Apollo 23

Apollo 23 is an Eleventh Doctor and Amy adventure.

I really enjoyed it. It reminded me a lot of an Old School Who episode, sinister goings on at an isolated base, with the Doctor blundering in.

The book has lots of really neat touches, like the Doctor's child-like glee at getting to ride in an Apollo spacecraft, and something which feels like the author using descriptive flannel turns out to be a vitally important detail.

It catches the Doctor just right, I particularly like the line about "I've got a different ridiculous plan to defeat you". Amy is also nicely done, as are the rest of the characters. The creepy bits are suitably creepy, and the atmosphere (or lack thereof on the moon) is well rendered.

Definitely worth reading.

I do love a Moon-based Doctor Who story and Eleven was credible, but the mechanism for alien invasion was not entirely satisfactory. It felt a bit too much like homeopathy.

Light and entertaining, Justin Richards knows how to make Who fiction work, even under the constraints of making it kid-safe. The plot is made interesting with some clever ideas such as the quantum mechanics involved in the transportation between Earth and the moon as well as the later use of water molecules as data storage for computers. The backdrop of secret US Apollo missions and a lunar base makes this story fit right in with the 3rd Doctor era stories of near-future tech thrillers. In fact, there is even a few nods to the Pertwee days as the Doctor drops mention of being incarcerated on the moon in the future (Frontier in Space) and mention is made of UNIT and a failed British mission to Mars (Ambassadors of Death). The 11th show more Doctor and Amy are clearly captured right down to the Time Lord's new catchphrase of 'Geronimo'. The supporting cast is fairly two-dimensional with the emphasis on action and plotting. The alien threat raises one's expectation of a return of some old Who enemies such as the Autons or the Great Intelligence, but instead we get some rather lackluster bags of air, but their appearance on the page is so late in the game it doesn't spoil too much. A diverting enough read, but nothing to rush out to the book store for. show less

Failed even to meet the low expectations I’ve developed for this writer. Too many “cool” ideas with little connection, necessity, or resolution. Companion sidelined in favor of redundant, one-dimensional characters with bad American accents. The 10th Doctor dressed up like the 11th. A callous disregard for human life—except when the page count needed to be padded. The day saved by homeopathy!

Reading this book is a lot like watching the show. I think the author did an amazing job of capturing Matt Smith's portrayal of the Doctor. I will say that the plot is less complicated than that of Night of the Humans, but the story is better written and uncluttered with unnecessary words. I especially liked the larger amounts of dialogue, which helped to round out the characters as well as provide a lot of laughs. If you love the 11th Doctor, you need to read this one!

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1443025.html

Justin Richards has written more Doctor Who books than anyone except Terrance Dicks, and those I've read have included more hits than misses. However, this isn't one of his more memorable contributions to the quasi-canon; at first it seems like an Eleventh Doctor rehash of The Seeds of Death but in fact the resolution is much closer to The Faceless Ones. Lots of stuff thrown in here without quite gelling - quantum wormholes, aliens just happening to take over a secret moonbase, and worst of all Not Enough Amy. Still, the target age group will probably enjoy it.

This is my first book of the year and it's already nearly the end of January! That's not a very promising start at all. My first book was a Doctor Who novel featuring the Doctor in his shiny new Eleventh incarnation. I wasn't sure how I'd enjoy it, primarily because I'm not overly sure how much I like Eleven compared to Ten. I thought this was a good one to start with because the author has written quite a few Doctor Who novels already and I've quite enjoyed the ones of his that I've read so far.

In this, there's a sudden appearance of an astronaunt in the middle of an English shopping centre and a woman with her dog appears on the moon. The Doctor and Amy go up to the moon to find out what's going on. The random appearances of the show more astronaunt and woman are never really explained and are mentioned solely as a reason to get the Doctor and Amy onto the Moon for the rest of the story. I found the story itself to be a bit disappointing, especially considering the author. It seemed to be rather formulaic in some respects, but also as though it was a mishmash of several ideas, all rammed together to fill out a book. It seemed to be rather lacking in oomph, which is possibly why it took me nearly a month to read it.

The characterisations seemed rather lacking too. The Doctor didn't seem particularly Elevenish - actually, I purposely tried to see if I could picture Ten instead and found that I could, so perhaps Justin Richards is better at writing Ten than Eleven. Amy also seemed to be rather nondescript and could have been pretty much anybody. I also thought that a lot of the secondary characters were rather flat too. The whole book just seemed to be missing a spark, almost as though the writer had lost interest in what he was writing. On the whole it was rather disappointing. show less