Doctor Who: The Five Doctors

Fun fluff. Funny double vision about the story - I know that the reason the Fourth Doctor wasn't there was that Tom Baker had - a previous commitment? A contract dispute? Something - there was a reason the actor wasn't available. So the Fourth barely shows up (waaah, he's my doctor!), with in-story reasons given. And I think about it with double vision - the story reasons and the real-world reasons are both there and both true. Very Doctor Who-ish, actually! The misdirection on the traitor was a little too obvious; the Master's role is rather amusing. It's very interesting seeing more of the various Doctors and their companions - I don't know any of them well. Overall - not much to the story, but as I said, what there is is fun. ( )

This wasn't going to be a particularly easy story to pull off in a short book - and one that was a focus of a lot of attention because of the teamup hoopla. However, the author here actually did lift his game a bit - perhaps he felt this one was worth more of an effort because of that.

Anyway, the various doctors are well handled - the new boy isn't so interesting here, so to speak.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2009/11/doctor-who-five-doctors-terrance-dicks.htm... ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1060883.html#cutid8

This one is a bit of a guilty pleasure for me. It is fundamentally very nice to have the old companions back (though poor Susan is a bit underused). The Gallifreyan plotting makes very little sense, as usual, but it is tremendous fun, and one feels that Dicks was enjoying this despite the extraordinary pressure he was under to produce it. Oddly enough it is the Fifth Doctor who comes across least memorably here. ( )