Doctor Who: Goth Opera
Story: A TARDIS arrives in Manchester, 1993, where some young human-born vampires have established a feeding ground. But it’s not the Doctor’s TARDIS – instead, a Time Lady named Ruath has come to gather local vampires to help her unearth and revive a “vampire messiah” descended from the Great Vampire banished by Rassilon. Having traced the Doctor’s fifth incarnation to the present day, Ruath sends the vampires out to collect Time Lord blood for their messiah, but instead they claim Nyssa as one of their own. Nyssa eventually leaves the Doctor and Tegan behind, joining Ruath, the revived Yarven, and a growing number of new vampire initiates. When an abrupt nightfall occurs during daylight hours, only then does the Doctor realize that Yarven and Ruath plan to plunge Earth into eternal night – and to turn its human population into either new vampire followers…or food.
Review: It’s nigh-impossible to tell a straightforward vampire story in the Doctor Who mythos, thanks to a 1980 four-parter, State Of Decay, that inextricably intertwined vampire and Time Lord iconography. Paul Cornell manages to build on that even further, even drawing The Curse Of Fenric‘s bloodsucking haemovores into the fold. It all hangs together quite well, and Cornell makes excellent (and quite disturbing) use of existing vampire lore. (Apparently bookstores and distributors were disturbed by Alistair Pearson’s cover art – though the bloodier version was taken directly from a scene in the book, it was toned down before hitting the stores.)
Doctor Who: Millennial Rites
Story: Just days before New Year’s Eve, 1999 – presumably while his seventh self is turning into his eighth somewhere across the Atlantic – the sixth Doctor and Mel visit London, where the Doctor attends a celebration of the life and career of Anne Travers, who, at a much younger age, helped the second Doctor and his companions defeat the Yeti. Since then she has been serving as the British government’s leading scientific advisor, but a dark cloud hangs over her – she constantly fears the return of the Great Intelligence. In the meantime, Mel attends a college class reunion, and though she’s unable to explain away her lack of aging, the greater mystery comes in the form of a former classmate’s plea. Mel is asked to hack into Ashley Chapel Logistics, a London-based worldwide software conglomerate, to uncover an unspecified dark secret. As it turns out, Ashley Chapel himself, head of the company that shares his name, has gathered dark powers in his new software, which will be unleashed on New Year’s Eve. Even though the Doctor arrives at ACL just before midnight to thwart this deadly scheme, he is powerless to stop Chapel from transforming the world into a place where magic is real…and where the Doctor’s worst nightmare can overtake him at any moment.
Review: I really did like most of this book. The extremely brief on-screen adventures of the sixth Doctor and Melanie were just enough to convince me that they would’ve continued to make an appealing team. Both personalities are captured well by Craig Hinton, and the first 2/3 of “Millennial Rites” – setting aside, for the moment, the question of whether or not New Year’s Eve 1999 truly constitutes the eve of the new millennium – are extremely interesting and suspenseful. But when midnight hits and the foreplay is over, the sinister secret turns out to be a transformation of the Earth into a world somewhere between Mirror, Mirror and Magic: The Gathering…with sometimes silly results.
Doctor Who: Managra
Story: 1613. The Globe Theatre in London has been burnt down by one of Shakespeare’s rivals, Francis Pearson. But, during Pearson’s escape from the crime scene, he encounters what he believes is the Devil himself, and is quickly posessed.
2000 years later, and the world has changed…but not much. All the overcities are gone (see Original Sin) but one, and it is the home of the New Vatican. The world is awash with history – quite literally. A multitude of Englands, Frances, Germanies, all built to reflect different periods of history, all existing together. Famous names from bygone ages all live here together, and sometimes more than one of each! There are three Lord Byrons, two Casanovas, Mary Shelley, a Borgia, Johann Faust, Cardinal Richelieu, the Four Musketeers, just to name a few. These clones, or “reprises” as they are called, roam about having adventures, generally existing merely to provide a more realistic historic atmosphere. These reprises all came from the same place – The Theartre of Transmogrification, which roams the world at the controls of its ringleader, who is known only as Personna.
But what is MANAGRA? Miles Dashing of Dashwood would love to know. It was his dying father’s last word, and he has been searching for the secret of its meaning ever since.
Review: I don’t know what to say about this book. Was it good or bad? There is so much subterfuge and subplotting, that you almost become bogged down in it all. But then, just when you feel like you’re being led down the garden path, you get a few Vampires thrown in to stir up the pot.
Doctor Who: Invasion of the Cat-People
Story: The Euterpians – a super-powerful, semi-immortal race of creatures roaming the Universe, splitting planets open in order to release the geo-magnetic energy, which they will harness, and use to return them to their homeworld. A group of them arrive at the Earth millions of years in the past, and seeing its potential energy, send a party to set the beacons which will split the crust wide open, releasing the power within. But, something goes terribly wrong, and the ship in which they arrived is destroyed, stranding five of these creatures on a primitive Earth. Knowing their duty, the group completes their mission, and lay the beacons out as planned. Millions of years pass, civilizations rise and fall, and in the confusion, the group lose contact with one another. A couple of them realize that, if they can get the attention of another alien race with spacecraft, then they could finally utilize the beacons, releasing the energy, and go home. Finally, in 1994, the Cat-people show up and form an un easy alliance with a Euterpian, who bargains away rights to the Earth, in exchange for transport home.
Of course, this is the signal for the Doctor to arrive on the scene. He is still recovering from his recent Regeneration, and suffering the company of Ben and Polly to boot. They land smack-dab in the middle of this weakly written plot, and seem more than a little out of place wandering around amidst a group of bipedal cats with spacesuits on. Polly becomes separated from the Doctor (go figure) and joins up with one of these long-lived Euterpians, believing all the while that he is trying to help the Humans.
Review: All in all, this book was a total catastrophe. I don’t think I’ve read a book quite this lame since “The Ghosts of N-Space”. It almost put me into a catatonic state, as if I’d been lost for weeks in a maze of catacombs. I don’t even know what category to put it in: bad, awful, or stupid. I wanted to, at many points, put it in a catapult and fire it into the garbage. I am sure it was the catalyst to my severe attack of catarrh which almost caused me to need a catheter!
Doctor Who: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Story: The TARDIS lands on what seems to be Earth. But burned-up medieval villages, a crashed and disintegrating spacecraft from the 30th Century, and an attack by a fire-breathing dragon convince the time travellers otherwise. On top of all this, the TARDIS has engaged its defensive systems, and will not allow anyone back inside, stranding our heroes on this strange world.
During the attack by the dragon, a group of knights on horseback arrive and vanquish the horrid beast. All return to the local castle to meet the King and Queen of this strange land of Elbyon, who are preparing for the imminent wedding of their daughter, the Princess. But, the local Evil Wizard, Morton Dhal, has other ideas. He wants the King to hand over Merlins’ Artifacts, which will allow him supreme wizard power, to be used for, undoubtedly, evil purposes. To precipitate the King’s decision, Dhal kidnaps the Princess, along with Susan, and imprisons them in his dark tower.
And so the Doctor and an intrepid party of adventurers embark on a quest to the Shadow Islands, to retrieve an artifact of immense power: Merlin’s Helm! This item will allow the wearer to put an end to the evil Wizard’s plans, and restore order to the world.
Review: I was on holiday in America at a time when horrible events unfolded in New York and Washington. It was hard to take my eyes away from the TV. Luckily, when I did look away, I had a good book to take my mind off of what can only be described as cowardice and evil.
Doctor Who: System Shock
Story: In one week’s time, Integrated Intelligence is bringing OFFNet online. All of the computer-controlled systems in the entire world will be linked together to work more efficiently as one.
But is this just a way of making life easier? Or is it part of a cunning plan by an alien race in their plot to take over the Earth?
It is 1998, and the Doctor, accompanied by Sarah Jane Smith, arrives in – of all places – London! Convinced that no interesting historic events had ever happened in that year, he decides to have a drink and move on. But when a strange man bursts through the door of the pub, followed closely by an even stranger woman, the Doctor becomes interested. His curiousity is piqued after the pursued man bumps into him, and runs out the door…slipping a CD-ROM and a note into the Doctor’s capacious pocket in the process.
As interested as the Doctor is, it is not until the very same man ends up murdered a few blocks away that the game is afoot. Something interesting might well be happening in 1998, and they’re going to find out what it was.
Review: These aliens in this book are quite amusing. They talk to each other in business jargon (“My people will contact your people, and we can do lunch to see if the idea is a go…”) and deal with their invasion plans in a purely professional way. It is the first time I’ve seen aliens go over graphs to discern what percentage of the takeover of the world will be a sucess.
Doctor Who: The Menagerie
Story: A nameless planet living in fear of technology – this is the setting of this Missing Adventure. The Doctor, along with Jamie and Zoe, arrive on this rain-sodden world just in time to become embroiled in a confrontation between the classes. On one side, The Knights of Kuabris, who are the anti-science police who rule this town with fear and intimidation. On the other, the creatures who live beneath the city, in the fabled “Menagerie of Ukkazaal.” These two sides could not be more different. The Knights have little or no knowledge of the existance of these subterranean societies, yet the three groups who live below (the Dugracs, a species of bipedal rat-men; the Rocarby, a race of apelike Sasquatch men; and the Taculbain, who are described as bipedal bee-men) all know of the surface dwellers, and don’t trust them a bit.
Of course, the age-old scenario which allows the story to flow rears its head: Separate the TARDIS crew. The Doctor is arrested and brought to the Castle where he is questioned by the Knights. Zoe is also brought to the Castle, but she is mistaken for a prostitute and is sent to the slave market for sale (I’ll bid ten grotzits!). And Jamie evades capture and manages to rope a few of the city folk into the adventure.
Review: I had a real good time reading this book, the only downside being the rather stupid names people are given: Argaabil, Xaelobran, Zaitabor, and Defrabax, to name just a few. With so little of the second Doctor’s adventures available on video (or CD) one tends to forget how good he can be. But this is a good example of how to write for him.
Doctor Who: Dancing The Code
Story: The events of this story are precipitated by a typical Third Doctor plot accelerator – the building of a totally unscientifically based invention called (now don’t laugh) a “Personal Time-Line Prognosticator.” This device shows events that are going to happen sometime in the future. So, the Doctor fires this machine up, and it shows the Brigadier shooting and killing the Doctor and Jo! These events are a fact, and cannot be changed – or so the Doctor says. So, of course, he tries to change them by coming up with the plan to split the three of them up, thereby making it impossible for this event to take place.
The other plotline concerns the fictional Middle Eastern country called Kebiria. UNIT has sent an operative to investigate a strange “anomaly” somewhere in the desert mountains of this foreign land, which was photographed by reconnaissance aircraft. Lethbridge-Stewart receives a phone call from a reporter who is covering peace talks between this country and its neighbor, who met this UNIT operative just prior to his grisly death. He drove out of the desert in a UNIT jeep, and this reporter found that he was severely bloated (and it wasn’t the water he drank) and babbling something about “dancing the code.” He then proceeds to burst open, and out flows yummy honey! The Bedouin tribe this reporter is staying with also witnesses this, and burns the remains. Apparently there is a story in their folklore relating these same events – and of course, it is a bad omen. So the Brig decides to send Mike Yates and some troops to check this out, and Jo follows along so she doesn’t get shot and killed by the Brigadier. (She doesn’t want to get shot and killed, so she goes to a war-torn Middle Eastern country…good thinking!)
Review: Well, I was none too thrilled when the time came to read this book. The last Third Doctor Missing Adventure I read was “The Ghosts Of N-Space”, and it completely stank. But, to my surprise, this one was actually good. Paul Leonard has done the memory of the third Doctor some justice. All the separate plots merge into a pitched battle for global supremacy by quite an interesting enemy – and no, it is not the Master for a change!
Domesticating History
Story: “Domesticating History” is a well-researched exploration of the contexts in which the homes of four different prominent Americans (George Washington, Louisa May Alcott, Thomas Jefferson and Booker T. Washington) were turned into museums. Unfortunately, the book does not provide much in the way of description of the museums themselves, nor of the particular interpretations that visitors did in fact take away from their viewing of the exhibits – West seems most interested in providing intellectual biographies of the museum founders and discussions of the political maneuvering required to establish and fund these museums.
Review: It is all interesting and very readable material, yet in the end, the lack of depth regarding the museums themselves leaves me feeling as if, at the core of the study, there’s no “there” there.
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
Story: Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson explores the political and military history of the Civil War; he traces its roots to the dispute between North and South over the institution of slavery and argues that while the Union held significant advantages over the Confederacy, the outcome was far from guaranteed.
Review: One remarkable element of the book is that almost 275 pages pass before the Confederacy fires on Fort Sumter and the war officially begins. McPherson uses those pages to carefully establish the political and social context of the time and make his argument as to the central cause of the war. Here he pulls no punches – while issues such as states’ rights and industrial expansion were bandied about, the fundamental, irreconcilable conflict between the North and South was the presence of slavery in the South and its expansion into the territories. Southern legislators were dominant in the 1850s, holding legislation such as the Homestead Act and the transcontinental railroad in check, and overturning the Missouri Compromise through the Dred Scott decision.
Bearing the Cross
Story: When Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a segregated bus, Montgomery, Alabama’s civil rights community settles on a young pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr. as its main spokesman and leader. The lengthy boycott eventually pushes King to national prominence. King and other activists formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to promote nonviolent protest against segregation. While protests in Birmingham and Selma helped motivate reluctant politicians to pass important legislation, and the 1963 march on Washington produced one of the twentieth century’s most famous speeches, SCLC was almost always underfunded and understaffed, swept along by events as much as it initiated action. Caught between politicians who wanted to move more slowly and radical activists who felt he wasn’t moving nearly fast enough, King pursued a breakneck schedule of speaking engagements, meetings, and protests while the FBI sought to use his private life and friendships with suspected Communists to turn the country against him. Even as the Vietnam War distracted the country from the civil rights movement, King worked to call attention to the economic and social inequities inherent in American society, until an assassin’s bullet ended his life.
Review: David J. Garrow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography is a fascinating read for those who might know only the most basic details of the civil rights movement. I myself was often struck by how the movement often asked for relatively small concessions, which communities would resist with seeming disproportionate force. During the initial Montgomery bus boycott, for example, King and the rest of the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) were not asking for an end to bus segregation – they merely asked that blacks and whites be segregated in such a way that blacks would not have to give up their seats or stand while seats reserved for whites went unused. The bus company itself, damaged by the boycott, was more than willing to go along with this compromise, but it took a year before the local government would make any concessions. (Thus the boycott provides an early example not only of how economic interests could put pressure on political centers of power, but on how long it might take that pressure to work.) While looking back, such resistance appears hopelessly misguided, in truth it was also a boon for the civil rights movement. Garrow describes a number of incidents like SCLC’s failed protests in Albany, Georgia, where the local law enforcement showed restraint, allowed blacks to march, and never allowed the galvanizing moment that would motivate blacks and whites against segregation to occur.
Mickey Mouse History
Story: A collection of essays that explore how museums, theme parks, and other cultural institutions preserve and sometimes distort the past, and what can be done to give citizens a more sophisticated understanding of history.
Review: That the rich and powerful in America have dictated the interpretation and portrayal of American history, particularly in popular institutions, probably shouldn’t come as a surprise. Still, there’s something shocking about the vividness with which Mike Wallace (a history professor, not the guy from 60 Minutes) discusses the issue in “Mickey Mouse History.” Whether it’s the original, slave-free version of restored colonial Williamsburg or the corporate-designed exhibits at Disneyland and EPCOT, the depictions of America’s past that have been most heavily marketed to the American public are free of almost any real historical context, or any inkling that there is debate over the positive and negative effects of various events of the past. The strength of this book, other than its detail, is that it takes conclusions others have reached – such as those about Americans’ connection to their own pasts or about the need to commemorate the lives of “average” Americans, minorities and women – and marries them to a need for historical rigor and standards. Wallace makes clear that the past should not be sanitized or exaggerated for any purpose, no matter how noble. And he makes clear how dangerous distortions of the past can be, particularly in chapters that discuss Ronald Reagan’s or Newt Gingrich’s…shall we say, passing acquaintance with history as it happened as opposed to how they wish it had happened.
America (The Book)
Story: The crew at The Daily Show turn their attention from fake news to fake education with “America (The Book),” a satirical look at American government structured as a civics textbook. The presence of actual facts within its pages is purely by accident, but the book will certainly make you laugh – if it doesn’t make you cry first.
Review: Jon Stewart has said in several interviews that one of The Daily Show’s biggest targets is hypocrisy, and that is certainly true of “America (The Book)”. Most mentions of the Declaration of Independence or the founding ideals of the country are accompanied by a parenthetical comment or footnote reminding the reader that at the time, “all men are created equal” meant “all white male property-owners are created equal.” A page of mock campaign buttons includes one with the slogan “My 5 slaves cast their 3 votes for…” There’s a fair amount of intelligent wordplay humor here – the table of contents identifies a section on foreign geography with the tagline “Denial: It’s not just a psychological defense mechanism.” But what often comes through is a certain amount of rage at the way America’s leaders and citizens have fallen short of its ideals.
The Book of Ratings
Story: In this collection of columns from the now-defunct Brunching Shuttlecocks, Sjoberg picks around five members of a given group, and then spends a paragraph making witty comments in praise or denigration of said items.
Review: The Ratings were my favorite recurring Brunching feature, and I’m very happy to see they now have their very own website. Sjoberg has a very smart sense of humor, and could probably teach Dennis Miller a thing or five about blending pop culture references with obscure facts to create humorous non sequiturs on seemingly inconsequential topics. Sometimes Sjoberg specifically targets pop culture phenomena – hence the ratings for Star Wars villains, Super Friends, classic video games, and so on – while other times he focuses on everyday items, cultural oddities, or longstanding pillars of our religious and social traditions. (You’ll find the ratings of the plagues of Egypt, for example, hysterical or blasphemous. I lean strongly to the former.)
Dave Barry’s Bad Habits
Story: Dave Barry collects some of his newspaper columns to form a “100% Fact Free Book.”
Review: In a way, “Dave Barry’s Bad Habits” is the reason my own website exists. When I read it in 1989, my career ambition began to shift toward journalism, and while like many other plans that one has since been relegated to the scrap heap, the skills and interests I developed while pursuing it have been funneled into Not News. So clearly I think this is a fine book. While it probably won’t cause you to go home and rethink your life, you should get a lot of chuckles and a few belly laughs out of the book.
Doctor Who: The Dying Days
Story: Near the end of the 20th century, Bernice visits the Doctor’s house on Allen Road, a residence he maintains in seclusion on Earth, where they have arranged to meet. But things have changed for the Doctor in the intervening months/years – he has regenerated. After convincing Benny that he is the same Time Lord she once knew, sinister events literally land on top of them as a man – whom the government has declared to be a dangerously unstable fugitive – escapes on the eve of a British manned landing on Mars. (Presumably this story takes place in the same alternate history in which Britain landed on Mars in 1970 in the Pertwee story The Ambassadors Of Death.) But the mission goes very wrong – the astronauts stumble into the burial crypts of the Martian natives, whom the Doctor knows as the Ice Warriors. Immediately an Ice Warrior invasion seizes Britain, deposing the monarchy and establishing a Martian foothold on Earth. The Doctor, with his centuries of experience with both the Ice Warriors and despotic would-be rulers such as the man who claims a place as the Martian liaison to the British people, tries to intervene, finding help in unlikely places. The aging Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and his young successor Bambera (a fondly remembered character from the 1989 Battlefield episode) have gone underground, preparing to wage a guerilla war on the Ice Warriors (and the greedy humans who are trying to achieve their own status by becoming the aliens’ collaborators), and Benny, who has a great deal of experience with the Ice Warriors herself.
Review: This is the first and only eighth Doctor novel published by Virgin Books prior to surrendering the Doctor Who license to BBC Books in the summer of 1997. One thing to consider when judging any eighth Doctor book is that there were a mere 90 minutes of Paul McGann’s performance as the revitalized Time Lord from which to extrapolate the entirety of the character. It’s been interesting to see how different authors (and their editors) have interpreted that performance and that character. For the most part, “The Dying Days” does it rather well.
Doctor Who: Lungbarrow
Story: The Doctor returns to his homeworld of Gallifrey. But by the worst luck of the draw, the TARDIS has brought him to the forgotten and buried, but not abandoned, House of Lungbarrow – the ancestral home of the Doctor’s Time Lord family, most of whom are trapped there, doomed to spend their remaining regenerations trying to eke out a barren existence until they finally die.
Review: This penultimate entry in the New Adventures series of original Doctor Who novels marks the final literary appearance – well, sort of – of the seventh incarnation of the Doctor (as played on TV and briefly in the 1996 movie by Sylvester McCoy). It’s a long-awaited and legendary storyline, which was briefly considered for inclusion in the final year of Doctor Who’s life as a BBC television series which evolved (appropriately enough) into the broadcast episode Ghost Light.
Doctor Who: GodEngine
Story: 2157 AD, planet Earth. To a Doctor Who fan, this means only one thing…the Dalek Invasion of Earth. But thanks to Craig Hinton, there’s now more. Due to a “sub-space infarction,” which coincidentally occurs at the same time as a “vortex rupture” (this is all tecno-babble deluxe!), the TARDIS gets “destroyed.” The Doctor, along with Roz and Chris, jump into the temporal life boats just in time to escape this cataclysm, only to be separated and spread across our Solar System. The Doctor and Roz end up on Mars, and they’re not alone. A spaceship crashes near to where they arrive, and on board they find a group of random travellers all with seemingly seperate agendas. As night begins to fall, the Doctor and Roz, along with the survivors of the doomed ship, head towards an entrance to the extensive underground cave system built thousands of years ago by the indigenous Martians. Little do they know, they are being followed. Chris, seperated from his crewmates, arrives in a subterranean research facility 50 kilometers beneath the surface of Pluto’s moon Charon. Out here in the farthest reaches of the Solar System are the sole surviving members of a doomed subspace tunnel research station. They are destined to be destroyed by the Daleks, or “invaders,” as they are frequently called…
Review: I enjoyed this book, but boy, is it ever chockablock with continuity! Daleks and Ice Warriors and Sutekh. Oh my! But it has been woven together quite well.
Doctor Who: Happy Endings
Story: The Doctor is once again manipulating events, plotting and planning – but this time, he’s planning Bernice Summerfield’s wedding. Friends and acquaintances – ranging from Ace to Kadiatu to the Brigadier himself – are gathering in the quaint Earth village of Cheldon Bonniface. But other forces are at work here – evil, hatred, and perhaps just enough lust to derail Bernice’s wedding before she’s even had a chance to walk down the aisle. Can singing Silurians salvage the situation? Can Jason keep it in his pants – at least until after his wedding? Will the Timewyrm unleash her mighty powers again…upon her new boyfriend, Chris Cwej? And will the Brigadier survive one final encounter with the Master?
Review: This pleasant little novel by Paul Cornell, surely the most gifted of the NA authors, breaks with the “seasons” theme utilized in his four previous books and plays Benny’s wedding for the stand-alone event that it has to be. Even if you haven’t read the previous book (and I haven’t), Jason Kane comes across as an interesting and well-rounded character – and Cornell wisely makes use of the fact that Jason had only appeared in the previous novel to keep the reader guessing about whether or not Jason and Benny are headed for wedded bliss, or the usual mayhem that seems to consume the lives of everyone in the Doctor’s immediate vicinity.
Doctor Who: Death and Diplomacy
Story: The planet Moriel is of great tactical interest to three races: The Czahns, the Saloi, and the Dakharri. An impromptu summit of these three great empires has been called by the Hollow Gods in order to apparently settle the sabre rattling over this seemingly important planet. The Doctor has been designated as the mediator of this meeting and, even though he doesn’t know how he got there, or the whereabouts of his companions, he seems in total control of the situation.
Bernice, who has been snatched from the safety of the TARDIS, has ended up on some backwater gambling spaceport world, and inadvertantly gets mixed up with a displaced human named Jason Kane. All forms of hijinks and adventures befall these two, leading them right into the proverbial sack with each other. This leads to more hijinks, which I will spare all of you the pain of reading about. Roz and Chris, also seperated from the Doctor, have wound up on the military, slave-driven world of the Czahns. Being as clever as they are, they join up with the Soldier Caste (by beating two of them up and stealing their uniforms…) only to find themselves shipped out on the next troop transport on the way to invade the poor old world of Moriel.
Review: So, I know what you are asking. What do the desires of these Hollow Gods have to do with all this typical weirdness? And what stake does Jason Kane’s “pet” have in the summit meeting on Moriel? Most of all, why is the Doctor wearing his old brown coat? I can tell you that 2 of these 3 questions are answered. Are the answers sufficient? You be the judge.
Doctor Who: Sleepy
Story: So, this time, our time traveling gang of sleuths in their mystery machine land on a frontier world in the far future. The settlers have contracted a virus which gives them all manner of psychic powers. You know…telekenesis, pyro-kinesis, telepathy, and I believe one of them can predict fashion trends a decade in advance. And so, the Doctor manages to catch this “disease,” but after some work, he is cured. The rest of the population, however, is not so lucky. Not only do they aquire these “powers” (I wish I had the power of mind-over-sci-fi-clichè) but they also have a compelling drive to run into the forest. They have this voice in their heads telling them to do… nobody’s sure what, exactly.
Review: Warning: the contents of this book DO NOT cause drowsiness.
Doctor Who: Warchild
Story: 15 years after the events of “Warlock”, all around the world, there are seemingly telekenetic/telepathic children being spied on by some mysterious Agency who are out to use these kids for, of course, evil and nefarious schemes of World conquest / domination / power / destruction / control, etc. The Doctor, being the sly chess player that he is, has figured everything out ahead of time, and has placed his operatives in key positions to allow events to come to a well-orchestrated conclusion.
Review: This book is third in a trilogy of books about much the same characters. “Cat’s Cradle: Warhead”, “Warlock”, and “Warchild” being the third. The first one I can’t remember due to adolescence-induced short term memory loss. The second book was good (you can read my review here). And this final book was, for lack of a better word, good. I do have to say, it’s not very Who-ish. The events in this story could happen just as well without the Doctor & company, but the added bonus of their presence is much appreciated.
Doctor Who: Just War
Story: One of the many reasons the Time Lords have a strict non-intervention policy is that by interacting with primitive cultures, you run the risk of messing with their natural evolution. Now, when the Doctor interferes, we usually don’t see the effects of his visits after the 4 or 6 episodes, and for the most part, he does enough good that we figure everything is going to be okay. But what if an innocent slip of the tongue could affect the outcome of World War II?
The Germans have a secret weapon. A weapon so cunning that not only could you brush your teeth with it, but it could single handedly win the war for their side. But what is it? The Doctor has dispatched his crack time travel team to investigate! Roz has no idea what this weapon is. Bernice isn’t really sure why she was sent where she was sent, or, for that matter, what to be looking for. Chris thinks the secret weapon is a flying saucer. And the Doctor? He, for once, has no idea what is happening. The only clues they have are, a scientist named Emil Hartung has designed some type of super weapon that will allow the Germans to win WWII.
Review: The whole way through this book you are anticipating aliens, or spaceships, or that Hartung is the Master. But instead you get air raids, secret bases, and SS officers. It is a refreshing change from the norm, and Lance Parkin has expertly blended the TARDIS crew into an historic setting. After the abysmal “Downtime”, it was so satisfying to read a good Who book again.
Doctor Who: Shakedown
Story: In “Lords Of The Storm”, a Rutan spy infiltrated the Sontaran ranks. He became aware of the fact that the Sontarans had cracked the Rutan Military codebank and had retrieved information that could turn the tides of the war so much in the Sontarans favor, that the Rutans could be utterly defeated. After a book-long chase, the Rutan spy managed to escape with its life and began its long trek back to the Rutan homeworld in order to warn the Host of the imminent Sontaran attack. Unfortunately, this Rutan spy became trapped in a decompressed spacecraft, thereby freezing it into a dormant state and delaying the delivery of this information, giving the Sontarans time to bring their plans closer to completion.
The Doctor, who, of course, knows about this spy from his encounters with it on Rudra, has heard of a number of strange deaths on various planets. These deaths match with the way a Rutan shapeshifts into another form, by probing into the bodily depths of the creature to be copied, gleaning all information needed to make an almost-perfect duplicate. This is a messy business, and it leaves a severely mutilated corpse as a side effect of the transmogrification. The Doctor sends in his companions, and ex-Adjudicators, Roz and Chris to find this Rutan and help it get back to its homeworld. The Doctor doesn’t know exactly what the great “secret” information is, but by allowing the Rutan to complete its mission, the war will continue, and the Universe will remain as it is. If the Rutans are defeated totally, the Sontarans, knowing only war, will inevitably set their sights on the rest of the Galaxy. By aiding the Rutan, the Doctor will keep both races busy with each other, and out of everyone elses’ hair (or scales, or shells, or whatever).
Review: I really could go on, but the Godfather of Doctor Who, Terrance Dicks, does such a great job of conveying this story to the reader that I’m just lessening his great prose by condensing it. Now, although this book is a broadend version of the video Shakedown: Return Of The Sontarans, only a small portion of this book is taken up with the events in the video.
Doctor Who: The Also People
Story: The Doctor has taken his companions here for a break after the events in “Head Games”, finding the place to be very relaxing, and the people to be very neighborly. Now, when I say “people,” I don’t just mean humans. There are humanoids who resemble regular “people,” but there are also robots who are self aware that call themselves people. These robots come in all shapes and sizes, from small marble sized, to giant ship sized, but they don’t look like human people, as the human people find it unnerving talking to a robot “person” who looks like a human person. In this world, tables are robots, but only sometimes “people.” There is a controlling influence inside this sphere – a giant computer, who is a “person,” that is known as “God.” It isn’t called God because it is omnipitant, it’s merely a term of endearment used by the locals. God creates the weather, manages the night and day cycles, and watches over the goings on inside the sphere. But, unlike the real God, he doesn’t see and know all. You see, there has been a murder, and it is a robot “person” who is the victim. God is not sure how it happened, so the Doctor takes charge of the investigation.
Review: Now, this was not the best book in the world. Lately my standards have gone way up, thanks to the brilliant “Millennial Rites”. I’m not in favor of an author messing about with Doctor Who mythos, or adding ridiculous characteristics to the Time Lord civilization, unless, of course, it is done properly. Here, it is not.
Doctor Who: Head Games
Story: Demons. We all have them. Those skeletons we keep in our closets. Our little vices we con ourselves into believing are not bad for us. We all do things that, even if they appear to be rotten, are for the greater good. The seventh incarnation of the Doctor has demons. One in particular. One which he doesn’t have to look too far inside himself to find: The Valeyard. Does his chess-playing with his companions as pawns draw him nearer to becoming the dark version of himself? Or did his last regeneration prevent this from ever taking place? This adventure has him playing God once again. However, it is no longer out of a sense of fair play. It is because his constant meddling has screwed up the fabric of time so badly, that it is now out of obligation…
Review: The Doctor is haunted by the ghost of his former self, who taunts him, asking for his life back. Asking him why he wanted to live so badly that he would kill his sixth incarnation, in a selfish act, just to exist. Did he force his former self to hit his head on the console upon landing on Lakertya, causing him to regenerate? Did he really want to live that badly that he could sacrifice his former self in order to exist? Or, was it for the greater good as well?
Doctor Who: Toy Soldiers
Story: There is a planet where War has raged for 1400 years. Where the opposing forces no longer have any concept of how a War ends, how the war began, or even what the word “peace” means. No, it’s not Earth, but most of the unwilling combatants are not only from Earth, but are children. These unsuspecting soldiers are being kidnapped from early in the 20th century, from an alredy War-ravaged europe. The vehicle used to transport the children across Space looks like nothing more than a simple, cuddly teddy bear. The creatures who are employed to lure these poor children to battle are not hideous insectoids, or amorphous blobs, but they too resemble large, human sized teddy bears.
The disappearing children have not gone unnoticed. Of course their parents are aware their children have gone missing, but so is the Doctor. He and Bernice are in 1920s England, and have gone native in order to blend in with the populace. Bernice has got herself a job in the very factory where these transmat teddy bears are packaged and sent out. It is not a true factory, however, as there is no manufacturing equipment. The already-made bears arrive in the morning by lorry, are packed for shipping, then sent out that night. Millions of them have been sent out, each of them a remote transmat device, and each in the hands of a child. Millions of children, which means millions of new recruits…
Review: Is today the day the teddy bears have their picnic? Thankfully, all these questions are answered. And even more thankfully, they don’t get answered in a book called “Invasion Of The Bear-People” by Gary Russell! But seriously…this was another in a series (though not in a row) of fine Doctor Who books. I cannot begin to describe how nice it is to read a book that not only is supposed to fit in a genre, but actually does fit!
Doctor Who: Zamper
Story: In a pocket-dimension some time in the future is the planet Zamper. For hundreds of years it has been flawlessly and expertly run by the mysterious Management as an extremely profitable ship-building enterprise. Zamper will supply any race of creature, with enough money, battleships of superior design, which will outlast and outblast all other ships in the Galaxy. These ships are much sought after, as they have the ability to tip the balance of any war to the owners’ favor. There are only two problems on this world: The Management is not what he appears to be, and he…it…is apparently dying. And the Doctor has arrived. The latest customers of Zamper’s wares are the Chelonians, who have sent two representatives to purchase a battleship. The sparsely employed planet has done everything to make their customers comfortable, although a couple of badly timed power failures have bruised the unmarred reputation of this planet and has lowered the Chelonians’ confidence in humans even more. The Doctor, with his party of three, arrive on Zamper quite by accident (of course), and on a planet that has never had unannounced visitors, this has raised some concern…
Review: That is all I am going to reveal about this book. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and periodically felt as if I was reading a novelisation. It is one of those stories which, given a BBC budget, could’ve worked a treat on the small screen. There are very few characters (less actors to pay) and the true enemy protagonist(s) are kept secret until very near the end. I got a huge kick out of the Chelonians’ interactions with each other, and with the humans (or “Parasites” as they call us). Apparently we smell like sour milk and are not very smart, in comparison to giant turtles anyway.
Doctor Who: Sky Pirates!
Story: In a dark region of what is not our Universe, sits a creature that, thanks to the Time Lords, never existed. Sitting in the heart of a Sun, it watches over millions of other creatures who never existed, infiltrating their minds and actions, out of sheer boredom.
Somewhere, an ancient Time-weapon is detonated, causing the TARDIS to be torn from the “real” Universe, and be dragged into this separate, quite silly place, where the “thing inside,” as it is called, is waiting. Separated from the TARDIS, Bernice and the Doctor are captured by pirates, who are influenced into searching for the legendary Eyes of Schirron. These four “eyes” apparently do something special when they are brought together and taken to a certain special place – according to the legends, that is. One is hidden on each of the four planets in the system, and are guarded by ingenious traps of sinister design!
Review: This whole book is filled with sad puns, jokes that are not funny, long-winded descriptions of bodily functions, and a writing style that makes Douglas Adams look like a Poet Laureate. Writing a Sci-fi book is one thing, but writing a funny Sci-fi book does not always work. In this case, the characters we know (the Doctor, etc…) suffer horribly at the hands of this author, and the characters created by the author seem to have motives which defy all logic.
Doctor Who: Original Sin
Story: In the 30th Century, the many tentacled arms of Earth’s Empire stretch across most of the Galaxy. Both the willing and unwilling cultures are incorporated into the ever growing web of assimilation. At the center of this web sits Earth itself, like a hungry arachnid, slowly devouring all who dare enter her parlour. The new spaceport cities float on massive anti-gravity devices over the ruins of old Earth. All manner of races must come through these overcities on their way on or off the planet. But, just as it is today, so it is 1000 years from now – Foreigners are treated poorly, disliked, and mistrusted, for no better reason than they are not Human.
Somewhere in Spaceport Overcity Five, a madman is releasing a dangerous form of radiation which is driving people to kill and not remember their attacks afterwards. This man has lived for over 1000 years, growing increasingly insane in his thirst for revenge on the man who had caused him pain – who thwarted his his plans for conquest so many years ago. He wants his revenge on the Doctor, and his desire to own the TARDIS clouds his mind with every waking moment…
Review: This was a fun book to read. After the spectacular exploits in the previous New Adventure “Human Nature”, (which, in short, I give a 9 out of 10) I didn’t expect to get another good one so soon. The dim view of humanity is not quite the Starfleet model, yet it doesn’t surprise me to see xenophobia as the main behavioral trait on Earth in the 30th Century. I mean, after all, isn’t that what it is like now? Wasn’t it like that 1000 years ago? The more things change…