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| What: | The Ice Warriors (BBC classic series DVDs/Blu-rays) |
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| By: | Trevor Smith, Nottingham, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Tuesday 3 September 2013 |
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| Rating: |   8 |
And so at last the Doctor's first meeting with the Martian warriors is out on DVD & it's been worth the wait.
The story is excellent. A well crafted "base under siege" story that manages to engage for all 6 episodes though I've all ways thought it would have been better as a 4 parter.
The cast are excellent and really believable.
The real stars are the Ice Warriors themselves, a great example of the BBC creating brilliance on shoe string.
Some people have been less than pleased with the animated episodes 1 & 2. While they aren't up to the quality of The Invasion or Reign of Terror they were okay as far as I was concerned.
The DVD also has an excellent set of bonus features.
Reccomended.
| What: | Dark Horizons (BBC prestige novels) |
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| By: | Trevor Smith, Nottingham, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Monday 2 September 2013 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
An okay sort of book that for me took to long to get going and just never really got the 11th Doctor at all.
| What: | Dying in the Sun (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | Chris Arnold, Bundaberg, Australia |
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| Date: | Wednesday 28 August 2013 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
The first two 'reels' of this novel grabbed my attention greatly. A refreshing setting and interesting characters. The movie Hollywood style lends the text an almost noire feel and I quite liked Chate as a character. Unfortunately once the alien threat was revealed I found it hard to warm to where the novel was taking me. The cult sections lacked interest for me but I enjoyed the attention to detail given to the regulars. A strong novel overall with much to enjoy.
| What: | Heroes of Sontar (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 23 August 2013 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
"Heroes of Sontar" is the Doctor Who take on Dad's Army, with a bunch of hapless Sontarans as the fighting fools. To the extent that this is the principal idea of the story, it works quite well. The Doctor and crew arrive on a planet of peace and love only to find that everyone is dead and the only things left are the ruins and some pinkish (or was it orange?) moss covering it all. Then, the Sontarans arrive, whose mission, unknown to them, is simply to die and thus break a "curse" that has led to multiple Sontaran defeats. Of course, nothing is quite as simple as that.
The whole is indeed quite amusing. There are many good lines, and Peter Davison has excellent comic timing. Because this one is played for laughs much of the time, the companions get simplified into their respective types. Turlough is ever so cowardly, Nyssa ever so helpless, and Tegan ever so bossy. In fact, the most amusing moments come from Tegan, either through sarcastic putdowns of Sontarans or bossing around Sontarans.
Like other Alan Barnes scripts, this story's detriments mainly come from stretching a premise too far and not having a clear and plausible rationale for the events. In typical Barnes fashion, there is much about beings melding with each other; the moss is melding into Nyssa and the phantom swordsmen are a gestalt entity who become powerful by absorbing other beings and merging together. These same sorts of ideas are central to "The Next Life," another Barnes script. Frankly, the swordsmen do not make much sense as a concept. What they are, what they do, and why they do it remain rather hazy. If they want to grow stronger by absorbing Sontarans, they seem to be going about it in an overly complicated manner with low chance of success.
So, high marks for comedy; just passing marks on rationality.
I will admit that when I tried to watch The Ice Warriors on TV I didn't like it and was so bored by the plot that I fell asleep in the middle. That said, in book format I liked it much better. Brian Hayles' writing has a lot of flourish even though he is writing for children, it is very evocative. A must-read for fans of the big green Martians.
| What: | The Myth Makers (Target novelisations) |
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| By: | Ellie Acheson, Charlotte, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 16 August 2013 |
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| Rating: | 9 |
To adapt this entirely missing 60s story Donald Cotton went with an unconventional approach. The book is narrated in first person by none other than Homer himself, who turns out to have been personally involved in the events of the Trojan War. If you know the story of the Aeneid you will love this parody of it. More than once I laughed out loud while reading this.
My only real criticism is the characterization of Vicki, she is continually dismissed and called stupid and silly. I have a soft spot for her as a companion and think she was much better than many people give her credit for but here she is just as flighty and dumb as popular fan opinion would lead you to believe.
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 | Excellent expansion of a good story |
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| What: | The Rescue (Target novelisations) |
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| By: | Ellie Acheson, Charlotte, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 16 August 2013 |
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| Rating: | 9 |
I have always thought The Rescue was an underrated little serial. Because it's only 2 episodes long, Ian Marter has to expand it significantly in order to fit the length of a Target book. This is done very well with added sequences adding flavor and answering many of the questions you might have had when you watched the original story. If you liked this story on TV you will like it even more in book form.
| What: | Fear of the Dark (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | Ellie Acheson, Charlotte, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 16 August 2013 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
The Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, and Tegan get stuck in a claustrophobic horror story with a disembodied terror from the dawn of time chasing after them. Don't get too attached to the well-characterized secondary cast or you'll be quite upset by their grisly deaths. But if you want to read a DW horror story, check this book out.
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| Great characterization and humor! |
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| What: | The Empire of Glass (Missing Adventures novels) |
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| By: | Ellie Acheson, Charlotte, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 16 August 2013 |
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| Rating: | 10 |
A perfect blend of the 1st Doctor era with later Who without making either of them feel out of place, this book is just fun from start to finish. Vicki and Steven both feel like the people they were on screen while simultaneously having more depth and backstory explored in their characters. For Vicki fans, this is a great one, as I think it has the best characterization of her from any of the books she appeared in. History nerds like me will love the setting of Venice in the 1600s and the appearances of various historical figures. And all the humor is great. I really have no complaints about this book!
Also if you like the Bernice Summerfield stories you may want to check this book out for its having an appearance of a younger Braxiatel.
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| Strong story with lots of nostalgia |
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| What: | Shroud of Sorrow (BBC New Series Adventures novels) |
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| By: | Ellie Acheson, Charlotte, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 16 August 2013 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Clara had good characterization considering that I think this was written before she would have been seen on TV at all. This is a good book for long-time fans who would like to read the Eleventh Doctor going on an adventure with a lot of callbacks and references to Classic Who. The monster is memorable and frightening -- it would have looked great on television -- but I didn't really like the ending. (It involves a world full of clowns and comes out of nowhere. I was a bit baffled.)
| What: | The Dalek Generation (BBC New Series Adventures novels) |
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| By: | Ellie Acheson, Charlotte, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 16 August 2013 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Nick Briggs' first foray into novel writing was quite fun. If you like seeing Daleks acting unusual the central mystery of this book -- the Daleks appear to be benevolent caretakers of paradise planets! -- will interest you. The Doctor was well-characterized but the ending was a bit of a cop-out. A very quick read good for a day of diversion but it won't be the kind of book that sticks with you when you're done.
| What: | Chicks Unravel Time (Miscellaneous factual books) |
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| By: | Ellie Acheson, Charlotte, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 16 August 2013 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
A really excellent essay compilation that examines each season/series of Doctor Who. Sometimes the essays are an exploration of if the stories are feminist but not every essay is like that. For instance, season 5 examined the use of sound in Who and season 2 addressed the First Doctor's character growth. With the exception of one or two that I didn't like (Diana Gabaldon's essay on season 6 didn't seem to have much of a point other than "I think Jamie is hot" and "Women like Doctor Who because of gender essentialism or something") these were mostly very good. I didn't read every single piece because I haven't got enough knowledge of every season yet but I certainly enjoyed the 60% or so of the book that I did read.
One other minor quibble is that the table of contents gave titles of the essays but not which season they corresponded to, and they were not arranged in season order, so if you open it like "I want to read about season 26 first!" you'll have to flip through the whole book to look for it. That was annoying.
| What: | Spearhead from Space (BBC classic series DVDs/Blu-rays) |
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| By: | Trevor Smith, Nottingham, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Tuesday 23 July 2013 |
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| Rating: | 10 |
And so the only classic story on film gets the HD upscale it deserves.
I'm sure your all familiar with the story.
This is a brilliant introduction to the 3rd Doctor via the genius of Robert Holmes's writing.
The Autons, the Brig & Liz Shaw all make up a cracking tale.
The HD quality film is just staggeringly good, an improvement on even the 2010 re-release.
It looks as though it could have been made yesterday instead of 1970.
It's packaged with 2 new documentaries one on Jon Pertwee the other on Caroline John.
Both are excellent.
It should be noted that none of the extras from the 2010 re-release are on this documentary.
Highly reccomended.
| What: | The Final Sanction (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | Trevor Smith, Nottingham, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Monday 22 July 2013 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
This is an okay sort of story. Not terrible but not great either. The story never really griped me enough & felt more like a Star Trek story than Dr Who. This TARDIS team are my favourite team but for me it never really feels like the Doctor, Zoe & Jamie.
| What: | Verdigris (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Monday 22 July 2013 |
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| Rating: | 2 |
This book seems to be an attempted parody of The Tomorrow People, here called The Children of Destiny. Instead, it just rambles along without rhyme or reason from one stupid incident to the next. It shifts point of view for no clear reason, and the author indulges far too many throw-away ideas as though they were inspired acts of genius. The basic idea is that a low-rent Time Lord, the loudly drunk Iris Wyldthyme, has concocted a plot to rescue Doctor 3 from his exile on Earth, but has for a long time completely forgotten all about it. This rescue involved magic, of all things, but Green magic, whatever that is, and not Black or White magic. This Green magic is the strange being Verdigris, who takes Iris's instructions and then concocts a preposterous plan involving duping an alien race into transporting themselves dressed as characters from historical fiction onto Earth, creating robotic killer sheep, duping a bunch of teenagers into believing they have super powers and are working for the galactic federation, and brainwashing UNIT members into believing they are running a convenience store. Throughout the book, the Doctor is pretty much useless. In addition, somehow this Verdigris creature has come to be employed by the Master, though where or when they met and what hold the Master has over the creature is never spelled out. None of it gets explained to any degree of credibility and little of it gets explained at all. Magrs should know, and probably does, that "magic" explains nothing and is simply his get out of jail free card so he can dodge his obligation of making sense.
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| In space, no one can hear you grumble. |
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| What: | Ten Little Aliens (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | Andrew Stephen Wilkinson, Bristol, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Saturday 20 July 2013 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Publisher's summary: Deep in the heart of a hollowed-out moon the First Doctor finds a chilling secret: ten alien corpses, frozen in time at the moment of their death. They are the empire's most wanted terrorists, and their discovery could end a war devastating the galaxy. But is the same force that killed them still lurking in the dark? And what are its plans for the people of Earth?
Ten Little Aliens is the first in a series of reprints of old Doctor Who books, done to commemorate Doctor Who's 50th Anniversary. Now if you've already read these books then there really is no point in you getting them, as aside from the new author's introduction, there is nothing new in these. But for someone like me, who completely missed out on the entire BBC books range for Doctor Who, this is a really useful chance for me to read some of these now long out-of-print books, and Ten Little Aliens is one of them that I very much enjoyed.
At first I thought it was odd to choose the First Doctor for this type of book, seemingly with the style and type of the story being completely out of place with this Doctor's era. At the time of William Hartnell being the Doctor, the stories were generally meant to be for families, with the Doctor being the leading "grandfather" figure to guide the stories through for the children. The stories of this period are usually rather charming, quirky and alot of the time crap. They are about flying butterfly people or meeting Richard the Lionheart or becoming really small and meeting giant ants. On the whole, gritty space thrillers in the style of Starship Troopers or Alien aren't at all common in this period. It would seem like this would be better suited to any post-Troughton Doctor really.
But despite that, Cole still pulls it off. Having Ben as the companion does help, as he's the energetic young man needed for a story like this. And really it works fine with the 1st Doctor and this is largely down to how well Cole writes for him. He nails all the mannerisms of Hartnell's Doctor perfectly, and every time he utters a little "Hmm", or a "Dear, dear" and calls people "child" and "sir", I am instantly able to hear his voice in my head, which is a credit to Cole's masterly writing.
The first words that I would use to describe this book straight from the word go would be "dark", "tough and "moody", or variations on these same words. By making the opening of the book seen through Shade's (one of the main characters) eyes is a clever way of conveying the usual exposition that is needed for futuristic books, and at the same time giving us an insight into Shade's world-view, thus making us sympathise with the character more.
It's clear right from the head-off that this book is considerably adult in tone, with Shade being shot right in front of the whole military academy as an example of the cell-replacing suits they wear. Cole manages to conjure a really very nasty image of Earth's future empire, with it being authoritarian, repressive and being almost monomanically fuelled by blind hatred of "others". They have headsets in this time, which are used by soldiers in training sessions and your thoughts are capable of being looked at and recorded for training purposes. The idea of anyone managing to read your thoughts is a horrific thought, and only gives us an insight into how we as a species presumably feel about individual's privacy by this time, adding to the bleak and repressive ideas behind Earth's first Empire.
Cole continues to present us with this vision cold, uncaring future throughout the book, and he does this partially through the supporting characters, who are nearly all dicks. Almost every character (Aside from The Doctor, Polly and Ben) are shown to be assholes. There are nearly all shown to be xenophobic, jingoistic, selfish, indifferent, bullying, reactionaries. Often Needlessly cruel to one another and indifferent to the suffering of others. One character named Frog was repeatedly raped as a child and her father slashed her face open one night when she came home late, and the other characters who tell this story merely reply that that's the thing to do to "wayward 14-year olds".
It makes you really despair sometimes, to think that one day this could just be common viewpoint amongst people. It also makes me despair to think Earth could one day very much have a bloated, grotesque empire in which there's rabid hatred for anything "non-human" and a callous indifference to other planets and the people on them. In which there's a "kill-or-be-kill attitude" in everyone's mind that makes them hostile and unfriendly as a result of it. Although another part of feels that is merely be the next logical step for humanity, judging by people's attitudes already.
Anyway, if you are squeamish, beware. This book is quite graphic. People don't just die, they get their body mangled up. The character of Frog almost get's turned into a Schirr (the villains of this piece who are seen on the original front cover of this book), with huge white bits sticking out of her body. The way she tries to deal with it is by stabbing herself repeatedly, making blood squirt out rapidly. Another character called Joiks has his arms and legs ripped from his body and then the remaining torso ripped to pieces a dumped into a massive engine. Things like that add to the bleakness of Cole's universe, as no one can even die nicely. They lived horrible lives and they have horrible deaths. Nothing can ever be peaceful or happy. And that's one of the reasons I like it so damn much.
This book is also quite experimental in nature, with a "pick your own adventure" section towards the end. It's a neat inclusion and a fun thing to actually read, and also quite impressive when you realize how complex it is, and how badly someone like me would probably have screwed it up.
However, I find the ending to be a little lacklustre. We've gone through quite a bit in this story, and seen plenty of graphic, horrific and also incredible things. And it just ends. They all just sort of joke about it and then they say goodbye. It's such an anti-climax. Nothing particularly dramatic happens, no one saves there life for the sake of the crew or anything bold like that. It's just "bye" and that's it. For a book so bleak, ending it like the end of a 1980s ThunderCats episode and have everyone laugh merrily about the adventure they just had, felt out of place. But whatever, in some ways it's calming to know things went aright in the end.
So all in all, a book I like. Dark and grim, with just enough gore in it to be readable, it's the kind of book I like.
| What: | The Unfolding Text (Miscellaneous factual books) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 11 July 2013 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Tulloch and Alvarado wrote the first book-length academic work on Doctor Who. The period it covers is 1963-82. That the first long academic study of the program is also a good study helps. This is a book written for academics, people with at least one degree in Liberal Arts. Specifically, the authors discuss the show from the perspective of media studies. The authors presume that readers are aware of the terminology and methods of media studies. The authors treat the program with respect, discussing the various factors that made the program a success at the time. They discuss production policy and methods, politics, social factors, and other external forces that helped shape the program. The book includes original interviews with some of the producers. The book also includes some literary analysis of a few key episodes. This is not a book for fans who want their egos stroked, or for getting the usual lightweight publicity information that one often finds in the slicker publications about the series. Instead, this book is for anyone who wants to make a serious investigation into how the program relates to popular culture in Great Britain and the politics of the BBC.
| What: | Who Killed Kennedy: (Miscellaneous original novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 11 July 2013 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
David Bishop has concocted a good alternate look at the first two seasons of Pertwee-era Who. The novel is written as a memoir-exposé by a journalist, James Stevens, who was involved on the periphery of various adventures from the 1970-1 period of Doctor Who. From these vague contacts, he develops an obsession with UNIT as a top-secret organization of nefarious intent that uses another top-secret organization, C19, as its enforcer. His investigations ruin his life, but lead him closer to the answer to a secret, not the nature and purpose of UNIT, but unbeknownst to him to the answer to another of his obsessions, the question of who killed JFK.
The book reads partly as reportage, partly as political thriller of the John Buchan variety (innocent man caught up in deadly secret plots), and partly as apologetic autobiography. The plot holds together well. Bishop has cleverly used actual dialogue from the broadcast series. Though the regular Who characters make mostly small, even cameo appearances, with two notable exceptions, the book is still a Who novel because UNIT and the Doctor are so central to Stevens' motivation.
The two characters from Who that are more critical to the story are the Master and Dodo. The Master is the Master and never strays from the Delgado portrayal. The inclusion of Dodo is far more problematic. Given her role in the novel, this character need not have been Dodo. Also, Bishop proceeds on the tired premise that anyone who has the slightest contact with the Doctor lives a horrible life because of it. I do not see this as a logical consequence of spending time with the Doctor. The inclusion of Dodo, plus a few other little bits, seem to me to be throwing in too many nods and winks to the fans that detract from an otherwise well plotted story.
| What: | Cobwebs (Big Finish: The Monthly Adventures) |
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| By: | Matt Saunders, Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Wednesday 10 July 2013 |
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| Rating: | 10 |
...but brilliant. Great to hear them back!
| What: | Dark Eyes (Dark Eyes audios) |
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| By: | Benjamin Embry, Kokomo, United States |
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| Date: | Tuesday 9 July 2013 |
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| Rating: | 9 |
My friends that got me into Doctor Who warned me about the Movie. Nobody seemed to like the Eighth Doctor. That meant I was going to. The first classic Who DVD I bought was the Movie. Dark Eyes was my first audio adventure. I absolutely love Paul McGann's Doctor.
This is a great adventure! It has inspired me to collect all the audio dramas I can, not just Paul's. That says al ot about his Doctor!
