This should have been much more horrifying to me, given that I'm afraid of stinging insects. Instead, it was just very, very gross. A good 100 pages could have been saved if Baxendale had cut out all the unneccessary running about done by the Doctor and Co.
I didn't buy the Doctor trying to shake info out of Jode one bit; it was completely out of character.
I realize that the wasps were scary and all, but couldn't the good people of Marpling spent some time trying to spray the bugs with insecticide, rather than stare at them fearfully?
If the Time Cops really wanted to sterilize the area, why didn't they bring a hydrogen bomb instead of a fusion bomb? An H-bomb is several times more powerful than an A-bomb.
Sure was nice of Fatboy's designers to build him so that he couldn't defend himself during the last 4 minutes. Exactly what kind of power where they conserving? After all, a contemporary A-bomb uses TNT to start the the fusion process, and that only requires a small electrical charge to set off the charge.
I didn't buy the Doctor trying to shake info out of Jode one bit; it was completely out of character.
Oh, I dunno. Obviously I don't remember anything about this scene (or even who Jode is) but if the world (or even the village) was in danger, I don't see why a bit of shaking would be so terrible. The Eighth Doctor may have been a bit of a softie, but that was pre-amnesia. (Are there no scenes on TV when the Doctor desperately needed information from a baddie who refused to give it? I can't remember any, which kind of leaves the 'Would the Doctor resort to a bit of physical violence' question unresolved. Oh, except in Robot, where the Brig unconvincingly wouldn't threaten Miss Winters to save the world, but Sarah would.)
Of course, I could be being influenced by Timeless, where the Doctor pulls a balding man's hair out (one hair at a time, IIRC) until he talks - and where he deliberately and unncessarily hurts a wounded and unconscious torturer. ('Tell the ambulence he's also got severe bruising to his ribs'....KICK! which I suppose I found forgiveable because it's so funny. Plus the Doctor HAS wiped out his own home planet (not to mention an alternative universe or two, apparently)).
'[The Doctor] comes across like Tom Baker in The Seeds of Doom, shouting loudly, knocking people about, and generally behaving like a boor. However, Baxendale cannot be wholly blamed for our hero's uncharacteristic unpleasantness. The Doctor's current predilection for violence is an ongoing theme, perhaps an extension of being trapped among warring humans for so long' - hmm. I noticed him being a bit of a git in The Burning and Timeless, but don't remember any such ongoing theme. Let alone it ever being resolved.
'The time-hopping Kala leaves, Doctor-style, before any awkward questions can be asked, and the reader is left wondering when (not if) we'll meet her again and get some proper answers' - well, I certainly don't remember ever encountering Kala again, and HER time-hopping people have been thoroughly replaced by Sabbath and his submarine...
If the Doc's so keen to drive a tractor, why didn't he do so during that well-over-a-century he spent marooned on this stupid tractor-infested planet?
'There aren't any holidays with the Doctor' - well, Fitz should know (inexplicable dodgy-memory notwithstanding) but...SURELY it hasn't been YEARS of DAILY death-defying adventures? Why haven't the EDAs grasped the every-other-day principle?
'We could do with a doctor in Marpling - ever since Doctor Gillespie eloped with that girl from the diary' - why the hell would a doctor have to flee his own village in order to get married? In those days you had to BUY yourself a practice and it must have been a hell of a job to swap it for a different one.
'Sometimes he went away for months or even years' - that doesn't sound like Hilary's recently back from a FIFTEEN-YEAR disappearance. Which, in fact, he is.
WOULD someone from the 1930s - where life-expectancy was a lot lower - regard Fitz as young? Let alone wonder why he didn't think of the Doctor as young?
'"Pity about the plums." "Oh, yeah." Fitz nodded sardonically. "Terrible shame." He couldn't remember the Doctor even passing comment about the death of Tom Carlton' 'He does the things he does simply because he can, not because he really cares. It's just something for him to do. Like a distraction, or a game' 'He found the Doctor's clinical detachment rather disconcerting; he couldn't detect even a shred of sympathy' - look, on the whole I approve of the EDAs' attempt to do something new with the Doctor's character (they're not to know that new and more interesting Doctors will EVER materialise) but the attempt to portray amnesiac-Eight as quite so cold-blooded just doesn't work.
And chickening out and claiming that Hilary Pink's death caused 'a look of momentary anguish on his face' doesn't help either.
And neither does the attempt to make him all zany by yelling 'Conkers!' and 'Humbugs!' He might have got away with it onscreen, but here it all feels a bit...desperate.
The Doctor has a criminal record in this time-period (AND a tattoo!)?
Why in hell's name don't the Doctor and Fitz grab the metal box and scarper (they KNOW the rod is in there) instead of taking out said rod, thus alerting the genocidal-maniacs-from-the-future - AND, as it turns out, Charley Rigby.
Why the hell does the Squire all-but tell a stranger like Anji that Gwen's baby was his brother's instead of her husband's? When the boy himself doesn't know? And what with this being a small and very gossipy village and Gwen's husband being away at war at the time he was conceived, AND him having his real father's eyes...how come the whole village isn't busy chucking rocks at the 'whore' and her 'bastard'? (Or whatever they did to express disapproval in the 30s.)
How come Hilary didn't know about the kid till fifteen years later, anyway? Didn't they write LETTERS in those days?
'Don't...tell...Liam!' - not only has Hilary inexplicably deduced that Anji Knows All about his illegitimate offspring, he's more concerned about the kid remaining in ignorance than he is about the fact he's being hideously tortured to death?
The Doctor and Fitz hang around - missing their chance to pursue the genocidal-maniacs-from-the-future, and setting themselves up to be arrested for murder - just because Anji decides they can't leave a corpse? What earthly difference does it make to Hilary NOW? And it's not like they'd be leaving the body to rot, the police will be arriving any second...
'This is worse than being stuck in a time loop!' - how would the Doctor know? He's amnesiac!
'The thin man hit the Aga and a welter of sparks flew into the air' - that doesn't happen when you hit an Aga! 'The sparks had caught the dry paper lying on the Aga' - and no one leaves paper lying around on an Aga!
Funny that the wasps managed to turn their first victim into a zombie, and have one subsequent success in possessing another victim so perfectly even the Doctor didn't NOTICE...but despite the Doc's claim that they'd learnt an enormous amount from their first victim, kill so many other people whilst trying to convert them.
'At least it looks as though Charles Rigby's paid for his crime' says Fitz. Which bit of THE MAN'S POSSESSED BY WASPS!!!! has he somehow not grasped?
What makes Kala think that nuking an English village won't affect the future much or her own personal future at all - 'Otherwise I wouldn't be here - it's immutable'. Surely a society with time-travel has worked out that TIME CAN BE REWRITTEN? (Alright, so HARTNELL hadn't, but...)
And how come these clodhoppers haven't blown up the universe by now or something? Or at least EVER appeared on the Doctor's radar, before or since...Not to mention 'Time-travel technology has developed in different ways all over the system'...!
'If this was indeed God's house, then the verger had died a horrible, agonising death right on his doorstep. And, if truth be told, Fordyke found that a bit difficult to swallow' - blimey, it usually takes a lot more than THAT to shake a god-botherer's faith.
'Nuclear strike. It's the only way' - to kill one human? These guys have invented time travel but not a cleaner way of killing that doesn't involve hundreds of thousands of deaths?
To be continued...
'Neither could see anything' WHY, exactly, since Fatboy's SNS suit has been DESTROYED.
'"Doctor!" Fitz shouted, genuinely shocked [at him knocking out Kala]..."I've no idea what's going on but you'd better have a good explanation"' - which bit of Kala saying 'I'm giving the order for Jode to nuke the place' ONE MINUTE EARLIER somehow slipped his memory...?
'Slowly the train began to haul itself forward' - and yet the Doctor doesn't jump on THEN, oh no, he has to chase it faster and faster up the platform and leap on the last carriage and nearly get Anji killed in the process...
'His eyes never left Rigby's, or what remained of them: cruel red orbs sitting like scabs in the calloused, black flesh' - ah yes, no Who book is complete without doing SOMETHING horrible to an eyeball or two (AND a cat but I have hopes...)
'I'm not at the point where I can take his life just like that...There's still a part of Charles Rigby that's not been taken over by the psionic energy' - oh for heaven's sake! Whatever happened to Cold Killer Amnesiac Eight? And if there WAS any of Rigby left I'm thinking he'd be urging the Doctor to save hundreds of thousands of lives by putting him out of his misery.
Honestly, anyone would think the Doctor KNEW he had eighty more pages to fill...
'All that sympathy for a few crushed wasps' - quite. This Doctor is positively schizophrenic.
'Giving him the final word was my only way of buying more time' - no it wasn't. You're the boss, Jode can't activate Fatboy without your say-so, he wasn't on the point of TORTURING you to get you to give it, he was just yelling and nagging a lot, so what's your PROBLEM?
'Jode stood in front of what he took to be an altar' - given this bunch's (delightful) ignorance of all things god-bothering, it's somewhat out of character for him to have the foggiest what an 'altar' is.
'Once the arming sequence had been started the countdown couldn't be stopped' - except when Fatboy freezes up shortly before the explosion and anyone can dismantle his innards...
The Doctor FORGETS that he has a piece of the weapon...and FORGETS that Kala more-or-less told him that Jode could set off the bomb on his own...? How stupid IS he?!
'"You stupid machine!" the Doctor grabbed the android's shoulders in frustration, and Fatboy's central computer processor interpreted the action as hostile intent. His own hands leapt up and fastened around the Doctor's neck in a choke hold' - how thick IS the Doctor? He KNOWS that Fatboy will freeze up in 20 seconds, giving him ample time to defuse the nuke...if he hasn't been throttled to death...
'[The Doctor's] eyes always looked so sad' - so you're saying he was miserable-as-hell for ALL post-Ancestor-Cell stories...?
'Now that the excitement was over, he seemed to have returned to his former state of ennui' - the Doctor Anji's known for the past three novels has always been bored out of his skull? Look, I'm not saying they've been the most interesting novels in the world (though EarthWorld is always fun) but...he's THE DOCTOR. He just DOESN'T spend his life being sad and bored.
The Doctor's current predilection for violence is an ongoing theme, perhaps an extension of being trapped among warring humans for so long' - hmm. I noticed him being a bit of a git in The Burning and Timeless, but don't remember any such ongoing theme
And in The Turing Test. Which still doesn't make for an ongoing theme.
'The time-hopping Kala leaves, Doctor-style, before any awkward questions can be asked, and the reader is left wondering when (not if) we'll meet her again and get some proper answers' - well, I certainly don't remember ever encountering Kala again
*Checks TARDIS Wiki* Nope. And should there be Time Agents from the forty-ninth century?
'Now that the excitement was over, he seemed to have returned to his former state of ennui' - the Doctor Anji's known for the past three novels has always been bored out of his skull? Look, I'm not saying they've been the most interesting novels in the world (though EarthWorld is always fun) but...he's THE DOCTOR. He just DOESN'T spend his life being sad and bored.
Especially after Endgame gave us an entire book on the subject of 'He's really bored and depressed and indifferent but hey! One adventure and he's perked up no end and started CARING about people!', not to mention Father Time providing a daughter he loved. (If you're gonna claim that he's really depressed over mislaying Miranda...he CHOSE not to go saving the galaxy with her in Father Time. And when she went splat in Sometime Never... he really didn't seem to give a toss.)