The Story of Martha

As far as Doctor Who books go, this one is the definition of split. The primary story is solid, following Martha's journey travelling around the world telling stories of the Doctor and attempting to avoid the Master's forces tracking her down. Where it falters is in the stories she tells, written by other authors and driving a wedge between the scenes where the main story takes place. It's sort of like a short story collection with a larger story in between stringing everything together, which is an interesting concept by itself, but it really struggles to make these transitions feel organic. The first two stories are pretty good, though I feel they should've been reversed. The first story isn't the one I'd choose to tell a 9 year old show more girl to make her feel better, so the organization could've done some simple adjusting. There doesn't seem to have been a lot of thought put in to the general layout of the book, almost making me feel as though the main author was equally unimpressed about having his story subdivided in such a forced and awkward way.

The biggest issue I have is with the final story which is a completely different style, feels amateurish and confusing, and is frankly just poorly written which completely took me out of the book entirely. It might've made me put it down if not for wanting to read the ending of Martha's story which was far more significant. The parts that are solid are the main story and the first two short stories, but in general the stories really dragged this book down. The positive is that these stories can be skipped if you'd rather focus on the more interesting story without losing any of the plot. Martha's journey in the Year That Never Was is a story worth telling on its own, and on that front it succeeds, but it's a shame that so much of the effort was spent trying to tie these cumbersome short stories together. show less

‘Doctor Who’ is a hugely successful, long running British science fiction television programme. It is about man, a Time Lord, called the ‘Doctor’, who travels in space and time and has adventures. The Doctor can regenerate, meaning that when he is mortally wounded or just old, his body takes on another form and personality. This allows the series to be repeatedly refreshed and for newspapers to speculate about there ever being a woman Doctor one day whenever a regeneration is announced.
The Doctor travels with a companion, usually a human from the twentieth century, usually an attractive woman, but not in a Yewtree way. The companion’s role is very important; the companion is a proxy for the viewer, asking questions about show more strange times and places, and is ‘something for the dads’.
Doctor Who is a children’s television programme. At least it was. It has now been going for more than fifty years and lots of people who watched it, famously from behind the sofa during some of the scarier, more tentacle-prone moments, are now adults. As the programme has formed a constant backdrop to the childhood of many adults, it is beloved, and each different adult age group will identify with ‘their’ Doctor, that is, the incarnation of the Doctor who was saving the world every Saturday tea-time when they were growing up.
Being beloved didn’t prevent those Bastards at the BBC from cancelling the programme in the 1980s however. One suspects that the budget was required for Gritty Soaps (known in the trade as ‘exfoliants’), Gritty Drama, programmes about Policemen with Quirks, hugely expensive (‘lavish’) costume dramas (‘bonnets, britches and bitches’) or possibly just to pay the claret bill of the BBC management.
One thing about science fiction fans, they love to read. When the programme was off the air, the spiritual void was filled with a succession of books and ‘audio adventures’ about the Doctor.
These new adventures did two things, they fed the fans desire, and they provided excellent opportunities for heated debate about what was, and was not, cannon, when the programme was re-commissioned.
The Doctor back on the screen did not stop the Doctor on the page. The BBC cashed in with a new series of new adventures in print featuring the new Doctor and new companion.
‘The Story of Martha’ is somewhat unusual in that it is a direct tie-in with a television episode. A renegade Time Lord called the Master has enslaved humanity, occupied Earth with an alien force and imprisoned the Doctor. Things look grim. It’s up to the Doctor’s companion, Martha Jones, to walk the Earth, dodging psychotic alien spheres and human collaborators, spreading the word of the Doctor and rallying the resistance. It’s essentially the story of what happens to Martha between two episodes of the programme and so ironically can be called a companion to the companion.
It’s also rather good. Martha’s mission is to inspire humanity, which she does through stories of the Doctor, so we have Martha having adventures on occupied Earth and then a short story showing how brilliant and inspiring the Doctor is.
The short stories, all from different authors, are pleasing short, and one can imagine them gracing the pages of any ‘Doctor Who Annual’, sandwiched between the puzzles and alien guides. The connecting narrative is actually rather good. Abnett draws on the French resistance during World War II as the basis for what it is like to be an agent behind enemy lines, a parallel acknowledged by setting the early part of the book in France and making frequent reference to the Resistance. Then things get more exotic, and rather grimmer, as Martha travels East. This is occupation on a global scale and humanity really is up against it, except for the collaborators, who are ruthlessly hunting down Martha in a global manhunt (womanhunt?).
There’s time for thrills, twists and unexpected nobility.
Any reader who has seen the episodes that bookend this book will enjoy it, even though they know the ending. Anyone unfamiliar with ‘Doctor Who’ will probably enjoy a decent ‘Earth in peril’ yarn with a compelling overarching narrative and some interesting, short, short stories about ‘the Doctor’. show less

This Doctor Who New Series Adventure anthology tells the story of Martha Jones during "The Year That Never Was", the gap between "The Sound of Drums" and "Last of the Time Lords". There's a frame story with what Martha's up to, and then there's four flashbacks to her days traveling with the Doctor, these being the inspirational stories she tell all those she meets. It's not as good as it should be. The frame is very good in some parts, but being half of a YA novel trying to cover a year in someone's life, it rather overreaches itself, and the end gets bogged down with some new and rather uninteresting alien villains. Your main character is trying to take down the Master, who has established his dominion over the entire planet! Why do show more you need this? The stories themselves are all pretty forgettable, with the exception of Rob Shearman's usual brilliant contribution, and most of them are more melancholy and end with things not quite resolved for the best, which is all right on its own, but not as tales supposed to inspire an entire planet with faith in the Doctor. Nothing about this book is bad-- and the first half of the frame and Shearman's story are both quite good-- but a book with this premise should be more than not bad. show less

I watch "Doctor Who" and thought the premise of this book was interesting - the Doctor's companion Martha's activities during what ultimately become the "year that never was" (and if I was her, I'd have been really annoyed about that after all the effort I put in). Anyway, it's something I've taken to reading while commuting to decompress, and so far, it is serving its purpose quite nicely. However, I don't suspect I will be reading any other DW books in the foreseeable future - but never say never!

As the other reviewers have already noted, this is the story of how Martha Jones walked the Earth in the Year That Never Was, setting everything up for the "Tinkerbell Jesus" conclusion in the last episode of Series 3. Parts of the framing narrative are really good and give a chilling picture of Earth under the Master (and would probably have been much nastier if this hadn't been a YA novel), while some other parts (like the Drast) feel like they're grafted from another story. The four short stories range from excellent (Robert Shearman's "The Frozen Wastes") to forgettable (the rest of them, really).

The audiobook, narrated by Freema Agyeman, only has the frame and omits the short stories (they are, I gather, available separately from show more Audible). I haven't listened to it yet, but will update this review if and when I do. show less

I've been a Doctor Who fans for a couple of years now, and I have also enjoyed the books for a handful of years, but I had only focued on the two (and later three) companions that were my absolute favourites (Rose, Amy, and Clara, in case you wanted to know) and didn't really add any Martha or Donna books to my tbr list. Until I found out that this particular book told the story of her one year around the world between The Sound of Drums and The Last of the Time Lords. Now that was something I was interested in!

Like I said, The Story of Martha tells how Martha traveled the world, looking for a way to defeat the Master and save the earth. And she does it, by telling stories. We all knew this already, but we didn't know which stories she show more told, where she went and who helped her around the world. In this book, we find out most of it!

It starts off two weeks after she used Jack's vortex manipulator to escape from the HMS Valiant, and she's in London trying her best not to get caught. She goes to France, to Turkey, Russia and eventually Japan. In each of these places she meets people and she tells them stories. Stories of her adventures with the Doctor.

There are four short stories in this book, written by different authors, and to be honest I quite liked them, but the last one was a bit 'meh'. It kind of felt a bit like a repeat of The Doctor's Daughter with two sides fighting about something and then finding out something was not quite the way they believed it was. Other than that, the stories were short but nice to read.

As for the story of Martha traveling around the world, I enjoyed that very much. Martha has never really been my favourite companion (mostly because the others were just my favourite more), but I thought the last three episodes of her season were very good. So this extra bit of story for those episodes was very nice in my opinion. I especially wanted to know about the burning of Japan, which Martha barely escaped from, according to The Last of the Timelords.

I honestly had wished to read more about her adventures, because I believe there was still half a year or so to go after she'd escaped Japan, but I was very happy with what we got. Dan Abnett's writing is very nice, I'd read The Silent Stars Go By written by him and enjoyed it very much. I've just found out he's written stuff for Marvel as well, so I think I am definitely checking that out soon!

In the end, The Story of Martha was a nice addition to the episodes, and I honestly enjoyed it very much! If you like Martha and you want to know how she survived that terrible year of the Master's rule over earth? Definitely pick up this book!

My opinion on this book in one gif: show less

*Spoiler alert - if you've not read this book and you want to, there are some spoilers in the following review.*

This is a Doctor Who novel but it's not like any of the others. It does feature the Doctor in his Tenth incarnation with Martha Jones, but here the main character is actually Martha! I think this book sums up exactly what a Doctor Who novel should be: it takes an event that's mentioned in the show and expands on it. I think there are a couple of other novels that have done this, where there's a throw-away line in an episode which mentions an adventure that's never actually shown but it becomes the plot of a book instead and we get to experience it that way. I was rather looking forward to reading this particular book because show more it's nice to be able to find out what happened to Martha during the Year That Never Was. Although it's not the Official story as such because it doesn't come from Russell T Davies, it's a good alternative.

The book is credited to Dan Abnett but he isn't the sole author. He wrote the main storyline that runs through the book and follows Martha in her trip round the world. Along the way, she tells of adventures she has had with the Doctor and these adventures are all written by different people. It's quite well done and hard to tell the different authors as there's no obvious jump in writing styles. I did feel that the book wasn't long enough, the adventures that Martha shared were only very short and it didn't seem as though they were enough to convince anyone how amazing the Doctor is.

I was really enjoying the book until Martha got to Japan where the story seemed to forget what it was supposed to be about and deviated from the original storyline. Martha gets captured in Japan because the perception filter becomes extremely dodgy. Just as she is in danger it randomly stops working all of a sudden and only starts working again when the factories are destroyed and she is free again. That didn't make sense at all and is laughably convenient. Considering the entire book up to that point was showing how Martha was Enemy Number One and had to be captured at all costs, it then didn't seem feasible that she would be captured and not returned to the Master. This was explained by saying that Japan wasn't under the Master's rule which again doesn't make sense and goes against the plot of the episode that the book is related to. There's no indication of exactly how long Martha is held captive but it seems to be quite lengthy and I got the impression it was several weeks. It doesn't seem possible that she could spend that amount of time there and still have enough of the year left to see the rest of the world, bearing in mind at this point, she's only done mainland Europe.

The reason given for Japan not being under the control of the Master is that the factories there are controlled by the Drast. This is another bunch of aliens who have crashed onto Earth and are trying to get off it. I couldn't believe this bit, there was no reason to introduce these aliens. As if the Master wasn't enough to contend with - and judging by the episodes of the show, he really was - there's now an alien invasion to deal with as well. It was just a bit much and seemed as if the author(s) got bored with the Year That Never Was storyline and decided to write something else instead. And after all that, the way the Drast were made to surrender was a bit puerile.

The final section of the book just didn't make sense at all and I spent the entire time boggling at it in disbelief. The book as a whole needed more of the Master in it, and not some random bloke who was chasing Martha. He was then blown up by the Toclafane at the end, something else that made no sense. The Master was mentioned only rarely and seemed to be a distant threat. It didn't come across as though there was any real danger from the Master right until the end when he ordered the destruction of Japan. At that point, there were only a few pages left so it was much too late. There didn't seem to be much sense of urgency or danger from the random bloke who was chasing Martha either and any threat seemed to be more from the fact that he was a bit mentally unstable than anything else. show less