Tragedy Day (The New Doctor Who Adventures)

Rating:
Summary: Great story, from start to finish!
Review: I finished this book very uncertain as to what had happened. An alien culture obsessed with TV, a giant mutant spider-alien assassin, forced labor camps, and a faded celebrity straight out of "Sunset Boulevard"--just what was going on here? Couple that with a mostly ineffective Doctor (and his clone) and a confusing 1st Doctor reference.

Rating:
Summary: A bit of a mess
Review: I finished this book very uncertain as to what had happened. An alien culture obsessed with TV, a giant mutant spider-alien assassin, forced labor camps, and a faded celebrity straight out of "Sunset Boulevard"--just what was going on here? Couple that with a mostly ineffective Doctor (and his clone) and a confusing 1st Doctor reference.

Rating:
Summary: Great story, from start to finish!
Review: I found this marvellously entertaining, something like a James Bond movie in fact, with some great humour and nicely turned-out characters (loved Forgwyn) but moments of pure seriousness too. Total suspension of belief is frequently required but when has that ever been a problem with Doctor Who? The Slaags make a suitably memorable race of monsters, too. Nice work Gareth, one of my all-time favourites!

Rating:
Summary: A Tragedy
Review: I thought I was never going to be able to finish this book. Virtually nothing about this appealed to me in any sort of way whatsoever. For something that seemed like an attempt at a light, frothy and throwaway romp, I found it to be an extremely tiring, turgid and monotonous read. The only thing that the book gets right about the Doctor is the picture on the cover (even that turns out to be a cheat), and neither Ace nor Benny manage to rise out of the depths of one-dimensionality that the rest of the characters are trapped in. The humor is just flat and the parodies are entirely forgettable.

TRAGEDY DAY attempted to be a satire of a handful of different things. Unfortunately, it seemed to be blurring the line between being a satire of something awful and just plain being awful. For example, at the very beginning the TARDIS crew is split off into different subplots. This is, of course, almost a standard feature in Doctor Who stories. But Roberts doesn't even bother giving them any real motivation for splitting up. Ace just suddenly decides that she wants to walk away from the Doctor and Benny for absolutely no reason. I genuinely couldn't tell if Roberts was attempting to poke fun at this convention in storytelling, or just honestly and unknowingly fell into it -- being unable or unwilling to come up with a realistic set of motivations. I actually spent several minutes trying to guess whether this was deliberate or accidental, and I just couldn't figure it out. I eventually decided that whatever it was, it wasn't a success at whatever it was trying to convey. If it was a joke, it fell flat; if it was a real plot point, then it was just unbelievably poorly executed.

And this sort of thing is representative of quite a lot of my reaction to the book. The plot is stunningly silly, and I was rolling my eyes at it rather than giggling along with it. The way the villain is defeated is shockingly uninspired, and although I won't spoil it, I will say that when you're forced to borrow plot points from TIMELASH, it's time to abandon that line of thought and try again after a good night's rest. (To be fair to the author, knowing a little about how NA deadlines could sometimes be bumped up to accommodate changes in the schedule, it's entirely possible that there simply wasn't a "next morning" in which to think up something better. But even so, the result here is tremendously poor.)

There were one or two bright spots mixed in. The satire is mostly blunt and ineffectual, but there were one or two moments were it suddenly discovered a razor sharp point. And there was a hilarious character, Ernie the hired assassin, who just happens to be a giant spider, dressed like something out of a Western and speaking like Brian Blessed with a fake working-class accent. Naturally, this wonderful and amusing character is given very little screen-time and is removed from the story far before the end. Shame. This character could have at least made the book slightly more palatable, and I shed real tears when he exited the narrative.

Simply put, I couldn't wait to finish TRAGEDY DAY and move on to something else. I just don't get this apparent style of "humor". To me, comedy comes from more than simply repeating bad things that other stories have done. Unfortunately, this book does nothing more than that. When Ernie McCartney leaves the story, there's no more reason to read.

Rating:
Summary: A Tragedy
Review: I thought I was never going to be able to finish this book. Virtually nothing about this appealed to me in any sort of way whatsoever. For something that seemed like an attempt at a light, frothy and throwaway romp, I found it to be an extremely tiring, turgid and monotonous read. The only thing that the book gets right about the Doctor is the picture on the cover (even that turns out to be a cheat), and neither Ace nor Benny manage to rise out of the depths of one-dimensionality that the rest of the characters are trapped in. The humor is just flat and the parodies are entirely forgettable.

TRAGEDY DAY attempted to be a satire of a handful of different things. Unfortunately, it seemed to be blurring the line between being a satire of something awful and just plain being awful. For example, at the very beginning the TARDIS crew is split off into different subplots. This is, of course, almost a standard feature in Doctor Who stories. But Roberts doesn't even bother giving them any real motivation for splitting up. Ace just suddenly decides that she wants to walk away from the Doctor and Benny for absolutely no reason. I genuinely couldn't tell if Roberts was attempting to poke fun at this convention in storytelling, or just honestly and unknowingly fell into it -- being unable or unwilling to come up with a realistic set of motivations. I actually spent several minutes trying to guess whether this was deliberate or accidental, and I just couldn't figure it out. I eventually decided that whatever it was, it wasn't a success at whatever it was trying to convey. If it was a joke, it fell flat; if it was a real plot point, then it was just unbelievably poorly executed.

And this sort of thing is representative of quite a lot of my reaction to the book. The plot is stunningly silly, and I was rolling my eyes at it rather than giggling along with it. The way the villain is defeated is shockingly uninspired, and although I won't spoil it, I will say that when you're forced to borrow plot points from TIMELASH, it's time to abandon that line of thought and try again after a good night's rest. (To be fair to the author, knowing a little about how NA deadlines could sometimes be bumped up to accommodate changes in the schedule, it's entirely possible that there simply wasn't a "next morning" in which to think up something better. But even so, the result here is tremendously poor.)

There were one or two bright spots mixed in. The satire is mostly blunt and ineffectual, but there were one or two moments were it suddenly discovered a razor sharp point. And there was a hilarious character, Ernie the hired assassin, who just happens to be a giant spider, dressed like something out of a Western and speaking like Brian Blessed with a fake working-class accent. Naturally, this wonderful and amusing character is given very little screen-time and is removed from the story far before the end. Shame. This character could have at least made the book slightly more palatable, and I shed real tears when he exited the narrative.

Simply put, I couldn't wait to finish TRAGEDY DAY and move on to something else. I just don't get this apparent style of "humor". To me, comedy comes from more than simply repeating bad things that other stories have done. Unfortunately, this book does nothing more than that. When Ernie McCartney leaves the story, there's no more reason to read.