I agree, but I still enjoyed it. The I-think-I’m-human section was weird and wonderful (OK, so it’s been done before in Human Nature, but it’s worth doing again) - the appearance of other Doctors was a joy, and I didn’t even mind him having a mermaid mother. Iris is always good fun, and I’ve nothing against old ladies being pursued round shopping malls by giant owls. And OK, the Star Trek parody was so blatant that even I noticed, and I’m not exactly a fan (EXTERMINATE ALL TREKKIES!!!! How DARE their programme be more popular than ours!) but it was bearable.

But as the end grew closer I was wondering how on Earth they’d tie everything up, only to discover that...they couldn’t be bothered. So it’s part of an arc, and hopefully it’ll all get cleared up later, but that’s no excuse for this being a series of scenes which cut off before the end, rather than a proper book. I don’t insist on the Doctor saving the universe EVERY day, but his presence should make a bit of a difference, surely? And I’ve nothing against a mystery about Iris’s origins (well, I’m a Who fan, I’m not exactly in a position to complain) but all those other questions should have been cleared up - did Ian/Icarus come from that owl’s egg or was produced by *shudder* Daedalus and Iris? How did he end up on Earth? Why is the War now inevitable? What's all this about a previous trip by the Doctor to the City of Glass? How and when did the Doctor get stuck thinking he was human, and when’s he going to escape from it?

I couldn't wait to finish this book by the time I was half way through. As much a fan of Star Trek as I am, I couldn't help but wish the authors had done something original, and given us a crew they created rather than these simpleton photo-copies. And that krappy 'ending'?! Pee-yew! This is a stinker if I've ever read one. As it ends with 20 questions,I havemy own that should have been stuck at the end of this collection of paper and words (I refuse to give it the honour of calling it a 'book'.)
1. How about that ending?...As I said, krap.
2. Do you feel ripped off?...Yes!
3. Did you pay full price for this book?...No. And at half price in a used book store, I still feel ripped off.
4. How original was the Star Trekparody?...Terrible. Was it supposed to be funny, or a slap in the face? I dunno.
5. Should the authors write a sequel?...God,no! Let this piece of doo-doo rest in peace.
6. Are you sure?.....Yes! Spare us!
7. How was the level of writing?.....The Iris sections seemed okay, but I suspect the rest were written by his partner, who's probably a 14-year old, because he writes like one.
8. Did the characters speak in the most over-the-top fashion you've read since high school?.....Worse. It was as bad as my writing when I was 12.
9. Who should take the credit?....No, credit; blame! I blame the editors for allowing this drivel to be printed.
10. Was the Doctor portrayed correctly?....No! Swearing profusely when something goes wrong is not in character for any incarnation.
11. Is that a future Doctor with an eye-patch and moustache?...Heck,no. Never. No-waaaaay!
12. Would you buy another 'book' from either of these 'authors' again?...Nope. Not gonna do it.
13; Was it cool having Earth animals like wolves and owls and a squid in the story?....No. More lack of orignality. Give me NEW alien life forms.
14; Blandish and Garrett are revealed to be lovers. Cool,huh?.....No, it's sick, especially if it's meant as Kirkand Spock. It served no purpose.
15; What did you think of the 'human' Doctor with the bad dreams?...Pretty lame, considering we were given no explanation about what's going on! Geez!
16; Did it make sense that the Glass Men originally spoke repetitivly, and then like a regular person later in the book?.....Nope. No explanation given there, either.
17. What was the best part of the book?...The part where it says, 'Published by BBC Worldwide'. After that, yecch!
18. What suggestions do you have for the authors?....Not to call themselves'authors'.
19. Anything else?.....Yep. Don't quit your day jobs.
20. What could be done to improve this 'book'?...Throw it into the time vortex and let the Daleks exterminate it.

Yeah, it *is* a brilliant book...

And now the arc's over, and all that 'events in the Obverse make the War inevitable' stuff is not only unexplained, it's utterly untrue.

Ed; All I have to say is...'HUH???" Why is this useless 'book' brilliant'? Did I miss something? The ending was ridiculous, and the ship characters were assinine and totally unbelievable. What's the deal with the human Doctor? Please tell me why you think this thing was so great.

It's brilliant. Lovely prose, nice surreal atmosphere. Good use of a Trekkish scenario, but twisting things slightly to give us a Captain worried about budgets, among other things. (It is most definately not just a parody- it's exploring the formula rather than poking fun at it).

It isn't a book that you point at and say 'this is about the Doctor fighting some Glass Men'.

This is a book that you think about, it's about who the Doctor is, what he does, if the way he does things is always for the best. It's looking at who the Doctor is if he isn't travelling through space/time fighting Daleks.

It's twisting things, looking at them in different ways, playing with our expectations.

It is a red herring, I don't think the Obverse stuff has much to do with the War really. That's just Iris-speak.

The closing twenty questions are there to take the perfectly adequate ending and give you something to think about, to suggest what might have been happening.

Two things slightly worry me about your review- 1, that you suggest Hoad is 14- given that he is Magr's boyfriend, urm no, I would hope not, and 2, that you suggest that Blandish and Garrett's relationship is sick.

Alright, 'sick' was going too far. But as I still believe the Bland/Garrett scenes to be a parody of Star Trek, it like they're taking a shot at Kirk and Spock's sexuality. They weren't realistic characters to me, and was much of the cast. When does the Doctor ever 'swear profusely'? Can you imagine that? Fitz: "Doctor! We're trapped!" Doctor: "Aw, sh**! I don't f***ng understand why the h*ll that should happen! It isn't f***ng fair, you G**dam sh** for brains!" Is that the Doctor we've grown up with? No. It crossed the line into a weird area that I simply can't relate to. The first half of the book I was barely able to tolerate, but the second half...yuk.

It isn't a parody of ST, it's using an ST type situation to explore the limitations. Swearing profusely???

When your captain is a womanizer, begins his scenes with 'Captain's Log stardate...', has an office adjacent to the bridge and orders hot drink from the computer (ala Captain Picard); has recently brought together his crew agai after completing 'a 5-year mission'; uses the Star Trek-originated term 'phasers'; has a First Officer/Science Officer that's unemotional and logical; and you mention the 'City on the Edge of Forever' that's either a Star Trek rip-off to me or a parody. It'd be a rip-off to me if the subject was taken seriously, but as it's not, it's a parody.
I can see you're going to make me quote the exact page(s) that the Doctor 'swears profusely', making me look through this 'book' again. Okay, here it is:
Page 144:
" 'With your friends Compassion and Fitz inside it. I gather they got tired of waiting for you.'
The Doctor's eyes blazed with anger and he swore profusely."
I believe it happens again, but there's the first time.

In 'Damaged Goods' there's a line that reads 'the Doctor swore in plain english', poking fun at the much used line in Target novelisations 'the Doctor cursed in ancient Gallifreyan', which fans never really got upset about.

Luke's dealt with that one, but in context *blink* and that would be important, why?

Ok, say it is a Star Trek parody- even then, it doesn't have to be taking a shot at Kirk and Spock. I don't see why Magrs (given that Hoad is his *partner*) would be suggesting that that would be a bad thing, and it's pretty obviously a reference to some of the rather odd fanfiction you find on the net...

I still don't accept that it's a parody- that suggests that he's doing it to take the mickey out of ST, and if he was doing that, he didn't do a very good job. I don't think he was- he's using a situation very similar to Trek, with tongue firmly planted in cheek, to explore certain ideas.

And FYI Paul Magrs is being tipped as a nominee for the Booker Prize...

Haven't got a clue what the Booker Prize is.
The authors went about revealing the homosexual affair in a lame way, tacking it onto the last few pages, as if they thought of it the day before they submitted the book. It served no purpose. Bland could have been sufficiently vengeful simply by the destruction of his ship and deaths of his crew, without losing his secret boyfriend. And as a Star Trek fan, I see the references as mockery from non-fans. Why include it? Why not be original and create new starship officers? Why annoy Emily with all the Trek references (considering her dislike of the series)? Why antagonize Trek fans like myself?
Never was a fan of Paul Majrs, and I'm even less of one now.

I think you're reading the book on precisely the wrong level- not a negative comment, just a comment, everyone's MMV, you and Paul Magrs obiosuly have rather different mileages.

The Booker prize is a big literature type award.

And he didn't win it.

I don't mind books of this ilk - in fact I thought 'The Scarlett Empress' was very good. However, that had one major advantage over this: it told a relatively coherent story which was a framework on which the writing style could be hung. This doesn't which makes all the deconstruction appear as a load of literary onanism.

It may be terribly clever and witty but it misses the vast majority of the target audience and that, for an on-going genre series, makes it a very bad book.

It may be terribly clever and witty

Though don't bet on it.

but it misses the vast majority of the target audience and that, for an on-going genre series, makes it a very bad book.

But so (I suspect) did Adventuress of Henrietta Street, and that doesn't make it any less brilliant. And judging by comments at the time, the feeble-minded target audience couldn't take Deadly Assassin, either.

Not that I'm suggesting The Blue Angel is in this category for a moment...

DWM 305: 'Paul Magrs exploited one strength of the print medium...absence of a linear narrrative..."Take The Blue Angel," suggests Cole. "On TV you'd lose the ambiguity of the identiy of the "Obverse Doctor"...the "20 questions" ending, too, is unique - and just wouldn't work on telly."' - Hate to break the news, Sunshine, but it doesn't work in print EITHER.

Well, that's a spectacularly forgettable book, the stupid questions in lieu of an ending were literally the only thing I remembered about it...

'They weren't to be deterred'? Really cos (in the very next paragraph!) 'I reckon we should turn back now, Maddy. This is madness' sounds like Big Sue at least is PRETTY DETERRED.

'A tighter reign on his whereabouts' - it's REIN, who d'you think you ARE, DWM?

'We're all equals here' - since when has any MALE Doctor pulled that JODIE!-style 'flat team structure' nonsense? (Or ANY non-JODIE! Doctor, you wouldn't get RUTH saying that, hell, she didn't bat an eyelid when her Faithful Companion was killed and she bloody MARRIED him.)

'The window panes [on Iris's TARDIS-bus] would rattle and let in the freezing air' - I don't remember any of Iris's other books or audios mentioning this and wouldn't that LET IN THE SPACE-TIME VORTEX or something? (Also, how come she NOTICED, given that she later 'didn't appear to feel the cold at all' while wading waist-deep through snow?)

'One other thing I used to be - in the days when I was larger, elderly, obstreperous and Valkyrie-like: I was in love....Today I feel ambivalent about my erstwhile object of desire' - of course, regeneration CAN change your feelings - Matt certainly wasn't in love with Rose - but I got the impression that every incarnation of Iris is in love with every Doc bar Colin Baker.

'My memory's terribly shaky these days' - I thought this was one of those rare occasions when McGann DIDN'T have amnesia (give or take over the Timeless Children, of course).

*Sigh* I s'pose the fat Doctor with the elephant gun, moustache and eyepatch could be a Timeless Child...would be preferable to our JODIE! ever regenerating into such a thing.

'You were tired of being nothing like human' - McGann IS the most pathetically human of Doctors, he even managed to have just one heart for a while - 'You had enough of taking the whole world - the whole of several worlds - in your two hands' - since WHEN!

'When human beings had adventures it was usually another person who set their heart beating that bit faster. What set their adrenaline flowing were things you had never experienced. Never experienced, Doctor. That's why Iris shook her head in sorrow at you' - well Lawrence said the Eighth Doctor had sex with I M Foreman in Interference, for starters...

Since when has Iris's bus had 'complex locking arrangements'?

'His stolen scarf' - it's not stolen! Fitz just borrowed it from the TARDIS wardrobe! (He's not to know he really should be keeping his grubby hands OFF our Sacred Scarf...)

Iris changes into floor-length skirts and sandals to make her way through massive amounts of snow? She's mad but she's not a MORON.

'You can't keep them against their wills. It isn't on, Daedalus' - er...Doc? You DO remember they just tried to MURDER Daedalus, right...?

'When they first thought him up, dragged him dripping and screaming from the deft weft of the Looms' - I think THAT ship has sailed, Sunshine...

'The Time Lords, pedantic guardians of Canonicity and Likelihood (the names of twin towers lording it over the north of their city)' - first (and last) I've heard of it. Also inaccurately implies the Time Lords have only one city.

Iris had a CHILD with an ELEPHANT? A STINKING elephant? ('A powerful, rank, bestial smell.') Not something I recall being mentioned in all her other books and audios. (Though said child is later shown to have been sliced out of...the naked Doctor's thigh so who knows. Or, indeed, WANTS to know.)

'In Garrett's face there was no hint that he remembered or even cared about the bond that he and Blandish shared' - shouldn't that be 'cared or even remembered'?

Belinda didn't think to keep a look-out while Marn was working on the lock?

Yeah, this is no Human Nature, is it.

'The Doctor's eyes blazed with anger and he swore profusely' - at least it isn't in Ancient Gallifreyan but still, it's extraordinary how often s/he swears in the books but not on-screen...

'You're insane! You don't know for sure that Valcea has any weapons of mass destruction!' - well isn't THAT prophetic...

'Owner and vehicle were in accord once more' - so the bus hasn't had an Idris-style chat with her Thief to spell out who owns whom, then...

'The bus loved being in anything transdimensional' - shouldn't she have been worried about timeram or recursive occlusion or something...

'Bright yellow eggs shaped like pert breasts' - no Doctor, even a temporarily-artificially-humanised one, should be thinking in these terms.

'This could be how it all ends, he thought gloomily, with me leaving the galaxy on the brink of war and I'm stuck walking for ever in infinite corridors, unable to get out and help anyone. He couldn't imagine a crueller fate' - you just wait till you're Capaldi in Heaven Sent, Sunshine...

'We appear to have... instigated a war with the combined races of the Enclave...The Captain and crew of the Nepotist can by no means be held responsible, now or in posterity, for what ensues' - so why did you just admit to instigating the war then...

To be continued...

'The Time Lords, pedantic guardians of Canonicity and Likelihood (the names of twin towers lording it over the north of their city)' - first (and last) I've heard of it. Also inaccurately implies the Time Lords have only one city.

Well, Gallifreyans obviously have more than one city, but maybe the Time Lords themselves only have the one?

Come ON, like they'd've wasted four hundred sky-trenches over Arcadia if it was just full of plebs...

Iris 'disliked weapons almost as much as the Doctor did, but it seemed that, during every escapade in which she found herself embroiled, they came in extremely handy' - really? Because in all the other escapades I've been forced to listen to/read about, the only time I remember Iris waving a gun around is when it's an EVIL version of Iris...

Belinda 'had almost forgotten her lover' how and why, exactly?

Either the Doctor's enormously confident that Iris and Fitz haven't been killed or he just doesn't give a toss.

'And with the TARDIS's help, he was sure [Compassion] could become an all-round better person and happier in herself' - since when did the Doctor consider himself a dispenser of happiness and self-improvement?

Blandish thinks he can get back-up from Federation ships IN MINUTES whilst he's boldly going where no man has gone before? (Or...where no ONE has gone before? I have no idea whether this is ripping off/paying homage to/oh, whatever old Trek or new (twenty years ago, anyway) Trek and neither do I care.)

'So while the Doctor is here aboard, as he has been again and again through all their many and sporadic lives' - he HAS? Since WHEN! - 'the bus is reasonably happy and pleased with itself. As pleased as it can be with its mistress missing and presumed to be dead' - yeah, shouldn't THAT be more important than having the Doc around? And shouldn't a TARDIS know whether her Thief is alive or dead, anyway?

'You know how Shirley Bassey sings themes to James Bond films, but she's never actually in the film itself?' - no I don't and why do YOU, Doctor? You're the guy who's shocked FIVE REGENERATIONS LATER to discover there's a film called Alien...

'A glass pillar had fallen and, pinned beneath it, bleeding but still alive, lay the great leathery body of Daedalus. One of his tusks had snapped' - yeah, maybe he should have THOUGHT OF THAT before deliberately getting his glass city bombed?

'The fattest, oldest woman I had ever seen' - you had bloody well not be talking about the KATY MANNING incarnation of Iris...

'She looked like Baba Yaga in the old Russian fairy tales' - wasn't Baba Yaga famously bony?

'If she looked [down] she would pass out for sure' - sorry, who are you and what have you done with the REAL Iris?

'There was still time to save the day' - er...Doctor...the city's JUST BEEN DESTROYED, remember?

The Doctor claims Sexy 'makes a habit of landing me on the outskirts of things' - she'd DOES?

'"When I say 'people like this', you realise of course I mean 'villainous scum'. Because that's exactly what I think of you, Daedalus...You can give me the evil eye all you want, but I still think you're a... well, you're a... swine!'"' - since when has ANY Doctor EVER talked like THAT?

So Daedalus has magic powers that can give people their youth back and send 'em back to their homeworld and suchlike...?

'He would never let Compassion out of his sight again' - yeah, maybe sending her on her months-long secret mission to infiltrate the Company in a couple of books' time wasn't such a great idea then?

'The Federation will be sending ships soon. So will the Draconians, the Daleks, the Martians, the Sontarans and Cybermen. Everyone will be coming here. We don't stand a chance' - is THIS where Moffat got the idea for Time of the Doctor? (Also, why talk about the Martians as if they're not members of the Federation?)

'Doctor, one day you'll sit and listen to me, and I'll tell you the whole lot. Everything. One day you'll stay with me long enough' - no he won't. He soon blows up Gallifrey and gets amnesia and then it's New Who in which all the Time Lords are dead (except for about five minutes when there's no sign of Iris before, y'know, they're dead again).

*Watches winged blue baby-angel get carved out of the naked Doctor's thigh* Gods, I miss The Doctor's Daughter.

Iris 'disliked weapons almost as much as the Doctor did, but it seemed that, during every escapade in which she found herself embroiled, they came in extremely handy' - really? Because in all the other escapades I've been forced to listen to/read about, the only time I remember Iris waving a gun around is when it's an EVIL version of Iris...

OK, my bad, Iris is perfectly happy to gun down all and sundry in Verdigris with slim pink blasts of radiation...