I thought the author put some real effort in developing some interesting alien characters--then through it all away by making them act just like humans.
Every time the author presented us with a villian, he would undercut their nastiness a few pages later by showing them to be not so bad. The worst case of this was the nasty Space Marine lady, who couldn't decide if she was a killer alien hater or a doting mother.
How did the Doctor get back to his TARDIS? I lost track of where he left it, so I was surprised when he turned in it with no trouble, and with the blind Krakenite in tow.
This book did kinda collapse towards the end.
It was easy to read though (anyone notice that Paul Leonard's books are 40 pages shorter than everyone elses?)
I dunno about it being the most boring though, what about 'Longest Read'... sorry, 'Longest Day'?
Believe me, I thought long and hard about the competing claims of Longest Day, Dreamstone Moon and Vanderdeken's Children (I hadn't read Janus Conjunction then or that would have made my shortlist) and I'm not sure I could fully justify my choice...at least Dreamstone Moon has that heart-stopping moment when you realise Aloise (or whatever the spider's name is) has been blinded, which is one more dramatic moment than you get from Longest Day...I suppose it just came down to the fact that I had more 'Oh god please make it end' moments whilst ploughing through Dreamstone Moon than the others.
Of course, I should have said 'EDAs' rather than 'BBC books.' It didn't matter at the time - I hadn't read any PDAs bar InfiniDocs - but now Last Man Running definitely gets the 'most boring BBC book' prize.
At least Dreamstone moon isn't actively bad, like Beltempest and Legacy of the Daleks
I'd prefer bad to boring anyday.
Well, this was my first 8th Doctor book. In fact, it was my first Dr. Who book that wasn't a novelization of an episode. I had read "Invasion of the Dinosaurs," "Genesis of the Daleks," and "The Krotons" before this. Unlike everyone else who commented here, I quite enjoyed this book. I am now reading "Escape Velocity" and enjoying it even more, though I have heard that it isn't considered all that good either. These were the only two Dr. Who books that my local Barnes and Nobel's had, but I just recieved two more through mail-order; "Dreams of Empire" and "Heart of Tardis." Both feature my favorite, the 2nd Doctor. These two books were better than most of sci-fi books published in recent years, and, if they are the worst of the lot, then I am in for quite a bit of fun!
Heart of TARDIS is a pretty wacky book, if I do say so. I happen to like Dave Stone's writing style, but it's probably too media-conscious for some. He also has a distressing habit of somehow writing action packed novels with no climax, just an abrupt end (The Slow Empire comes to mind).
It took me weeks to finish this and I have to agree with Emily, as I so often do (Scherzo notwithstanding), that this is one of the most boring books I have ever read. Having Sam weep over the Doctor's death every other chapter was getting a bit lame; I think she pronounced him dead more often than Sarah Jane (the original recordholder).
And how did the Doctor get back to the TARDIS anyway?
This is like all Paul Leonard books. They start off vaguely interesting and then get continually worse so that around halfway through you start looking to see how many pages are left. And given that he begins with theohsooutofdatestreamofconsciousnesswriting that indicates it's starting from a fairly low point.
The 'have you read Mortimore? All his characters die in the end' is the sort of thing editors should cut out. It's not as annoyingly blatant as the Groenewegens that crop up in Orman's books but it does go a long way to breaking the suspension of disbelief (although being namechecked in 'Ship Of Fools' probably means that statement is a tad hypocritical of me).
If books are food for the mind this tastes of cardboard.
You be hypocritical if you want to be! Having your head explode whilst being stuffed down the toilet (or whatever the hell happened to you) should not in ANY WAY disqualify you from criticising Dreamstone Moon as it so richly deserves.
Though mind you, there are SO many worse Who books around these days that I'm feeling the tiniest bit guilty for being QUITE so nasty about it...
So there's an Earth fleet going round blowing up moons and stuff? Er...haven't we just SEEN the Earth of the SAME PERIOD knocked almost back to the Dark Ages in Legacy of the Daleks? They've got knights on horseback, not spacefleets!
Acknowledgements: Awww, our very own Nick Walters gets all the credit for 'doing far more than his fair share of our joint writing project and thus leaving me free to concentrate on worrying myself to death over this one' - DAMMIT NICK, DREAMSTONE MOON IS ALL YOUR FAULT AND I WANT AN APOLOGY!
'Since the Dalek war and the subsequent weakening of Earth's control in this sector' - Earth is reduced to WHAT WE SAW IN DALEK INVASION OF EARTH FOR TEN YEARS plus knights on horseback (Legacy of the Daleks) and it leads to a slight reduction of Earth's control in certain sectors of the galaxy...?
Ah BLESS, Anton's computer takes ages to look for information and it RINGS him when it comes up with the search results...
Anton will risk his life in a dodgy area rather than pay for a cab to wait for him, but he can afford to throw in a 20% tip to the guy selling him the Dreamstones?
So...a ship just happens to encounter Sam's drifting ship (haven't you READ Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Space is BIG! REALLY REALLY BIG!) and goes back for her cos she screams at it (even though it can't hear her) and rescues her by blowing her out into a vacuum (where she only gets a perforated lung unlike, say, THE TWELFTH DOCTOR who was BLINDED)?
The Doctor in the TARDIS really has no better way of looking up the Mu Camelopides system than going to the library, walking half an hour to the 'M' section and taking hours more finding the book he wanted?
A cat can't IGNORE you if it's asleep. It's ASLEEP.
'He'd made inquiries at every post office and missing-persons bureau he dared visit' - DARED? - 'human Draconian, Tractite, Chelonian, Besiddian, Arachnon, Krakenite...He'd visited Threadworld, wrapped himself in the toffee-like Thread Helmets and traced sightings of humanoids' - and it didn't occur to him to JUST USE SEXY'S TELEPATHIC CIRCUITS?
The demonstrators are hoping to 'get on into the top ten news items, at least locally. We might even make the hundred on Earth, I'm told everything else is really quiet' - it would HAVE to be, a few environmental protesters on some obscure moon who'd be lucky to make said moon's top ten surely wouldn't stand a chance in hell of making the top hundred news items at the centre of what appears to be a galactic empire...
They're having a strike/riot because of one dead miner? I don't mean to sound like a heartless ••••• but...
'So this was her dad' - Why the hell would Daniel assume the Doctor is Sam's father when a) Sam told him her family were dead and b) the Doctor told him that Sam was his FRIEND?
'He's that stowaway's father' - HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU THE DOCTOR IS NOT SAM'S FATHER YOU GIBBERING HALF-WIT? Also, Sam's not 'the stowaway', she's the rescuee, Aloisse is the stowaway, you know, the GIANT SPIDER it's a bit hard to get muddled up with the blonde human teenager?
'The eye stalks were stiff, motionless, the eyes an amber pulp...Sam looked at the pulped eyes, the bubbling fluids inside the helmet' - OK, you've fulfilled your Who-novel eye-gouging duties, so there's ABSOLUTELY NO NEED to have humans burn out the retina of Aloisse's eyes later IS THERE MR LEONARD?
'Sexual dimorphism. Besiddian males are twice as heavy as the females, and half as intelligent. The corresponding ratio for humans is one point two' - fun as that would be to believe, I don't think humans males ARE that much stupider than the females?
'Hello, I'm the Doctor and I used to be Special Scientific Adviser to UNIT, when there was one' - *wince* Who d'you think you are, CHIBNALL? Don't you DARE write off UNIT by the twenty-third century! *Frantically consults TARDIS Wiki* 'By the 26th century, UNIT had become a secret society called the Unitatus. (PROSE: Cold Fusion) Unitatus survived at least until the 30th century. (PROSE: So Vile a Sin)' - so THERE!
'Sam felt the curved shapes, suddenly very glad that she'd taught herself to use the post-2020 bowlboards that had replaced the twentieth-century QWERTY layout. The curvature itself told you where the letters were, and the layout was infinitely more logical' - well these wonderful bowlboards had better hurry up and make their entrance if they really want to catch 2020...
'Did he have nightmares because every stone he touched happened to be a bad one, or because he made the stones bad in some way?' - er...isn't it because he specifically asked for nightmare-inducing bad stones?!
'Did you know that the Dreamy Muddleheaded et cetera actually waste ninety-five per cent of the dreamstones they bring up? Just break 'em to pieces in the production process' - that sounds like a terrible business model, why don't they care about future profits?
To be continued...
They're having a strike/riot because of one dead miner? I don't mean to sound like a heartless ••••• but...
Maybe he (she?) was the straw that broke the camel's back?
fun as that would be to believe, I don't think humans males ARE that much stupider than the females?
There are not. To be fair, he may just have been referring to the size difference, the sentence is ambiguous.
Maybe he (she?) was the straw that broke the camel's back?
I definitely didn't get that impression, whilst not exactly enamoured of the company they worked for, the miners seemed a lot more annoyed with the environmental activists than with their bosses.
To be fair, he may just have been referring to the size difference, the sentence is ambiguous.
Nonsense, the Doctor DEFINITELY said that human males were 20% stupider than the females. If only it had been some Doctor with a bit more authority in her/his voice than McGann we might all BELIEVE it too, dammit...
'There are people in there injured. They'll be done for if we don't get some props under it, but the bloody troopers won't let us through' - would you really use something as mild as 'bloody', in these circumstances...?
Um, I don't remember any explanation of how the Doctor goes from arrested to laboratory...? What IS this, Silver Nemesis?
'This Doctor - if he was the UNIT Scientific Adviser working with Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, from my information he'd be about two hundred and fifty years old' - oh, don't bother mentioning KATE'S ERA, even though the Doc was a bit more prominent then, like being PRESIDENT OF EARTH.
'The Doctor would have said it wasn't her fault, but then he always did' - DID he, though? How irresponsible. Haul a teenager off round space and time and ALWAYS tell her nothing is her fault, even when she dooms an entire timeline and slaughters people and suchlike (Paul Leonard's own Genocide, assuming I'm remembering it aright).
'The young men in their battlesuits looked up at him in amazement' - MEN? (I'd congratulate this at being consistent with Legacy of the Daleks' sexism if nothing else whatsoever but guess what, it's a woman who's commanding those men...)
Cleomides seems awfully friendly with Daniel, considering that he attacked her.
'Now she might be dead.
Another one.
And when he'd so nearly found her' - surely EVERY adventure has the Doc thinking one or two of her/his Strays might be dead? So what's the biggie here? (Not that it DOES seem THAT big a deal, admittedly my compass has been slightly skewed by CapaldiDoc's four-and-a-half-billion-years piece of insanity.)
'He tried to remember if he had any Krakenite-specific antibiotics in his pockets' - er...I realise they're capacious/bigger-on-the-inside/he's at one with the lining of his jacket etc etc but I'm betting...NOT.
The Doctor SEEMS TO HAVE LEFT HIS SONIC SCREWDRIVER IN THE TARDIS?!
'It's not just true, it's obvious!' - er, yes, isn't it. Even THE AUTHOR realises that the big twist towards which his dreary novel slowly grinds is bleedin' obvious.
'Her eye was weeping blood..."The retina was deliberately burned out with targeting lasers"' - you just had to do it AGAIN didn't you.
'What was happening? Why were the marines attacking? Were they mad? Seeing things, like Anton?' - Er...YES Sam, and YOU were the one who explained that 'The Moon is alive. That place you were blowing up is part of its brain. It'll make you kill each other if you don't stop.'
'She saw the Doctor at the pilot's console, his hands moving over the controls as if he'd had ten thousand hours piloting this type of ship. Perhaps he had; he'd certainly stabilised it quickly enough after the collision' - so, er, why didn't he take control sooner? ('She looked to the Doctor for advice, but he seemed to be doing nothing, his hands frozen on the console that was tracking the shuttle. He was muttering something to himself' 'The Doctor...looked with alarm at the glittering shape rising out of the brown clouds below. "Oh, dear," he said. "I was rather afraid that this might happen."')
'Using the shuttle meant leaving Aloisse behind...So she wasn't telling the Doctor about her plans yet. She knew enough about him to know that he wouldn't let her abandon Aloisse, even if it meant that everyone had to die' - is that TRUE? If the Doctor has a choice between Aloisse dying and Aloisse-dying-and-taking-several-innocent-people-including-the-Doctor-with-her he'll choose the latter option?
'Perhaps Cleomides had told the Doctor she was dead - he'd hardly have left her behind otherwise. Or perhaps the Doctor was dead himself' - Jeez, Aloisse AND Cleomides are both convinced on a very short acquaintance with Our Hero that he'd DIE for that •••• spider?
'They're going to destroy the planet altogether, you know' - um, so why did you bother with your ill-fated expedition to said planet, then?
'"I think I've persuaded them to steer clear. They lost five thousand people." The Doctor didn't really believe the agreement would stick, but the losses should keep all but the greediest and stupidest away, for a while at least' - well, kudos for not even TRYING to disguise the utter pointlessness of the entire book.
the post-2020 bowlboards that had replaced the twentieth-century QWERTY layout
Well, there's a QWERTY layout on the space station in Independence Day...
the post-2020 bowlboards that had replaced the twentieth-century QWERTY layout
Well, there's a QWERTY layout on the space station in Independence Day...
...AND on Earth colony New Houston, um, some time after 2020...(Second Doctor audio The Yes Men.)