How come most of the SS officers in this seem to have conventional military ranks. I thought that they were given ranks with names like Sturbenfuhrer or Swinehundfuhrer and stuff like that.
Is there some reason why the Seventh Doctor keeps hanging around World War II? In the whole history of the series, only ONCE did the Doctor visit Earth in WWII, the Curse of Fenric (also a Seventh Doctor story). Now it seems he can't stay away from that time. What gives?
I think one of the reasons the series steered clear of World War II is because it was still fairly recent history. There were still people around who carried scars from that war. I guess it is easier to have stories taking place in the Crusades, or the French Revolution, when everyone involved in those events are long dead.
But in the words of comedian Dennis Miller: "Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong."
Is there some reason why the Seventh Doctor keeps hanging around World War II? In the whole history of the series, only ONCE did the Doctor visit Earth in WWII, the Curse of Fenric (also a Seventh Doctor story). Now it seems he can't stay away from that time. What gives?
Well, now we have an Eleventh Doctor who can't stay away either. Victory of the Daleks, Let's Kill Hitler, and (presumably, though given Danny Boy launched himself into space with no explanation, maybe he can travel in time as well, just for the hell of it) shortly before A Good Man Goes To War.
You know how Doctors (or maybe Sexy) just get into a rut with certain areas of history. Just be grateful it isn't an early-twenty-first-century housing estate or a near-future base-under-siege...
There are just so many fight scenes that might be fun to see but certainly aren't to read about that it just gets tedious. And it's pretty padded (all that Ace-wandering-around-in-the-sewers stuff could be obviated by she and the Doc having MOBILE PHONES. Why the hell hasn't Mr Arch-Manipulator issued her with such a device?). Even the nits are the petty, dreary kind, not the big juicy cast-new-light-on-the-rest-of-the-Whoniverse-and-make-all-one's-suffering-worthwhile types.
Military Intelligence investigate the UFO-sphere thing? Whatever happened to Torchwood?
So only the press try to get an eyewitness account of the arrival of said UFO from 'the frightened businessman'? Not, say, the police or Military so-called Intelligence? (Look, even TORCHWOOD would have collared an EYEWITNESS. Admittedly they may have forgotten to question them before shagging and/or retconning 'em, but they wouldn't have just IGNORED them.)
Nicotine addict McBride only smokes ONE cigarette during a stressful day at the police station?
Ace can't work out what the problem is with the escape vessel being empty...? How stupid IS she!
All this 'Dr Peddler' stuff is distracting. Seems too obvious a reference to Kit Pedler in a Cyberman novel.
How the hell does Ace get to sleep with the Doctor making a worse racket than poor old Mr Colasanto from Turn Left? And why does no one in the shelter try to lynch him?
Why the hell would Ace work in a McDonalds on Tottenham Court Road (other than to fit in with Crystal Bucephalus)? Surely they have McDonaldses in Perivale to spare her hours of commuting a day?
Not really convinced that smearing blood all over its body will help an injured Cyberman.
'Ace felt a pang of guilt. No wonder her grandmother had kept talking about the Blitz....Ace resolved that if they should ever meet again she would...not dismiss [her stories] as the boring afternoon ramblings of a nostalgic old woman' - so presumably this is her FATHER'S mother rather than Kathleen? The father Ace doesn't actually HAVE? And surely Curse of Fenric would have brought this change-of-heart about sooner?
Would pain explode inside your head as well as your hand if you punch a Cyberman?
'Ace closed her eyes and braced herself for the shots' - cos BRACING YOURSELF just works SO WELL when being shot. Much better than, say, DUCKING.
So if Cybermen had responded to the signal the Doctor was sending out, how was he planning to COPE with them, exactly? He could barely cope with one Cybermat.
'Tiny silver mites, no bigger than pinheads...' - oh, great, THIS invents those stupid Cybermites, not Nightmare in Silver. Plus the biological component of Cybermats, long before Closing Time. Plus Next Doctor's SICK idea that you could cannibalise cats for such things.
'Lazonby [of Military Intelligence] would have you arrested on the spot - perhaps even shot'. Don't be ridiculous. This is BRITAIN. You don't put people up against the nearest wall for going to crime-scene factories to look for friends.
The Doctor has seen the Pittsburgh Crawfords - some sort of BASEBALL team - 'many times'?? WHICH Doctor is a baseball fan and how has he kept this perversion from us? When Five was a cricket fan he certainly wasn't subtle about it.
'He shook his head sadly. It would be many millennia before humankind finally learned the simple lesson of the futility of blind conflict. They wouldn't learn it from this war, nor the next...' - oh shut your moralising gob Doctor, World War TWO is hardly BLIND conflict...
Why doesn't the Doctor just wait for his policeman chum at the factory to tell him what's happened to Ace instead of hanging round Mamas for hours on the offchance someone might tell him that, er, she went to the factory when he already KNOWS she went to the factory?
'The last few...victims were crushed to death [by a damaged Cyberman]. Quickly too, judging by the area of the...blast...they were squashed like tomatoes. They literally exploded from the pressure' - is that physically possible?
'Trouble is, they'll be up here like a shot now, the noise the drum made' - except that...er...they're not.
The only food Ace has in her pocket is a crème egg? And it's uncrushed in all her adventures?
'Oh dear. Very careless. I could have sworn I brought the Cybermat with me. I must have left it at McBride's office' - nope, you brought it with you. You should actually be able to REMEMBER these little details, Doctor.
The Doctor hypnotises Walsh with a BUNSEN BURNER?
Why not take a spare torch when going down the sewers?
Cybermats don't get damaged, being chucked head-first down a large hole?
'Closing her eyes, she had muttered a prayer' - Ace - had - WHAAAT!
What makes Sharkey think the Doctor won't instantly tell the police about him nicking the Cybermat (as indeed he does)? He's not only helpfully tells the Doctor where he is, he even tells him to send someone else with the ransom money...
And what makes Sharkey think a broken Cybermat is worth £5000 anyway? That was the price of SEVERAL London houses in those days (maybe entire STREETS worth, given there's a Blitz on) and what about the Seventh Doctor screams STINKING RICH! at him anyway?
I KNEW the Doctor was over-confident in declaring that Cybermat dead!
So there are a dozen people dead - plus the Caretaker who she actually KNEW - because Cybermen and mats are after Ace? She might have the decency to feel a bit GUILTY.
'George Limb. Her final hope' - sorry, doesn't Ace know some bloke called...what's his name again? Oh yeah...THE DOCTOR?
'Had she said too much?' - er...YEAH Ace, leaving aside the fact the bloke you've been inexplicably spilling your guts to is a Nazi agent, telling ANYONE from the 40s about other planets and alien races and suchlike is NOT A GOOD IDEA. And she didn't even have to work out this FAIRLY OBVIOUS FACT for herself - 'The Doctor was always warning her.'
To be continued...
'The Doctor traced a finger around the corroded eye socket, with its teardrop-like indentation. Someone in the distant past of this ancient race must have known what would come from their cybernetic experimentation...What had happened to that scientist of conscience? Had he, too, been turned into one of these remorseless silver creatures' - HE?? Leaving aside the fact that the creator of the Cybermen was actually a woman (Spare Parts), they DIDN'T get that teardrop during cybernetic experimentation by some HUMAN, did they. The EARLIEST Cybermen didn't have it at all.
'These men were on a knife-edge, and he'd been in enough similar situations to known [sic] that any clowning about on his part at this moment was liable to get him shot' - when has clowning around ever got the Doctor shot?
'He had been aware that his interrogation was likely to get physical' - because, of course, as well as executing people on a whim British soldiers also torture people. (I'm talking about in London, obviously, if this was the EMPIRE it would be considerably more likely.) We're even specifically informed (by the Doctor!) that Lazenby 'is liable to do everything by the book'!
Cybermen give off a smell of 'fetid air, like sour milk'?
'Of course. The spare room. If the Cyberleader had been kept up there then perhaps Limb had used it to store things of equal importance' - what, where a crazy rampaging Cyberman would destroy 'em all?
'He had no idea of how far he had gone. It could have been a mile or a hundred miles, in this blackness there was no way to tell' - you'd probably be able to tell if you'd walked a hundred miles.
'The interior lights of the TARDIS rose in intensity as the Doctor strode into the console room...The background hum of machinery changed in pitch too, settling into a steady purr, like a contented cat' - oh, what nonsense.
Amazing that Limb has stayed a SECRET secret agent for the Nazis when they're happy to tell any Tom, Dick or Ace about him for no readily apparent reason.
'Exposed bones; raw, wet, torn flesh glistened...Blood pooled on the floor...A corner of the lab was piled high with discarded organs. A butcher's window of human offal...' - and THIS is Peddler's 'worthy but domed' attempt to 'harness Cybertechnology without the terrible human cost' because of his 'ethical qualms about the Cyber process'...???
And CYBERMATS are involved, 'squirming over the bodies like metallic leeches, their teeth snipping at flesh with the precision of a surgeon's scalpel'?
Why on Earth would the Cybermen replace Wall's eyes with cameras that can't stand any light?
'Oh, I doubt that they consider it that important' - the Cybermen don't give a toss if the Doc's run off with the Cyberleader's HEAD? With all its information and power to command other Cybermen? (Not to mention the sickening possibility of him turning it into Handles his faithful Companion.)
Why does NO ONE EVER search the Doctor and/or the Companion when locking 'em up? (And what's Ace doing with her hated mother's keys anyway?)
'Satisfying himself that no trace of Cybertechnology remained in the ruins' - well why the hell DIDN'T it!
'If the Cybermen's little toy was to trigger any more explosions it could do so in the TARDIS, where no one except the Doctor would feel the effect' - what about Sexy?!
The Cyber command-relay unit reminds the Doctor of an old friend cos it's running round like a lost dog trying to find its Cybercontroller - er...WHICH old friend?
'I'm not sure I've ever said this to a human before...Would you be so kind as to...take me to your leader?' - he MUST have done!
'I doubt you'd be able to pronounce the name I was originally given' - THAT'S the excuse he gives to the Nazi? Not, say, the fact that there's only one time he can ever tell anyone his name and, let's face it, he's unlikely to marry a Nazi...
'The Doctor tutted. "I expected more of you," he said. "Just another mad scientist."' - great, even he's criticising the quality of this book's villain.
'Churchill was my true friend, and my undoing. He had assured me many times that he had no intention of taking the highest office...' - why would he do THAT?
'Every point in space-time has an infinity of alternatives' says the Doc. Since WHEN!
'I once played chess with a being from another dimension for the survival of the universe' - Curse of Fenric didn't give me the impression the UNIVERSE was at stake.
'We of the Third Reich are more than human. Together, your race and my race, we have a mighty destiny' - look, we've DONE all the stupid 'We Nazis are supermen, you Cybermen are giants' stuff in Silver Nemesis.
Why is Hartmann stupid enough to revive all the Cybermen at once?
'His left ear had melted from his head. His left eye was closed, the lid sunk deep into the socket' - you know, I had the FEELING that Wall's eyes being replaced with cameras wasn't gruesome enough to fulfil the quota of eyeball-mangling.
Ace calls Limb 'George', gets a Cyberman off him, asks if he's hurt and is 'shocked at the note of concern in her voice' - since when has she cared about pro-Nazi scumbags?
'"Don't do it! The machine is dangerous! You risk damaging the fabric of space-time!"...A tear in space-time could mean the end of everything.' - What, one damaged Cyber-ship and it's curtains for the universe? How come we're all still HERE, then?
'She closed her eyes' - Ace's reaction to discovering she's lying in the path of an approaching tank.
(How...exceedingly convenient...that time just happens to freeze in that moment.)
'The Germans are the least of our worries' - when they've conquered the rest of Europe and look set to conquer Britain any minute now? I don't think so.
Pretty stupid of the Doctor not to notice there's a Cyber-army in the Underground.
I bought and read these as they came out (this was the 'hiatus' between the 8th & 9th Doctors). Having just re-read it I cannot recall a single item from it that I had read before. It was that unmemorable the first time that I didn't bother commenting on it. So unmemorable that it seemed like an entirely new book when I read it the second time - and that was dull and derivative.
In-jokes like Peddler are fun as a one-off but not when used repeatedly in character names. Then they become continually annoying in taking you out of the story (Kate Orman made a similarly bad decision in naming a character 'Groenewegen' who was a person with a very rare name active in Australian fandom at the time).
The worst thing about its amnesia-inducing properties is that it has a sequel in Loving the Alien that actually expects you to remember every word - or at least the villain.
Groenewegen the fan was definitely... unique. Unforgettable to say the least...
The memorable part for me was the revelation that the Cybermen were converting a human baby!
Groenewegen the fan was definitely... unique. Unforgettable to say the least...
I assume she's the one who wrote Lethbridge-Stewart: Daughters of Earth?
The memorable part for me was the revelation that the Cybermen were converting a human baby!
Seriously icky but didn't traumatise me the way the CyberShades being dogs OR CATS did.
'The Doctor traced a finger around the corroded eye socket, with its teardrop-like indentation. Someone in the distant past of this ancient race must have known what would come from their cybernetic experimentation...What had happened to that scientist of conscience?
Or...not.
Benny in Blood and Steel: 'Represent the perpetual pain of the person trapped inside...a tear-drop that can never be shed.' Warner Doctor: 'It's more likely a fluid reservoir used to prevent lubricant obscuring their vision.'
The memorable part for me was the revelation that the Cybermen were converting a human baby!
Seriously icky but didn't traumatise me the way the CyberShades being dogs OR CATS did.
OK, when this sort of thing is WELL-WRITTEN it freaks me out.
The Doctor Falls:
DOCTOR: They target the children because conversion is easier with a younger donor. The brains are fresher, and because the bodies are smaller, there's less to er -
BILL: Less to what?
MASTER: Less to throw away.
Though not as much as OOCHIES obviously.