Luckily from the point of view of rereading this, the only thing I remembered about it was Ace having a one-night-stand.

Unfortunately, reading this as if for the first time was in no way an enjoyable experience.

'Christopher Bulis is a designer, artist and illustrator - he painted the cover picture of this book - and has turned his hand to writing' - and don't you wish he hadn't? The cover illustration is quite good, by NA standards (sure, Benny has an incredibly deformed head, but it's the kind of deformation she can only DREAM of in, say, Parasite or Falls the Shadow). The book...is NOT quite good, even by the unbelievably low standards of the NAs. (And this follows a McIntee book and is followed by a Nigel Robinson and a David Banks! Weren't Who fans suffering enough, during TSLABYOD? Were the NAs trying to drive us right over the edge??)

The typos are literally the most amusing thing about this book. 'Perfectly at east'; wearing 'the combat suite' etc...

Blimey, you can really tell it's a first novel - the long-winded descriptions of everything - especially the TARDIS's appearance, materialisation, translation skills etc etc.

'Ace...felt the familiar sense of sickness and anger swell within her...Ace...froze, choking in horror...pale and trembling...staring with fearful eyes...' - She's so uncharacteristically cowardly even Bulis/Benny notices. And tries coming up with pathetic explanations.

The TARDIS crew's IDs and bank accounts are 'perfectly genuine...[a] widely travelled person such as myself, sometimes finds it easier to establish a source of genuine bona fides' - since when?!

'Cold suspicion seeding within her even as she spoke' - well, Ace the ultra-paranoid, doesn't-even-trust-the-Doctor, hardened Dalek-killer certainly took her time in getting suspicious! Given that...y'know...they're going in the wrong direction. Followed by an unexpected stop. And an unexpected corpse.

The police didn't even search Ace for another bag of her killer-sweets when they locked her up?!

The Doctor can send vitality flowing into people by touching their forehead? Since when?

'Interstellar law' - WHAT interstellar law??

Why does Ace unnecessarily invite some policemen into the TARDIS and explain all about it?

So the Doc puts 'Ms Ace' on Ace's ID card, but an incomprehensible unpronounceable name on his own? PLEASE tell me this isn't another Vanderdecken's Children-style use of his REAL NAME!

Dear GOD this likes padding things out with pointless and agonisingly long fight scenes. Though it has to be admitted, the image of Ace running round with only a Dalek helmet on is...memorable. They should have made an action figure...(Though she seriously doesn't wear any underwear under that combat suit?)

'Have you ever wondered if it isn't always chance?' Benny asks the Doc, vis-a-vis him always turning up in time for an adventure. 'I think it's more likely that it is the nature of the universe that if you look long and hard about you, there is always something interesting going on.' - GOD that man is STUPID. WHEN does it FINALLY dawn on him what Sexy is up to?

OMG, he thinks he's got TWELVE lives! 'Stupid' was putting it WAY too mildly...

'I've had some practice with routemarches in the past...Marco Polo...Hannibal over the Alps...Mao's long march' - no. Just...no.

Oh look, Ace is naked again. There's a surprise.

So Ace sends a long, waffling, pigeon-post letter to her pals, whilst COMPLETELY OMITTING TO TELL THEM about, say, the existence of nice-Shenn who want to help, or nasty-Shenn who have been possessed, or their numerous abilities or ANYTHING useful...

Kim doesn't ask about her own injuries? WHY NOT?

So Umbra is so keen to enjoy Ace's little moral dilemma that he gives her all this time to agonise about shooting innocent people...instead of just destroying the threat that goes on to destroy HIM...this sort of thing is BARELY allowable when it's a maniac like Davros, with a millennia-long obsession with the Doctor...

Oh look, Ace is naked again. There's a surprise.

To be fair, it's actually quite innocent here whereas when it repeatedly happens in books by John Peel, Terrance Dicks and - especially, in the light of 'Script Doctor' - Andrew Cartmel it's a little bit seedy.

I get the feeling that Christopher Bulis, never being the most creative of writers, just thought "Ace getting her kit off" was part of the format and just ran with it...

I get the feeling that Christopher Bulis, never being the most creative of writers, just thought "Ace getting her kit off" was part of the format and just ran with it...

Ah, fair enough then. It is, after all, TOTALLY part of the format.

As, of course, is the latest Love Of Her Life dying horribly, but I literally can't remember if this happened to that guy she had the one night stand with in Shadowmind.

Was there a squirrel inside him, working the controls?

*Realises there's not a chance in hell of remembering any other Shadowmind facts without resorting to hypnotic regression therapy and looks it up in the Reference Guide*

Don't THINK so. Santony turns out to be Ace's lover and - surprise! - Santony gets killed but it's someone or other called Quillon who Ace feels REALLY GUILTY about shooting cos he's being controlled, though I get the impression it's mental control rather than via a squirrel-in-chest - in which case it wouldn't be his real body so it wouldn't matter if she shot it...

Bookwyrm:

'1993 was a great year for Star Trek...The same, alas, cannot be said for 1993's Trek books. Take Shadowmind as an example. Everything here fits together, ticks the boxes, does what Classic Trek always did, but that's all it does. Yes, there was the brave choice of sidelining the regulars in favour of a different crew (although Scotty is still there, albeit in disguise) - and renaming the Enterprise as the Broadsword was odd - but, otherwise, it's same-old-same-old' - I don't suppose anyone is familiar enough with Trek AND Shadowmind to tell me whether or not this is foul slander? (OK, it didn't have a particularly Who-y feel but I can count the number of NAs who DID have a Who-y feel on one hand. One SONTARAN hand. One Sonataran-who's-had-a-couple-of-fingers-chopped-off hand. Cos Christmas on a Rational Planet is the only one springing to mind. Which is not to say that several of the others aren't REALLY GOOD, but you just can't picture JODIE! striding into Falls the Shadow waving her Sheffield Sonic.)