I love the cover of this book (though I've heard that some hate it ...). The Doctor seemingly pointing a gun at Mel in the console room - oh yeah!
Actually, I rather enjoyed the story, too. It seemed perfectly believable that Mel, with no benefit of having watched how the Doctor developed over his recent past, would be filled with a distaste for her former companion which echoed that shown by Ace in Love and War.
I agree, the Doctor threatening to shoot Mel is a beautiful, and long overdue, concept. The only problem is that it necessitates a picture of a live Mel, the sight of which brings on an instant headache.
This was the first New Adventure I tried, and it put me off reading any others for about four years. Who were these 'Benny' and 'Chris' people? Why were they travelling through the sky chasing a stupid disappearing joker and eating pills with 'eat me' on them? This thing should have had a 'not for beginners' health warning on it.
Having re-read it with the benefit of NA expertise, I quite enjoyed it, especially the explanations for the Doctor always visiting Earth, and for the Sixth Doctor's death (though wearing that coat would have been justification enough). It was a nice dilemma, even if I'm getting a bit tired of poor McCoy being dumped into this sort of situation. And why didn't he go to whatever-that-planet-was, and give them a helping hand to atone for wrecking their Miracle, a la Planet of Evil?
You waited until a NA came out with Mel on the business end of some heavy weaponry before giving them a go?!
Madam, I salute you!
:)
I wish I could bask in your applause, but actually, it just happened to be the one in the local library.
Fair enough. Shame, though. Would have been an excellent claim.
I can see how Head Games would have left you completely non-plussed (sp?). However, starting at the beginning of the series wasn't much better. I found the first Timewyrm book a real plod.
I'm not really sure if I could come up with the best book for a newcomer to start with - one which retains everything that's so wonderful about Doctor Who and gently introduces the NA recurring themes. I'd have to do some rereading.
What do you think?
I'd just recommend any of the really good ones - which luckily are often the important ones as well. Even a lifetime's devotion to Doctor Who doesn't help much when trying to work out what on earth is going on in these books, so starting at the beginning and working your way through is not the best way (especially given that the beginning is Timewyrm: Genesys).
My suggested reading would be:
Timewyrm: Exodus - a good, recognisably Whovian book.
Love and War - disposes (albeit temporarily) of Ace, introduces Benny and is very good apart from the sex scenes. And it gives fascinating hints as to the 'Time's Champion' business, and the Sixth Doctor's death.
Original Sin - excellent, and introduces Roz and Chris (though I still think they're pretty pointless).
The Also People - no new revelations, just an extremely good read.
Just War - WOW!
The Dying Days - brilliant, funny, blasphemous - Virgin's last Dr Who novel, and their only eighth Doctor one.
Vampire Science - the first real BBC 8th Doctor book, given that he was suffering from amnesia for most of the Eight Doctors.
Alien Bodies - changes your view of the Doctor (and his companion) forever.
Seeing I - fantastic, and agonising.
Set Piece is supposed to be great (and gets rid of Ace) but I haven't managed to get hold of it. Lungbarrow (Virgin's last 7th Doctor book) explains a lot of mysteries - Susan, The Other, Gallifrey's methods of reproduction (not to mention Leela and Andred's marriage), AND it generally comes second in polls, but I find it unbelievably boring.
I didn't think Set Piece was great - I was left wanting more by the end... everyone raved about it and I thought "Is that it?" Too much stranding people in different time zones and not enough plot.
Yeah, Exodus might be a good place to start. Many of the ones you mention I haven't read, I'm afraid. Set Piece I can't remember all that well, it being years since I read it, though I recall the Doctor giving Ace his (latest?) 500 year diary as a leaving gift and wondering why he would choose such an item. I quite enjoyed Kate Orman's earlier one - The Left Handed Hummingbird.
The problem I found with the characters of Roz and Chris was that they evoked no reaction in me at all. I'm not a Benny fan, but I have to give credit - if I find myself disliking her then there must be some character to get hold of. Roz and Chris left me cold - I just didn't care about them or their input to the adventures.
The most consistent aspect of NAs I have found is that they may contain some great stuff - especially in terms of ideas - but they often also contain less than great stuff at the same time, usually to do with characterisation and dialogue.
It seemed perfectly believable that Mel, with no benefit of having watched how the Doctor developed over his recent past, would be filled with a distaste for her former companion which echoed that shown by Ace in Love and War.
But in Love and War the Doctor KNEW that the brand new love of Ace's life was doomed to die in a deeply unpleasant manner, and failed to warn her, let alone save him. What the hell did the Doc do to MEL to get her QUITE so annoyed with him? If she wanted to abandon the universe's greatest hero in favour of someone who sold his last crew into slavery, that's HER problem. (Don't remember Head Games very well - SURELY he wasn't stupid enough to TELL her he hypnotised her into it...? Even if he WAS, she still should've accepted most of the responsibility - as Tennant said in Christmas Invasion, you CAN'T hypnotise someone into jumping off a roof. Hell, even THE MASTER failed when it came to Peri and even, sometimes, Jo.)
The problem I found with the characters of Roz and Chris was that they evoked no reaction in me at all. I'm not a Benny fan, but I have to give credit - if I find myself disliking her then there must be some character to get hold of. Roz and Chris left me cold - I just didn't care about them or their input to the adventures.
They do grow on you. Really, really gradually.
'The number of regenerations a Time Lord can have is limited because of the inability of the Gallifreyan mind to deal with carrying any more psyches' - DWM Head Games article.
The HELL it is! Leaving aside our fourteenth, yeah-maybe-I-can-regenerate-indefinitely Doctor, there's still the new regeneration cycle offered to the Master...AND the fact that even without said cycle, said Master had considerably more than thirteen lives...though come to think of it, most of his psyches were unusually alike and he was insane ANYWAY...um, just forget I mentioned the Master...
...Look, the fact is, the Doctor can download memories (and presumably psyches) via the TARDIS telepathic circuits - as demonstrated in the very first NA (and involving a naked Ace for some reason).
Bookwyrm:
'We learn here that Chris's year of birth was 2954, suggesting that he was five years old when Original Sin occurred. Not wonder he was dressed as a teddy bear' - oops.
'Something that happens a lot in the NAs as people try their damnedest to forget The Pit: "You wiped out the Seven Planets in the Althosian System". No. He really didn't' - ah, so the Althosian System is McCoy's acid bath...?
They 'wonder why absolutely everything that had been gently built up over 42 novels all simultaneously comes to fruition in the same book' - it DOES? Blimey.
'In the past, the Doctor has manipulated in order to make people behave contrary to the choices that they would usually make. Here, there's simply no need for him to do so, but he does it anyway...[either] we, and Lyons, are so used to a manipulative Doctor, we barely notice when it's unnecessary [or] it's the Doctor himself who has now got so used to manipulating people, he can't see any other way of doing it, like an obsessive-compulsive' - either option works fine for me.
'You can still smell the Mel-hatred from a distance of twenty years' - oh, that's nothing, you can smell it on ME after a third of a century...
'Suddenly, in a moment of ultimate fan wish-fulfilment, the TARDIS appears in his bedroom to whisk him off to exciting adventures where he defeats evil and saves the universe on a weekly basis. There can't be many Who fans who don't admit that, around aged 10, they'd wished that such a thing would happen' - aged TEN? What, you mean some people GROW OUT OF IT?!
What, you mean some people GROW OUT OF IT?!
More like they resign themselves to the cruel reality that it will never happen.
I deny this reality.
Well, I hope Mel's prepared to APOLOGISE for all those HORRID things she said to the Doctor, now it turns out she unexpectedly LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER with genocidal slave-trader Sabalom Glitz (The Giggle)...