Reading three Doctor Who tie-ins on the spin highlights the strengths and the weakness of this genre niche. The television programme left its educational roots a long time ago but the books repeatedly adopt a didactic tone. Here we explore the morals of zookeeping and get a heavyhanded lesson on the values of wildlife conservation. This directness might be appropriate in a children's book but the use of the I-Spy books as a framing device is unlikely to have much resonance with anyone born after 1980. The curious inconsistency of voice whereby the narration flips without apparent cause between third person and a first person Martha is distracting but generally the tone of the characters is caught well. Despite the glaring faults, the novel's plot and the light wit of much of the dialogue held my interest. ( )

Martha asks the Doctor to take her to see the last dodo, which leads them into unexpected trouble (as usual).

Freema Agyeman (who played Martha Jones on Doctor Who) is an excellent reader. The story was decent and there were some unexpected twists and turns along the way. There was an odd stylistic quirk where sometimes the story was in third person and sometimes the story was in first person with Martha speaking directly to the reader, but it was always clearly stated when it happened. Overall, I enjoyed it. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1246406...

Another solid enough Tenth Doctor novel from Rayner (I haven't checked, but she must by now be one of the most prolific of Who writers, combining books and audio). In a slightly confusing stylistic quirk, about half of the book is told by Martha Jones in the first person, while most of the rest is also from her point of view but in the third person in varying degrees of tightness. This does give us odd moments of nice characterisation like this:

‘Doctor!’ Vanni said (people do that, you know. It’s always ‘Doctor!’ Never ‘Martha!’ Same with villains. ‘Get the Doctor and the girl!’ Oh well, maybe one day it’ll be ‘Get Martha and the man!’ and he’ll know what it feels like to be the anonymous spare part. Not that I actually want to be captured by villains or anything, I should point out).

Which is more of a meditation on the companion's lot than we are used to. As usual (as I'm beginning to realise) a slightly out-of-nowhere ending, but basically a decent addition to the shelves. ( )

A nice wee run a round story. Has a bit to say on the morality of zoos. And does a nice line in Doctor and Martha characterisation.
A bit Deus Ex Machina at the end perhaps though. ( )

I really like that this book is angry (well, mildly annoyed) at the real life issues of conservation and extinction, even if some of thosee points are directly lifted from Ghost Light. It's refreshing for one of the NSAs to have something to say without being too didactic rather than just being an escapist runaround. Although yes, it's still an entertaining enough escapist runaround too. There's some nice subtle references to the old series for the long term fans and the Doctor going up against sabre toothed tigers, dinosaurs and bomb planting dodo clones is exactly the sort of thing these books should be giving us since they're beyond the scope of the telly. Loved the last chapter too, answered a question that was nagging at the back of my mind from the start.

But...

I'm not sure what the point of the first person Martha narration was - there didn't seem to be any particularly good reason for switching to first person and seemed just there to liven up what might otherwise have been a slightly dull first half although, on the plus side, Rayner nails the Doctor's character to the point her own characters are sketches in comparison. Oh, and the I Spyder and animal description just looked like pure padding to an otherwise skimpy narrative to me, yes they're largely educational but don't serve the story at all and seem a bit clunky. And I'm not sure the premise holds together if you look too closely. Not bad but not great - I still think Jac comes up with some great ideas but doesn't exploit them in the way other Who writers (such as Steve Lyons) do. ( )