The first Who novel I've read for years. This is Dr Who by numbers and aimed squarely at lifelong fans, so I found it compulsively readable and Dicks can always be relied on to write a decent story. I was moved to read this after watching the DVD of State of Decay, where the production notes mentioned that this book was set partly on the same planet. A minor quibble: this book involves a new locale and set of characters on the planet, whereas State of Decay had made clear that there was no other inhabited part of the planet. 5/5 for nostalgia's sake. ( )

Don't read this expecting any more than a self-indulgent romp through past episodes with a rather flimsy plot pretext. However, as long as you accept all that it can be quite fun. The poor 8th Doctor spends so much of his time with amnesia I'm surprised he ever knows who he is... ( )

What were BBC Books thinking getting Terrence Dicks to write the first in a new series of Eighth Doctor novels?
This is a seriously continuity heavy (and for its own sake) novel, Dicks takes the opportunity to go back through key scenes, adventures and points in the history of Doctor Who and takes pains to point it out and make continuity references.

It even double references his own work such as State of Decay (a TV series story) and Blood Harvest (a Virgin New Adventure novel), but having referenced both these in this novel he contradicts things he himself set up in Blood Harvest.

He cuts huge swathes though the 6th Doctor's trial scenes which couldn't possibly be there, and in this novel they're there for no real reason, aside from patting himself on the back for the large amount of continuity references.

He also creates Sam Jones, but does such a one dimensional job on filling in her character that she might as well not exist except as a thinly veiled vehicle to introduce a 'modern setting' into the first and last chapters.

There are two much better 'first' Eighth Doctor novels; The Dying Days by Lance Parkin and Vampire Science by Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum. ( )

Laughable. Confusing. Silly. Contrived. Hackish. You know, just like the television series. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/790383.htm...

This was the first of the BBC's series of Eighth Doctor books (the book-of-the-TV-film apparently being in a different category). I had read one of these before and was not madly impressed. Here, however, we are on comfortable ground; Terrance Dicks' record of writing more Doctor Who novels and novelisations than anyone else is unlikely to be surpassed any time soon.

Though it really ought to be called Doctor Who and the Heroic RetCons. Dicks uses the opportunity of creating a new fictional environment for the Eighth Doctor to try and iron out some of the grosser continuity problems left by both the Eighth Doctor TV film, and the Trial of a Time Lord (and also a wee bit of clearing up from The Five Doctors, which I think I must try and watch again soon). Sensibly, rather than pull all eight Doctors together (he had after all written The Five Doctors and was script editor for the programme at the time of The Three Doctors) he has the Eighth Doctor dropping in on his predecessors at various points of the programme's established timeline.

The most effective piece of writing in the book is a description of the Third Doctor chasing the Master across southern England after his escape from prison in The Sea Devils. The least convincing bit is actually the characterisation of the Eighth Doctor himself. Lance Parkin got this rather better in his Dying Days, the last of the Virgin New Adventures, the last before Peter Darvill-Evans and Rebecca Levene cruelly had the franchise removed from them; in Terrance Dicks's hands, he comes across as rather like the Third Doctor, but a little less arrogant. On a tangent, I was interested that Dicks chose to place the Fourth Doctor encounter with the Eighth in the world of his vampire story, State of Decay, and its novel sequel.

Anyway, the fun bits outnumber the embarrassing bits, just about. Certainly worth reading for a sense of where the BBC thought the Eight Doctor might lead them, and also for the heroic retconning. I still feel no desire whatever to catch up with the Trial of a Time Lord season. ( )