The Doctor Trap

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.

Just imagine the Doctor trying to outwit the most clever hunters in the universe. The search for the last Time Lord is exciting.

The Doctor Trap failed to deliver on its promise. Action is in the background. The author failed to explore the Doctor's character and rushed and muddled the plot.

A failed attempt at developing a complex and intriguing case of “mistaken identity with a twist.” Its length prevents it from providing the details needed to solve the mystery. One of the biggest flaws in the whole story is the key element which makes up a “fake” Doctor. Sebastiene brought in this “fake” Doctor to hunt him down as a “dangerous species” on his own planet as part of his plan to hunt the Doctor down.

Sebastiene and the show more impostor are not serious threats because their plans lack reasoning, and they are egotistical. It was also very frustrating to see Donna; instead of being assertive and compassionate, she was mis-characterized as selfish and whiny.

Throughout the book, Donna is absent from the story. The Doctor and his companion were separate, but Donna was nowhere to be found. The book was too reliant on outside characters and the middle part was boring. Despite her role being reduced to a minor one, Donna’s absence left an unsettled feeling. The book lacked her distinctive perspective and energy. Something was missing.

I'd recommend it solely if you've finished reading every Who book. show less

“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 show more 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. show less

As it happens with other Doctor Who books that belong to the new series, some knowledge of the characters is required to fully understand what is happening and the characters’ behaviour may seem a bit odd otherwise. But this doesn’t mean that readers who have never watched an episode won’t understand the plot.
The Doctor and Donna, two time travellers, land once again on a foreign planet where they split up while trying to help some people. They wake up alone on a completely different place: Donna is a guest in a hotel that is not as peaceful as it looks and the Doctor is being chased by several people he has never met before and he does not know why.

The person responsible for their situation is Sebastiene, a man who hides a secret show more he himself is unaware of, but can change everybody’s lives. Sebastiene is a hunter who wants to be the one who kills a Time Lord.

The Doctor and Donna have to find each other before Sebastiene kills the Time Lord...

Although these books can be read by people of all ages, the plot may seem to be confusing to younger readers. It is a very good plot and everything is explained in the end, but younger readers may find it difficult to notice the little details that lead to the explanation.

The thing that is confusing is that there are two Doctors; one is real and the other is just a boy who wanted to be the Doctor and who now looks like him. Neither of them know at first if they are the real Doctor and the reader faces the same problem, as some of the chapters focus on one Doctor and others, on the other one. But it is not until close to the end that the reader and the real Doctor learn who is the Doctor and who is just a boy who wants to live his dream.

This plot is very well written. Enough things are hinted so that readers think they know who the real Doctor is but also there are at the same time enough clues to make them doubt of the identity of who they think is the real Doctor. This happens with both Doctors.

It is a great Doctor Who novel that successfully challenges the readers' attention! show less

Original post - in french - on my blog: http://moncoinlecture.over-blog.com/article-the-doctor-trap-simon-messingham-885...

When it comes to Doctor Books, let's say I'm not what you could call objective. I just read them and imagine the actor playing the scenes and and 14 years old again.

This story in particular would have been better suited for the screen. It's very, very visual and there's doubles involved. So it's kind of hard to maintain suspense.

I really liked the setting and the ideas. This Sebastiene character is interesting and this Planet one has lots of potential. I liked to imagine those robots wearing perruques. It's always fun to see the Doctor (yep, I see him when I read. Some could say that I see him everywhere but it's show more a totally different story) playing with everybody and being his clever self.

I have to say that it is a not as funny as the episodes. Donna is not particularly brilliant and I waited more from her. I also missed the mandatory running sessions! show less

I don't really know what to do with this one. I mostly enjoyed the plot, where the Doctor is yet again being hunted because he's now the last of the Time Lords. However, I found the villain kind of annoying. I also managed to call one of the big reveals before it happened. Donna's characterization felt a little up and down, as if Messingham only pulled out the loud, determined, yells-at-the-Doctor-but-secretly-adores-him parts of her. Donna had some really great bits, but it felt a little like shallow depths. I haven't read any other books with Donna yet, so I don't know if that's how she goes regularly or what. Overall, I think The Doctor Trap was adequate but not as good as it could have been.

I happened to see this in the library and as it's not a Doctor Who novelisation that I already have or have read, I decided to pick it up. My only misgiving was that it's from the last series so the companion is Donna and I can't stand her.

The book actually wasn't too bad and I quite enjoyed it, even with Donna as companion. Thankfully she wasn't in it an awful lot so that helped as did the fact that her annoying personality and voice doesn't translate into text very well.

I thought that the plot was interesting and quite different to the previous novelisations. One of the downsides to the sheer volume of novelisations is the lack of unique ideas, or at least an interesting rehashing of an old idea. So it was refreshing this time to get show more a new idea and for it to be quite well written. There were several important plot points that I figured out ahead of time, but I have a tendency to do that anyway, so it's not always a failing on the side of the author.

The characterisations weren't too bad. The Doctor was captured quite well which was good because the book was mostly about him. As I've already said, Donna didn't translate to text quite so well. It's hard for me to complain about that because I dislike her so much, but the character felt very flat and insipid. It didn't matter an awful lot because she wasn't in it enough to really make much of an impression. Still, it certainly was one of the better novelisations I've read. show less