Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon

Rating:
Summary: Which is the greater threat - the Master or boredom?
Review: Based on the TV serial 'Colony in Space', Malcolm Hulke adapts his own story, which features the first trip of the third Doctor and Jo in the TARDIS.

Showing Jo the TARDIS interior, the ship suddenly takes off without any actions from the Doctor and the pair are deposited on an alien planet 1000 years in the future. They are captured by colonists, who believe they are working for the IMC, a mining company who wants to exploit the minerals of their planet. Amongst conflict between the two groups of humans, and the possible threat of the Primitives of the world, a Earth Adjudicator arrives to settle the problems. But he is, in fact, the Master...

For the first trip into space in two years, this story is actually very dull, making the Earth-based ones seem much better by comparison. It is quite drawn out, taking a while to get to the point, with several spurious conflicts that seem to exist simply to string out the book.

The illustrations are OK, but not great.

This novel was one of the first published by Target, and somewhat spuriously adds the meeting between the Doctor and Jo to the beginning of the book. If you were reading the novelisations in order, this would be your second encounter with this seen, the previous one being three books before!