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| What: | The Talons of Weng-Chiang (BBC classic series DVDs/Blu-rays) |
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| By: | simon blackwell, rotherfield, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Thursday 25 August 2011 |
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| Rating: |   6 |
dont believe the hype, its a good yarn but there are so many better ones
| What: | The Seeds of Death (BBC classic series DVDs/Blu-rays) |
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| By: | simon blackwell, rotherfield, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Thursday 25 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 4 |
far too long, zoe and the Doctor laughing their heads off in a ton of foam is the best bit
| What: | Psi-ence Fiction (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | Darek Pilař, Pardubice, Czech Republic |
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| Date: | Sunday 21 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 10 |
I never like horror movies for they boring and obvious situation, but if are horror books written at least half great good like this I certainly gonna read them. This books is brilliant in my point of view. All “supporting” characters are pretty fast likeable and you are interesting what’s gonna happen next from cover to cover. Only negative on this is, that The Doctor and Leela haven’t much room in this book and most attention is concern on University students, but that isn’t necessarily bad thing (and even dispite of that Leela is my favourite companion)
It is very good book, especially for foggy days, or autumn evenings.
| What: | Touched by an Angel (BBC New Series Adventures novels) |
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| By: | Hessel Hoekstra, Maassluis, Netherlands |
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| Date: | Saturday 20 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 10 |
Alongside Prisoner
| What: | Ghosts of India (BBC New Series Adventures novels) |
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| By: | Hessel Hoekstra, Maassluis, Netherlands |
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| Date: | Saturday 20 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 9 |
The plot of this book is quite simple, but this simplicity has quite a lot of power in the novel. The Doctor is rather annoying in this book, but all the other characters are far better. Especially Donna and Gandhi
| What: | Paradox Lost (BBC New Series Adventures novels) |
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| By: | Hessel Hoekstra, Maassluis, Netherlands |
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| Date: | Saturday 20 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 9 |
This book's plot is original and complex, while it also contains a kind of familiarity but which makes perfectly sense. Nice characters, scary creatures and a perfect setting to fit this story in.
This is one of the better books
Whilst still waiting for some plot development, this is a simple fast paced, easy going story, with the twisted humour and gags you expect from Benny and the gang.
| What: | Here There Be Monsters (The Companion Chronicles audiobooks) |
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| By: | Clive T Wright, St Lawrence, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Thursday 18 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
This starts off with a sense of mystery, wondering around a strange space ship. Introduced to a great alien and then another but soon turns into a Rambling dialog with little happening. Strangely with strong delivery from the readers this is still a good story.
The second of the Unbound series is a real winner. What if the Doctor had never been the UNIT adviser? Well, we find a discredited Lethbridge-Stewart running a pub in Hong Kong on the eve of the handover to China. The situation allows Jonathan Clements to rewrite three classic "Doctor Who" adventures: Spearhead from Space, Terror of the Autons, and Mind of Evil. The Doctor, now stranded by the Time Lords and forced to regenerate, draws the unwilling Brigadier into a story involving a crashed Chinese plane with oddly advanced technology and a missing scientist. UNIT is on the scene, but this is not the friendly UNIT of the past. Rather, this is another military arm of the British government run by an arrogant, impatient oaf played brilliantly by David Tennant. Eventually, the Master turns up, and we get a nicely handled battle of wits between him and the Doctor. David Warner is excellent as the Doctor, understated and determined, but suave and charming as well. This story reminded me of why I like "Doctor Who" in the first place.
The first of the "What if the Doctor..." series takes us back to the first Doctor. What if he had never left Gallifrey? This is an interesting enough idea on its face. Marc Platt has him down as a writer of time-travel Romances and a do-it-yourself historian. That is fine, and makes a certain degree of sense. However, Platt has typically gone off the deep end in the "which reality are we in" department. The idea is to make the story a kind of ode to imagination, which can allow us to "travel" in ways impossible otherwise. Again, that is fine and in keeping with the spirit of the thing. However, Platt has developed a needlessly complicated plot involving the Doctor's use of a machine for creating virtual reality worlds, an attempt by a dead Time Lord to gain power by taking control of the next candidate for President of the High Council, a chase with mixed up realities inside the virtual reality machine, and not the slightest bit of effort to untangle all the strands.
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 | Another Good Political Thriller |
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The third Kaldor City audio gets us more deeply into the counterplotting. That this society still runs is amazing, given the amount of assassination, brutal police tactics, and personal destruction that seems normal in it. The society is like the Italy of the Medici's and Borgia's gone into hyper-kill mode. Still, it is a thrilling ride, and the actors keep the pace up well.
| What: | Kaldor City: Death's Head (Kaldor City audios) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 18 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
The second in the Kaldor City series follows logically in spirit and plot from the first. In this one, Kaston Iago is now fully incorporated into Uvanov's system. There is plot, counterplot, intrigue up the ying-yang. For those addicted stories of political intrigue, this audio has just their fix. The only real problem has to do with the characters, not the characterizations but the characters themselves. The first Kaldor City story was a kind of introduction to the world and the characters. Now that we get to know them, there is not one who is even remotely likeable. They are all mean, corrupt, cavalier about life and death as long as it is their life and someone else's death. The audience is left with no one to feel good about winning or to feel sad about losing.
| What: | The Man in the Velvet Mask (Missing Adventures novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 18 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
This is a very strange, depressing, potentially off-putting novel, which perhaps explains its low ratings and that no one has yet written a review of it on this forum. It is something like Stephen Marley's "Managra" in that the Doctor and companion arrive in an Earth that both is and is not like one they or we know, and that runs by a peculiar logic outside the bounds of ordinary rationale. It takes place in Paris, 1804, but instead of the rule of Napoleon, France is run by the supposed son of the Marquis de Sade, an evil genius in a boy's body named Minski. The plot unfolds along a weird logic so that normal reader's expectations are constantly thwarted. Also, the novel is written in a multiple-perspective semi-stream-of-consciousness form, which means that every description is metaphorical, imbued with emotion and strange perceptions. Finally, the Doctor himself is not the usual force to be reckoned with here, but instead is feeling his oncoming regeneration, and spends most of the novel tired, withered, barely able to put one foot or one thought in front of the other.
"The Man in the Velvet Mask" is not really science fiction and almost not "Doctor Who." This is one of those strange fantasy novels, like Neil Gaiman's work or Philip Pullman's, in which the whole world is slightly askew. In a way, it resembles steampunk in that the novel has an eighteenth century with advanced technology built around the technological concepts of the time, such as automata, a video monitoring system derived from water, and airships with something like lasers. That this is not science fiction is clear because none of the technology ever really gets explained, and for most of it O'Mahony makes no effort to explain. It is, in essence, magic that looks like technology.
Still, it all works for the most part. Once one gets into the peculiar logic of this world and gets used to O'Mahony's distinctly different descriptions for things, the novel keeps matters tied together. Many characters have an emotional depth not seen in other "Doctor Who" novels precisely because O'Mahony endeavors to show how the world looks and feels to them.
The novel really deserves higher ratings.
| What: | Touched by an Angel (BBC New Series Adventures novels) |
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| By: | Nicholas Murphie, Newtown, Australia |
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| Date: | Sunday 14 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 10 |
Easily the best Matt Smith novel so far, and probably the most romantic Who novel of all.
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| Too Many Senseless Add-Ons |
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| What: | Bunker Soldiers (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Friday 12 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 5 |
"Bunker Soldiers" might have made a very good straight historical "Doctor Who." The setting of the sack of Kiev by the Mongols provides plenty of intrigue, action, and emotion all by itself. However, the setting is also a limitation. As with "The Massacre," in "Bunker Soldiers" the historical outcome is as inevitable as it is gruesome. There is no chance for our heroes to alter events or wrest some good from the situation. Kiev will be sacked and half or so of its population slaughtered. The situation presents the writer with limited opportunities. One is the fight against the inevitable. The Doctor and Steven seem to be doing this each in his own way. The Doctor's way, though, is a half-hearted attempt to change the minds of the Mongol generals, which he knows he can never do. Steven's way is just to keep hoping that in some way they make a difference. An alternative for the writer is to have our heroes trapped in a bad situation and spending most of their time trying to escape. This plot occupies more or less the first third of novel. All in all, the writer's possibilities are limited. So, Lucarotti handled the problem by bringing in a non sequitur, a complex plot involving the Doctor's having a double who is also a vicious church authority. Martin Day's non sequitur involves an alien cyborg weapon crash landed a century or so before the events, and known to only a few of the people of Kiev as their possible saving angel. The problem is that these inventions are non sequiturs. They are non-problems, needless complications that when resolved have no real bearing upon the main sequence of events. The sideshow takes more novelistic resources than the main show and thus drags down the whole theater. The ending leaves an intelligent reader wondering "what was that all about" and finding no answers.
| What: | Salvation (BBC Past Doctor novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Thursday 11 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Steve Lyons has written another excellent book. The basics are fairly straightforward. Lyons has written the backstory behind Dodo's first appearance in the TARDIS. She is running away from a confused alien who has taken over the body of man in her neighborhood and has kept her hostage for several days. Unbeknownst to her, these events are tied into a series of UFO incidents in Britain and the US. The Doctor takes Dodo to New York City, where it seems, the action is heating up. This involves a group of aliens who look like angels and gods and seemingly have the power to grant people their wishes. Things start to get out of hand when these alien-gods try to establish a cult to themselves in New York. It's a strange plot, but the novel is the most direct interrogation of something that has been on Lyons' mind, given what his other novels are about.
There are a few things to quibble about before getting to the essential work. Most of my quibbles revolve around Lyons' portrait of America. His New York is really London with different names for places. Likewise, his portrayal of the American military makes it more like the British military. General Marchant talks more like an Englishman than an American. He carries a swagger stick, which is not all that popular in the American military. Other American characters also fall into English rather than American diction, such as "keep to" rather than "stick to."
The essential novel more than makes up for these errors in rendering the setting. The issue here is religion. Lyons is not particularly concerned with questions of whether one or the other religion is "right" or "wrong." His novel is concerned with what motivates people to get religious in the first place. More generally, this becomes a matter of dedicating oneself to a concept.
The gods in the story are not gods, but aliens with weak psyches, little imagination, and tremendous power in manipulating reality and perception. They absorb the ideas of other minds and mold themselves and reality to fit these ideas. Thus, they appear to be gods because this seems to be what the people around them want. They start acting like the gods that the people want them to be. Instead of the religion molding the people, the people mold the religion. However, once a multitude of people start joining, they bring a multitude of desires and expectations. What started out as a simple message of peace to everyone becomes a confused cacophony of doctrines and pronouncements. The gods become angry and vengeful. Love turns into destruction. The whole process is a miniature enactment of the historical process of religion, or at least one interpretation of that process. The gods are really ideas made manifest. When the ideas start conflicting, so do the gods. Thus, factions are born.
Lyons writes in general about how dedication to ideals warps people's perceptions and ethics, taking their focus on where he thinks it should truly be, which is the ethics of person-to-person relations. Lyons displays the consequences of not following Immanuel Kant's dictum, that the source of ethics is in treating people as ends in themselves and not as means to ends. One has the example of General Marchant, dedicated to his idea of national security and America first every bit as much as a religious zealot is dedicated to his/her religious ideas. This drives Marchant to break all communications with his daughter. Even after they temporarily must work together, he cannot make the loving connection he ought, and turns her out of his life once again. There is the example of Steven, who is so desperate to find an idea to believe in, a cause that would in his view give meaning to his life, that he breaks away from the Doctor and even temporarily joins the new cult. Lyons shows in these examples how raising ideals above people breaks the personal connections that make life bearable. On the opposite side of this is the Dodo-Joseph story. The reader sees that Dodo's attachment to Joseph, even though he is an alien, brings him around. Through the emotional bond they share, Joseph can see how badly astray his fellow "gods" have gone. The gods, and Joseph too, are using people for their own ends, which is to give themselves identity and purpose. They cannot help themselves, and this is their danger to any intelligent species that has contact with them. Only through his connection to Dodo can Joseph see this and learn to do the right thing.
A reader can see these themes in other Lyons books, stories of the terrible consequences derived from people's giving up free will to the cause, whatever it might be. In "The Final Sanction," the loss of an entire intelligent species results from dedication to ideals and the resulting loss of ethical compass. Similarly, "The Witch Hunters" shows that the Salem witch trials were largely caused by the same impulse, that the idea one believes wholly in, whatever it is, is more important than the life of any person.
Lyons' explorations of these themes, and his technique of demonstrating them through plot rather than telling them through dialogue, is what I believe sets him apart as a writer from most the other writers of Doctor Who novels. It is what makes his books so popular and highly praised.
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| Typical Historical With A Twist |
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| What: | The Plotters (Missing Adventures novels) |
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| By: | David Layton, Los Angeles, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 10 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 7 |
Other reviewers seem to be wowed by this novel to a degree that baffles me. While the novel is entertaining and amusing, it is by no means brilliant. Gareth Roberts pretty much admits in his author's note that he is doing to late Renaissance England what "The Romans" had done to Nero's Rome. The TARDIS crew land they know not where. The Doctor splits from Ian and Barbara in a huff so that he can take Vicki off on his own little adventure. The Doctor and Vicki get caught up in court shenanigans while Ian and Barbara get swiftly plunged into danger. The specific historical event at the heart of all this is the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Of course, with the Doctor and crew around, events do not happen quite as history writes them. There is much fun to be had with a horny King, very similar to the horny Nero of "The Romans." In this case, however, we get a Shakespearean twist when Vicki must pretend to be a boy and the King gets the hots for her thinking she's a boy. There is also an over-the-top complication to the plot involving a master spy from religious cult. The novel is clever, but not deep.
| What: | Black Orchid (BBC classic series DVDs/Blu-rays) |
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| By: | Patrick Alexander, Bellevue, United States |
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| Date: | Wednesday 10 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 8 |
Looks Fantastic
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| Some nice characterization |
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Plot isn't really the high point to this book, although it is somewhat interesting. I found that how the characters were written were much more in touch with how they seem on the show, especially Ianto. One of the original characters was made, at first, to seem more important than he ended up being, which through me somewhat. Overall, this is the best of the Torchwood novels I've read so far.
| What: | Lucifer Rising (New Adventures novels) |
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| By: | Clive T Wright, St Lawrence, United Kingdom |
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| Date: | Sunday 7 August 2011 |
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| Rating: | 9 |
Lucifer Rising is a clever well thought out story, pulling Ace and the Dcotor back together, with good tensions as Ace has finally moved on an grown since her time away.
The images of strange worlds and aliens is excellent and all together a strong enjoyable read.
