Trading Futures

This book is kind of "Doctor Who does James Bond"—you can get that as soon as you look at the cover, which could come out of a Bond film title sequence.  But though it has its goofy moments, and definitely owes something to the Pierce Brosnan films in particular, it's not a parody. Rather, Parkin does that thing Doctor Who does so well: crash the Doctor into the conventions of a different genre and see what happens. Parkin explore the consequences with seriousness. Well, as serious as Doctor Who ever gets, anyway.

What would a Bond villain look like in the Doctor Who world? Bond villains, when not Soviets themselves, were often trying to incite conflict between East and West for their own reasons. Parkin gives us a new Cold War in the show more twenty-first century, and then thinks of a Doctor Who way an arms dealer might trying to make money off this conflict: selling time travel. The result is a fast-paced action story, but one firmly in the Doctor Who realm. Especially early on, the way the Doctor gets out of James Bond-esque jams nonviolently is inspired, and a sequences where the Doctor stages a bank robbery to protect people from a tidal wave is delightful, a perfect extrapolation from the eighth Doctor in the tv movie. The Doctor's sort-of companion for the story, Malady Chang, feels exactly like a female ally character from a Pierce Brosnan film.

Parkin always does well by Eight, I reckon, and he also has a good handle on Anji, who here gets to plausibly bluff her way into the confidence of the villain. The subplot about Fitz pretending to be the Doctor probably could have gone further, but was enjoyable anyway. Some people praise Parkin for his Big Ideas about Doctor Who, and while he does indeed have them, he can also write solid Doctor Who books without them. A perfect example of the kind of fun you can have with a "regular" Doctor Who book. show less

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I am not always a big fan of Lance Parkin, but I rather enjoyed Trading Futures. Good old Anji, the longest-running non-white Who companion (Feb '01-Aug '03, compared with Martha's single season run, generously extensible to one and a bit) gets a proper story here where the Doctor and Fitz are rather in the background, and she gets both a James Bond-like storyline and a wee bit of character development. There are various other nods to both Bond and Who continuity, and some deliberately crap aliens. I don't claim it as Great Literature, but I was very entertained.