Finally read this one, despite the bad press surrounding it.
I guess the bad reputation made me want to read it more. I felt like I was being challenged to read it A challenge that I gladly met.

Wasn't all that bad really - I'd prefer something like this anyday than some faceless boring twaddle like 'Longest Day' or a complete continuity disaster like 'Ancestor Cell'.

BAD POINTS:
*The Androids were lame and cliched, and did nothing for me.
*I also would've preferred it if we *never* saw the nether dimensions of the Great Vampires and their kin, the Yssgaroth, and not just in this novel, in any novel - these places are meant to be so terrifying and alien in comparison to our own universe that to show them would no doubt be a let-down and a disappointment, no matter how well (or in this case, how badly) portrayed.
*William Blake - I'm not familiar with his poetry, but unless the events of 'The Pit' fit into a lot of his works (not unlike 'Timelash' involves a lot of so-called inspiration for H.G.Wells' works) I didn't think his presence was really warranted.
*Too many times and places - a couple of Earth timezones, the nether dimension, a variety of locations in the System - too much! too much! too much!
*Writing style - Penswick may be a professional writer but his lack of experience in prose writing shows. Some times embarrassingly so (though, to be fair, at other times it is effective).

GOOD POINTS:
*A general feeling of foreboding and armageddon, that serves well to build up the tension of the book.
*Kopyion - I wouldn't mind it if he returned. Funny how he's got one arm, isn't it? Not unlike a certain Grandfather who heads a certain time-travelling voodoo cult.
*The Prologue - creepy.
*The Doctor - I didn't think his portrayal was *that* out of sorts.
*The Doctor's meeting with Kopyion - we get a real sense of power in Kopyion when the Doctor shows him respect.

The trouble is, after Colin Baker and his let's-try-to-be-funny-while-watching-people-dissolving-in-acid, it's a bit difficult to claim that anything is beyond the pale for the Doctor. Maybe he WOULD have burnt people alive to save his own skin...but could he really have strolled by a bunch of people being crucified without even THINKING about helping them?

Got to agree with Emily on this book--it was one of the worst books I've read in a long time. It's hard to work up interest in characters when they don't care themselves; half the time they are described as shrugging their shoulders in resignation.

What was the point of having Williams Blake in the story? He contributed absolutely nothing, other that to make the Doctor look like a jerk.

I think the author doesn't seem to know what androids are. He seemed to be describing cyborgs instead.

I could not believe that the Doctor would bow down before Kopyion. He's met the White Guardian, and he didn't bow down before him!

The Doctor...? Yuck, yuck! How could he?! Mind you, I'm sure he does a bit of sychophantic grovelling bowing/hand-kissing to Borusa in (obviously) some Terrance Dicks book or other. And of course, being a disgusting royalist he's quite happy to bow to the Draconian Emperor. (My life at your command, pah!)

As far as bowing down before the Draconian Emperor, it was the diplomatic thing to do at the time. It certainly got him out of trouble. Whereas with Kopyion, it just didn't ring true.

Ah, but I have a sneaking suspicion the Doctor quite LIKES bowing to royalty. It's funny, isn't it, the way he can do the diplomatic, sensible, getting-himself-out-of-trouble grovelling when required - falling flat on his face to Queen Mab in Shadows of Avalon, for example, thus proving it's not just Mr Establishment Figure Third Doctor who goes in for that sort of thing - but he never does it to non-royal villains.

Take Tomb of the Cybermen, where he's very wisely pandering to Kleig's megalomania with all this stuff about 'There shall be no thoughts in the world except Eric Kleig thoughts!' I bet that, had Kleig been KING Kleig, the Doctor would have left it there. Instead he •••• near gets himself shot because he can't resist going on to say 'Now I know you're mad.' There are plenty of occasions where a little bowing, scraping and general buttering-up would have come in extremely handy, but the Doctor just can't bring himself to do it - except when there's a s t u p i d title involved.

Okay, now you're just being paranoid. There's no WAY the 2nd Doctor's comments were anything but sarcastic, and I still believe the 3rd Doctor's reaction was the appropriate one.

Yup, I'm paranoid. So would you be if you were considered a SUBJECT instead of a citizen, and didn't even have the right to elect your own head of state.

Oh. Sorry. I was forgetting about your last 'election'.

Yeah, WE could tell that the Second Doctor was being sarcastic, but why did he sign his own death-warrant spelling this out for Kleig in words of one syllable? It's as if mocking a dictator's pretensions was more important to the Doc than his own life, in which case he bloody well ought to have told the Draconian Emperor, King Peladon, Mary I, Nero, King John (well, Kamelion anyway) etc, where to stuff themselves. (And yes, OK, he did something rude to Henry VIII (what IS a parson's nose, anyway?) so my congratulations to Hartnell, at least.)

To be fair, the second Doctor doesn't exactly 'sign his own death warrant' in Tomb. He survived and went on to appear in many other exciting adventures and also 'The Dominators'.

A 'parson's nose' is a bit of a chicken. Allegedly.

Ah but how could the Doctor KNOW that Kleig, having raised his gun, with his finger tightening on that trigger, would suddenly and conveniently change his mind at the last microsecond? Did he think 'Hey, I'm a bit short to be an ideal Cybermen, but I'm sure it'll occur to Kleig that converting me is a better idea than blowing my brains out...why don't I just take the risk? It'll be so much fun to see the look on his face when I tell him he's mad.'

As I said, you have no proof for what is an extreme leap of logic. After all, the Doctor's been at the wrong end of a gun more times than I can count.

Yes, many's the time our brave hero has been held at gun- (or equally unpleasant implement) point. But this is the only time I can remember when the Doctor is deliberately and totally unnecessarily goading the baddie to pull the trigger. (Unless, of course, he's doing so as part of a cunning masterplan to blow up Skaro. Or whatever.) Tom Baker had a great line in insulting monsters, but I don't think he ever gratuitously risked his neck in order to get a 'Chop Suey the Galatic Emperor' type laugh. It was usually to make them too furious to think straight, and it worked.

And no, 'Look me in the eye. Pull the trigger. End my life.' doesn't count. It was a clever - and successful - attempt to get out of being shot, by forcing the young, reluctant, inexperienced and scared guard to think about his actions and their consequences. Whereas with Kleig the Doctor had actually got the homicidal maniac on his side. All he had to do was continue to lay on the sycophancy with a trowel. But no, he just had to open his big gob and nearly get his head blown off.

Seeing as he DIDN'T get shot, I'd have to say he knew what he was doing.

Am I the only person who thinks the 'look me int he eye. pull the trigger. end my life' speech is terribly cliched and badly acted?

Yes you are. It's a wonderful scene. So there.

Mike - the Doctor knew what he was doing?! Since when! Don't get me wrong, normally I'd be the first to insist that the Doctor is a mega-genius, nay, god, far beyond the reaches of my mere mortal understanding, but...this is Tomb of the Cybermen we're talking about. Did he know what he was doing when he solved the equations to allow the humans entrance to the Tomb? When he left Victoria the wimp to keep an eye on super-criminal Kafan? When he recharged a dying Cyberman?

The Doctor was just relying on blind luck to avoid getting shot. It worked, as it so often does when he's about to get shot. But, as Magdalena proved in Interference, he really can't count on luck forever.

Is it just me or is everyone talking about 'The Pit' lately? Is it 10th anniversary fever or did The Book of the War just turn us all back on to the Yssgaroth?

Actually we're talking about Tomb of the Cybermen. We just happen to be doing so in The Pit section. It takes more than a mention of Yssgaroth in TBOTW to rehabilitate The Pits.

Hmm, but haven't you noticed that 'Neil Penswick' would be an anagram of 'Lawrence Miles' if it just had different letters?

Now I'll have to look under season 5 to see if they're talking about The Pit under the entry for Tomb...

So I take it the Yssgaroth are in the Book of the War?

Yes, with Neil Penswick's permission and everything. Quite why they're in there by 'Father Kreiner' isn't is another matter altogether!

They're WHAT? My copy of The Book of the War has 'em sandwiched between 'Younger World Story, The' and 'Zero Time'.

I suspect that the word 'by' in Daniel's post should actually read 'but'.

Butterfingers!

Oh. Yeah, that makes sense.

Look, poor old Fitzy's a Faction Father. You can't expect him to just turn up where he's supposed to. This is the guy who's got the Doctor's AND the Master's stuffed heads on his spaceship wall...(even if at least one of 'em's a clone...)

I have a sneaking suspicion the Doctor quite LIKES bowing to royalty. It's funny, isn't it, the way he can do the diplomatic, sensible, getting-himself-out-of-trouble grovelling when required - falling flat on his face to Queen Mab in Shadows of Avalon, for example, thus proving it's not just Mr Establishment Figure Third Doctor who goes in for that sort of thing - but he never does it to non-royal villains.

OK, so SPOILERS FOR SPYFALL she's now knelt to the Master but there was a certain amount of eye-rolling going on that s/he never does when it's royalty...

Bookwyrm:

'Oddly, the blue babes...described in the book as half naked, are nevertheless supposed to have missing limbs, or rearranged faces...Strangely, the buxom wench we have pictured on the cover appears to be a perfect specimen of bluemanity' - *sigh*

Well, apparently Kopyion is the Other, according to numerous hints that were totally ignored by Lungbarrow going on to prove he ISN'T the Other, 'because no one could work up the will to re-read [the Pit] and fit their ideas around it.' Ah well.

'Virgin were looking for a new companion...and had narrowed it down to three possibilities among existing one-off guest stars. Two of their choices were Bernice Summerfield and Kadiatu Lethbridge Stewart...Incredibly, the third was William Blake. We can only imagine that they chose not to go this route out of pity for all the NA authors who would be forced to read his introductory book as research' - OK, I'd say that was a narrow escape but I can't imagine it was THAT narrow...