Uh, there's nothing here!
I knooooow! The site isn't just slow to show up actual posts, it frequently takes its time to allow you to post ANYTHING in a newly-created section.
Anyway...
*Drumroll*
I've no idea what this is - may get relegated to the Young Children's Books thread - but A THIRTEENTH DOCTOR NOVEL, EVERYONE! And it's not even by Justin Richards!
You don't really KNOW a new Doctor's real until she's appeared in some paradoxically-uncanonical and usually-rubbish book...it's like being christened or something...
Oh, and you won't believe (except that you WILL, of course) - having attempted to blackmail Fans into buying the same stupid book twice by turning 11 Doctors 11 Stories into 12 Doctors 12 Stories then, yup...13 Doctors 13 Stories...
As with The Good Doctor, JODIE!'s voice comes across wonderfully clearly, this is probably more to the credit of her adorable Northern accent than to her authors' skills - and I'm STILL getting a kick out of seeing the Doctor casually referred to as 'she' - but the back-cover blurb is over-selling it a bit claiming this is 'a thrilling, hilarious and scary adventure' and under-selling it a bit by claiming the galaxy (rather than THE UNIVERSE) is in terrible danger.
Still, the front cover's great - JODIE!'s costume really comes into its own when rendered in cartoon form cos it IS a bloody cartoon.
'Diddly-dum Diddly-dum Woo-woo' is an EXCELLENT title for Chapter One. And I don't usually approve of breaking the Fourth Wall.
WHY had the Mark VI obtained little intelligence about the Doc during the pursuit? It certainly became an expert on all her pets.
Oh, now it's FINALLY noticed she's got two hearts. And after accessing the knowledge of 10,000 star system deduces she's a Time Lord. Only 10,000 systems? I'm surprised Gallifrey is even on such a rubbish databank. And plenty of other species have two hearts - like that Girl Who Waited planet.
A paranoid dictator's scanning equipment fails to register the sonic screwdriver as a weapon?
'I've seen that grin before. On Proxima Ceti, just before she outwitted those carnivorous chessmen' - dammit, why are the adventures we DON'T see ('I have apologised for the Death Eye Turtle Army! Profusely!') more interesting than the ones we do?
'One time he'd even seen her escape from Houdini. Well, not the real Houdini, but 200 evil cyborg clones of the great escapologist in the subways of New York City in 1904' - OK, maybe not THAT adventure. Destiny of the Doctor: Smoke and Mirrors put me off Houdini for life...
'It had no force field' - that's not what Rosa said!
'The prisoners were lined up before him and forced to pay their respects on their knees by the butt of a rifle' - the Doctor actually KNELT to this git! She might at least have groaned loudly about her bad back, a la Hartnell.
'I'm the Doctor, first in the Gallifrey Under-tens Swimathon, thirteenth of my line' - you don't think Gallifrey's been SUFFICIENTLY demystified, over the decades? You just had to ADD A SODDING SWIMATHON?!
'There are three universal constants: Planck's quantum of action' - uh? - 'toast always falling butter-side down, and the reaction of anyone entering the TARDIS for the first time' - not our Rory!
'She'd soon realised it wasn't just the timeship that was bigger on the inside; as soon as she stepped through its doors, she felt bigger and bolder too' - and yet it STILL took 'em fourteen tries to get round to thinking of actually stepping OUT of said doors into history? Also, Yaz isn't worried that some of these traumatised people/monsters aboard the TARDIS might decide to STAY? (Luckily it turns out they ALL have families waiting for them, despite the fact their planets were all genocided and conquered and suchlike years ago.)
'Just like the Time Lords who built them' - GREW them, surely? - 'every TARDIS had two hearts: the engine room with its near-magical power source, the Eye of Harmony, and the circular console room' - oh-kay, you might like to correct the telemovie and point out it's only a LINK to the Eye of Harmony, and IS the console room always circular?
'Incongruous against the fantastical interior, the entrance looked like an extension forced on the architects by a plodding local-council planing department' - jeez, I haven't taken to the antechamber either but I wouldn't diss the hell out of it in an official novel!
Alright, you said it was early days but you also mentioned several unseen adventures, so for Graham to say 'I thought you weren't supposed to meddle in other civilisations' and the Doc to have to point out that 'Meddling's kind of my thing' is, frankly, WEIRD.
'"Time Lady" sounds like a watch you'd buy on the shopping channel' - JODIE! knows about the shopping channel?! Oh gods how bored WAS poor darling Capaldi during his Vault years...?
'The Doctor was apparently on her thirteenth body...the Doctor's twelve previous bodies...' - Well, SOMEONE'S certainly decided not to address the WAR DOCTOR elephant in the room...
'Sarah Jane and I had a few problems with one of those' - two of those actually, and then there was that stupid Eighth Doctor Krynoid audio I can't really fault you for ignoring...
Look, to be absolutely honest, the Ents were never my favourite part of Lord of the Rings...
'Mystery lost in the mists of time. Yes, it's up there with the monoliths on the moons of Europa, and with Stonehenge' - the Doc KNOWS about the mystery of Stonehenge! It was built to mark her Pandorica prison (The Pandorica Opens) with the help of the Monk's anti-gravitational lift (The Time Meddler)!
The Doctor doesn't protest when ushered to safety (or at least to go-rescue-the-Vault) when the attack craft arrive?
'The bee invasion of earth in 2151 AD' - well why did no one mention THAT in Dalek Invasion of Earth!
'We can't get too close, or we'll risk triggering ground-to-air defences...we have to park and ride' - er...you've got a TARDIS Doctor! Just materialise inside the Vault!
I thought Kate was KIDDING when she referred to the Doctor* being drawn by rabbits on a sledge. But there is no idea so sick that SOMEONE won't canonise it...
'Strange, I would have expected a welcoming committee by now. A warning laser-shot, a sonic blast, a pack of robot guard dogs' - so basically even the 'park and ride' idea was seriously dodgy!
Sexy can't provide clothing that heats up?
'Hope you know some space karate?' 'Venusian aikido. A more subtle martial art, favoured by a few of us Time Lords' - a) Yaz SOMEHOW DIDN'T NOTICE Herself paralysing Epzo with a helpful explanation of ' Venusian Aikido. Grand Master Pacifist. Temporarily paralyses, while also being fundamentally harmless. Very clever, those Venusian nuns'? Also, since when was nipping off to Venus a TIME LORD rather than Doctor peculiarity? When did Andred, Maxil or Rassilon ever whip out a finger as a deadly weapon?
'Yaz and the Doctor had no means of contacting them' - Team TARDIS don't keep in touch via MOBILE PHONE? The Good Doctor made it clear that Ryan at least was still mobile-obsessed...
'They say they treasure all plant life. But, by destroying the seed vault, they'll wipe out millions of species of plants. It doesn't make any sense' - stop drawing attention to the rubbishness of the villain's motivation, Yaz!
The Doctor waited with remarkable patience for the whole 'universe is at stake!' thing to be explained.
'"Seventeen minutes. Between landing and being arrested. A new record." She grinned' - I bet it ISN'T.
'The Doctor also had her sonic confiscated' - OK, I've just spent several decades nitpicking anyone who DIDN'T confiscate the Doctor's sonic when they captured her (him. Whatever) so it's GROSSLY unfair for me to turn round and ask SINCE WHEN has anyone had the sense to search the Doctor and confiscate her (his. Whatever) sonic - that's just not the way the Whoniverse WORKS.
To be continued...
*Well, Sylvester McCoy pretending to be a wizard, or something.
'A smooth white oval that resembled a human head, but was featureless save for a pair of empty eye sockets' - Ah, bless, this has found a way of continuing the good old Who novel tradition of gouging people's eyes out...in a child-friendly manner.
The Doc names her fake-kids-with-Graham Rassilon Junior and Sally?! And, worse, calls herself MRS SMITH - it's the forty-first century! Women STILL lose their identities?
'"Shouldn't we stay until the rescue ship gets here?" asked Yaz. The Doctor looked around at the celebrating students of New Phaeton. "No need. They're all going to be just fine. School's out. Forever."' - Well, SOMEONE obviously hasn't read Lord of the Flies...
The TARDIS's telepathic circuits now involve 'the hypodermic needle of [Yaz's] nightmares'. I don't remember that from Demons of the Punjab. (Mind you, I don't remember MUCH about Demons of the Punjab.)
The Doc's excuse for not being hurled to the floor when Sexy pitched over is that 'Nadia Comaneci, first gymnast to achieve a perfect ten...taught me how to stick the landing' - WHEN? I'm (fairly) sure that JODIE! hasn't been sneaking out on her pets when they're asleep, a la Matt in the DVD extras, so that would be sometime she was a MAN, and presumably after Tennant was rolling around on the TARDIS floor in Tooth and Claw...
Yaz is twenty years old? Not a nit (would fit in with her spending two years as a probationer if she went straight from A-Levels to the police), but I'm sure this will be contradicted at SOME point so this is just a reminder to my future self...
SO unDoctorish for the Doc to programme some stupid cube with knowledge gained from all of her regenerations. (Alright, s/he did something similar in Infinite Requiem but there's nothing particularly Doctorish about Infinite Requiem either.) As as for her worry that 'the cost of brontobyte storage is exorbitant'...
Um, why give the mole an addition sacrifice of a shiny chrome expresso maker and similar? THAT wasn't in the bylaws.
Graham's remarkably eager to sacrifice some other poor guy in his place. (Yes, obviously I would be too, it's just that exposure to JODIE! should have turned him into a hero by now.)
What are Thals and Tritovores doing in a list of monsters? (The list-reciting is perhaps where the fanwank stops being marvellous fun and starts being a bit annoying.)
'If Yaz wanted to keep the most precious item in the universe out of the wrong hands, she would have entrusted it to the Doctor too' - seriously? She's, like, the most endangered/accident-prone person in the UNIVERSE.
Noughtweed would really be able to get through the TARDIS's outer shell?
'There is actually a T-shirt commemorating my epic saves' - then how come previous Doctors had to go to MUSEUMS for a bit of a gloat (Time of Angels)? - 'Got it in the gift shop on the planet Shada' - Shada does not have a gift shop! It didn't have one in, well, Shada and it didn't have one in Movers and A Labyrinth of Histories either! - 'Terrible place. Designed so that once you're in you can never find your way out' - er, yes, Doctor, IT'S A PRISON.
'Yaz struggled to comprehend the Doctor's actions' - you and me both, Sunshine, and I'm speaking with hindsight - 'Why had she given up the seed so easily? Surely she didn't trust Nightshade to keep his end of the deal?' - what difference does it make whether or not Nightshade keeps the deal to release her friends unharmed? He's about to blow up THE UNIVERSE thanks to the Doctor helpfully handing him the means to blow up THE UNIVERSE.
Shouldn't Yaz at least have had some sort of moral dilemma about telling the Doc that she'd seen her lying DEAD while in Sexy's telepathic circuits, and she suspected it was a genuine vision of the future?
Why 'Vault 13' on the cover and 'Vault Thirteen' in the text?
'All things must die. That was the way of the universe, and even the universe must obey its own laws. He was merely the agent of that change' - what, that's IT? Admittedly it's about as much motivation as Davros had for his let's-destroy-every-universe-ever thing, but still...
'What do you think I am - a magician?' - er...well...YEAH, actually. You're Merlin. You do the transmigration-of-object thing in Ambassadors of Death and Greatest Show in the Galaxy, you saved every universe ever, you sealed the rift at the Medusa Cascade single handed, you should bloody well be able to SWAP APPLE SEEDS AROUND without anyone noticing.
'When was the last time you used Zyton-Seven to transfer the Eye of Harmony's energy into orbital artron energy, eh?' - OK, I'm sure those of us who've spent decades wondering what Zyton-7 has to do with anything are very grateful...
Oh, of course you built a back-up Vault on EARTH. Just as you hid one of the keys on EARTH. And stuck the other one on the President of EARTH. And come to think of it, you must have handed over the other key to the human teachers before their spaceship left, yup, EARTH. Despite the fact it's the most invaded planet in the universe (don't believe the Tivolians, that's what I say).
And never mind the aliens, we're destroying our own planet, INCLUDING THE SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT, all by ourselves...
'Yaz and the Doctor had no means of contacting them' - Team TARDIS don't keep in touch via MOBILE PHONE? The Good Doctor made it clear that Ryan at least was still mobile-obsessed...
And Yaz certainly has a working mobile in Resolution...
And never mind the aliens, we're destroying our own planet, INCLUDING THE SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT, all by ourselves...
Actually that should now read ESPECIALLY THE SVALBARD GLOBAL SEED VAULT...
Fastest-Warming Place on Earth.
'Yaz and the Doctor had no means of contacting them' - Team TARDIS don't keep in touch via MOBILE PHONE?
Well, the Doc seems perfectly capable of mobile-phoning her chums in Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror, and surely if she thought of this in her second year, it would have occurred to her mega-genius brain EARLIER.