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* Vampire Science (Sam)
In the days when the Time Lords were young, their war with the Vampires cost trillions of lives on countless worlds.
Now the Vampires have been sighted again, in San Francisco Some want to coexist with humans, using genetic engineering
in a macabre experiment to find a new source of blood. But some would rather go out in a blaze of glory - and UNIT's attempts
to contain them could provoke another devastating war. The Doctor strikes a dangerous bargain, but even he might not
be able to keep the city from getting caught in the crossfire. While he finds himself caught in a web of old feuds and high-tech
schemes, his new companion Sam finds just how deadly travelling with the Doctor can be.
My review: There is a good book between
the covers somewhere. However it's gotten lost between one too many episodes of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and the film Interview
with the Vampire. This is the first full Sam Jones story and she's portrayed
as your average teenage girl conflicted with ideas and emotions. She wants to save the world but she's not exactly sure how
to go about it. The Doctor is sadly portrayed a little too McCoy and the book
goes out of its way to point this fact out, even bringing in an old unseen acquaintance to hammer home the point with all
the unsubtlety of making toast with napalm. The Grace-lite substitute Carolyn
is an aging hippy who wants to relive Woodstock and her boyfriend is something of a cross
between Arnold Rimmer and Fidel Castro! The
vampires themselves include all the classic cliches: The mad scientist, the Lestat wannabe and the Nosferatus. The most stand
out is the vampire accountant who seems the only sane one among them and he's bunked off by one of his own kind! This seems
to show the whole problem with the book, it's shot down by its own good intentions.
* The Bodysnatchers (Sam)
It is London, 1894. Amid the fog, cold and degredation, a gruesome business
is being conducted. The bodies of the dead are being stolen from their graves - men, women and children alike - for the sinister
purpose of a very mysterious gentleman. When the Doctor and Sam arrive, they are witness to a horrifying scene in the
evil-smelling fog: something rises up from the filthy waters of the Thames
and devours a man - a man terrified for his life and on the run from the devil himself... Teaming up with an old friend,
pathologist Professor George Litefoot, the Doctor is determined to get to the bottom of the mystery. Together with Sam, they
discover there is a far graver threat facing London then just earthly
grave robbers. Deadly alien beings the Doctor has encountered before are at work, and they bring a whole new twist to the
word bodysnatchers...
My review:
Revisiting old stories can be a tricky business, recreating the atmosphere of the original, while doing something new
and interesting is something of a must if the endevor is to be successful. Luckily The Bodysnatchers manages both admirably.
The pseudo-Victoriana of The Tanons of Weng-Chiang is effortless recreated with smoggy streets and gin palaces by the bucketful. The Zygons are given a healthy revamp, gone are the shabby blobs of jelly from the
TV and in come crusty warriors with great strength and a new strain of scientists to provide a new aspect to their culture. The Doctor and Sam are both well depicted with lavish attention payed on both. Little
mentions are made of previous adventures to keep the continuity straight, plus other references to past adventures create
a sense of connectivity with the past rather than being swamped with unnecessary references every paragraph or so. The guest characters are all competently written, as is Professor Litefoot, one could almost believe that
the pages are haunted by Bob Holmes at times.
* Genocide (Sam)
Years after leaving UNIT, Jo Grant receives a plea for help from an old acquaintance. A palaeontological study of the
earliest known humans is apparently under threat from a UNIT force led by a captain who does not officially exist. Investigating
further, she begins to find herself out of her depth - and out of the twentieth century altogether... Meanwhile, the
Doctor and Sam visit Earth in 2109 - but there is no trace of the human race. Earth is home of the Tractites, a peaceful race
who have been living there for hundreds of thousands of years. Astronished and appalled, the Doctor travels back in time to
see just what went wrong in Earth's prehistory. Why have Jo and the expedition been taken back in time? Are the Tractites
all they seem? Finally, separated from the TARDIS, the Doctor's last chance to put things right rests with Sam - but has even
she turned against him?
My review:
A simple tale of paradox and magic. The idea of two time streams each counteracting the other until mutual annihilation
occurs is interesting, but it's a secondary issue to the real driving force of the story, the characters. Sam is slowly developing throughout the story until the end where she's forced to kill, which really brings
up all kinds of moral issues for her to think about. The Doctor doesn't get that
much to do, he's basically in 6th Doctor mode, telling everyone what to do. Jo
Grant is older and wiser and driven by a maternal instinct, which adds a new depth to her, giving her different goals to the
others. Plus a cameo appearance by Benton makes the
beginning that little bit better. I really liked the story on the whole, the
time tree really is a poor imitation of a TARDIS though, far too plot convinient too.
Also adding 2 deranged maniacs to drive the story is unnecessary, the story would have been better served with sane,
rational characters, making the points that much more salient and impactful.
* Earth & Beyond: Deadtime (37' 52")
The TARDIS is brought down in a black void, and Sam and the Doctor emerge to find themselves in a lifeless walled environment
which the Doctor seems to find strangely familiar. As they explore further, the area slowly becomes illuminated, revealing
the twisted, distorted statues of people in agony. Just as the Doctor realizes that they've landed in an ancient, dying TARDIS,
Sam is trapped in a temporal stasis field and the Doctor is assaulted by insane telepathic voices which try to burrow into
his mind. As he tries to fight them off he receives a telepathic message from himself just a few hours in the future, warning
him that his attackers are insane Time Lords who converted themselves into electrochemical impulses in an experiment to follow
the temporal psychic pathways of Time Lords. They learned that they could manipulate the past of their subject, but when they
did so and then tried to exit their host, a loose thread caused his entire timeline to unravel and they were trapped in this
form, forced to move from host to host. They were trapped in this dying TARDIS when its owner suffered a brain seizure, and
have gone mad over the millenia; now that they have captured the Doctor, however, they intend to possess him, go back along
his timeline and return to Gallifrey. But when they depart his body they will kill him in his past, unravelling the causal
nexus. The Doctor allows them into his body and monitors them as they travel back along his timeline -- and traps them within
his mind at the moment of his first regeneration, explaining to Sam that it's as though they're beneath a cut which has healed
over.
My review:
A simple tale of paradox and Gallifrey and flowers of remembrance, I wonder if we'll see any of those again? The story is simple and concise, Sam and the Doctor barely have anything to do as the story more or less
sorts itself out. I liked the idea of the dead TARDIS, pity the Doctor couldn't have swiped it's memory banks to add to his
own ship's memory stores.
* War of the Daleks (Sam)
The Doctor is repairing the TARDIS systems once again when it is swept up by a garbage ship roving through space, the
Quetzel. When another ship approaches and takes the Quetzel by force, the Doctor discovers that he and Sam are not the
only unwitting travellers on board - there is a strangely familiar survival pod in the hold. Delani, the captain of the second
ship, orders the pod to be opened. The Doctor is powerless to intervene as Davros is awakened once again. But this is
no out-and-out rescue of Davros. Delani and his crew are Thals, the sworn enemies of the Daleks. They intend to use Davros
as a means to wipe out the Daleks, finally ridding the universe of the most aggressive, deadly race ever to exist. But the
Doctor is still worried. For there is a signal beacon inside the pod, and even now a Dalek ship is closing in...
My review:
Where to start? This is a really good story, like chess meets The Hunt for Red October with move and counter move all
throughout the book. It's like Balance of Terror with Daleks at times as the Doctor and a handy army of Thal shock troops
are taken deep into Dalek space. There are numerous continuity references to
past Dalek stories, Off hand I spotted: The Dead Planet, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, The Chase, Mission to the Unknown, The
Power of the Daleks, Day of the Daleks, Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, Genesis of the Daleks, Destiny of the Daleks,
Resurrection of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks and of course Enemy Within. Some continuity references slip by witht he greatest of ease and others jar so badly because the author
has not done the proper research or explained the plot points sufficiently. The main thing that jars is the idea that the
Daleks built a duplicate Skaro before Davros was revived by the Doctor, transfered from the old Skaro to the new one and then
allowed to believe that he was on Skaro so that when the Hand of Omega was dispatched to Skaro's sun to turn it supernova
it actually destroyed a fake one. This would be all well and good except the author then goes out of the way to discredit
this twice over with two different theories. Clarity would have been nice. The
rest of the story is basically another Dalek civil war (we've had 4 before already: Evil, Resurrection, Revelation and Remembrance)
and the strange insistance that the Imperial Daleks in Revelation/Remembrance were in face the renegade faction and vice versa
with the renegades. Over all though the story is easy enough to follow and has
some cool 'visuals' that would make Hollywood blockbusters look weak and tame in comparison.
* Alien Bodies (Sam)
On an island in the East Indies, in a lost city buried deep in the heart of the rainforest,
agents of the most formidable powers in the galaxy are gathering. They have been invited there to bid for what could turn
out to be the deadliest weapon ever created. When the Doctor and Sam arrive in the city, the Time Lord soon realises
they've walked into the middle of the strangest auction in history - and what's on sale to the highest bidder is something
more horrifying than even the Doctor could have imagined, something that could change his life forever. And just when
it seems things can't get any worse, the Doctor finds out who else is on the guest list.
My review:
There's a good story in this book somewhere, but I couldn't find it. The problem is it's not only vastly overwritten,
it's all middle. There's no sense of beginning middle and end, it's just all middle so there's no time spent introducing everything
to the reader it's thrown at them all at once like a sandblaster. This is the greatest weakness of the story, there's no sense
of it being a story. It's the perfect example of the idea of a novel, but as
far as being a novel goes it's not a very good one. As a piece of art though it's a masterpiece. The Doctor and Sam manage to blunder their way though events and situations that any other Doctor would
have cut through in seconds. Instead of trying to make the 8DA's stronger it makes them weaker by showing the Doctor to be
less then he was, instead of more as in other novels. Many great visuals do not
make up for a lack of good story telling and that really sums up this book.
* Kursaal (Sam)
Kursaal is a pleasure world, a huge theme park for the Cronus System - or rather it will be if it isn't destroyed during
construction. Eco-terrorists want the project halted to preserve vital archaeological sites - areas containing the last
remains of the long-dead Jax, an ancient wolf-like race whose remains are being buried beneath the big-business tourist attractions.
Sam falls in with the environmentalists, and finds her loyalties divided. Meanwhile, the Doctor's own investigations lead
him to believe the Jax are not extinct after all. Cut off from the TARDIS, separated from his companion and pursued
for murder, the Doctor discovers Kursaal hides a terrible secret - and that Sam is being affected by events more than anyone
would guess...
My review:
A simple story told very well. Lots us use of characters that drive the story rather than a plot device performing
the same function but in a bad way. I liked the way that the Doctor then
Sam alternately wanted to do things as their perceptions changed. It's good to see how they differ in certain ways. There are a couple of clichés, the creepy environmentalist, the shady businessman and the angry copper
but each is given a fresh edge as if to say they can be more than just clichés but alas it's not quite enough. The structure is a little like a Tom Baker 6 parter with the main story told in one go then a bit
of a twist as the end is told a slightly different way. Jumping forward in time allows us to have 2 stories for the price
of one; the down side though is that we have 2 stories for the price of one. Perhaps
it would have been better to wrap things up straight away rather than have whole chapters saying how old others looked? This
room could have perhaps been spent more fleshing out the characters in the main story and providing a bigger finale to the
rather downbeat ending.
* Option Lock (Sam)
Landing in present-day England,
all appears serene as the Doctor and Sam emerge from the TARDIS into the idyllic grounds of the Silver family's ancestral
home. Only when they enter the house do they suspect things are not what they seem. How far-reaching is the strange
power of a secret society almost 700 years old, and how is it linked to the mysterious Station Nine? And what is the significance
of a series of paintings that drove a man to suicide? From thirteenth-century England to the former Soviet Union, from
the United States to the cold wastes of space, the various strands of a complex
plan come together and threaten to engulf the world in a nightmare of nuclear destruction.
My review:
A deceptively small scale story despite the potential for a bigger scale. Its basic alien possessed people try to revive
the alien by means of a nuclear bomb, the whole premise was done a lot better in Shadow in the Glass and that book was boring. The Doctor and Sam are like guest stars in their own show as they are sidelined
and only get a few clichéd moments of silliness ala season 18. Nothing
of consequence happens, everything is dealt with too neatly, it's all too tame and restrained when it could have been far
more devastating and impactful (if you pardon the pun) to have one nuclear missile hit somewhere. All in all this is a book of chances missed rather than a book of chances taken. Loved the 2-line Prisoner reference though, the best bit of the whole book.
* Earth & Beyond: The People's Temple
(Sam) (89' 38")
Sam wants to see Stonehenge, but the Doctor materializes too early, while the monument is
still under construction, and Sam discovers the hard way that it was built with slave labour. The king of the Bear Men, Coyn,
has conquered several other tribes to provide himself with labour and stones with which to built the biggest temple in existence,
believing that this will make him a god in the afterlife. Although his friend and advisor Shalin, originally came up with
the idea, he's growing frightened of Coyn's obsession with the temple and won't stand up to Coyn's great cruelty towards the
slaves. One of the stones falls during construction and kills a slave girl, and Coyn blames Dorlan, the young leader of a
conquered tribe, and prepares to sacrifice him. Sam rescues Dorlan, but the Doctor is captured while creating a distraction.
Shalin speaks with the Doctor and asks him to use his magic to kill Coyn, but Coyn overhears this and kills Shalin before
the Doctor can stop him. The Doctor explains to Coyn that Shalin was just frightened of him, and that Coyn should release
his slaves and convince his own people to work on the temple of their own free will. Sam, meanwhile, gets Dorlan back to the
TARDIS and gives him aerosol paint cans, telling him to use them to spray his tribe's markings on the stones and convince
Coyn's tribe that their gods have turned against them. She's appalled when Dorlan instead grasps the concept of spraying the
paint directly into his enemies' eyes, and uses them as weapons to start a slave rebellion. Several slaves and Bear Men are
killed before the Doctor takes Coyn into the TARDIS and pilots it into the middle of the fighting, surprising everybody enough
to make them stop while Coyn officially releases the slaves.
My review:
A short but poignant tale of a small boy who grew up to build Stonehenge and hold the
lives of many people in his hands. The structure is like that of a novel
but given the shortness of the story it doesn't help nor hamper it in any way.
The main characters are refugees from Stig of the Dump but they serve a purpose to highlight the simple complexity
of the time and the reference to Battlefield doesn't get in the way either.
* Longest Day (Sam)
Its surface ravaged by colliding time-fields, the planet Hirath is a patchwork of habitable areas separated by impenetrable
zones of wild temporal fluctuation. The planet's unique biosphere is being exploited by an uncaring company happy to
rent out temporally isolated chunks of the planet to the highest bidder - no questions asked. But the controlling computer
seems to be malfunctioning, and the viability of the whole planet hangs in the balance - along with countless thousands of
lives. Arriving at Hirath's control base, the Doctor and Sam are soon separated and trapped on the dying planet. While
Sam becomes the focus of attention in a barren penal settlement, the Doctor discovers the secret of Hirath's unique condition
- just as a race of hideous bloodthirsty alien creatures arrive in force to reclaim it. Caught up in a desperate struggle
for survival, it seems time has run out for every living creature on Hirath - not least Sam and the Doctor...
My review:
A very absorbing book, it really draws you into the story and the separate but connected plights of Sam and the Doctor.
In many ways Sam has the tougher deal, she gets stuck with the most gutless resistance leader ever; he makes Arnold Rimmer look
like all of the Magnificent Seven combined! Then she's threatened and beaten up a lot and generally put through emotional
hell. Meanwhile the Doctor has a couple of long walks and a spot of rock climbing, before being almost killed. This of course leads to the big finale as Sam believes the Doctor really is dead and somewhat confused
and half-insensible with grief and pain she leaves on the alien's ship. This
is the start of a 4 book story arc and it's a very good novel in its own right. We learn where the time trees from Genocide
originated and also Sam starts to come of age as she sorts through her conflicting ideals and beliefs that were thrown up
in War of the Daleks and other stories.
* Legacy of the Daleks (Susan)
England in the late 22nd century is slowly recovering from the devastation that followed
the Daleks' invasion. The Doctor's very first travelling companion - his granddaughter, Susan - is where he left her, helping
to rebuild Earth for the survivors. But danger still remains all around... While searching for his lost companion, Sam,
the Doctor finds himself in Domain London. But it seems that Susan is now missing too, and his efforts to find her lead to
confontation with the ambitious Lord Haldoran, who is poised to take control of southern England through all-out war. With the help of a sinister advisor, Haldoran's plans are
already well advanced. Power cables have been fed down a mineshaft, reactivating a mysterious old device of hideous power.
But has the Dalek presence on Earth really been wiped out? Or are there still traps set for the unwary? The Doctor learns
to his cost once again that when dealing with the evil of the Daleks, nothing can be taken at face value...
My review:
A good Daleks story, without the focus being just the Daleks and no Davros either which is a plus. Instead we get a
bit of a political thriller mixed with a war story and of course a ton of continuity references. Using the Delgado Master is a plus and it leads in nicely to The Deadly Assassin with a reference
to The Invasion of Time too. The Doctor is a bit out of sorts, which could
be explained by a lack of Sam in the story. Of course originally being a 3rd Doctor story explains the 8th Doctor's more gung-ho
manner. The Daleks being left overs from the 2nd Dalek story is a good
idea, although the senseless death of serves very little purpose outside of Susan's final confrontation with the Master.
* Dreamstone Moon (Sam & Aloyisse)
Sam is on her own, but her distance from the Doctor doesn't make for a trouble-free life. Rescued from an out-of-control
spaceship, she finds herself on a tiny moon which is the only known source of dreamstone, a mysterious crystalline substance
that can preserve your dreams - or give you nightmares. Pitched into the middle of a conflict between the mining company
extracting dreamstone and ecological protesters, Sam thinks it's easy to decide who the good guys are - until people start
dying, and the killers seem to be the same species as some of her new friends. Meanwhile, the Doctor has tracked Sam
down, but before he can reach her he's co-opted by the Dreamstone Mining Company and their sinister military advisers. Suddenly,
it's war - and the Doctor is forced to fight against what he believes in. He alone suspects that dreamstone isn't what it
appears to be. But nobody's listening - and nobody could dream who the real enemy is...
My review:
This is a book that says as much about humanity's regrowth after the Dalek invasion as it is about ecological protests
against corporate greed. The humans are a bunch of rabid xenophobes you'd want to shoot rather than share chromosomes with
and the greedy corporation of Dreamstone Inc is even worse. The Doctor
and Sam almost run into each other a couple of times, narrowly avoiding each other a few times, which is a good thing as it
builds tension and teases the reunion. New temporary companions Daniel and Aloisse are interesting, he's a jaded miner who
only cares about providing for his family and she's a radical protestor who falls foul of the humans and suffers terribly
at their hands. The premise of the story is pure Star Trek, alien moons coming
to life, but there's a fresh Aliens twist as the military boot lands heavily on the situation. In the end everything is set
up for the next book...
* Seeing I (Sam)
He has no idea why Samantha Jones ran away from him. Sam is homeless on the streets of the colony world of Ha'olam,
trying to face what's just happened between her and the Doctor. He's searching for her, and for answers. While she struggles
to survive in a strange city centuries from home, the Doctor comes across evidence of alien involvement in the local mega-corporation,
INC - and is soon confined to a prison that becomes a hell of his own making. Where did INC's mysterious eye implants
really come from? What is the company searching for in the deserts? What is hiding in the shadows, watching their progress?
Faced with these mysteries, separated by half a world, Sam and the Doctor each face a battle - Sam to rebuild her life, the
Doctor to stay sane. And if they do find each other again, what will be left of either of them?
My review:
This book covers a lot of ground, just over three years of Sam's life going from soup kitchen to dead end job to labourer
to industrial spy and political activist. In this time she live, she learns, she dates and she tries to make a difference. Meanwhile the Doctor spends most of this time in jail (the 2nd Doctor would
have escaped in about 2 minutes) and yet his adventures are more interesting as he tries repeatedly to escape and fails. The book spends lavish amounts of time building up to an alien invasion but
when the I actually get there they're defeated quicker than any other alien ever! This is a let down after such a big build
up there should have been an equally big pay off. The guest characters
come in two flavours, boring vanilla and interesting cookies & cream. Sadly its the interesting characters that are killed
off leaving only the vanilla ones left at the end to make Sam's decision to go with the Doctor that much easier.
* Placebo Effect (Sam, Stacy & Ssard)
It is 3999. An artificial planetoid, Micawber's World, is hosting the Intergalactic Olympic Games, and athletes from
all the worlds in the Galactic Federation are coming to take part. But when the Doctor and Sam arrive, murders soon begin...
The Doctor finds himself drafted in to examine some bizarre new drugs that are said to enhance the natural potential of the
competing athletes. But what is their real purpose? Why are members of the Security Forces disappearing randomly? And just
why is Chase Carrington, manufacturer of the drug, so protective of his company's secrets? Watching and waiting, at
the very heart of Micawber's World, is a race of parasites the Doctor has fought before. The Wirrrn have come to the Milky
Way from Andromeda, determined to spread their seed throughout a whole new galaxy, and it seems to Sam that the Doctor's hands
are too full to pay their threat full attention...
My review:
Billed as the reunion with Stacy and Ssard from the Radio Time comic strip series, they only appear in five scenes
of the book and that's in the first half of the book. Instead of a fig final send off as was hoped for they limp off in a
curtly written paragraph and they're by far the most interesting characters in the book!
Placebo effect is a good book, the problem is it's too full, too many characters coming and going at once for anyone
to keep track of and deathly slow plot strands suddenly lurch into life when needed then die back again once they're done
with. I like the reuse of old alien species, it gives the books a good
grounding and as the Foamasi and Wirrrn have only been used once before there's a lot of fresh ideas that can be done with
them that don't feel false or forced. The regulars are a little more cipheric
that usual, but given that they're squeezed into an already crammed cast it's inevitable that characterisation is going to
be lost, which is a pity but you don't notice it too much unless you pause to think about it.
All in all though it should have had more Stacy and Ssard in to be be considered a classic...
* Vanderdeken"s Children (Sam)
A mysterious disturbance in the hyperspatial vortex causes the Doctor and Sam to materialise the TARDIS in deep space.
Here they find that a huge derelict alien craft has become the subject of a dangerous confrontation between starships from
the rival systems of Nimos and Emindar. At the center of the dispute is a ruthless politician with secrets of his own - a
man who is willing to risk innocent lives to claim the derelict for himself. While the Doctor and Sam find themselves
accompanying an expedition into the heart of the alien vessel, strange and frightening incidents spread terror through the
watching ships. But exploring deeper into the derelict disturbs a sinister presence and takes the expedition towards an inevitable
confrontation with fate - and perhaps beyond the boundaries of life itself...
My review:
Starts off ok, lot of minor characters but they soon get thinned out a little. Big deal is made of the Doctor using
his real name except we don’t get to knew what it actually is. Build up is a cross between 2001 & The Call of Cthulhu. Lot of pointless posturing by the former military commander who uses the appearance
of the ship to assert himself on others. The Doctor is at his usual baffling best, being part magician and part Open University
lecturer. Lots of small chapters makes for a very jerky read as it’s
all to easy to be tempted to do other things as the story really isn’t strong enough to maintain any long-term interest. The Doctor’s almost like Pertwee with lots of gadgets and technical jiggery
pokery. You could almost hear him thinking about reversing the polarity of the neutron flow.
The artifact itself is both over described and under described, in that we get excess info about how it looks but next
to nothing about what it does. We get a lot of theories and supposition but no real facts or evidence to back these up. The
paradox of the artifact takes up all of a few lines of throwaway dialogue. A most unsatisfactory end to a promising story.
* The Scarlet Empress (Sam)
Arriving on the almost impossibly ancient planet of Hyspero, a world where magic and danger walk hand in hand, the
Doctor and Sam are caught up in a bizarre struggle for survival. Hyspero has been ruled for thousands of years by the
Scarlet Empresses, creatures of dangerous powers - powers that a member of the Doctor's own race is keen to possess herself:
the eccentric time traveller and philanderer known only as Iris Wildthyme. As the real reasons for Iris's obsession
become clear, the Doctor and Sam must embark on a perilous journey across deserts, mountains, forests and oceans. Both friends
and foes are found among spirits, djinns, alligator men and golden bears - but in a land where the magical is possible, is
anything really as it seems?
My review:
Not so much a Doctor Who novel as a novel featuring the Doctor and Sam. Not so much a novel either as a series of events
and set pieces. Every chapter bombards the reader with a dozen different big things but along the way they're drowned out
leaving a background buzz of things to ignore and forget about. The Doctor
and Sam are realistically written, each doesn't stray too far from the already establish behaviour patterns. It's even nice
to see a small revisit of The Bodysnatchers. However the book is hopelessly
over cluttered, instead of everything being given its moment instead it's passed over almost straight away as something else
comes along, which is a shame as with so many other novels so far it could have done with just a slightly firmer editorial
hand.
* The Janus Conjunction (Sam)
Two planets, Janus Prime and Menda, orbit a Red Giant on the edge of the galaxy. The planets lie diametrically opposite
each other on either side of the huge sun - but where Menda is rich and fertile in the light of the sun, Janus Prime's moon
leaves the sun in a constant state of eclipse. Humans are colonizing the area, and a rival group sets up on Janus Prime
via a mysterious transmat system left behind by the planet's former inhabitants. But what is its true purpose? When
the Doctor and Sam arrive, they must piece together a centuries-old puzzle. How can Janus Prime's moon weigh billions of tons
more than it should? What is the secret purpose of the hyperspatial link? They discover a terrible weapon is hidden in the
glowing sands of the planet, one that if it falls into the hands of the warring humans could destroy the galaxy.
My review:
This is a very simple story premise, the Doctor and Sam get caught up in a conflict between a group of radiation poisoned
soldiers and a group of colonists the soldiers blame their woes on. The
use of real time almost throughout the story works well as the tensions between the characters flux with their moods and the
revelation of past deeds and actions. Inevitably there's the complication,
the insane military leader has discovered a doomsday device and tries to use it as his last act of spite. Sam getting the radiation poisoning is treated with dignity and care, her final moments are graphically
portrayed as she succumbs to the finality of her condition. Then the inevitable
story-reset button is pressed ala Trek and Sam is saved, with the same plot device used in the pilot movie. Luckily though
it's explained a little better here so it doesn't seem such a cop out even though it is.
The idea of an arachnid society presents one continuity error, in Scarlet Empress the Doctor states he's still phobic
about 8 legs while in Janus he states that he's not.
* Beltempest (Sam)
The people of Belannia II see their sun, Bel, shrouded in night for a month following an impossible triple eclipse.
When Bel returned to them a younger, brighter, hotter star, it is the beginning of the end for the entire solar system...
100,000 years later, the Doctor and Sam arrive on Belannia IV, where the population are under threat as disaster looms - immense
gravitational and dimensional disturbances are surging through this area of space. While the time travellers attempt
to help the survivors and ease the devastation, a religious suicide-cult leader is determined to spread a new religion through
Bel's system - and his word may prove even more dangerous than the terrible forces brought into being by the catastrophic
changes in the sun...
My review:
Despite having numerous similarities with the previous stories (a sun about to go nova, a dying Sam, the Doctor tangled
in a web of his own good intentions) there is just enough differences to make this book stand out on its own merits despite
being constantly reminded of the events of the last book. The idea of life
on so many different scales is interesting from the microscopic nanites that infect Sam to the humanoid colonists to the large
gas creatures to the planet-sized creatures responsible for the whole mess with the sun, it's interesting to see how interconnected
they all are. Again much use is made of real time to indicate the disasters
that befall the planets in the Bel system, this time however the ending is much less rushed to give the finale a much more
satisfying natural feel to it.
* The Face-Eater (Sam)
The Doctor and Sam arrive on Proxima II, one of the earliest planets colonised in humanity's first big push into space.
But instead of a brave new world, they find a settlement rife with superstition and unrest. The native Proximans are
inexplicably dying out. Humans too are being killed in horrific ways, with each face being stripped bare. Posing as
investigators from Earth, the Doctor and Sam must track down the force moving through the dark catacombs beneath Proxima City. It seems that the superstitious whisperings of the colonists
may be well founded - that the sinister Face-Eater from Proximan mythology has awakened from its long sleep, to drive out
all those who would defile its world...
My review:
Doctor Who by rote: mix 1 Doctor, 1 companion, 1 menacing enemy, 1 earth
colony, 1 psychopath and allow to simmer for 275 pages then resolve in 5 pages or less.
In short this book is better than it should be because waiting for the out-of-her-depth-psychotic-to-get-it strand
dangles through the story like a jar of carrot juice on a rope. A fantastically
rushed finale whizzes by at breakneck speed leading to the inevitable jarring ending and vague feeling of dissatisfaction
aftertaste.
* Doctor Who and The Taint (Sam & Fitz)
The TARDIS has finally brought the Doctor and Sam back to Earth - and straight into danger. It is 1963. Six very
different people have been gathered together for study by parapsychologist Charles Roley in his stately home outside London. All of them claim to have been possessed by the devil, and all have shared similar delusions
- they describe the same bizarre 'death cave' riddled with demons. Roley's experiments are having a gradual yet terrifying
effect on his subjects, and the Doctor and Sam discover the connections between those tainted with the madness are more disturbing
than anyone could guess. For the Doctor, too, has seen the cave they describe - on a dead world, billions of years ago.
My review:
A landmark in the range as we get the first new regular character introduced since The Eight Doctors. Fitz is VERY conflicted (ie screwed up) he starts off with very few connections to everyone around him
and half of those are based on lies and distorted facts. The story itself
is quite a simple one; a cosmic bug blaster messes up big style and turns a few test cases into raving psychotic sociopaths.
Luckily the Doctor manages to work it out just in time (doesn't he always? The
book is mostly real time with a few time jumps to indicate the passing of time that indicates a slow building of events towards
the final confrontation. If I had to describe this book to a newbie I'd say Invasion
of the Brain Snatchers meets OAP's of the Damned.
* Demontage (Sam & Fitz)
The Vega Station - a haven for gamblers, art lovers and duty-free shoppers, the one place where the Battrulians and
their erstwhile enemies, the Canvine, meet and mix, in neutral space. A pressure point, an explosive mixture. And just as
the new President of Battrul is about to arrive, the TARDIS crew turn up. Fitz is in trouble. He's accedently got himself
hired as an assassin while trying to emulate James Bond. And he's upset Bigdog Caruso, the unofficial Canvine leader on Vega.
Sam is in trouble. She's become involved with the key witness to a murder, and the witness has vanished. The Doctor,
meanwhile, has been roped in to help with investigations into robbery, sabotage and the murder, as well as to sort out Fitz's
problems, Sam's problems, and the President's safety. He's in his element. And if they should get bored, there's a hitman
on the loose, monsters roaming the station corridors, an exhibition of art by a painter who depicted his own death, and the
opera.
My review:
This has to be The Phantom Menace of the 8th Doctor range, so much of no consequence happens and is dealt with and
has nothing at all to do with the story. The idea of paintings coming to
life is interesting and well presented. The regulars are ok, Fitz seems
to be doing bad impressions of Roger Moore, Sam is pushed into the background (literally) and the Doctor is mainly a caricature
of himself. The guest cast are a mixture of clichés and dullness personified.
* Revolution Man (Sam & Fitz)
1967: The Revolution has just started. All you need is love - but the ability to bend space and time helps. An entity
called the Revolution Man is writing his graffiti across the surface of the Earth, using a drug called Om-Tsor. Trouble
is, none of this was supposed to happen. The Doctor knows that the Revolution Man isn't for real, that he's part of the problem,
not part of the solution. But how is he going to convince the flower children? How is he going to convince Sam? And he doesn't
dare tell Fitz... The Chinese People's Army want to defeat the capitalists. Om-Tsor is the most powerful means available,
and the source is on their doorstep. If half of India is immolated - well, you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs... 1969: The Revolution Man has decided.
Mankind is evil, not good. The only way forward is to destroy all of it. The Doctor and Sam struggle to find him but time
is running out...
My review:
Not the best story ever written, possibly because it skips about a little too much, especially towards the end when
it should be consolidating everything and the ending is far, far too rushed. Fitz
gets an interesting little development, pity it’s totally wasted. Sam suffers needlessly again, rapidly losing patience
with authors who take the cheap way out, psychological torment is much more interesting re character development, used in
great effect in earlier books as Sam is haunted by the possibility that she's still infected with nanites. The Doctor is in generic cipher mode, he's hardly in this story, and it may as well be called Drugged Out
Hippies rather than Doctor Who...
* Dominion (Sam & Fitz)
When the Doctor loses both Sam and the TARDIS after an encounter with a mysterious dimensional anomaly, he finds himself
affected in a very fundamental way, doubting his own powers and making crucial errors of judgment. Stranded amongst
the forests and lakes of southern Sweden in
the summer of 1999, it quickly becomes clear to the Doctor and Fitz that something unusual - and dangerous - is afoot. Fitz
finds himself acting the hero as the search for Sam gets them involved with investigations into strange disappearances - and
manifestations of even stranger creatures. Events quickly spiral out of control as the Doctor and Fitz become entangled
with a secret deep beneath the forest, a secret which could save Sam and an entire doomed alien race - but destroy the Earth
in the process.
My review:
An ok story, using some new ideas and combining them with some old ones. UNIT is represented by a colossal military
moron; the Brig would never have had this guy in his command for long. One off companion Kerstin is the best thing in the
book, she's everything Sam isn't and yet she's cast off at the end like a used tissue because obviously she's far too good
for the series. The idea of the Dominion is interesting but shows very
limited imagination about science and the idea of imagination in its way it's as limited as the old sun going round the Earth
arrogance of the limited view of human belief. The Ruin and the Bane are quite
original but ultimately serve only as a distraction to the poorer choice of Wolstencroft as the central anti-Doctor force.
This is one book that could have done with another draft to iron out its short comings and turn it into a huge stonking classic.
* Unnatural History (Sam & Fitz)
San Francisco's changed since the start of 2000. The laws of physics keep having acid flashbacks. There are sightings of creatures
from outside our dimensions, stranded aliens and surrealist street performers. The city has become a mecca for impossible
creatures, those who revel in them - and those who want to see them pinned down and put away. And beneath the waters of the
Bay, something huge is waiting. The Doctor and Sam find their pasts catching up with them - in Sam's case, a past she
didn't know she had. Time is running out for the city, and the Doctor may have to sacrifice an old friend to sort everything
out. But who's trying to sort the Doctor out?
My review:
FANTASTIC! This book does nothing wrong, it's a delight of visuals
and personal emotions, with a liberal sprinkling of metaphor and allegory. Kate & Jon easily out do Faction Paradox creator
Lawrence Miles to deliver a far superior version of FP than seen in Alien Bodies.
Dark-Haired Sam is a fantastic character, everything blonde Sam isn't. It's just such a tragedy that everything that
was lovingly built up in the book is subjected to the Trek reset button of death at the end. They should have kept dark-haired
Sam and ditched blondie forever! Fitz is also more certain of himself,
although he's still as neurotic and twirly as ever, he's just gotten better at being able to master his emotions. The Doctor is a magician per excellence; also he makes the 7th look like Tommy Cooper when it comes
to being a sneaky bastard. The collector is a pretty generic bad guy, but
that's the whole point of him, he's by his very definition created to serve a single role and he does it very well.
* Autumn Mist (Sam & Fitz)
The Ardennes, December 1944: the Nazi forces are making their last offensive
in Europe - a campaign which will come to be called the Battle of the Bulge. But there is a third side to this battle; an unknown and ancient force
which seems to pay little heed to the laws of nature. Where do the bodies of the dead disappear to? What is the true
nature of the military experiments conducted by both sides? The Doctor, Sam and Fitz must seek out the truth in a battlefield
where no one and nothing is quite what they seem.
My review:
Definitely a book of two halves, which considering this book is about halves is no mean feat! The first half is like
a John Wayne/Clint Eastwood WWII film with every cliché brought out for effect. The second is a fantasy story about elves
manipulating humans as revenge for damage to their realm. Imagine Midsummer Night's Dream with Telly Savalas as Oberon... Sam goes through more turmoil and confusion (tm) as she's killed and forced
to relive her life (all it needed was a game of chess to be Seventh Seal in disguise).
Fitz goes through his routines again, this time he even calls himself James Bond!
The Doctor is in dark avenger mode as he skulks and stalks for dramatic effect. He's called the Evergreen Man but I
think Lord of Misrule is more appropriate as he defeats both order and chaos by showing them how they should have been acting. The heralding of Sam's departure is stapled onto the end like an afterthought
and as a sign for change it's a reminder that things will never be the same again.
Something special has just come to an end.
* Interference: Book One (Sam, Fitz & Compassion)
Five years ago, Sam Jones was just a schoolgirl from Shoreditch. Of course, that was before she met up with the Doctor
and found out that her entire life had been stage-managed by a time-travelling voodoo cult. Funny how things turn out, isn't
it? Now Sam's back in her own time, fighting the good fight in a world of political treachery, international subterfuge,
and good old-fashioned depravity. But she's about to learn the first great truth of the universe: that however corrupt and
amoral your own race might be, there's always someone in the galaxy who can make you look like a beginner. Ms Jones
has just become a minor player in a million-year-old power struggle... and as it happens, so has the Doctor. Both of
him.
My review:
Oh dear. This book is a complete mess. A mish-mash of styles that ruin the narrative flow and the separate story lines
jump painfully from one to the other with the effect of further ruining any chance of reading a coherent story. To be blunt
this book is rubbish, 5 year olds have written better than this. The only redeeming quality is the tiny 3rd Doctor segment
towards the end and quite frankly it’s too little too late. The editor should have sent this back and demanded a second
draft be written.
* Interference: Book Two (Sam, Fitz & Compassion)
They call it the Dead Frontier. It's as far from home as the human race ever went, the planet where mankind dumped
the waste of its thousand-year empire and left its culture out in the sun to rot. But while one Doctor faces both his
own past and his own future on the Frontier, another finds himself on Earth in 1996, where the seeds of the empire are only
just being sown. The past is meeting the present, the cause is meeting the effect, and the TARDIS crew is about to be caught
in the crossfire. The Third Doctor. The Eighth Doctor. Sam. Fitz. Sarah Jane Smith. Soon, one of them will be dead;
one of them will belong to the enemy; and one of them will be something less than human.
My review:
A far better book that the first one, this one actually manages to tell a story and not just fill pages with words.
The separate storylines come together and make some sort of sense although there's still some MASSIVE plot holes left unattended.
As an event story this and the other book would have been far more effective if cut down to one slightly larger than normal
book. There are whole sections that could easily be removed without loss. Killing
off the 3rd Doctor before he was due to die was a bold move, obviously the paradox will later be resolved because he does
die at the end of Planet of the Spiders...
* The Blue Angel (Fitz & Compassion)
As the Doctor becomes embroiled in the doings of the crew of the Federation Starship Nepotist, his old friend Iris
Wildthyme is rescuing old ladies from a shopping mall attacked by savage owls. And, in a cat's cradle of interdimensional
Corridors lies the Valcean City of Glass, whose King Dedalus awaits the return of his Angel son and broods over the oncoming
war...
My review:
Where to start with this nonsense? It's a poor attempt at writing any sort of story that makes sense. Instead its a
series of abstract set-pieces arranged at random and then badly connected by more set-pieces which have no relation at all
to anything else. If I were the editor this 'book' would never have been published at all and nothing would be missed at all.
* The Taking of Planet Five (Fitz & Compassion)
Twelve million years ago, a war touched the Earth briefly. Now, in Antarctica, an archaeological team has discovered the detritus of the conflict. And it's alive. Twelve million years ago,
a creature evolved that was capable of consuming all life in the universe. Now someone, or something, is desperate enough
to want to revive it. Outside the ordered universe, things move. They're hungry. And something has given them the scent
of our space/time. In the far future, the Doctor has learnt of the war and feels he must intervene - but it's more than
just a local conflict of interest. One of the groups of combatants is from his own future, and the other has never, ever,
existed.
My review:
A very good story, combining part and future histories and wrapping it all around a good dose of Lovecraft. While Lawrence Miles may have great ideas its other writers who make
them work. Homonculette is back and this time he'd a real character and he kicks!
The heavy use of At The Mountains of Madness as the setting for most of the story is intriguing, although the cop out
that it's fiction made reality takes away some of what it gave the story. All
in all a very good book.
* Frontier Worlds (Fitz & Compassion)
What strange attraction lures people to the planet Drebnar? When the TARDIS is dragged there, the Doctor determines
to find out why. He discovers that scientists from the mysterious Frontier Worlds Corporation have set up a base on
the planet, and are trying to blur the distinction between people and plants. The TARDIS crew plan to prevent a biological
catastrophe - but their plan goes wrong all too soon. Compassion finds her undercover work so engrossing she risks losing
her detachment. Fitz seems too distracted by the local population to keep his eye on Compassion. SO when the Doctor gets trapped
in a freezing wilderness, who can stop him falling victim to a lethal experiment in genetic modification? For something
else has been lured to Drebnar, something that Frontier Worlds Corporation will ruthlessly exploit without care for the consequences
- an ancient organism which threatens to snuff out Drebnar's solar system.
My Review:
Doomwatch for the new millennium as an eco-project becomes a nightmare scenario. Frontier Worlds suffers from taking
too much time to set up the incidental aspects of the story rather that just telling the story. This depth pays off with those
characters that survive more than a few scenes, but for the rest it's wasted space.
The Doctor is hardly in this story at all, less the 1/4 all told, but he's behind the scenes working like crazy to
pull some sort of plan together/ Fitz and Compassion are the two leads and half the time they're clichés and the other half
they're psycho-analysing why they're clichés. The Raab is an interesting spin
on the Krynoids, but not different enough to hold any interest or excitement. The
body horror aspect is quite good but a little too visual for the more reflective medium of prose.
* Parallel 59 (Fitz & Compassion)
Fleeing a doomed space station in tiny life capsules, the Doctor and Compassion find themselves prisoners of Parallel
59, a militaristic power on the planet Skale. Meanwhile Fitz finds himself apparently safe in Mechta, a colony for convalescents.
A space race is in full swing on Skale, with each of the planet's many blocs desperate to be first to reach the stars. If
the Doctor's knowledge helps Parallel 59 to succeed, the consequences for the rest of the world could be devastating.
But Fitz knows nothing of his friends' predicament. Enjoying his new life, he's not even sure he wants to be rescued - which
is a good thing. Because the Doctor has no intention of going to Mechta. He's decreed that Fitz's new-found utopia must
be totally destroyed.
My Review: A quaint little story about paranoia and paradise. Compassion and the Doctor land
on the planet of the idiots who're a perfect analogy of 1950's America, fearful,
suspicious and fragmented. They meet some of the most ridiculously paranoid cliché’s ever including a mad scientist
with a foot fetish. Fitz on the other hand is in a simple world where everyone
likes him, he can cheat with married women and have casual sex whenever he wants it. However more and more people start vanishing
and it's only 3/4 of the book before he realises that something's up. The ending
is fantastically rushed with a whole segment of a war mentioned casually as an aside. Sadly as this is what the whole book
was building to it leaves a bit of a taste of ashes.
* The Shadows of Avalon (Fitz & Compassion)
The Brigadier's wife is dead. A terrible accident. Grieving, he searches for death, and finds his way to Avalon, the
other-dimensional kingdom of the Catuvelauni. The Doctor is also in Avalon, marooned. He's lost his companions, his
TARDIS... and his hopes for the future. Now it seems they'll have to make a new life for themselves with the Celts who live
in the Dreamlands. Perhaps even help in the Celt's negotiations with the Unseelie, the original inhabitants of Avalon, who
live far to the North. But then a gateway opens between Earth and Avalon. The British Army arrives in force. And the
Brigadier negotiates a treaty that will lead to war in the Land of Dreams. With fearsome dragons duelling jet fighters, vicious
Gallifreyan agents causing havos, and Compassion fighting against her ultimate fate, can the Doctor save the world, his best
friend, and himself?
My Review:
So many things happen in this story, the Brigadier is back and he's chronically depressed over the death of Doris,
Compassion's trying to learn to be more human and the Doctor and Fitz are in the TARDIS when suddenly it explodes! Elsewhere a dragon steals a nuclear bomb from an aeroplane and the Brigadier enters a realm of dreams where
humans live in a world of magic and mystical creatures. There is a great deal
in common with Battlefield in this story, of powerful sorcerers and sleeping kings and the battle between technology and magic.
However it manages to somehow carve a slice of newness from the meat of past adventures, by introducing the mad 3rd Romana
and giving an interesting new spin on the Silurians as magical beings akin to faeries.
The Doctor is really out of character a few times during the story; at one point he seems like a poor imitation of
Pertwee and the next he was channelling Eccleston!!! Fitz is hardly in the story,
he's about but nothing really happens with him as this is not really his story. This
is Compassion's story and as the clues from previous stories finally come together we realise that something's very wrong,
then at the culmination of the story she's turned into a TARDIS and that's when the book goes from fantastically great to
disgustingly bad. This is as far as I ever got with the 8DA's when they were
originally released; this story put me off them for a VERY long time. However time has mellowed me and I have decided to give
the range another chance...
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