Reviews

Doctor Who: Timewyrm: Apocalypse by Nigel Robinson

mrcoldstream's review

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

🙏🏼55% = Average!

Flicking through an endless stream of pages, one book at a time. This time, Ace finally blows that nitro-9, the Rills are mentioned, and you forget this novel as soon as you’ve finished it.

****

Such a weird beginning on this one. The prologue and chapter one had me hopelessly lost with all the names, places, and terms. Chapter 2 then begins with a scene with the Second Doctor looking for Polly, and I was convinced I was reading the wrong book until it became clear what was going on. The story returns to the Second Doctor occasionally, as this earlier adventure directly ties to the current one.

This book is the epitome of average in that it takes a very traditional Doctor Who story set-up and throws in a bunch of one-note characters, predictable twists, and generally good action scenes to keep it going. It’s an example of the “false utopia” subgenre that Doctor Who does a lot, with a seemingly perfect society hiding terrible secrets such as inhumane genetic experimentation, oppression, and brainwashing. The story is in many ways similar to The Krotons, The War Games and, to an extent, Galaxy 4.

Apocalypse is a brief book and a quick read at 200 pages, but it still feels pretty long because there is very little here to keep things truly engaging. The narrative moves forward but doesn’t have much dramatic fuel, so I kind of had to convince myself to finish it.

The Doctor feels like the Seven we know and love in this one, but is the most boring he’s been in the series so far and doesn’t get very involved in the story. Ace is also very well written and very well used. The supporting characters leave no lasting impressions, and the villains are pretty flat, except for a couple of the monsters that do appear (such as the horrifying Homunculus).

I don’t like how the Timewyrm is never mentioned throughout the entire book until the very end, and even when it finally appears for the final confrontation, it is quickly disposed of in a rushed finale, as if it were added in as a last-minute revision to tie this novel into the Timewyrm arc. 

Nigel Robinson’s strengths lie in describing Kirith, its people, and the horrible experiments and mutations that we come across throughout the adventure, some of which are truly gross and involved in many great action scenes.

Overall, this was disappointingly safe and forgettable.

ondrykselecky's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

andrew_j_r's review against another edition

1.0

So far, this series of books has been okay.  The worst book so far still felt a bit like a Doctor Who story from that era.  In this book, though, it goes spectacularly badly wrong.
  So far, the Doctor has accidentally created the Timewyrm in book one, and prevented it from meddling in history in boom two.  In this book, it tries to build a machine that has all the knowledge in the universe, and has experienced all the emotions, which therefore makes it as powerful as God.  What?  Really?  Oh dear...
  I won't bore you with the details, but this book makes two horrendous mistakes.  Firstly, the characters are just badly drawn and unbelievable.  There are the beautiful people, and the mutants (and as described, it is now hard not to think of Leela's race from Futurama!)  The leader of the Kirithans, Lord Huldah, is so cardboard and unrealistic it is untrue.  When he pushed the rock down the cliff to try and kill the Doctor you are either waiting for him to twirl his curly moustache or get his Acme kit for his next attempt to run the Doctor off the road.
  And secondly, we have more pointless past continuity references.  There are a couple of chapters set in the time of the Second Doctor, something they just could not have done on the TV show.  So far in this series, we have had cameos from the second and fourth Doctors, and we have channelled the mind and expertise of the third, and a sequel to a second Doctor story.  Just bloody stop it, okay?  An original tale that stands on it's own with no pointless continuity references would be bloomin' lovely.
  This story resolved nothing in the main plot (just like the third episode in a four part television story, come to think of it!)  The Timewyrm escapes, ready for the (presumably) final showdown in the final book.  Looking at the structure of the stories, it should have been a three part tale: creation, growth and destruction, as opposed to what we have by inserting this book - creation, growth, farting about for no apparent reason, then presumably destruction in the final volume.
  Easily my least favourite of the range so far. 

scheu's review against another edition

3.0

Waiting for a NA story that doesn't read like a TV script.

hidekisohma's review against another edition

3.0

Third book of the 4 part timewyrm series done.

In looking at the GR ratings for the 4 of them, i can see that this is the lowest rated of the 4 (2.94 at time of review) and...even not having read the last one yet...yeah. i can see that.

First of all, this book is REALLY short. like it BARELY constitutes a novel. 201 pages. passing that 200 page mark by the skin of its teeth (and that's only with the epilogue). and yet, for how short this book was...it actually felt quite long. Like, i have to say, this book dragged quite a bit.

The doc and ace go to this planet a few billion years in the future as they sense the timewyrm and find a race of perfect people. However, it's not all perfect there. shocker i know.

While the first book in the series was very "Adult" in terms of violence and nudity, and the second book felt more like an episode of the show, this one was very much of a...normal doctor who novel. Like the type of book i've come to expect from reading so many of these. It's very much in line with the "Some violence but keeping it at a pg-13 rating" sort of thing. It wasn't BAD persay, it was just a very average book.

There's more than a few side characters, and, while the book doesn't spend TOO much time with them, away from both Ace and the Doc, the amount of side characters could feel a bit overwhelming at times. at one point someone died and i totally forgot who that person was or what import they had to the plot. yeah, it was one of those.

This was also another one of those "super quick end" books where they realize there's 15 pages to go and they have to wrap everything up stupid quick. Not really a fan of when they did that, but they wrapped up the story enough that you could understand what they were going for.

There were a few annoying characters i didn't like, but at least the writing style wasn't super confusing and hard to understand. pretty straight forward.

I'm hopeful as all the reviews say this is the worst of the 4. and if that's so, that means that i'm in luck as i thought this one was just this side of okay. Not bad, not great, a little long in the tooth despite being so short, but i've read much MUCH worse doctor who books. the average rating is a 2.94, and that's perfect. exactly what i would give it.

even 3 out of 5.

brnineworms's review

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

2.5

I wanted to like this one but it really does lack substance. There are a lot of tropes just thrown together. For example:

Soylent Green zavát is people! And it’s also a drug which keeps people placid. And it’s also able to wipe specific memories. Somehow. The Second Doctor appears as a force ghost to solve the mystery which he shouldn’t know the answer to or be aware of in the first place. There are too many characters now so uhhh here comes a sea serpent!

It very much feels as though the author was making it up as he went along.

Despite all this stuff, there’s actually very little to connect these ideas together, and not a lot of momentum to drive the story forwards. Things just kind of happen. The Doctor in particular doesn’t do much. The villains mostly stand around being sinister while monsters chase the protagonists until they’re killed or scared away. The Timewyrm is sidelined yet again,

concealed within the mind of another villain (the Grand Matriarch this time) until she’s released at the very end. Only this time she isn’t mentioned during the story and when she is eventually present she doesn’t even get a line.

I’m starting to feel bad for her.

While I’m talking about the Grand Matriarch, I have to ask... why is she evil?

Rather, is she Lilith or is she the Timewyrm? Lilith is described as a “reluctant host” but it’s unclear to what degree she was being influenced or controlled. Terrance Dicks made a point of telling us Hitler was a fascist before the Timewyrm entered his mind, and she only amplified his psychic powers (I love Doctor Who) but here? Robinson presents us with a sweet little girl and a Matriarch intent on creating and controlling God and I suppose ascending to godhood by proxy – are they the same person, or is the Timewyrm merely puppeteering that body?

The Doctor blames himself for unwittingly infecting Lilith with the Timewyrm when he met her as a child. There’s also some emphasis on the contrast between the Second Doctor saying “Everything gets old and falls apart in time [...] But most things can be fixed” and the Seventh Doctor saying “Everything must at some time die. It’s part of the natural order of things.” Am I supposed to think the Second Doctor was wrong to fix Lilith’s broken doll and that he should have instead used it as an opportunity to teach her to accept death as inevitable? Is the implication that this small act of kindness was directly responsible for the millennia of subjugation which followed? Or is that irrelevant and it’s all the Timewyrm’s doing?

The politics of this story are a bit naff.

The novel’s answer to propaganda-fueled authoritarian rule seems to be rugged individualism; after calling the Kirithons “wimps!” for being oppressed, the Doctor offers them “the chance to be dependent on no one but [themselves]” and later reiterates that they’ll “have to fend for themselves” from now on. Coupled with the message that acts of kindness create dictators, it suggests that thinking for yourself is good (I agree), but moreover you should trust no one and help no one. I don’t like that.

Am I expecting too much from a 200-page Doctor Who novel? Maybe. But if Robinson wants to get political enough to say wake up sheeple, he might as well go all the way and write something actually radical.

Not that any of this matters even within the fiction. As soon as the God machine is introduced, what happens on Kirith is immaterial. Who gives a shit?

In the end, Timewyrm: Apocalypse is just weak. I really did want to like this book, but as the story went on and the clichés piled up I started to lose interest. I can only hope Revelation will give the Timewyrm arc a satisfying conclusion.

CONTENT WARNINGS:

human experiments, torture, body horror (with some ableism tangled up in there), racism, cannibalism, violence (including gun violence), death, dissociation

arthurbdd's review

3.0

Painfully generic stuff - inoffensive, entertaining, but very forgettable. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/2024/01/04/the-virgin-new-adventures-timewyrm-from-genesys-to-revelation/

justiceofkalr's review against another edition

3.0

This was... not as abysmal as I expected it to be. With a (as of this moment) 2.86 stars out of 5 I expected it to be pretty unbearable. After all, Genesys managed a 3.1 rating and that one was majorly terrible. But thankfully this was better than Genesys. It wasn't spectacular, but it was acceptable. The thing that's best about it is that Ace and the Doctor seem to be fairly well in character. Also it's short and a quick read so the faults don't have too much time to start to grate on the nerves. The plot is predictable but okay. In the negatives are the clunky writing, the last minute obligatory Timewym appearance, and the constant need to reference older Doctor Who events. The writing is kind of the ultimate fuck you to the idea of "show, don't tell", where the omniscient narrator is constantly revealing everyone's thoughts and motivations and hopping all over to make sure you know what's happening. The references to the series in this book were kind of annoying, as they were somewhat in the previous books. It's like these novels are trying too hard to make sure you know they are definitely part of Doctor Who and they know all about it so they just start shoving in references to past Doctors, companions, and events. As for the Timewyrm, it really just doesn't belong in this story and is only there so that this qualifies as part of the whole Timewyrm arc. But, still way way way better than Genesys.

paddyh's review

adventurous lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

secretlyadoombot's review

adventurous medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0