While the pastiche of Heller's style was pretty good, the author still had him using the word "mad." Americans almost always (especially in 1944) use the word "crazy" or "nuts." Also, I belive the US Air Force was still known as the US Army Air Force.

The good thing about it, for me as a Maltese, is that a scene of the story happens in my country, Malta. It's the first time Doctor Who gets to Malta I believe...

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Ah. Being English, of course, one has a distinct advantage when it comes to the Doctor's presence

Most Doctor Who stories are set in the UK. Ok there are episodes showing Paris, Spain and South America.

If you read the novels, there have been quite a few set outside the UK, including several in the US ("King of Terror", "Dying in the Light", "Salvation", and "First Frontier" all come immediately to mind).

Yeah. And the other thing that comes to mind when seeing that list is that none of them are any good. (And it's Dying in the Sun, by the way.)

Hmm. Momentary lapse of memory. Old age, you know.

Although I did like "First Frontier", even though it's portrayal of the Master is really hard to fit into continuity.

Old age, my foot. It's fatherhood.

So you didn't find First Frontier one of the most tedious experiences of your life?

Not really. But I was reading it on the train, so there wasn't much to distract me.

It's certainly not the greatest novel ever written, but it was also far from the worst. A left-handed compliment you could assign to most of the novels, I'm afraid.

I'm currently reading 'Catch 22'.

This book answered none of the questions it raised. Who and what were the Dresden aliens? Who and what were the robot "creatures" trying to kill them? And how could their very presence stop the transmat (or whatever it was) from working? There really wasn't much of a conclusion at all.

Typical Paul Leonard tripe. Why they continue to let him write for the range is beyond me. The first half is nominally OK but the switch to using Greene and Heller as narrators is simply so he can indulge in some literary onanism. I'm sure PL thinks those sections are filled with in-jokes and wonderfully witty asides but it does nothing for the story and leaves the reader with the feeling the author is trying to show how clever they are (and failing miserably). The court-martial scene is a very poor and extremely unfunny pastiche of 'Catch-22'. Worse than that is that it's tedious. For the last forty pages I had no interest in how it would end - I just wanted it over with asap. And it 'climaxed' in a few sentences (much like 'Revolution Man') with no explanation. That's not building mystery; it's just very, very bad writing.

As an example of bad writing in the court-martial scene the prosecutor is mentioned to be like a praying mantis three times in two pages. Did PL run out of descriptive terms?

When Greene and Elgar run into the church during the bombing (in Greene's narrative) Elgar is blinded. On the next page it says they both turned to look at each other.

For the last forty pages I had no interest in how it would end

Well, then what are you complaining about? It's those of us who actually wanted some kind of proper ending who were cheated.

When Greene and Elgar run into the church during the bombing (in Greene's narrative) Elgar is blinded. On the next page it says they both turned to look at each other.

Hmm. Maybe it's temporary blinding, a la Brain of Morbius and Horror of Fang Rock?

Maybe it's temporary blinding, a la Brain of Morbius and Horror of Fang Rock?

In a later scene down at the river he's sill blind.

Temporary miracle?

Can we have a permanent miracle of Paul Leonard never writing for the series again? The [i]only[/i] book I've got of his that I'd say was good is 'Dry Pilgrimage' - and by all accounts he had sod all to do with it.

Am I the only one who thinks this way?

Weeeeeell...I wouldn't be QUITE that harsh, but I have to admit that I could live extremely happily with never seeing the words 'Paul Leonard' on the cover of a book again. Though given the kind of authors inflicted on us these days (you know...Dicks...Letts...Boucher...practically everyone who's been commissioned in the last couple of years) even Paul Leonard would be a relief.

You forgot Mick Lewis. Or at least tried to.

And it 'climaxed' in a few sentences (much like 'Revolution Man') with no explanation. That's not building mystery; it's just very, very bad writing.

It is when it happens in the novels. However it's bloody marvellous when RTG does it on-screen.

Can we have a permanent miracle of Paul Leonard never writing for the series again?

HAS he ever written for the series again?

Typical Paul Leonard tripe.

'Fraid so. Very dull and dragged-out, seems to be suffering under the delusion it has profound things to say, BUT...redeeming feature!...a blessed forty fewer pages than the average Who novel.

The Eighth Doctor (twice!) has golden hair?

The Doc's 'incandescent and theatrical' 'Adam cast out of Paradise', 'incoherent', 'groaning' 'tear-stained' display of despair on discovering that Sexy was still a box (um, sorry, what...she's been a gradually growing box for well over half a century) is somewhat ridiculous. (And then he...STARTS SNORING LIGHTLY?)

'Don't worry. You were stupid, but he's probably just a madman. I'm sure a spy wouldn't draw attention to himself like that' - a madman who just happens to know all about the brand-new top-secret German code? ARE YOU KIDDING? Lest we forget, this is the beyond-top-secret code-breaking during WORLD WAR TWO. (I mean, you TOLD your boss that, right? You specifically said you told him EVERYTHING. And yet a few pages and days later you two are having a '"What precisely did he say?" And so I had to tell him, of course' conversation?)

'You can't do that! I don't think you can understand the importance of Mr Turing's contribution to the war effort!' - QUITE. Even the CHARACTERS can't maintain the suspension of disbelief necessary to drag ALAN TURING off to Europe during World War Two...

'I wanted to get into a real dialogue with the Doctor - something I still thought possible, at that stage in our friendship' - surely the Doctor had managed to master DIALOGUE by Casualties of War, if not The Burning?

'They were speaking a language' 'What kind of language' 'I don't know' - I thought only Companions required a Doctor-n-TARDIS combination in order to understand foreign languages - that the Doctor could cope all by her/himself?

Why doesn't Torchwood cope with this bunch of aliens? They really should be bothering to do SOMETHING during the War...

The Doctor doesn't have any nationality papers? Is he really incapable of a good forgery - or of finding someone capable of a good forgery? How has he avoided being rounded up during two World Wars? How did he manage to get a ration card - or if he didn't, how did he manage to EAT?

'"Your life may be in danger," I said. He didn't even raise his eyes from the book! "Oh, it always is"' - since WHEN! The Doc has had a grand total of Two Exciting Adventures during his over-fifty-years being stranded on Earth, and he can't REMEMBER anything before then! (NB: He obviously hasn't been having alien-encounters between books because he later specifically says 'I have been looking for an impossibility for a long time. I found a couple [viz, Burning and Casualties] but they didn't lead me anywhere.' Come to think of it, why didn't he spot any of the PROPER Who stories that were going on during the War...)

'He seemed to think that, because I could think logically about what I had told him, I had no heart' - er, HE told YOU.

'Outside I could hear the Doctor shouting. "Help me with the door! For pity's sake, someone help me!" I dropped the papers and ran outside' - this does NOT sound like someone who responsibly 'locked [the door], because of the code sheets'.

'I asked Sergeant Brevell where Greene and Elgar were' - you couldn't even be bothered to remember that Greene was going under the name of White? There's a war on! Careless talk costs lives! Loose lips sink ships!

'Bernard can get us across the border. We'll have to lie to him, but that's a small sin, and I'll do it if you like' - I know he's amnesiac and has been subjected to human concepts for decades but hearing the Doctor talk in terms of sins is just weird.

'The Doctor's insouciance, his way of using apparent coincidence, parallels that of our Maker Himself - a similarity which I think is neither deliberate nor accidental, but inevitable' - I never noticed the Catholic God being particularly...insouciant?

'He had appeared from nowhere, had no papers, and appeared to be innocent of the need for any' - IN THE MIDDLE OF A WORLD WAR? Come OFF it. Pertwee only got away with affecting an indifference to papers because he KNEW Jo Grant would be trotting meekly behind him clutching them.

So the Eighth Doctor's reaction to the War is to try and join up - and, when rejected, to go travelling in Latin America and Africa? That's distinctly different from his reaction to the Time War...

'"So what do you suppose we should do?" "I don't know," said the Doctor, his voice again taking that hollow and sepulchral tone. "I never do"' - you DON'T? You seem almost indistinguishable from your former world-saving self in the later EDAs - when you've still got amnesia - so is the lack-of-Sexy/Fitz really making THAT much difference to your ENTIRE CHARACTER...?

Meeting more than one alien species doesn't seem to have affected Greene's novels at all, oddly enough.

Why does Greene suggest to the Doctor they take Mass together? It's not like he has any reason to believe the Doc's a) Catholic, b) in a state of grace or c) human.

Also, the Doc drinks the Blood as well as eats the Flesh? I thought in those days Catholic rank-and-file didn't get the booze cos, hey, plebs?

'The priest said you were evil, Doctor' - what a git.

To be continued...

Meeting more than one alien species doesn't seem to have affected Greene's novels at all, oddly enough.

And bear in mind when I say 'meeting' I mean SHAGGING one of 'em...

'We didn't talk much after that. I left him at the port in Freetown: he said he would catch a Portuguese liner to Europe, but he left no forwarding address' - that's IT? Greene suspects the Doctor tricked him into an entirely pointless trip to Markebo just to get out of jail free, and once it's over Greene just...waves the blatant inhuman spy goodbye?

There's a ••••••• WAR on, why is secret agent Graham Greene spilling his guts to a mysterious woman in a public restaurant about German secret super-weapons and suchlike, just because she asks 'Which doctor?' and 'What incident?'...he's not even sure he wants to sleep with her at this point...

'"We - I -" He shrugged. "It's not something that interests me." "Sex?" "Yes. It's a missing piece in my life"' - ha! Take THAT, Interference, Year of Intelligent Tigers, City of the Dead, Autumn Mist, The Dying Days...(Amnesia wouldn't affect that sort of thing, would it.)

'In the face of Daria's death, I was only reminded that human beings do not speak in B-movie cliches, and that Elgar could not, therefore, be human' - humans DO sometimes talk in B-movie cliches, especially in the Whoniverse...('Nozzing in ze vorld vill schtop me noooooow!')

'It was much like the sense I might have about the direction of a novel, and had the same sense of tedious inevitability' - unwise to use phrases like 'tedious inevitability', in the circumstances...

Elgar says he can see through the iced windscreen yet Greene still refers to him as driving blind.

Hang on, there are still Jews living openly - Star of David and all - in Nazi Germany in 1945???

Greene wonders if he'd have the courage to use his cyanide capsule. But it feels like the normal human fear of death, nothing whatsoever to do with the fear of eternal damnation after committing the Ultimate Sin...

'Turing had been...not at all interested in the fate of thousands, perhaps millions, of European Jews' - what d'you mean, PERHAPS millions? You KNOW Europe doesn't - didn't - only have a few thousand Jews in it, don't you?

'I knew that the best solution would be to expel all of them - burn them back to whatever heaven or hell they came from' - blimey, when did Graham Greene turn into Simon de Montfort (the Elder)?

Greene takes a revolver because 'it occurred to me that it would be better to shoot myself than fall into the hands of either the Doctor and his fake SS, or of the real Gestapo' - er...hello! Eternal damnation! Also, CYANIDE CAPSULE!

Why are no locals taking refuge from the bombing in the church crypt?

(At least some excuse is offered for the pub cellar also being mysteriously devoid of humans while Dresden is being fire-bombed out of existence - even if 'It's full of wood! It's not safe!' is a bit...weak. Any port in a storm...and you're not Big Finish, you don't actually have to cough up MONEY for each extra...)

'You have killed the Doctor' - and yet Turing seems remarkably unupset about the demise of the love of his life...

'Perhaps that was why he'd followed me - to make me feel guilty' - or because he's a helpless childish Brit in the middle of Nazi Germany who desperately needs your help to get OUT of Nazi Germany? And who, if captured and interrogated by the Nazis, could reveal the fact he'd CRACKED THE ENIGMA CODE and thereby potentially add YEARS to the horrors of World War Two...?

'Turing shrugged. "It's no good being sorry if he's dead." "And is he?" "I don't know. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you were willing to do it. To kill -"' - IT DOESN'T MATTER? Not only does no one in this book manage to remember THERE'S A WAR ON for more than five minutes at a time, they also can't remember WHO THEY'RE IN LOVE WITH either...And Greene's a British Agent in the middle of a World War, the fact he's willing to shoot people shouldn't come as a much-more-important-than-the-loss-of-the-love-of-your-life SHOCK!

'I saw then that his eyes were white, like those of a cooked fish' - because if you're not gonna GOUGE OUT THOSE EYEBALLS you're gonna BURN 'em. It's a Who novel, it's your duty. For Queen and Country! (And, um, Elgar found you lurking in your locked cellar whilst wandering BLIND around fire-bombed Dresden...?)

To be continued...

Greene wonders if he'd have the courage to use his cyanide capsule.

All top ranking Nazis had them. Both Himmler and Goering used them to escape justice (Goering just before he was due to be hanged).

The Allies had him in prison for HOW long? And they just...forgot to search him?

Somehow, all those times the Doctor was locked up and got out by...getting the sonic screwdriver out of his pocket are looking a lot more plausible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_G%C3%B6ring#Trial_and_death

Blimey, I didn't know any of that stuff, which is pretty weird given the British education system is basically obsessed by Nazis.

The more you know...

Greene seems prepared to die for Elgar AFTER seeing Elgar for exactly what he was ('The grey-and-black German uniform became a part of him as soon as he put it on. Elgar became a German - a committed Nazi...gained a pig-eyed, flabby sense of evil...I had joined the wrong side') WHY, exactly? (You know, you're more likely to get away with forcing characters to behave wildly out of character to suit the plot when there actually IS a plot to distract the reader with.)

'I remembered Daria's self-sacrifice' - WHAT self-sacrifice?! She was killed by the Doctor's machine, remember?

'I wonder if the Doctor has ever worried about biographers...Greene sought to explain the mystery, but give it up before the end, as if he felt he were writing a bad novel and couldn't bring it to a creative conclusion' - stop with the Messages From Fred!

'The Doctor stepped forward and muttered something to the colonel in a low voice. And no, I didn't hear it, and no, I don't know how he did it, except that I guess he appealed to the core of self-interest beneath the blood-thirsty colonel' - wow, since when has the Doctor been able to talk homicidal maniacs out of executions? He didn't seem to have so much luck in, say, Masque of Mandragora...

Aaaand later we are actually blessed with an explanation of what was actually said: 'The Doctor smiled sweetly. "I told him I was your friend." He looked around, then added in a whisper. "I told him I could stop you making trouble"' - you know what else could stop Heller making trouble? EXECUTING HIM.

Turing falls from the plane without a parachute. The Doctor jumps after him with a spare parachute. 'He couldn't possibly save Turing. He couldn't possibly even catch him up' - unfortunately the likes of Death in Heaven and The Doctor, the Widow and the Wardrobe have prevented me from agreeing that OF COURSE THE DOCTOR COULDN'T HAVE SAVED TURING EVEN THOUGH HE DID.

'"I sometimes think God is a great big glutinous monster, sticky-fingered with young men's blood, sitting up there in the sky and laughing at us." He didn't recoil, didn't even blink, but an answering sadness darkened all the shadows on his face. "Sometimes I think that too," he said' - NO HE DOESN'T! (Though it WOULD have been quite amusing to see a vulnerable, abandoned, amnesiac Doctor converting to one of the human religions during his century of misery abandoned on our planet.)

'I'd already sat through a half-hour of Greene, the Doctor and Turing discussing the moralities and possibilities. They were very good at discussion, I'd decided, and much less good at action' - this book is REMARKABLY self-aware, which makes it even more annoying that it's STILL seen fit to inflict itself on us.

'The Doctor, rolling upright with remarkable rapidity for a man who'd just been shot. I couldn't see nay blood, and concluded he'd been playing possum. A quick thinker, obviously, and used to being shot at' - so the Doc wasn't just SAYING he was used to being shot at! He actually WAS even though LIKE I SAID, his life on Earth (even during his previous two alien-adventures) was dull as ditchwater...maybe he had lots of excitements in Latin America and Africa when he was allegedly spending the World War there...?

'it was murder. I watched as the flesh fell away and the ululating screams choked off. I watched the eyes as they melted' - of course you did. Turning the eyeballs white liked cooked fish just ISN'T ENOUGH to fulfil your contractual duties, gotta MELT 'em too, just to be on the safe side...

The Doctor's 'killed so many people'? WHEN? (I mean, when post-amnesia, obviously. Before Gallifrey Chronicles one would have thought that he was subconsciously aware of slaughtering his entire species (bar four for some reason) but THAT makes it quite clear that he knew on some level that he hadn't.)

Hmm. This entire novel seems designed to shock you with the revelation that THE DOCTOR IS PREPARED TO COMMIT MURDER! when pushed to the limit. Did it really not notice that the FIRST book in this misconceived Earth Arc (two whole books ago!) ALSO ended with Amnesiac Eight murdering the alien-creature? Did it not notice this entire range STARTED with The Eight Doctors' Pertwee threatening to murder a future self because HE was so desperate to get off-world?

So the Eighth Doctor's reaction to the War is to try and join up - and, when rejected, to go travelling in Latin America and Africa? That's distinctly different from his reaction to the Time War...

More to the point, it's distinctly different from his reaction to the FIRST World War (Casualties of War): '"Why are you not off fighting in the war?" "This is not my war." "This is everybody's war." "Perhaps I fought my war already."'