<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: The Doctor who came in from the Cold War
Review: I was pretty critical of the first two books in the current Doctor Who story arc ('The Burning' and 'Casualties of War') because both failed to convey the impression that the Doctor had lost his memory. The third book, 'The Turing Test', was a vast improvement in this regard, the best had yet to come. In the second prologue to this book, Ace and the Doctor's seventh incarnation see a man who the Doctor thinks looks familiar, but then concludes he has never met before. It is plain from the description that this man is the Doctor's eighth incarnation, and the two have in fact met...This book is set during the Cold War, and as it progresses the Doctor is drawn into then world of espionage and double agents (Kim Philby is one of the most prominent supporting characters), and comes up against old enemies who remember him from his second and sixth lives, the extradimensional being known as the Players. I've never been a great fan of spy thrillers, so a large part of this book certainly wasn't my cup of tea. However, there are quite a few scenes that rise from the spy story and plainly mark this as Doctor Who. While I've only rated this 3 stars, that second prologue deserves 5 stars!
Rating: 
Summary: Back to Basics
Review: It's Terrance Dicks' best Doctor Who book since Exodus, written nearly ten years ago. To some extent, it suffers from immediately following the excellent Turing Test, as Endgame covers much the same ground, being a cold war spy drama instead of a WWII one. But it's a very quick light read, good for a warm summer day. It's somewhat odd at times that there's a lot of focus on the Doctor's lost memory -- by this point, he's been without his memory for over fifty years. In the end though, this series of Doctor Who novels is turning out to be the best I've read in a long time, starting with the Burning but especially Casualties of War and the Turning Test. I'd heard that from the people that are more caught up than I, and they're right.
Rating:
Summary: Back to Basics
Review: It's Terrance Dicks' best Doctor Who book since Exodus, written nearly ten years ago. To some extent, it suffers from immediately following the excellent Turing Test, as Endgame covers much the same ground, being a cold war spy drama instead of a WWII one. But it's a very quick light read, good for a warm summer day. It's somewhat odd at times that there's a lot of focus on the Doctor's lost memory -- by this point, he's been without his memory for over fifty years. In the end though, this series of Doctor Who novels is turning out to be the best I've read in a long time, starting with the Burning but especially Casualties of War and the Turning Test. I'd heard that from the people that are more caught up than I, and they're right.
Rating:
Summary: A different Doctor story...
Review: The 4th in the 'Stuck on Earth with no memory' story arc sees the Doctor fed up with others problems and just wanting to be left alone. After the death of a friend, who leaves him with secret documents concerning a myterious third player in the Cold War era bent on destroying the world, The Doctor (after much blackmailing) is forced to save the world again. This novel reads like an action spy thriller, with the Doctor amazing everyone with his fighting prowess, his 'vulcan' neck pinch and his short hair. It also see the return of 'The Players' from their self-titled book also by Dicks. If you're not familiar with these characters, escpecially the motivation for the Countess, you will feel very underwhelmed towards the end of the novel. Actually, I knew about them and was still underwhelmed. I'm thinking this might mean another excursion into the 'Players' at a later date. A distracting point in the novel, comes around page 177 where it seems the editing crew must have been sleeping as one of the main villian's name keeps alternating from Myrek to Marek. A small mistake but it does break the flow of the story. I recommend this book, but only for a different kind of Doctor Who story which would have been better off without the 'Players' involved.
Rating: 
Summary: We've seen it all before
Review: The major problem I had with Terrance Dicks' ENDGAME can be blamed almost entirely on the fact that I had read both TIMEWYRM: EXODUS and PLAYERS within the past six months. These two stories form the entire basis for the structure and the content of ENDGAME; at no point does the book ever feel like its giving us something that isn't just a rehash of things that have gone before. ENDGAME is a story where the baddies in PLAYERS are responsible for the type of events in EXODUS. It never deviates from this, and the results are quite unsatisfying. The opening section of the book is rather interesting. We see a depressed Doctor who's starting to crack up at the prospect of a never-ending exile on a planet that is not his own. The sequences from the Doctor's point-of-view are well written and are excellent at conveying the hopelessness of a confused, amnesiac Time Lord who's almost suicidal at the prospect of being trapped in a linear existence for the rest of his unnaturally long life. The only parts I was confused about were the frequent mentions made by other characters as to the fact that the Doctor has no past. Although he arrived at the end of the 19th Century Earth with no money, no family and no memory of any previous life, he's been around for over fifty years now. Fifty years is quite a long time in human-terms and certainly long enough for anyone to build up a long trail of traceable events (even if one has lead a completely boring life), yet people are acting as if he's just appeared out of nowhere last week. It's possible that he keeps moving from place to place without any records (though it's mentioned that he's been living in the same flat for almost a decade) but if so, it was not properly addressed. The beginning sections of the plot are fairly interesting. This is an unabashed spy novel and the early portions are quite well told. But the story begins to fall apart midway through and by the end major characters are jetting across the world with ease for no real reason. The ending to the story also feels majorly contrived, with one of the main characters (I'll be vague here to avoid spoilers) switching allegiances for no apparent reason. It's quite handy that this person does so, as it allows the plot to end relatively painlessly, but in terms of the story, it makes absolutely no sense. The book also feels rather lazily written in portions, with many clumsy examples of boring and primitive exposition. The historical details could have been integrated into the story with much more ease, yet they feel clunky and lecturing. Once we get past the lessons, the story itself becomes staggeringly unoriginal. If you put Dicks' EXODUS and PLAYERS into a blender and then fed the results into a Markov Chain generator, you would almost certainly end up with something that has a remarkable resemblance to ENDGAME. That's not to say that the ENDGAME is badly written (apart from the aforementioned instances of awkward prose), just something that you've probably seen before. After the previous three books in the series (the first three books of the Earth Arc) had slowly increased in quality, it's a shame that ENDGAME fumbles the ball the way that it does. While it does a surprisingly good job at furthering the arc along its course, the standalone story here isn't worth all that much if you've already read previous Terrance Dicks books.
Rating:
Summary: We've seen it all before
Review: The major problem I had with Terrance Dicks' ENDGAME can be blamed almost entirely on the fact that I had read both TIMEWYRM: EXODUS and PLAYERS within the past six months. These two stories form the entire basis for the structure and the content of ENDGAME; at no point does the book ever feel like its giving us something that isn't just a rehash of things that have gone before. ENDGAME is a story where the baddies in PLAYERS are responsible for the type of events in EXODUS. It never deviates from this, and the results are quite unsatisfying. The opening section of the book is rather interesting. We see a depressed Doctor who's starting to crack up at the prospect of a never-ending exile on a planet that is not his own. The sequences from the Doctor's point-of-view are well written and are excellent at conveying the hopelessness of a confused, amnesiac Time Lord who's almost suicidal at the prospect of being trapped in a linear existence for the rest of his unnaturally long life. The only parts I was confused about were the frequent mentions made by other characters as to the fact that the Doctor has no past. Although he arrived at the end of the 19th Century Earth with no money, no family and no memory of any previous life, he's been around for over fifty years now. Fifty years is quite a long time in human-terms and certainly long enough for anyone to build up a long trail of traceable events (even if one has lead a completely boring life), yet people are acting as if he's just appeared out of nowhere last week. It's possible that he keeps moving from place to place without any records (though it's mentioned that he's been living in the same flat for almost a decade) but if so, it was not properly addressed. The beginning sections of the plot are fairly interesting. This is an unabashed spy novel and the early portions are quite well told. But the story begins to fall apart midway through and by the end major characters are jetting across the world with ease for no real reason. The ending to the story also feels majorly contrived, with one of the main characters (I'll be vague here to avoid spoilers) switching allegiances for no apparent reason. It's quite handy that this person does so, as it allows the plot to end relatively painlessly, but in terms of the story, it makes absolutely no sense. The book also feels rather lazily written in portions, with many clumsy examples of boring and primitive exposition. The historical details could have been integrated into the story with much more ease, yet they feel clunky and lecturing. Once we get past the lessons, the story itself becomes staggeringly unoriginal. If you put Dicks' EXODUS and PLAYERS into a blender and then fed the results into a Markov Chain generator, you would almost certainly end up with something that has a remarkable resemblance to ENDGAME. That's not to say that the ENDGAME is badly written (apart from the aforementioned instances of awkward prose), just something that you've probably seen before. After the previous three books in the series (the first three books of the Earth Arc) had slowly increased in quality, it's a shame that ENDGAME fumbles the ball the way that it does. While it does a surprisingly good job at furthering the arc along its course, the standalone story here isn't worth all that much if you've already read previous Terrance Dicks books.
Rating:
Summary: The most meaningful historical epic of our time
Review: There has never been a more accurate and moving account of the Cold War ever written. American and the Soviet Union are on the brink of nuclear war. Armies of suspicious spies and pandering politicians on both sides are poised at each other's throats, and only ONE MAN -- or is he more than a man? -- can save the world's children. *stumbling drunk clatters through doors* "It's me! The Doc-- *hic* Doctor! Doctor Who!". "Endgame" is Terrance Dicks's first Eighth Doctor novel since the much-maligned "Eight Doctors", and it also comes at a critical moment in the "Caught On Earth" Arc. It's 1951, and the Doctor is halfway through his exile. He's living an increasingly insular existence, and only a set of Hitchcockian circumstances (or perhaps he's just "The Big Lebowski"'s Dude) can lure him out of hiding so that he can save the world. Uncle Terry plays this one solely for laughs. Obviously. In this one, the President of the United States is "Harry S. Truman" (as opposed to Harry S Truman, the historical figure), and every time he appears, he's described by some character or other as "One tough son of a gun" (so to speak). Josef Stalin drinks a lot of vodka. One of the British spies, Guy Burgess, is evidently played by American comedian Jon Lovitz in full-on "Master Thespian" mode. As usual from Uncle Terry, the chapters are short, and littered with casual barbs and flashes of insight so quick you might miss them. Some scenes threaten greatness, and almost deliver. This is the first Eighth Doctor novel since "Demontage" played mostly for laughs -- so it's fitting that the author of that book, Justin Richards, now editor of the line, penned a few lengthy scenes for this one when it was submitted late and under word count (by the author's own testimony). Otherwise, what you see is what you get. "Endgame" is 99.44% fluff and saccharine, albeit delivered by an expert tale-teller and string-puller. It can be finished in a matter of hours, and you're likely to want to stumble around re-enacting some of the more slapstick scenes for a few days afterward. Just don't emulate the copy-editing, which is some of the worst we've ever seen in a "Who" novel. And don't re-enact Guy Burgess's scenes... he wins the award for Most Inebriated Character in "Who History". Just realize... it'll be a LONG time before we see another book like this in the EDA line. As the fictional "Harry S. Truman" might say to his author, "I reckon the buck stops here!"
Rating:
Summary: The most meaningful historical epic of our time
Review: There has never been a more accurate and moving account of the Cold War ever written. American and the Soviet Union are on the brink of nuclear war. Armies of suspicious spies and pandering politicians on both sides are poised at each other's throats, and only ONE MAN -- or is he more than a man? -- can save the world's children. *stumbling drunk clatters through doors* "It's me! The Doc-- *hic* Doctor! Doctor Who!". "Endgame" is Terrance Dicks's first Eighth Doctor novel since the much-maligned "Eight Doctors", and it also comes at a critical moment in the "Caught On Earth" Arc. It's 1951, and the Doctor is halfway through his exile. He's living an increasingly insular existence, and only a set of Hitchcockian circumstances (or perhaps he's just "The Big Lebowski"'s Dude) can lure him out of hiding so that he can save the world. Uncle Terry plays this one solely for laughs. Obviously. In this one, the President of the United States is "Harry S. Truman" (as opposed to Harry S Truman, the historical figure), and every time he appears, he's described by some character or other as "One tough son of a gun" (so to speak). Josef Stalin drinks a lot of vodka. One of the British spies, Guy Burgess, is evidently played by American comedian Jon Lovitz in full-on "Master Thespian" mode. As usual from Uncle Terry, the chapters are short, and littered with casual barbs and flashes of insight so quick you might miss them. Some scenes threaten greatness, and almost deliver. This is the first Eighth Doctor novel since "Demontage" played mostly for laughs -- so it's fitting that the author of that book, Justin Richards, now editor of the line, penned a few lengthy scenes for this one when it was submitted late and under word count (by the author's own testimony). Otherwise, what you see is what you get. "Endgame" is 99.44% fluff and saccharine, albeit delivered by an expert tale-teller and string-puller. It can be finished in a matter of hours, and you're likely to want to stumble around re-enacting some of the more slapstick scenes for a few days afterward. Just don't emulate the copy-editing, which is some of the worst we've ever seen in a "Who" novel. And don't re-enact Guy Burgess's scenes... he wins the award for Most Inebriated Character in "Who History". Just realize... it'll be a LONG time before we see another book like this in the EDA line. As the fictional "Harry S. Truman" might say to his author, "I reckon the buck stops here!"
Rating:
Summary: The Doctor Does the Cold War
Review: This novel is adequate for a historical spy novel. That needs to be stated before anything else. Set in the early days of the Cold War, paperwork falls into the hands of an immigrant from the Communist Bloc, who tries to give it to the British but fails. The paperwork confirms the existence of a mysterious Third Force trying to play the Eastern and Western blocs against one another for sheer amusement. The inclusion of historical figure Kim Philby, a notorious traitor who was playing both the British and the Soviets himself, is a very skillful stroke. As a Doctor Who novel, it seems forced. The Doctor seems to have been included simply perforce because Terrance Dicks is supposed to be a Doctor Who novelist. He has plenty of opportunity for globetrotting -- in the course of the novel, he makes it to France, the United States (where he meets President Truman), and Russia (where he rescues Joseph Stalin from evil influence). The problem is, this could just as easily be any schlameel who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got blackmailed into involvement in the Cold War. Apart from his usual acumen, there's no reason the character should be the Doctor. His inclusion seems like a market-oriented contrivance that neither contributes to, nor detracts from, the novel. The short version is, this is a good spy novel. The historical elements of the Cold War are very well done and the book is fun to read. However, it feels like it's only a Doctor Who novel because the author was under contract. It offers nothing new to the Doctor Who mythos. It detracts nothing either, so there's no reason it shouldn't be read; but there's no real reason for the character in it to be the Doctor.
Rating:
Summary: The Doctor Does the Cold War
Review: This novel is adequate for a historical spy novel. That needs to be stated before anything else. Set in the early days of the Cold War, paperwork falls into the hands of an immigrant from the Communist Bloc, who tries to give it to the British but fails. The paperwork confirms the existence of a mysterious Third Force trying to play the Eastern and Western blocs against one another for sheer amusement. The inclusion of historical figure Kim Philby, a notorious traitor who was playing both the British and the Soviets himself, is a very skillful stroke. As a Doctor Who novel, it seems forced. The Doctor seems to have been included simply perforce because Terrance Dicks is supposed to be a Doctor Who novelist. He has plenty of opportunity for globetrotting -- in the course of the novel, he makes it to France, the United States (where he meets President Truman), and Russia (where he rescues Joseph Stalin from evil influence). The problem is, this could just as easily be any schlameel who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and got blackmailed into involvement in the Cold War. Apart from his usual acumen, there's no reason the character should be the Doctor. His inclusion seems like a market-oriented contrivance that neither contributes to, nor detracts from, the novel. The short version is, this is a good spy novel. The historical elements of the Cold War are very well done and the book is fun to read. However, it feels like it's only a Doctor Who novel because the author was under contract. It offers nothing new to the Doctor Who mythos. It detracts nothing either, so there's no reason it shouldn't be read; but there's no real reason for the character in it to be the Doctor.
<< 1 >>
| 
