Did anyone think the ending was just a tad abrupt?

Yes. At least compared with the rest of the book, which meanders along in a slow and slightly illogical manner. And as I said in the review, if it's that easy for the super-rich to save the world from pollution, why didn't they do it before?

But it's not nearly as abrupt as its sequel Warlock, where the longest Who book ever (I think it beats Falls the Shadow by about 2 pages) has a two-minute climax - 'Oh gosh, Warlock's an alien, bye-bye!'

OK, it was probably a mistake to reread this straight after Foreign Devils, which made Cartmel one of my Least-Favourite People Ever. But even without that, the pointlessness of most of the build-up (and by 'build-up' I mean ENTIRE BOOK) - even when it's NOT going into loving detail for page after page about computer software or Ace practising with her new helmet or VR wargames or gunfights in drugstores (I kid you not, there's OVER A PAGE just describing an UNANSWERED phone call) - would have jarred. Ace accidentally making an enemy of a Kurd so that the already-unbearably-padded Turkish scenes could be padded still further with repeated murder attempts is just painful. Since when has the Doc needed to recruit a mini-army to take something off four teenagers, anyway?

Where does Seven get the TIME for these ludicrously slow-burning and over-elaborate plans?

It's a vivid but somewhat contradictory picture of the future. Sometimes the world seems to have descended into guerrilla warfare, cannibalism, unbreathable air, etc (fitting in with precisely NO other piece of Whoniverse history bar The Mary-Sue Extrusion), but sometimes Brits are still summer-holidaying abroad in the sun and shops stock a hundred brands of shampoo. And presumably it's supposed to be set pre-Happy Endings' 2010 'reconstruction' period - what with the end of this book kicking off said reconstruction - but I've just LIVED through that decade and it REALLY doesn't seem to be set then.

Plus, this seems to think it's quite a big deal to send an email. And is somewhat short of mobile phones. There's one nice touch about future-society, though: The Sunday Times - of all currently-respectable papers - describing Shreela as a 'dusky beauty'.

The cat's so helpful WHY, exactly?

Everyone telepathically knows the Doctor's called 'the Doctor' - since when?!

The Doctor really ought to be able to hack a computer without any help from the cleaning lady.

Ace's reflexes when being shot at seem to involve staring, fascinated, at this phenomenon. It's a miracle she's still alive.

Are we supposed to guess who Miss David is?

Unless being in a few NAs has drastically aged him, Seven is NOT an 'old gentleman', OK?

'The Doctor had a knack with taxis' - since when! He sure as hell didn't have any knack in City of Death, Runaway Bride, Terror of the Autons...

Kids at Ace's school had brand-names tattooed on their faces? Why didn't we see any of these freaks in Survival?

'The search for eternal life has been a recurrent motif in your cultures. It's a form of insanity' - yeah, it's not like immortality features in TIME LORD culture...oh wait! It does! And frankly a bloke with 13 (or 507) lives has a cheek condemning humans as insane for wanting more than one life.

One moment Ace is in a bikini, the next it's morphed into a one-piece swimsuit.

'When he'd first arrived he felt tense. His mom didn't have the kind of money that Calvin's parents had' - riiiiight. So the tenseness had nothing to do with the fact that the last time he'd seen Calvin, the bloke had handed him over to a bunch of child-murderers?

Ace didn't realise that unconscious people can drown in baths?

Ace automatically assumes that an 'unstable and potentially dangerous' visitor is a 'he'?

Don't incredibly busy roads have these things...what are they called...oh yeah, TRAFFIC LIGHTS? Frankly whenever this is set I don't see kiddie-Justine n'pal's parents letting 'em take a tube alone from school aged seven and six respectively, AND having to run across a multi-laned and traffic-light-free road twice a day.

Ace spent three months restoring a car? Who does she think she is, Jon Pertwee?

Justine laughs at Ace for believing that 'He's from another planet and you're his girl companion' - whereupon Ace howls, attacks her, and flees, her worldview destroyed. Sorry, WHAT? a) Justine is a known nutter for whose opinions Ace has no respect whatsoever, b) Ace has travelled through time and space with the Doctor so KNOWS he's an alien, and c) so what if Justine WAS right and he was a magician instead? Ace didn't exactly have a nervous breakdown every time she heard him called 'Merlin'.

If the Butler Institute sweeps the park every two hours to collect more biostock...WHY THE •••• ARE PEOPLE STILL SLEEPING IN THE PARK???

So the rich families are 'frantic' cos their brats have suddenly disappeared. Did they not think, in all those months of franticness, to CHECK THE BOYS' COMPUTERS, on which they'd booked tickets to Turkey...?

The Doctor can't drive a helicopter? Well, I suppose different bodies remember different skills.

The Doctor's breath doesn't fog up the window, unlike everyone else's? Hmm. As far as superpowers go, this one's pretty pointless.

Why is Justine the only possible candidate to trigger the weapon (and yes, I WAS thinking this BEFORE someone else, er, triggered the weapon). There must be QUITE A FEW pissed-off people out there who don't want the planet to choke to death.

'The door was caught by the wind and torn off its hinges. He had been holding on to the handle as the door went and his arm went with it, torn off at the shoulder' - would this actually have HAPPENED? Surely it's more likely his entire body would have got swept away with the door?

I'm not convinced that anyone would become a child-mass-murderer because they love books. Loving books makes you more civilised, not less.

So what happens to the policeman whose consciousness is now inside a gun?

And presumably it's supposed to be set pre-Happy Endings' 2010 'reconstruction' period - what with the end of this book kicking off said reconstruction - but I've just LIVED through that decade and it REALLY doesn't seem to be set then.

Clearly, the Time War left a few ripples in our history. Perhaps the PM from 1997-2010 was Gordon Brown rather than Tony Blair, though that wouldn't be the root cause of the differences. People wouldn't resort to cannibalism just because Brown was PM, but both might be symptoms of the same problem.

The cat's so helpful WHY, exactly?

Seven is probably going to bribe it with fresh salmon, at some point in his distant future and the cat's past.

If the Butler Institute sweeps the park every two hours to collect more biostock...WHY THE •••• ARE PEOPLE STILL SLEEPING IN THE PARK???

They're idiots, so probably not the best source of biostock.

'The door was caught by the wind and torn off its hinges. He had been holding on to the handle as the door went and his arm went with it, torn off at the shoulder' - would this actually have HAPPENED? Surely it's more likely his entire body would have got swept away with the door?

You'd be much more likely to release your grip on the handle from pure reflex. If not, the applied force would pry your fingers open long before your arm was torn off.

Clearly, the Time War left a few ripples in our history.

Yeah *sigh* and the sooner I realise it rippled every book n'audio out of existence, the better. (Though of course simpler isn't necessarily better for a nitpicker...)

Perhaps the PM from 1997-2010 was Gordon Brown rather than Tony Blair

But we DID have Tony Blair at SOME point! Mickey mentioned him in Rise of the Cybermen! (I was kinda HOPING he was the one whose corpse fell out of the cupboard in Aliens of London...)

People wouldn't resort to cannibalism just because Brown was PM

Though one mustn't rule it out, especially if 'people' include, say, Tony Blair or Peter Mandelson...

but both might be symptoms of the same problem.

Actually Gordon Brown made a pretty good PM when it came to a crisis (his leadership may well have been what stopped the Credit Crunch turning into the Great Depression, though as I know about as much about economics as I do about science, I couldn't say for sure) - it's just EVERYTHING ELSE that he was hopeless at...

Seven is probably going to bribe it with fresh salmon, at some point in his distant future and the cat's past.

I don't think the TARDIS eats salmon.

I mean, I THINK the oochie is supposed to be the spirit of the TARDIS (cos a DWM article just told me so - obviously not because of anything the Cat's Cradle trilogy actually SAID) but neither kitties OR Sexy tend to be THIS helpful, with or without fishy treats.

They're idiots, so probably not the best source of biostock.

Well, the Institute just wanted their organs, they weren't planning on BREEDING from 'em or anything. Though now you mention it, even Institute employees thought that a few minutes outside without a full head-mask and they'd be lucky if at least one eyeball wasn't rolling around on the ground after being hit by some radioactive dust (what IS it with NAs and eyeballs??) so why would tramps' organs be in such great shape?

You'd be much more likely to release your grip on the handle from pure reflex. If not, the applied force would pry your fingers open long before your arm was torn off.

Ha! I KNEW IT!

But we DID have Tony Blair at SOME point! Mickey mentioned him in Rise of the Cybermen! (I was kinda HOPING he was the one whose corpse fell out of the cupboard in Aliens of London...)

So maybe it went Gordon Brown 97-02, Charles Kennedy and Michael Howard in coalition 02-05 (after Brown's election defeat), Tony Blair for two months in 05, ending when he got stuffed in the cupboard. After all, to get so dystopian, the government must have been a lot worse than the one we had.

I don't think the TARDIS eats salmon.

Well, if it's the spirit of the Tardis, he can take her to Cadiff for a feast of rift energies, or he can just try sweet talking her into not causing a universe threatening paradox.

After all, to get so dystopian, the government must have been a lot worse than the one we had.

Ah, but as soon as the Doctor rematerialised in Britain after his inexplicable absence, we started getting a different Prime Minister every year, up to and including the Master, which might explain how we became so dystopian so fast even if PREVIOUS regimes had been a lot more stable. (And after all, they DID seem to atone for their little mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq by handing over their nukes to the UN. They can't have been all-bad.)

or he can just try sweet talking her into not causing a universe threatening paradox.

Sadly, when it comes to Sexy the Doctor usually prefers resorting to the hammer rather than the sweet-talking.

Mentions copying to floppy disks, disc players, CDs, reading magazines. That was supposedly in the 'near future' from 1992. Most of those had gone a decade later.

Although the mentions of Apollo workstations were enjoyable for IT nerds. That brand closed in 1997. Another problem in writing about the near future.

But a character did make comments about US residents escaping to a better life over the Canadian border. Very prescient given that we face having President Trump.

Overall it did seem like a number of very good vignettes put together to produce a rather fragmented and unsatisfying whole.

Although the mentions of Apollo workstations were enjoyable for IT nerds. That brand closed in 1997. Another problem in writing about the near future.

Anything called Apollo was a lot more successful in the Whoniverse, judging by the Apollo 23 spaceship in, well, Apollo 23.

But a character did make comments about US residents escaping to a better life over the Canadian border. Very prescient given that we face having President Trump.

Not THAT prescient. If that...creature...gets its hands on the nuclear button, then, to quote Eccy, NO ONE ON THIS PLANET!! will be safe.

Bookwyrm: 'Here, [Ace] is 22...in Time's Crucible, she was 18 and is back to being a teenager in the next book' - dammit, I KNEW something was going on with her age, but given that Ace frequently regresses to behaving like a five-year-old it's not always easy to pin it down...

'I know multiple non-fans who read this book as their gateway drug into the NAs because it wasn't assuming any background - and who then stuck around for other novels. It's the Blink of the nineties' - awww, what a compliment. Why didn't I think to make anyone read Warhead?

Oh. Cos I made everyone read Dead Romance and after that the philistines refused to read what I told 'em to any more. Talk about pearls before swine...

'This is the seventh Doctor's character arc reaching full force, one that will run through the entirety of the NAs and which will turn out to be one of the great fall and redemption arcs in literature' - blimey. I...hadn't really noticed said arc, tbh. It wasn't like Eccy, gradually being humanised until he literally became a better man. (You know, one with really great hair who didn't betray n'abandon us after TWO MINUTES.) Seven just got more and more anguished in the last few books till he went off to try and top himself on Skaro.

By Bookwyrm, do you mean Jessica?

And where are these quotes coming from? I can't find them here.

Nope, I mean Bookwyrm: Volume I: The New Adventures 1991-1997 by Anthony Wilson & Robert Smith?.

(Mentioned the full title in Genesys but didn't bother to do so subsequently.)

The poor nut - er, heroes are tackling all the Who novels and have fairly intelligent things to say about 'em. Though as the NAs took four years for them to get through I'm not holding my breath for Bookwrym II: The EDAs just yet.

Ah

Written by Andrew Cartmel, with this his NA debut and I eventually discovered that it is the first in a trilogy from Cartmel, the others being Warlock & Warchild and hence why they call the War trilogy.

Warhead presents the premise of the Earth being on an environmental collapse and a Butler Institute, having no way to restore the environment back to what it once was, has a very clever solution of putting the minds of the superrich into computers which therefore their need for food and water.

Not that is in anyway ideal to escape an environmental collapse, this does not however benefit who can't afford such a treatment.


Cartmel was script editor on the classic series of Doctor Who including when it ended in 1989.
He therefore script edited Survival the last of the classic run and Cartmel brings back a character from Survival into Warhead that of Ace's friend Shreela.

Unfortunately Cartmel kills off Shreela here as she succumbed to a serious illness.
An intriguing comes in Turkey when the Doctor sent

Ace to retrieve a certain metal drum.

However not too thrill on when it is revealed what
it is in this drum.

I thought the story was very dark when Justine and Victor gets brought into this story.


A very dark story and I doubt the exact tone this story presented would have been acceptable had this made for TV.

A very dark story and I doubt the exact tone this story presented would have been acceptable had this made for TV.

Too dark for CARTMEL too, by the way Earth miraculously recovers JUST FINE in the rest of his trilogy...