http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1296994...

Like Stuart Burns, I began by expecting this book to be a derivative rejigging of Richard Connell's famous short story, 'The Most Dangerous Game', with the Doctor being pursued by trophy hunters who literally want his head, and like him I was pleased when my expectations were confounded a couple of chapters in and the narrative jumped into quite a different structure of real vs fake Doctors who might or might not know whether or not they are the real thing. Unlike Burns I didn't quite feel that the conclusion delivered on the premises, but it is decent enough. Tovey has great fun doing the villainous Sebastiene, though his Donna is a bit less confident. ( )

My book review:
http://ganimede.dreamwidth.org/16180.... ( )

The Doctor Trap is a bit of a dire book with an implausible ending. This book might be for you if you like books where the Doctor isn’t with his companion or where the characters seem somewhat (maybe very) different then their personas on Doctor Who. With that said, the book had a strong beginning and some decent character development of Sebastiene and his Planet 1. Although the pace was fairly fast paced, there were places that could have been slowed down to cover loose ends. While not entirely bad and certainly better than the novelizations of old, this book isn’t recommended. ( )

“Excitement, tension, the thrill of the chase, these were a few of his favourite things.” – The Doctor Trap, p. 187

Sebastiene is physically flawless, incredibly powerful and more than a little bit maniacal. As the ruler of Planet 1, Sebastiene has everything he could ever want, but that will never be enough. He’s taken to hunting down alien species, the more dangerous the better. For his ultimate prize, however, Sebastiene must enlist the help of the Endangered Dangerous Species Society, a group of the most ruthless hunters in the galaxy. Sebastiene wants to add the most dangerous being in the universe to his collection: the Doctor, the last of the Time Lords.

Sebastiene uses a genetic copy of the Doctor, a man named Baris, to steal the TARDIS and kidnap Donna. The doppelganger lures the Doctor to Planet 1, but it doesn’t take long for the Doctor to turn the tables on his twin. He manages to switch places with Baris, which only complicates matters. Now he has to save Donna, recover the TARDIS and keep the hunters from killing Baris. Can the Doctor escape Sebastiene’s trap or will Sebastiene find himself in a trap of the Doctor’s design?

The Doctor Trap is an action-packed story filled with twists and turns, alternating between confusing and clever. Sebastiene was an interesting villain but I felt that the story would have been stronger without the final twist; it felt rather anticlimactic compared to earlier revelations.

This is one of the first novels to feature Donna Noble as the Doctor’s companion. While they spend most of the story separated (one of my personal pet peeves with the Doctor Who novels), there are some nice moments of Doctor/Donna banter that the show’s fans came to expect during Series 4. ( )