This was pretty good IMHO, tho' the blurb is very, very misleading, and I still want to read *that* story and see how Lyons would deal with it.

Oh and Mike, please can we have boards for:

The Banquo Legacy
The Ancestor Cell
The Burning

May the 15th (tBL should come out round then) can't come too soon...

Only if you promise to start sending me some summaries & comments.

Great idea Mike! My pathetic pleas have fallen on deaf ears, so let's try blackmail instead...

I'll try and bash out something...

The Space Age: in which Steve Lyons recycles his favourite plot again. But not for the last time.

The Steve Lyons plot being 'There's an imaginary world with lots of people running around on it'? (Space Age, Conundrum, Head Games, Crooked World). Yeah, it doesn't really stand up to repeated reading. Though actually his attempts at branching out into exciting (I use the word 'exciting' in its most sarcastic sense, of course) alien shark invasions aren't that great either (Murder Game, and...oh hell, its utter lack of memorableness has even extended to its name...the one with the genocide...aha! Final Sanction. I think.)

If the NAs are anything to go by, those who chose 3012 Earth are going to be in for a nasty shock.

And if the new series is anything to go by, those who chose 3012 Earth are going to be in for an even nastier shock. Solar flares AND Silurians...

The Steve Lyons plot being 'There's an imaginary world with lots of people running around on it'? (Space Age, Conundrum, Head Games, Crooked World).

Aaaand now Stealers of Dreams and Architects of History too.

Though actually his attempts at branching out into exciting (I use the word 'exciting' in its most sarcastic sense, of course) alien shark invasions aren't that great either (Murder Game, and...oh hell, its utter lack of memorableness has even extended to its name...the one with the genocide...aha! Final Sanction. I think.)

Aaand now Architects of History too.

To be fair, only about a fifth of this is IRREDEEMABLY TEDIOUS. The rest is just drearily pointless. And I keep having to remind myself that no, THIS Eighth Doctor hasn't had his mind wiped yet, he's just being utterly character-free for some other, undefined, reason. (Also: see Companions: Novels: Fitz n'Compassion for yet more TARDIS-crew-mischaracterisation.) And if you're contaminating the Whoniverse with beings with super-duper magic powers, at least have the decency to think of something to DO with them.

'History is being remade constantly. You can't see it from your point of view. You drift through the fourth dimension, unable to change direction or even see where you're going. But other beings are different. They see the whole of the tapestry that is Time. They pull at a thread here, create a new detail there, and they don't care what their interference does to the rest of the fabric. Why should they?' - er, because the Time Lords would stop them? Or (if the Time Lords are snoozing) the Reapers would sweep in and sterilise the wounds? Or at least these all-powerful, all-interfering creatures would have popped up before (or since) in the Whoniverse?

'Something - perhaps somebody - does care, at least enough to darn the holes' - oh, who? Cos the Time Lords (and Reapers) do not DARN HOLES. They're a lot more likely to try to put your entire homeworld in a timeloop, or something.

'Oxygen going in where it should, carbon dioxide coming out, yes, yes, that is the right way around for human beings, isn't it?' - er, yes, Doctor, ALSO FOR TIME LORDS.

So the rockers start torturing Fitz - their precious saviour-Spaceman - almost straight away. But they lock up their mod prisoner in the hope he'll eventually get hungry and provide some information...?

(Of course, Alec's torturing a mod prisoner to death a few hours later but hey, things accelerate FAST when the Doctor's around.)

'A squawking noise like a cat in distress' - there are no cats on this planet but you just had to THEORETICALLY distress one, didn't you.

So you've got this massively gender-imbalanced society - a bunch of REALLY thuggish males from the 1960s and a handful of females stranded together away from law enforcement, not to mention everything they've ever known? And there's NO MENTION WHATSOEVER of how this effects their 'society'?

Gillian didn't think to tell the Doctor SOONER about the whole follow-the-servo-robot thing? Like, when they could have brought their own robot?

And why doesn't the Doctor just SONIC the •••• hatch? Or use the screwdriver in Gillian's lab when building weapons?

Motorbike chases are really boring even on TV (well, unless the Doc's going up the side of the Shard on anti-grav engines or you're just REALLY REALLY excited about seeing your brand new Eighth Doctor after what you were foolishly assuming was the Seven Long And Barren Years Of Despair) - in books they're a thousand times worse.

'You're his friend - and I'm sure he'll want to do whatever it takes to save your life' - Fitz has known the Maker for approximately two minutes! And they weren't GOOD minutes, what with the Maker rendering Fitz catatonic and all. Why the hell would Rick assume they're best buddies?

Why are the mods all following one of their youngest members anyway? How did Rick single-handedly build up a cult of youth? (Ditto for Colin and Mary in Enemy of the World, of course.)

'There are no possible futures in which the mods and rockers make peace' - that's a rather bleak view for the Whoniverse, isn't it. They did manage to work together in the past, after all.

Oh-kay. Alec gets his thugs to smash up the Brain in an attempt to force the Doctor to...mend the Brain? Would it make more sense to, y'know, try smashing up the Doctor instead?

'The Doctor would be at the heart of the rumble. He had always had a penchant for finding trouble, and recently he had made an extra-special effort to do so' - points for TRYING to make out that the Doctor is ACTUALLY QUITE UPSET by THE TARDIS EXPLODING but it's a bit of a wasted effort when none of the OTHER post-Avalon (or indeed Avalon) novels join in.

'Can you get us out of here?' 'There's always a way. I just haven't found it yet' - er, HELLO! Even FITZ has worked out that, worst comes to worst, everyone can pile inside Compassion. Yet this simple solution escapes THE DOCTOR?

'She looked to him to save the situation, to come up with an alternative [to switching off the oxygen!]. But all he could manage was "Something will turn up," and he didn't seem at all confident about that.' - ah yes, extra lashings of TOTALLY PATHETIC EIGHTH DOCTOR. Just what I needed.

Rick had felt the Maker 'four times in 1965' - yet Sandra only felt it three times in 1965?

'He felt a tingle of fear in the presence of these beings. He was a Lord of Time, but to them time was nothing' - so? That was true for the Eternals too but I didn't notice even that wimp Davison quaking in his shoes.

Alec never noticed his wife had stretch-marks?

'Their memories, their experiences, their lives...I can't take those things from them' - kinda ironic coming from the suffering-from-amnesia-on-every-conceivable-occasion Eighth Doctor.

'I only wish I could have shown you more. Perhaps if things were different...' - oh PLEASE don't try to pretend that one of your pointless boring nasty infinitely-forgettable characters is actually worthy of Companionhood...

'The Doctor felt a surge of primeval fear...' - ah yes, that well-known coward the Doctor.

'With an involuntary howl of anguish, the Doctor hurtled himself into the room' - ah yes, that wimp ALWAYS howls with anguish whenever some-alien-he-doesn't-even-know keels over.

'The tapestry is repaired - and, if some details have changed, then they are only minor ones. Just a few small rewrites to the ends of a few small stories' - whatever happened to 'Rose, there's a man alive in the world who wasn't alive before. An ordinary man: that's the most important thing in creation. The whole world's different because he's alive!'...?

History is being remade constantly.

Since WHEN!

'Something - perhaps somebody - does care, at least enough to darn the holes' - oh, who? Cos the Time Lords (and Reapers) do not DARN HOLES. They're a lot more likely to try to put your entire homeworld in a timeloop, or something.

OK, to be fair, there was a certain amount of hole-darning done in Twelfth Doctor audio Timejacked!, Eleventh Doctor computer game The Gunpowder Plot, and - on President Romana's orders - by Leela in Jago & Litefoot.