I noticed that the 'Paragon of animals...' soliloquay that the Doctor gives is the same one that Withnail rambles in 'Withnail and I'. Coincidence?

Just finished reading this one actually. Well written - I agree though, the ending was a bit of a disappointment. The way the book slowly builds up I wasn't really expecting any sort of ending actually - not a predictable one anyway, the villain doesn't really become so until right up to the end, where he seems like a completely different person anyway, before this happened I was beginning to think there'd be no distinguishable villain (something I would have liked) and the explanations are wishy-washy and somewhat hackneyed - I would have preferred and accepted no explanations really.
Another disappointment is that there is little in this book to justify it's being in the 'Caught on Earth' arc - the Doctor seems pretty much like the old Eighth Doctor, doesn't doing anything surprising or unexpected, doesn't make any mention of what's happened in the last twenty years, and, most infuriatingly, doesn't even respond to Mary's love for him.
I'm looking forward to the Turing Test though, unfortunately I hear that Escape Velocity isn't much chop though - which is something I'm dreading ending the arc on.

I doubt it's coincidence - the books seem to like making cheeky references to Withnail and I. In Independence Day Ace thinks to herself how fanciable one of the stars was, before revealing that for some reason she had Richard E Grant in mind.

'No explanations' also has its drawbacks - it's intensely irritating to get to the end of, say, Heart of TARDIS only to be informed that 'The Doctor's done something terribly clever but I'm not going to tell you what, so there.' Though it is probably very slightly less infuriating than getting a Casualties of War-type 'The Doctor's done something terribly clever and has...mumble mumble mumble...OK folks, hope you got that, goodbye.'

INFURIATINGLY the Doctor doesn't respond to Mary??!!!!

I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that the whole Earth arc was designed by conniving BBC executives in order to derail a range that was becoming far too exciting. Prove to us, they told Justin Richards through the levitating severed head of Ben Dunn, that Doctor Who can still be done by the numbers and that the books can be as cliche-pick-n-mix as the dear old smelly slipper BF audios.

And then, the squawking head cried, we'll publish The Turing Test just to annoy all the conservative trad fans who think the books are finally on their wavelength...

Seriously - this is The Burning with clay instead of lava. For a book supposedly commissioned on the strength of its spectacular prose, it's clunkily written and average. I also don't believe that the Doctor would fall for the "so you're from the war office, why you must know the [non-existant] Sir Henry" line, but the poor dear does have amnesia.

Not only amnesia, but a drastic personality transplant too, as the old Doctor wouldn't have been caught dead supporting women's rights.

And what the hell has the flu virus got to do with anything? Is the mention of it at the end supposed to indicate that the Dark Force is responsible? That's almost as s t u p i d as the Nemesis causing World War I in the first place.

Please don't ever try Mark Frost's novel 'The List of Seven'. The final paragraph will have you groaning.

For a more detailed account of how the Doctor has affected the womens rights issue, see the forthcoming Telos novella 'The Cabinet of Light'.

I dunno about detailed, but boy is the Doctor gonna be in trouble if I ever get my hands on him...

I thought this was a pretty good story. The universe didn't collapse, none of the companions died, no tedious locking the Doctor up and having him escape, just a nice, normal, TV-like DW story. Every book doesn't have to explain some crucial aspect of a half-remembered continuity reference. And the characterization of the Doctor seemed more natural than most.

Hmm, yes, but I don't see why we can't have all of the above AND a plot.

Plot shmot. Morbius didn't have a plot (just the Doctor and Sarah running back and forth between Solon and the Sisterhood), and it was great! And all because of the characterizations.

But also because Tom Baker fills one's life - er, I mean one's television - to such an extent that an hour and a half of him running round is joy, sheer joy. Whereas the Eighth Doctor, particularly on the page rather than the screen, doesn't have the same presence. Espeically if he's minus a memory and has a love-sick nurse instead of Sarah Jane tagging along behind him.

I liked Mary! She was brave and effective. Now yes, she did investigate the gun room and predictably fell victim to evil forces (any companion could've warned her), but that happens to everyone in DW, including the Doctor. She was smart and open-minded, ready to jump in feet first, and totally accepting of the Doctor's natural authority (as any good companion would be). It's too bad exposure to the Doctor ruined the rest of her life....

Ah. Mary may well have been, and done, all those things but over the years they have slipped my memory and only the disgraceful lusting after the Doctor remains.

Emily... Tom Baker... disgraceful lusting... oh, what am I thinking? Clearly, there's no connection at all.

*Screams of incredulous indignation* •••• right there's no connection!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! My adoration for the Fourth Doctor AND his human avatar is ENTIRELY PLATONIC. I would no more DREAM of having Doc-Holliday-and-Kate style relations with Tom Baker than I would having 'em with Bill Hartnell.

Emily: Not only amnesia, but a drastic personality transplant too, as the old Doctor wouldn't have been caught dead supporting women's rights

Well it's a certainty for this one ever since the 'oh look he's now a SNAG who makes waffles for breakfast' saccharine-coated version of him was vomited into our consciousness in 'Vampire Science'.

I assume the Doctor has two skeleton keys as he gave Mary one but used another to get into the gun room when looking for her.

*Sigh* Still not over Vampire Science, then? Actually I hate to break the news, but cooking breakfast once does NOT qualify a man to be a feminist.

Mary may well have been, and done, all those things but over the years they have slipped my memory and only the disgraceful lusting after the Doctor remains.

OK *cough* so these days I go a BIT easier on people who lust after the Doctor.

As long as they're not Martha Jones, obviously.

'The story concerns the after-effects of catastrophic events...The Doctor himself is a casualty of the war that came to a head in The Ancestor Cell. He has been fundamentally damaged by that experience. There are strong hints in Casualties that people can't recover from such experiences - but the Dcotor isn't "people"' - Steve Emmerson in DWM. Oh, was THAT what the entire point of the book was?! No wonder it felt so pointless. Because the - Doctor - isn't - damaged! Gallifrey Chronicles makes it PERFECTLY clear that he doesn't give a toss about blowing up Gallifrey - he just wiped his memory to make way for all those Time Lords in his head!

'My wife hates Doctor Who, but despite that she enjoyed a lot of the human warmth and homour in my book' - well of course she'd SAY she did, but how far can you TRUST a Who-hater?

Well, SOMEONE'S certainly not neglecting their eye-gouging duties...'He thought he saw eyeless sockets gazing at him from the dark' 'He didn't have no eyes. Just empty sockets' 'The eyes were empty holes, shadow lost in shadow' 'One eye hung from its socket, lying on his cheek like a lump of sloppy jelly' 'Empty sockets full of wonder and darkness' 'The dead man gazed back out of eyeless sockets' 'Vacant chasms for eyes' 'He tore at the big man's face with his nails, pressing his fingers into Watson's eyes, feeling them give like soft jelly under the pressure' 'The second eye, on the side that was the more ravaged, was a empty socket' 'Their eyes were empty sockets' 'Men without eyes. Men without flesh' 'Blank empty sockets and rotting flesh' 'The Doctor found sightless sockets watching him' 'Empty sockets turning on him. A single, gelatinous eye in a face of decrepit flesh. Gazing blind' 'Black holes-for-eyes watched warily'...

'"I think it's something of a blessing not to have anybody to worry about. Don't you agree?"' - what a stunningly stupid thing for ANYONE to say to a stranger after four years of a world war...'Maybe he had boys, Briggs thought. He looked as though he might just about be old enough to have idealistic sons' - like I said, FOUR YEARS of a WORLD WAR, don't they, like, have CONSCRIPTION by now?

There's an EXTRAORDINARY amount of food sloshing around given that there's a war on 'She'd worked the land for nearly two years now, and in that time she must've put on five stone' - ?! 'She placed a large plate of buttered bread in the centre of the cloth, and this she surrounded with smaller dishes of other foods' 'The plate was piled high with dripping layers [of bacon and egg]'...we do get an explanation of why Mary has so much chicken but the REST of it...? Sure, it's the countryside not London where you have to shag the butcher to get plentiful food (The Doctor Dances), but still....

'"I'm just an avid admirer of all things beautiful," the Doctor remarked' - since WHEN! Whatever happened to 'You're a beautiful woman, probably'...?

'Monarchs: King Alfred, Harold, John, the Tudors, Elizabeth, Victoria' - er...you do realise Elizabeth was a Tudor, right?

'"You like Shakespeare?" "I loved the man." "Sorry?"' - the Doctor has amnesia but regurgitates the odd bit of info...it's just odd that it's an UNTRUE bit - you OBVIOUSLY didn't meet Shakespeare till you were Tennant...

'He was entirely lifeless, white as a sheet. "Move back," Mary demanded. "Let him breathe." As the crowd parted reluctantly, Mary felt for a carotid pulse. It was present, but weak' - so, er, NOT 'entirely lifeless', then.

The Doctor assures Mary that he slept 'like a log'. Yet she later decides he 'did not apparently have any call for sleep'? (Without discovering he's been lying or anything.)

'The station house, with its pile of rubble where the lock-up should have been. The Doctor's box stood resplendent, as if it had been added to the pile after the damage had been done' - but Sexy CAN be damaged by local events - e.g. looking a real mess in Angels in Manhattan or The Snowmen.

We're informed that Veidt has 'a smattering of English'...followed by several pages of him chatting away in extremely fluent English...

'From the pockets that Davies could have sworn were empty when he searched them, the Doctor produced a bicycle lamp' - haaang on...AMNESIAC Eight can do the magic jacket thing? ('Over the years, people had often commented on his ability to produce exactly the right item from his pockets at exactly the right time. Some had speculated that his pockets were extensions of the TARDIS, others had guessed he was just lucky. But then, they'd never read Yeltstrom's Karma and Flares: The Importance of Fashion Sense to the Modern Zen Master. They didn't appreciate the things a sentient life-form could achieve, if he was totally at one with the lining of his jacket.' - Alien Bodies.) And don't most PROPER Doctors find all their apple-cores, yo-yos etc spread across the studio floor whenever their pockets get searched...?

'A man who seemed, despite these complexities, uniquely oblivious to the idea of romance of any variety' - so a) why do you promptly think he's trying to take you to bed, b) it's MCGANN for heaven's sake, he'd shag I M FOREMAN, Bernice Summerfield, an Elven Queen and Karl you so-called empath, and c) of ANY variety? Have you already observed him with a number of interested women, men and animals...?

'"Do you have any brothers or sisters, Doctor?" "No." "That is very sad."' - not as sad as when Justin Richards is pushing his 'Braxiatel is the Doctor's brother!' agenda...

'In Iris Cromby's kitchen, the kettle boiled. Very strange, she thought, that Bill Cromby should request a cup of tea at this time' - and even stranger that you should be thinking of YOUR HUSBAND as 'Bill Cromby'. (Also, not strange when you consider that this book is almost as padded-out by cups of tea as it is by zombie-attacks. Gotta get to that magic number of 280 pages SOMEHOW! Unless you're Paul Leonard for some reason.)

The Doctor's reluctance to involve Mary stands in stark contrast to his willingness to involve Alan Turing of all people in the next book, so, like Mary, I can only put it down to sexism. WOULD an amnesiac Doctor stranded on a patriarchal Earth take on its more disgusting aspects? I'd like to think the real Doctor buried inside would fight back but, let's face it, the real Doctor is pretty sexist too, right up until he becomes a she...

'The Doctor moved at an unstinting pace. He forced on with a single-minded determination, like a missile let loose on the enemy' - ha ha ha ha ha! The Doc's spent the last 224 pages meandering around achieving sod-all. FOR EXAMPLE - spending hours digging up some dog-tags to prove that a couple of corpses are who he thinks they are (despite said identity being unquestionably accepted by everyone for no readily-apparent reason), whereupon he gets ambushed by some zombies and rendered unconscious for hours and has his 'proof' stolen...speaking of which, why the hell don't the zombies kill him and take his head for their tree like everyone else?

'The Doctor was gripped in a stunned stasis. A gun barrel rose into view, black orifice searching out his face' - oh, NOW they suddenly want to kill him?!

'"You wouldn't shoot me," Banham assured him. "Wouldn't I?" "When you guessed that I possess a degree of extrasensory perception, Doctor, you were absolutely right"' - ah, he realised that Amnesiac Eight can't kill despite the fact Amnesiac Eight solved the previous and subsequent books by, um, killing.

'Although the Doctor might falter in killing Banham, Briggs felt certain that Banham wouldn't share the same qualms in return' - oh. Amnesiac Eight COULDN'T face killing the baddie THIS TIME?

'It now had only two men left that were any use. The others had sustained too much damage to be able to function. Tattered limbs and rags for hands are useless even to undead soldiers' - why? They can see perfectly well without eyeballs, after all...

'I cannot believe you were blind to my intentions. I do not believe for all your strengths and complexities of nature you have an Achilles' heel in Love. I know you are a passionate man' - whatever happened to Mary deciding that the Doctor's uniquely oblivious to the idea of romance of any variety?