Customer Reviews

The Burning (Doctor Who)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Richards's The Burning officially kicks off the "Stranded on Earth" story arc. The Burning takes place immediately right after the catastrophic events that took place in Anghelides/Cole's Ancestor Cell.
The Burning begins in the late 19th cent. with the Doctor having very little memory of who he is (no pun intended) and that the small cube he holds in his pocket is his TARDIS in a regenerative cycle. The Doctor is given shelter by the Rev. Matthew Stobbold who takes pity upon the homeless stranger who calls himself the Doctor. Later, the Doctor and Stobbold meet the mysterious Roger Nepath who is in possession of sentient, shape-shifting, entity that he claims will revolutionize mechanization. Soon, the Doctor finds that not only the entity can bring the dead "back to life" but it is using Nepath to take over the world. In short, all the lifeform knows how to do is eat and it does this in the form of Burning.
Richards's plot is very simplistic and the reader never finds out what the entity really was. Unlike Demontage and Option Lock, the ending is not very good and seems too drawn out. However, Richards's imagery of the 19th century I.E. Mines, Mansions, Small Towns, is very good and done with much detail. I did throughly enjoy the Doctor's and Nepath's debate over free will vs. predestination and the part later in the book where the Doctor argues the case of the Zebra to Nepath to demonstrate that individuality and conformity can live together.

I have found new characters of the 8th Doctor have been intriguing me throughout Richard Justin's "Burning". Unfortunately the end of his stroy was weak, though. I have found that it has the writer's certain charms and skills which kept me going on till finished reading it at the end. I was more intrigued about ruthlessness and mysterousness. These are main characters of the 1st and the 7th Doctors. I have felt the 8th Doctor has lost some mysterious parts of his origin for a while since he regenerated from the 7th one. Since the end of Ancestor cell, his ruthless, mysterious and even cold murderous acts in Burnings has really reminded me of ones of the 1st and 7th ones. I have felt he was bit more happier Doctor from the rest of somehow neurotic and nervous Doctors before Ancestoral Cells. I am an avid fan of the 7th Doctor. I have been intrigued with his mysterious and ruthless moods. I welcome New Doctor's charcterization in "Burning".

'The Burning' is the start of a new story arc for the Eighth Doctor. Stranded on Earth in the late nineteenth century without his TARDIS or memory after the events of 'The Ancestor Cell', we find the Doctor caught up in events that relate to the fate of the village of Middletown, whose major source of employment (a mine) has just closed down.

Enter the mysterious Roger Nepath, traveller and collector of artefacts which relate to the topic of fire, and his plan to reopen the mine.

As is normal with the Doctor, he turns up and all hell breaks loose, although that looks like more than a turn of phrase in this book. The cast of characters in this book are quite well-defined, although some of them undergo a transformation in fairly short order.

The actual nature of the menace is kept concealed for much of the book, although from the title, the striking cover, and the number of times early chapters end with the phrase "And the burning.", you're on safe ground betting that it has something to do with fire. While the revelation is not something new in Doctor Who, it should take quite a few people by surprise.

My one complaint is that Justin Richards, who is he BBC's consultant on its range of Doctor Who books, didn't really give me a strong impression that the Doctor has lost his memory. There are a couple of things he should have recognised, but other than being told he has no memory a few times I didn't really get that impression.

Not the most auspicious start for a new story arc. A book which spent more time on the changes in the Doctor's circumstances would have been better, with this perhaps the second. Still, it's worth seeing where this is taking us.

THE BURNING is a new beginning for Doctor Who. After a year-long continuity-heavy story arc that ended up collapsing under its own weight, new editor Justin Richards has entered into the picture carrying a broom large enough to sweep away all traces of Faction Paradox, Gallifrey future wars, and companions that turn into TARDISes. The break certainly seems to cut off a lot of the history and continuity, but how drastic are the stylistic changes?

THE BURNING feels like an extremely low-key book after the excesses of the previous stories. No planets are in jeopardy here and no time traveling voodoo cults are attempting to rewrite history. The action is set entirely around a small English village at the end of the 19th Century that's experiencing some Who-style strange phenomena. There's one man to the rescue, of course, but who is he, and why is he helping?

The plot is surprisingly weak considering that this was written by Justin Richards. Several vital elements are given cursory descriptions and others aren't described at all. It really is a credit to Richards' skill as a writer that the end product is as readable as it is; in the hands of a lesser writer, this story could really have turned into a complete mess. As it exists now though, it is far from perfect. Much of the actions of the main villain are left unexplained, as are the relationships between the human agent, the creature and their control of the elements. The menace is never clearly explained, and while this may or may not have been done deliberately, I didn't care for the execution. Had the monsters merely been rationalized as forces of nature or something along those lines, I think it would have worked a lot better.

The Doctor's "new" character is, of course, one of the most debated points of this book. Certainly, he's a million times more interesting than the person seen in THE ANCESTOR CELL, though much of the interest comes from the lack of knowledge that we have rather than an abundance of new facts. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; on the contrary, it's quite intriguing to have Doctor becoming a real mystery again. We don't know where he's coming from, we don't know why he acts in the way that he does and we don't know the extent of his amnesia. While this can be frustrating in a few places, it is a great hook to bring the reader back into the Doctor's story.

There were also some interesting passages concerning a determinism vs. free-will argument. The Doctor and a reverend muse over the possibility that if Newton's laws of motion extend to every particle of matter in the universe, then everything that is going to happen is predetermined - anything we do could have already been predicted, if one had access to enough information about the movement of those particles. The reverend can only surmise that the human soul somehow exists outside of these laws, but the Doctor doesn't seem so sure. While some these discussions were quite interesting, in places they were a bit too blatant. However, it was a nice parallel to the Doctor's emerging role in the story. While he enters the story without much to do and lacking the drive or ability to change what's going on around him, by the end he has managed to take control of the situation, albeit shakily. It's such a refreshing change after the past several books to actually see the Doctor involved in the plot and expressing himself on it. The Doctor has always been the ultimate expression of free will in the universe and it's nice to see an author remember that. Anything that compares the Doctor to the soul of the universe (even if it's just me reading too much into it) is all right by me.

In THE BURNING, we have an average story that is given a boost by putting some mystery and interest back into the character of the Doctor. It's notable that after a large, universe-spanning story-arc, we're back to a remote setting with the Doctor simply helping people. Despite the problems with the story, the book comes as a breath of fresh air and sparks hope and interest for the future.

As a long-time fan of the classic TV show, and a discerning reader, it took me a long time to summon the courage to approach the Doctor Who books series. I was very much afraid that my sensibilities would be deeply offended by some ghastly fanboy writing, and my happy memories of the show would be spoiled as a result. As good fortune would have it, one of the first of the new Doctor Who books I picked up was "The Burning" by Justin Richards.

Richards, I can state with relief, knows his craft. His prose is modestly assured and succeeds in projecting the new Doctor's mysterious charm with effortless poise. Also, the casual reader is not seriously disadvantaged by not knowing story-arc details; Everything one needs to know is contained within this volume.

The story brought back for me the delight of watching Doctor Who on television. The tragically misguided villain reminded me of many other similarly afflicted baddies from the show, and his monster henchmen conjured images of BBC actors in garish fibreglass suits, without allowing the narrative to descend into parody for even a moment.

A well-deserved four stars. It's not without its flaws, but science-fiction fans can do much much worse than to read this.

THE BURNING takes place entirely in and outside a nineteenth century English village fast on its way to economic decline. It is winter, yet this is tempered by unexplained cracks in the earth that deliver unnatural heat. Enter one Roger Nepath, a mysterious entrepreneur with a plan to revitalize the town and an unhealthy fixation on a dead sibling. What's his connection with the strange geological activity, and what does he really want?

This is an eighth Doctor adventure, and my first exposure to the character since the unjustly maligned TV movie some years back. I was disappointed to find his appearance here distinctly lacking in personality. I found as I read on that the Doctor had lost his memory in a previous adventure, but this doesn't really excuse the weak characterization. He says and does very little for most of the novel, and except for a few brief heated dialogues, is almost a nonentity. Perhaps if I'd read previous novels I'd see this development more clearly as far as the big picture goes, but the book gives no indication that knowledge of prior adventures is necessary (or at least helpful.) I know that some of the novels state where a story takes place in the larger mythos, but that is lacking here -- an unfortunate oversight. It's fine if they want to carry ongoing subplots, but I'd like to know about it beforehand. I felt like I was in the dark as much as the Doctor was. If, like me, you do not intend to read every Doctor Who novel that is published, and prefer to pick and choose, you may want to pass on this one as it doesn't stand on its own very well.

The story itself is weak. I can't mention many details without spoiling it, but the whole thing simply does not come together as well as it should. There is much time given to the supposed importance of a strange new mineral, yet it proves to be completely irrelevant to the latter half of the story. The villain's plan is also not explained adequately. In the end, everything conspired to make THE BURNING an unsatisfying read.

If this wasn't the first story after the events of "Ancestor Cell" then I don't think anyone would be all that interested in it. It's not a bad story, it's just not a real exciting one.

At the turn of the century in England, a visitor comes to the village with the intention of restarting a mine that had been shut down years earlier. Soon enough it's clear that something sinister is going on, or at least that Nerpath has a bit of an agenda going on beyond bringing prosperity to the area. But before things can get too out of hand, a mysterious stranger comes wandering out of nowhere, with a lot of knowledge but very little backstory. And then, indeed, the plot begins to simmer. Sorry, I couldn't resist.

This is one of those books that don't do a whole lot to induce a sense of dread. The title of the book is "The Burning" and at least two chapters end with a character being engulfed by "a burning" so it becomes fairly obvious fairly quickly that whatever is going to happen, fire will be involved in some form or another. The early scenes are perhaps most effective, when you can't tell if people are being possessed or a strange form of the ol' switcheroo is taking place. The plot basically halts for a little bit so the resident pastor and the Doctor can have a debate about free will versus predestination, which is done well enough that you wonder if that's what the writer really wanted to have the book be about. People get bumped off here and there just to raise the stakes slightly and eventually the threat is revealed and the action really kicks into gear. And then its over, after everyone talks to each other for a really long time.

Part of the problem is that everyone was tuning into this book to see what the new status quo would be like. When we last left the Doctor, Compassion was dropping him off somewhere to let the TARDIS grow back and get his head back together. He clearly was amnesiac and not himself. So it'd be interesting to see the Doctor not act like himself, especially when all his memories are removed. Unfortunately, he acts a whole lot like himself, with only passing references to the fact that he doesn't remember anything. Great Shades of Kaspar Hauser! And with no one around that he knows anyway, you basically get a Doctor who doesn't worry about Fitz or Compassion because he doesn't remember that he exists. I don't know if it qualifies as disappointing but it would have been nicer if the change in personality was somewhat more distinct. About the only definite change we see is a rather callous act toward the end, and considering what has led up to it, I really can't blame him.

Thus we're stuck with the rest of the plot. "Stuck" is probably too strong of a word, since the plot itself isn't half bad, but it's not especially distinctively told and progresses without really twisting. There's a threat. The threat builds until people can't ignore it any longer. Then the Doctor does something about it. People ignore obvious problems (the reverend's daughter acts very strange for most of the book and it's only much later that someone goes "Gee, she's acting funny"), the villain's motivations are rather, er, crazy, or at least not exactly complex and the Doctor gets to once again (all together now!) mock the military mind. The monsters aren't especially scary, and really only kill people because they're silly enough to stand too close. In fact, the monsters really aren't explained, which leaves them somewhat colorless. Are they aliens? Beings from another dimension? I can deal with mystery, but at least give them some aura of mystery. Here, they exist to move the plot along, and that's all.

So what we get is a not very complex adventure that moves from Point A to Point B without any real complications. Everything is more or less what it seems and if the Doctor is any less effective for having his memory removed, it doesn't show (he's still a big smartypants, he just doesn't know why). Thus instead of a real new status quo, we get a sort of standard adventure.

But there's still hope. He's got a hundred years to wait for Fitz, hopefully something different will happen in the interim. Cross your fingers!

As a reader new to the literary world of Doctor Who, this reviewer had doubts as to the possible merit of this book. Having read only one other book in this line, I was quite prepared to be disappointed. Surprisingly, The Burning turned out to be highly readable, in spite of some plot weaknesses and my having no knowledge of what had brought the good Doctor to the state we find him in when he arrives in Middletown. He seems not to know exactly who he is or why he is there, yet in many other ways, he is the nearly all-knowing Doctor that fans love.

A Mr. Nepath arrives before the Doctor and just after the tin mine that has supported the residents of Middletown has to close. The good Lord Urton and his wife kept it open and the men employed far longer than they should have, but the hope of finding a new vein of tin, or any other reason to keep the mine open, is gone. As is their money. However, Nepath offers another use for the mine, where he asserts there is something else of value to be brought out.

The offer seems like a gift from heaven, but slowly people begin acting strangely. Then they start dying. The weather has already been acting oddly -- warm in the middle of winter -- and scientific experts arrive to check things out. Among all of these arrivals, the Doctor settles in, neither explaining who he is nor why he is there. But as things worsen in Middletown, he seems to be the only person with any idea of how to solve the mysteries and hopefully how to save the town and its people.

Although the end is telegraphed early on, it is still satisfactory after a fashion. The only real clinker in the whole thing involves the reverend's daughter, although some readers may find it satisfying as well. The Doctor's behavior in the end is, as always, shocking and shows why fans love the character and generations keep coming back to watch and read his adventures.