Mark Michalowski

A big fan of M. Michalowski's other Doctor Who novels, I plunked down my 13 bucks and wrung my grubby palms in anticipation. I had some reservations regarding the NSA's as I had heard they were written for younger readers than the previous lines of Doctor Who novels (though this is disputed by some). If this instillation is typical - my fears were founded, and I should have resisted the book (at least until a used copy found its way to me).
Without giving too much away, the book features cute show more fuzzy otter beings that are sometimes sweet to human settlers and sometimes threatening. I'm tempted to say that is the long and short of the whole piece, but there were some interesting 'settlers under siege' moments, and a slightly more complex plot than 'sometimes otters... they don't like you so much'.
If you like your Doctor Who with a little more sci-fi substance, character and plot, save yourself the mild disappointment and head straight for Relative Dimentias (one of my favorite all-time Doctor Who novels, and written by Michalowski). show less

The last attempt at a standalone Professor Bernice Summerfield novel, The Big Hunt, was pretty unimpressive, part of that deriving from the fact that it felt like it took place to a rootless character with no history before the book.  The Tree of Life avoids that problem nicely, beginning and ending on the Braxiatel Collection, and in a way that actually sets up what's to come in the next few books.  Even beyond that, though, Bernice is better characterized then she has been in some of show more her other novels; though plot obviously dominates as it does in this type of sf novel, Michalowski keeps her lively by keeping the narration Bernice's voice, and also bringing Joseph along, who gives Bernice someone to spark against.  Obviously this is less essential in prose than in audio (which is usually the only medium where Joseph is really used), but it actually works well here, too.

The plot, which once again feature evil corporate types, isn't terribly innovative, but some cool ideas do come up in the course of its unfolding, most especially in the very well-depicted climax.  All in all, this is a decent adventure, but the Bernice novels really do pale before the audios, anthologies, and novellas, making me glad that after this, Big Finish largely abandoned the format for Bernice's continuing adventures. show less

I'm not exactly well-versed in the Doctor Who books, so perhaps it's not saying much that Shining Darkness has the best standalone adventure of the three companion novels I've read.

I do have an awful lot of experience with fanfiction though, and so I recognize it's not easy serving split interests in having to a) do well by the established characters of Doctor and Donna by nodding to their character arcs and b) create a brand new world for them to explore, populated with people for them to show more help. And as official merchanise, additionally Shining Darkness has got to also c) not break canon and d) accomplish this all in a fairly short length.

And Mark Michalowski generally does just that. There's definitely some show worthy dialogue between Donna and the Doctor (enough to remind me how much I still miss her: a lot). As usual, our heroes in short order get themselves involved in a local conflict: the locality being the Andromeda Galaxy, and the conflict is the plight of pro-mechanicals against the bigoted Cult of Shining Darkness. It's a fun and complete story, and so even if the original characters and their history aren't quite fleshed out enough for us to read the situation as more than a very broad allegory for discrimination, it's easily forgiven. Broad can still be worthy.

And so I would feel no same in recommending it to fellow fans, an enjoyable ride with laughs and thrills.

*And if you want to get at my opinion of where that five star fic is at? Message me. show less

As has been noted around the place, last Sunday was the forty-fifth anniversary of Doctor Who. Big Finish's commemoration is four one-act, 25-minute plays, each by a different author. False Gods takes the team to Howard Carter's excavation of the tomb known as KV45; Order of Simplicity sees them deal with a virus which reduces its victims' IQs to 45; Casualties of War takes us to Ace's mother and grandmother in Streatham on VE Day in 1945; and The Word Lord resolves it all in a Bad show more Wolf-style revelation. The final playlet seemed to me the strongest, playing with concepts of language as a reality of its own, and with Paul Reynolds as the eponymous villain seeming to channel David Tennant's Tenth Doctor occasionally. I enjoyed the other two historical plays, but was a bit underwhelmed by the second of the four. The same guest cast appears in the first and second plays, and a different guest cast in the third and fourth, but the characterisations (and accents) are very different, so it all works rather well. show less