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futurama1979's review
3.0
⟶ 3.5/5 stars
I'm sort of lost on the context with which to judge this book like. Should I compare it to Doctor Who serials? Audios? To other books, DW or no? In any case, for any of them, I think it's solid and I had a lot of fun reading it. It made me genuinely invested in the one off supporting cast, which definitely speaks to its standalone worth as a book, and the characterization of the Doctor and co. wasn't that off. The setting was really rich and cool and it reminds me that while DW is great as a show, with books, there's no budget limit for sets and monsters, and the creative freedom that gives writers is really great.
If I could point a finger at one biggest issue, for me it was how little the author did with Victoria's character. She was really just there, and didn't do much that impacted the story at all. There was also a moment where she was like. weirdly sexualized that made me :(. DW writers everywhere constantly forgetting that Victoria's like 15 years old? It's more likely than you think.
I'm sort of lost on the context with which to judge this book like. Should I compare it to Doctor Who serials? Audios? To other books, DW or no? In any case, for any of them, I think it's solid and I had a lot of fun reading it. It made me genuinely invested in the one off supporting cast, which definitely speaks to its standalone worth as a book, and the characterization of the Doctor and co. wasn't that off. The setting was really rich and cool and it reminds me that while DW is great as a show, with books, there's no budget limit for sets and monsters, and the creative freedom that gives writers is really great.
If I could point a finger at one biggest issue, for me it was how little the author did with Victoria's character. She was really just there, and didn't do much that impacted the story at all. There was also a moment where she was like. weirdly sexualized that made me :(. DW writers everywhere constantly forgetting that Victoria's like 15 years old? It's more likely than you think.
patti_pinguin's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
3.0
saroz162's review
2.0
I first read this book when it came out, in either late 1998 or early 1999. I would have been fifteen years old. I recall liking it at the time, which is almost certainly in part because it featured a halfway decent take on the second Doctor - my personal favorite - who had often been the subject of some truly dismal characterizations in earlier books. Coming back to it...yes, Richards does reasonably well with the second Doctor, Jamie, and Victoria. They're not pitch-perfect, which probably says how much their characterizations were devised by the actors playing them on television more than anything else. Richards, who has a famously good ear for characters' verbal idiosyncrasies (he wrote the first eleventh Doctor novel, it would seem, on the basis of a few script fragments), chooses to go the humor route with the Doctor here, amping up his comedic potential and arranging the kinds of physical business that Patrick Troughton and Frazer Hines often developed in rehearsal. It sort of works - but it also feels, oddly, rather calculated. The second Doctor has a lot of different aspects to his character, and it was only in the final showdown that I felt like Richards chose to show us more than one or two of the more obvious ones.
The plot, unfortunately, is incredibly perfunctory (although, again, it improves somewhat for the final denouement). Like so man Doctor Who books, it's about futuristic soldiers in space, and the machinations of more than one character to gain power. It was probably a little more acceptable to me in the late 1990s when I wasn't so jaded against this type of pseudo-hard-SF, but it's awfully boring to me now.
Is this the best second Doctor book the BBC could have picked to represent the second Doctor in its 50th Anniversary collection? Nope, it's not. That probably would have been Mark Gatiss' The Roundheads, set during Cromwell's attack on Charles I (and I'm staggered there isn't one pure historical in the entire set). That said, it really is one of the better candidates just by not being universally loathed. The second Doctor has never had a great run in prose, and surely that must be down to what a skilled actor Patrick Troughton was. His Doctor remains inimitable - and I would certainly rather watch either of his newly-recovered TV stories than read this book again!
The plot, unfortunately, is incredibly perfunctory (although, again, it improves somewhat for the final denouement). Like so man Doctor Who books, it's about futuristic soldiers in space, and the machinations of more than one character to gain power. It was probably a little more acceptable to me in the late 1990s when I wasn't so jaded against this type of pseudo-hard-SF, but it's awfully boring to me now.
Is this the best second Doctor book the BBC could have picked to represent the second Doctor in its 50th Anniversary collection? Nope, it's not. That probably would have been Mark Gatiss' The Roundheads, set during Cromwell's attack on Charles I (and I'm staggered there isn't one pure historical in the entire set). That said, it really is one of the better candidates just by not being universally loathed. The second Doctor has never had a great run in prose, and surely that must be down to what a skilled actor Patrick Troughton was. His Doctor remains inimitable - and I would certainly rather watch either of his newly-recovered TV stories than read this book again!
mikime's review against another edition
3.0
A complicated game of chess involving different parties in an interplanetary Republic that some would like to turn into an empire. The Doctor and his friends arrive in a prison planet where mysterious murders took place and a former key politician is held prisoner after the recent war. The situation gets even more dangerous as a mysterious legion of special soldiers faithful to the prisoner turns out to be approaching the prison to attack it. The Doctor has to try his hand at this game of secrets, bluffs, betrayal and ambition.
obscuredbyclouds's review
1.0
This is a story featuring the Second Doctor and his companions Jamie and Victoria. I have never watched the Second Doctor and didn't know what he was like - and I still don't feel like i know what he was like. I did like the interaction between Jamie and Victoria, but that was the only part of this novel I enjoyed. The story was about some sci-fi version of Old Rome and chess - which should be engaging, but really really wasn't.
bleary's review against another edition
5.0
Terrific. Space Romans, political skullduggery and a great base under siege story, plus a lovely portrayal of the Second Doctor. Shame Richards didn't take the chance to write slightly more progressive female characters, but I suppose the world was very different back when he wrote it (the late 90s).
fancyfroggie's review
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
anhonorableleech's review
4.0
Perfectly depicts the second doctor, even if a little too obsessed with chess.
nwhyte's review against another edition
3.0
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1854822.html
This is more like it - epic Richards rather than formula Richards, with the Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria turning up in the middle of an intricate conspiracy involving imperial politics which are reminiscent of the rise of Julius Caesar, though very different in the detail. Some excellent plot twists and turns, some of which I think I saw coming and some of which blindsided me. The characterisation of the Doctor is a little off-key but I've read much worse. Enjoyable, and probably reasonably accessible for non-Who fans.
This is more like it - epic Richards rather than formula Richards, with the Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria turning up in the middle of an intricate conspiracy involving imperial politics which are reminiscent of the rise of Julius Caesar, though very different in the detail. Some excellent plot twists and turns, some of which I think I saw coming and some of which blindsided me. The characterisation of the Doctor is a little off-key but I've read much worse. Enjoyable, and probably reasonably accessible for non-Who fans.