Agreed.
Well, to be fair (and am I not always scrupulously fair?) it did have one good joke - when Jax Queen Sam is holding forth about the Doctor's future status as her consort, and he says 'Woof woof, call me Rex.' But...er...that's it.
Frontier Worlds is far superior. Actually is it just me, or has the quality of the books shot up wiht the depature of Sam?
Well, having just read my first post-Sam novel, The Blue Angel, I'd have to say, well, no. But it’s early days. If the quality is improving, it may be due to having a story arc rather than to the departure of Ms Jones. After all, her fancying of the Doctor has merely been replaced by FITZ’s fancying of the Doctor - hardly an improvement.
Did anyone feel the sudden abrupt departure of the Doctor and Sam two-thirds of the way through, after all that had happened, left the reader a little unfulfilled? OK, they arrive back on Kursaal 15 years later and fill in some of the gaps but the first section seemed to leave too many unfulfilled loose ends.
I can't believe there wasn't even a passing reference to Mags in this, given she was the only other werewolf the series has ever seen.
Today I am in a mood of joyful celebration as I managed to finish 'Kursaal' after what seems like a period of years (rather than, say, a couple of weeks). Of all the other Who novels, only 'SLEEPY' has ever taken me as long.
And I can't remember a thing about it now!
So two of the first seven books of this series involved vampires and werewolves. Guess they were a little short of original ideas.
This book is a real chore to grind through. It was obviously going to suffer in comparison to the one previous to it but it gave up with barely a whimper.
I can't believe there wasn't even a passing reference to Mags in this, given she was the only other werewolf the series has ever seen.
Well, it's been one death and a few decades since the Doctor briefly met that not-very-interesting character - you can hardly blame him if he doesn't remember her, or at least doesn't feel she's worth name-dropping. Not until his Tenth and Eleventh bodies does the Doctor do much gleeful shrieking/hugging/dancing whenever he meets a 'classic' monster like werewolves and vampires.
Today I am in a mood of joyful celebration as I managed to finish 'Kursaal' after what seems like a period of years (rather than, say, a couple of weeks). Of all the other Who novels, only 'SLEEPY' has ever taken me as long.
*Nods sympathetically* And yet the DWM Review regards it as 'perfectly paced, balanced between action and insight...Based on Kursaal alone, I would certainly trust Peter Anghelides to create a new series of Doctor Who on television.' *Shakes head despairingly*
So two of the first seven books of this series involved vampires and werewolves. Guess they were a little short of original ideas.
Not to mention the other five books involved Raston Warrior Robots, Rassilon, Borusa, Zygons, Krotons, Daleks, Coal Hill School and Jo Grant...
God, it's one of those books that makes your eyes and your mind glaze over and you have to read every page twice cos the first time you just didn't take in a thing. And the second time you realise there's just nothing there WORTH taking in.
Plenty of nits though, which should be A Good Thing but just means that the agony of thinking about Kursaal is prolonged.
Blurb: 'the Doctor realises Kursaal hides a terrible secret - and that Sam is being affected by events more than anyone would guess...' er, Sam gets clawed by a werewolf that then licks her wounds. I think SOME of us can take a wild guess about exactly how she'll be affected...
'I am sure you are most pleased that I prised these devices out of Gray Corporation Labs for this expedition' - there are super-duper special-communicators that even the HEAD of Gray Corporation has to wrestle out of his scientists' hands...that show the location of each member of your team! Haven't these guys heard of MOBILE PHONE APPS?
'My team aren't worried...about the weather, Mr Gray. We are self-sufficient' - which bit of 'a flash flood in this area could pour down these tunnels and drown us while we sleep' has Amy somehow not grasped?
Amy has a day to document the greatest archaeological find EVER and she spends it bickering with Gray about preserving WILDLIFE?
It's all very Earthshock, the underground team getting picked off one at a time, with their lifesigns disappearing from the monitor and only their namebadges left to identify their remains...except, of course, that Earthshock is EXCITING.
So whatever-year-this-is (wisely left unspecified) still has - for a planetary OWNER - guns with bullets and recoils and suchlike?
The Doctor 'was obviously doing his schoolteacher thing again: see the universe, discover alien cultures, learn other languages' - learn other LANGUAGES?!
'"Doesn't the TARDIS have a dishwasher?" asked Sam' - she doesn't know? After MONTHS aboard?
For heaven's sake, they walked down a tunnel and the Doctor STILL failed to memorise the route?
Two of the wounded are STILL ALIVE - and the Doctor didn't bother to check.
'The ••••-poor pea soup they gave me for the first course...' - since when? We SAW you order. You ordered steak. We saw it arrive.
Ugg! Eight's reaction to a seriously-injured woman is 'What a very beautiful young woman, isn't she?' God, I miss Tom.
'Trying not to think how hungry she was' - why the hell didn't she ask for some food during all the waiting-around?
'What are you a doctor of, anyway?' 'Oh lots of useful things' - and now I'm PINING for Capaldi, Doctor of Intestinal Parasites...
'"Actually, I did take a medical degree," replied the Doctor smugly' (just keeping track).
'"What's French?" said Saraband' - how far in the future IS this?
Amy's leaving the hospital BEFORE her arm gets seen to?!
'While they waited for their transport to arrive' - THEIR? Amy didn't invite Sam along!
Ah. NOW'S she's invited Sam along. And taken her to HALF's secret base. And revealed the identity of HALF's secret leader, the one the police have NO IDEA of the identity of.
Why DID the police issue that fake photofit of Bernard, anyway? It certainly wouldn't help to catch the right guy, and if they DID ever catch him people would wonder why the hell he looked nothing like it...
'Before her journeys with the Doctor began, she had barely travelled to a different time zone. Now she knew why people complained about jet lag' - didn't one of the other books claim the TARDIS ensured none of her travellers got jet lag? Which would make sense, as we've seen precious little sign of it for the past 52 years.
The police don't put tracking devices on their own vehicles?
'Sam had never been in an interrogation room before' - and YET AGAIN I'm getting the impression that Anghelides doesn't have a clue that Vampire Science said Sam had been with the Doctor for MONTHS.
So still all this illegal drug-dealing about the place? It hasn't occurred to anyone by whatever-century-this-is to stop fighting a genocidal, pointless, losing war and just LEGALISE the stuff? (Well, MOST of the stuff, anyway. Maybe not vraxoin.)
So the chief of police (who seems to do ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING around here) goes to investigate missing corpses at the mortuary and TAKES SAM WITH HIM for no readily apparent reason? Instead of, say, locking her in a police cell with an experienced interrogator?
Re the Jax: 'Could the excavation have woken them up?' 'Have you gone mad too? Where are the rest of them, then? Or did only one bother to set his alarm clock?' - Bernard is acting like this is a completely insane idea. Has the guy not heard of SILURIANS? According to the NAs at least they're very much a part of human history by now.
'The Doctor gave another shout of delight. "I love cartoons."' - he does? Someone remind me to double-check this claim when I finally get round to rereading The Crooked World.
The Doctor 'could understand about half' of the Jax language. UH?
'Double poo with extra poo on top' - can SOMEONE please invent some PROPER swearwords for The Future! (And if you can't, just nick 'cruk' and 'shampoo' from the NAs.)
Why doesn't THE DOCTOR lift a finger to defuse the bomb instead of first trying to scarper and leaving it to destroy this ancient cathedral, and then when THAT didn't work leaving all the defusing to Bernard?
Why does the Doctor try to scarper on seeing a Jax instead of communicate or see if Johnson's alive or anything?
You can decapitate a werewolf with a shovel?
The police don't bother to check see if the back-from-the-dead wolves are actually dead this time?
Don't wolves have a good sense of smell? Why couldn't they sniff Sam out? Frankly after all this running around and being attacked stuff she must be pretty sweaty by now.
To be continued...
Oh god, Cockaigne is leaning on his shovel. Instead of DEFUSING THE DIRTY GREAT BOMB THAT'S ABOUT TO GO OFF. And then he's having a long chat with the Doctor, and then he's just sitting around...
'I'm sorry, Bernard. The Jax infection was only able to reanimate his dead body. So you didn't kill your friend back there in the cavern' - and the Doc is SORRY about this WHY, exactly?
'It's all right, Captain. I've deactivated the excavation bomb' - you HAVE? WHEN!
And why tell your enemy the police captain? (Instead of, say, THE DOCTOR or THE MISFORTUNATE READER?)
OK, does it make any sense for a werewolf to turn back to human after it dies? Especially if the werewolf virus was only animating a corpse in the first place?
Kadijk is 'taunting the Doctor with malicious glee' - but not, y'know, actually HANDCUFFING the Number One Most Wanted Criminal?
Why the hell would Bernard Cockaigne TELL the police chief he's Bernard Cockaigne? What with that so-convenient mistaken-identity thing going on?
Rather reckless of Sam to clumsily attempt to extract a confession from Gray and record it on the data-cube which holds all the evidence against him. Thus giving him a chance to destroy said evidence. The evidence whatsherface DIED to pass to Sam.
Kadijk hasn't got the basic common sense to KEEP AN EYE ON THE DOCTOR AND SAM? Sam just has to burst into tears to EMBARRASS him into leaving these two criminals alone to escape?
The Doctor's doesn't notice that Sam's blue eyes have TURNED BRIGHT GREEN?
The Doctor just abandons Kursaal with loads of werewolves running round. (Well, if he's too bored to give a ••••, who am I to criticise? I mean, sure, they'll contaminate this entire system for five hundred years to come but on the other hand, Kursaal is REALLY REALLY dull.)
'I'd like to wish you a happy and accident-free stay at the Kursaal ActionPark' - could they really put such an emphasis on the chance of an accident?
'The Doctor...found that the party of Ogrons...were struggling with their data map. He turned back to make a sarcastic comment to Sam' - lovely. Does he mock mentally disabled humans too, or is it just Ogrons (and, judging by his attitude towards darling Straxy, Sontarans)?
The Doctor's using a police captain's 15-year-old stolen I-Card to pay for everything? REALLY? Why can't he just rob a cashpoint like any self-respecting New Who Doctor? ('Even smart people sometimes do dumb things' the police chief helpfully attempts to explain.)
If you drop off a building and land in a garden...would you REALLY be buried up to your SHINS?
Why is the Jax virus so dependent on the sight of Kursaal's moon to operate? It didn't even originate on this moon's planet.
Why is there an assumption that in fifteen years the Doctor will be fatter and greyer - to the extent that it's 'impossible!' for him to still be looking the same? If humans can colonise other worlds, surely they've got good diet pills/hair dyes/plastic surgery?
Why do the Doctor and Cockaigne get distracted talking about drug dealers when they're SUPPOSED to be talking about 'Sam in danger!'
The Doctor reads files for NINETY MINUTES? Some incarnations (Tom, Eccy, Matt) can read super-fast and others are presumably at 'I See Sam' levels of literacy.
'How the guy ever got to eat was a mystery' - QUITE. Never went out AND never got deliveries...
'I'll do the autopsy tomorrow, unless you're in a rush.' 'I believe it can wait.' - you KNOW this man has been attacked by a Jax, you KNOW corpses attacked by the Jax turn into werewolves WHAT THE HELL IS YOUR PROBLEM, PEOPLE!
Why did Kadijk follow the Doctor's stupid suggestion of putting the werewolves in a zoo, anyway. He's not the sentimental type. Kill them all already and that will stop them BREAKING OUT AND GOING ON THE RAMPAGE.
'You should get the cleaners to come and remove all these papers' - Kadijk's not KEEPING all the vital Jax-research?!
By the way, why DID Gray fall out of the window? And why DID the fall kill him?
'With Cockaigne dead, the only person who really knows the Jax is the Doctor' - well maybe if you hadn't CHUCKED OUT COCKAIGNE'S NOTES...Plus how well DOES the Doctor know the Jax if, in fifteen years, he hasn't spotted that his best friend is one?
Even though she's growling. And scenting the air. And he's FINALLY noticed her brilliant green eyes...
'Doctor, think about it. Why would the Jax want her? What can she possibly give them?' - why doesn't Kadijk just yell 'She's infected!', it'd be quicker and frankly easier for Mr Thickety-Thick From Thicktown, Thickania to grasp.
'Oh dear' - if that's THE DOCTOR'S reaction to the penny finally dropping, why should the READER care if Sam Jones is a werewolf.
The Doctor didn't NOTICE Kadijk priming the bomb? Until Kadijk inexplicably TOLD him? And his reaction is 'That is terribly dangerous' - blimey, I'm more upset about the cultural vandalism than he is!
Sorry, Kadijk has the remote-control for the fifteen-year-old bomb under a panel in his car?
Since when would any Doctor let a huge bomb go off for fear he'd get electrocuted trying to stop it? (It's not like electrocution ever does him any long-term damage.)
Oh look, Kadijk is cutting a Jax's paw off and breaking the Doctor's fingers. Cos merely killing everyone in sight is no longer enough to pad this thing out, presumably.
So, for reasons both unexplained and inexplicable, the car has a viewscreen with a projection on it, not, y'know, AN ACTUAL WINDOW. And a mere projection of the moon isn't enough to make Sam a permanent werewolf. Even though a projection was VERY EFFECTIVE INDEED when it came to Mags...
'We could make a real difference' Sam argues to the Doctor. Which bit of CAREER IN PLANET-SAVING does she somehow not grasp?
Oh gods, they're having the 'Prevent the First World War' conversation NOW? Rather than, say, MONTHS AGO?
'But [the Jax virus] was alive. I mean, it was...sentient' 'Interesting dilemma. You know, for similar reasons, four countries in your time still keep samples of the smallpox virus in laboratories' - BECAUSE SMALLPOX IS SENTIENT?!
'News reports had speculated that the explosion was caused by an asteroid strike' - er, I think an asteroid would have done QUITE A BIT MORE DAMAGE. Plus, which bit of Kadijk faking a terrorist 'I'm gonna explode this huge bomb' phone call did the news media somehow miss?
Ah look at the Doctor fleeing Kursaal, YET AGAIN too bored to clear up any loose ends like, um, WEREWOLVES. And now with everyone who actually knew anything about 'em dead, too...
I can't believe there wasn't even a passing reference to Mags in this, given she was the only other werewolf the series has ever seen.
Well, it's been one death and a few decades since the Doctor briefly met that not-very-interesting character - you can hardly blame him if he doesn't remember her
I mercifully failed to foresee that OF COURSE Big Finish would produce a godawful Mags trilogy in which she inexplicably became McCoy's official Companion...