot was boring (actually the Saw movies have more plot than this thing).
I tried to finish it, I really did... but when you read a bit and put it down for a few day, then read some more and put it down for a few weeks that kinda says to me "start some other book" and I think this time I will listen to the little voice in my head.
| What: | Combat Rock (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | C G Harwood, Dunedin, NZ, New Zealand |
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| Date: | Saturday 26 July 2014 |
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| Rating: | 1 |
Oh my god! What was this book? It wasn't Sci-fi? And it defiantly wasn't Dr Who. My main concern with this book though was that I kept thinking 'this is not the 2nd Doctor that I know and love'. maybe mick Lewis was going for a slasher type thing... But the plot was boring (actually the Saw movies have more plot than this thing).
I tried to finish it, I really did... but when you read a bit and put it down for a few day, then read some more and put it down for a few weeks that kinda says to me "start some other book" and I think this time I will listen to the little voice in my head.
| What: | The Lost Stories: Hexagora (The Lost Stories audio dramas) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 21 July 2014 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
"Hexagora" was originally an outline not picked up probably because the DW team in 1982-3 felt they could not do insects convincingly. The plot starts as your basic investigate alien abduction story. However, we move swiftly from Australia to another world never to return. The rest of the story is interesting enough. Elizabethan England seems to be transported to an alien world. Why? Time to investigate, but not before separating the companions. There seems to be a villainous plot to the abductions, but is it so villainous? And will the Doctor really be marrying the magnificent queen? The story is a curious mix of the predictable and the unexpected. It has a very 80s feel, with Nyssa being just a bit posh and Tegan being ever so emotional. The music soundtrack goes for that 80s feel as well, though it sounds more McCoy-era Keff McCulloch than Davison-era Peter Howell. All in all, this is an entertaining if not fully convincing story.
