It’s hard for me NOT to finish a book but… Doctor Who novels, you are on thin ice. Three in a row, I’ve given up on them.
Two of them were the “Missing Episodes” from the mythical Season 23 that was replaced by “Trial of a Time Lord.” And flawed though that was, honestly, if the original stories had gone out, I think it would have been a disaster.
(Spoilers under the cut…)
Mission to Magnus is just bizarre. There’s a matriarchal society that uses a plague to keep its men trapped underground. They’re under attack by the Ice Warriors, so they have hired Sil to trap a Time Lord to steal technology. The Time Lord is not the Doctor, but rather someone who the Doctor is terrified of because he bullied the Doctor mercilessly at school. Meanwhile Peri wanders around caves with a bunch of pubescent boys and gets captured by… everyone. Made it about 70% before giving up.
The Ultimate Evil is somehow more nonsensical. An alien is tormenting half a planet with a mind-ray that makes everybody homicidal. It causes the crown prince of this nation to murder his fiancé who looks a lot like Peri. Then Peri meets him and he gets murder-mind-rayed and nearly kills her, too. And she decides to keep spending time with him for some reason. I actually finished it once years ago, but this time I didn’t even get halfway through it.
(I recently also read The Nightmare Fair, another “missing” Season 23 story, and while I finished it, it was nearly incomprehensible. I’m of the opinion that the original Season 23 would’ve gotten the show canceled.)
Okay, so maybe the Missing Episodes is not the way to go. Let’s try something else. My first reaction to the cover of The Indestructible Man was… why does that wig look familiar?
Well, it’s because this is barely a Doctor Who novel at all. It starts off as a roman à clef of the 70s Gerry Anderson series UFO, complete with secret base inside a film studio BBC Television Centre. But in a twist, it turns out it’s actually a roman à clef of the 60s Gerry Anderson puppet series Captain Scarlet!
Did I mention the Doctor doesn’t show up until several chapters in? And he’s immediately shot and rendered comatose? And not even referred to by name until we find Jamie joining an underground militia in 2090s London and… yeah, that was enough for me.
