Customer Reviews

Divided Loyalties (Dr. Who Series)

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

 

 

This novel starts off quite encouragingly. Russell seems to have captured the Fifth Doctor perfectly, including much of his sarcasm. The initial glimpses of the Celestial Toymaker are also very reminiscent of Michael Gough's performance. 'Divided Loyalties' is also quite short, running to only 252 pages, which makes you think that someone has finally seen sense, and restricted the page numbers to fit the story. But Gary Russell's afterword rings all too true. He seems to have been originally planning a meeting between the 6th and 8th Doctors. Two Doctors feature in this novel too, with an episode from the First Doctor's life to explain why he'd been expelled by the Academy. This is quite enjoyable, although the presence of a large furry animal gives the lie to the thought that Russell might have dropped some of his more irritating habits. The monsters in Doctor Who were never supposed to be cute: only the budget restrictions made them that way (like the giant rat in The Talons of Weng Chiang). If any era deserved a Russell novel, then it would have to be Davison's. Doctor Who's producer at the time, John-Nathan Turner, loved continuity even more than Russell seems to do: 'With an exaggerated sigh Tegan straightened up and smoothed down her uniform. (Nyssa had promised to go through the TARDIS wardrobe... so that they could both choose something new to wear instead of forever getting the TARDIS to work its overnight magic on her lilac air hostess outfit.) His grammar could do with some work too! Well, at least there's only one villain. Koschei does feature, but he's still in angelic mode. The Toymaker does have a nasty henchman, but we can hardly take him seriously, because he's called 'Gaylord'. In like manner, and as an internal continuity to recent Eighth Doctor novels, Russell speculates on the nature of the Guardians - 'The Great Old Ones'. Could these be Lawrence Miles' Time Lords from another universe invading our own? Unfortunately, Russell chooses to spoil their majesty by giving them some very silly names: 'Raah, Nah and Rok, who together would one day cause the end of this Universe'. Although this might just be another reference, this time to the televised adventure 'The Greatest Show in the Galaxy'. But Russell is such a slave to continuity that he spoils his own book. It appears that he became too concerned about the portrayal of the Toymaker in Graham Williams' 'The Nightmare Fair'. In this unrealized script, the Toymaker was rather less fun than he'd been in his debut in the 1960s, so Russell dully contrives to explain this (I mean 'dully'). By the end of 'Divided Loyalties', the Toymaker is thus transformed into a 'Nuthink in this world can stop me now!' type caricature. In order to explain this transformation, Russell feels obliged to disrupt continuity by introducing new characters and events (I don't think William Hartnell's Doctor knew of the Toymaker beforehand). The 'divided loyalties' of the story refers to the Fifth Doctor's companions, and Russell here uses the word 'divided' to its fullest extent. Nyssa, in particular, has a reason to be aggrieved with the Doctor, but Russell chooses to dwell rather too long on her dilemma. The Toymaker's games are also quite banal. Gary Russell could have done with the helping hand of Christopher Bulis here, in devising some really devious puzzles, just as he could learn from Lawrence Miles the way to write a complex plot which grips you all the way.

I won't be quite so acerbic and say this was the worst story, nor will I proclaim this to be the world's greatest DW story. Truth be told it was a run of the mill tale.

I'm always a sucker for a Peter Davison tale and I normally pick up those adventures because I really enjoyed that era.

I believe that this story could have (SHOULD HAVE)progressed without the crew of spacestation Little Boy II. I found them shallow wastes of space. The Doctor, his companions and us readers would have been better off in the long run had the cardboard cut-out crew members of the Little Boy II been missing.

I will say that I really enjoyed the portion of the Academy-years Doctor. It was fun trying to envision that part of the story. It was once said that you never make the same caliber of friends than the ones you met in school. Gary Russell excelled in bringing this aspect of the Doctor's life across.

The fleshing out of Nyssa, Adric and Teagan was very refreshing. I hope we can see more of it in future 5th Doctor novels.

Personally, I'd like to read the same style of fleshing out for the more-or-less newly regenerated Doctor. If we're going to read adventures taking place so soon after Castrovalva, this would only make sense. Not to mention a good read.

If this were an episode, it would be on par with Four to Doomsday and Time Flight. Not the greatest ones, but watchable.

In mid-flight, the Doctor receives a telepathic dream message from a long lost friend, begging for help. The friend was overtaken by the cosmic force known as the Celestial Toymaker. The Doctor goes looking for revenge and, along with his companions, end up once again playing the Toymakers deadly games.

This novel is really two interlinking stories in one. In the second part of the book we go back into the Doctors past to when he was still in school on Gallifrey and visit an adventure he had with his first ever TARDIS jaunt which leads him to his first Toymaker meeting. This is by far the best aspect of the novel and it would be great to get another story set around this period. The fifth Doctor's parts tend to be pretty bland.

The Toymakers games that try to persuade the Doctor's companions to doubt him are excellent and are issues that were not ever touched on in the series.

But one of the best reasons to read this book is for all the Adric bashing - yay!! He whinges a lot but he does get put back into place. All in all, the book is RECOMMENDED for a no brainer read and especially for the insight into the Doctor's past.

The TARDIS is invaded by a force from the past, which asks him "How many doors must you slam, Doctor, before you understand the magnitude of what you did?" And so it's off to the planet Dymok, where a shadow from the past places the present under threat and the Doctor must try to undo a past mistake.

Featuring the return of the classic William Hartnell foe, the Celestial Toymaker, and the crowded TARDIS of the Fifth Doctor, Adric, Nyssa and Tegan, this book is written in three parts (or rounds, as it puts them). The first and third feature the TARDIS crew, but the middle round is an all-star visit to Gallifrey's past to discover exactly how the Doctor and the Toymaker first came to be in conflict. So many Time Lords you'll need a score card to keep track!

Aside from this visit to Gallifrey's past, the other great feature of the book is the characterisation of the Doctor's companions. For instance, we are treated fairly early on to Tegan's impressions of the Doctor, Nyssa and Adric, and complimentary is not a word that springs to mind. As the book progresses, discord is sewn amongst the four friends with potentially disastrous results.

So, here we have a book which not only deals with the "present", but has its eyes fixed firmly on the past as well as the "future" - in the form of the unmade but novelised Sixth Doctor story 'The Nightmare Fair'. If Doctor Who's continuity gives you a headache or makes you nauseous, leave this one to those (like me) who enjoy it.

It's generally not a good sign when the stated intention of the author is to explain things that probably didn't need to be explained. For therein lies the realm of fan-fiction.

In his afterword Gary Russell explains that, among other things, one of his goals for this novel was to explain why the Celestial Toymaker had a different personality between his first appearance and his later would-be appearance in the untelevised story "The Nightmare Fair". Think about that. He feels a need to explain a change from a story that literally no one has ever seen (it comes from the cancelled season of the show, though in all fairness a novel and an audio play do exist of it). Here's an idea, how about we not bring back any characters at all?

Still, we won't hold it against him because he does give it a game try. In this instance we have the Fifth Doctor and his band of merry companions winding up on a world where everyone seems to be dreaming. An Earth crew is monitoring the planet from overhead and wind up getting involved with them, but it quickly becomes clear that something sinister is going on. Something toyishly sinister.

The early sections of the book, where the Toymaker is literally doing anything he wants (including cheating) are effective, depicting exactly what our team is up against. Unfortunately for us, we've got the team of Tegan, Nyssa and Adric in full soap opera mode, where their problems become projected against the larger tableau. Thus, Tegan just wants to go home, Nyssa wants her home (and father) to exist again, and Adric just wishes for the old fun Doctor to come back. And wonder why nobody likes him.

All the various degrees of interpersonal moping tend to bog the book down a bit. Russell seems to have a particular problem with Adric, making him almost unbearably whiny and smug, and constantly wishing for the girls to be gone so he and the Doctor can have fun adventures alone together again. It gets so bad you want a Cyberman spaceship to come and smash into him several episodes too early, just so he can shut up. Everyone else just seems to work the same themes, which only gets worse as the Toymaker begins to play their loyalties against the Doctor, sowing distrust and strife. With toys.

If this all sounds a little thin, it is. The original "Celestial Toymaker" was no great shakes (seeing what it actually looked like took it down a few notches) but the Toymaker was an interesting character. The problem is that he's a bit of a one-trick pony . . . he plays games with people and cheats, or at least rigs the game, until the Doctor comes along and turns the tables. Russell tries to one-up matters by making him one of the Great Old Ones, which pretty much wholesale co-opts HP Lovecraft concepts, and a Guardian of dreams. Like Morpheus from "Sandman", only without the cool hair.

None of this really disguises the fact that the story is fairly standard, a series of obstacles that kill time until the final confrontation. Perhaps knowing that, Russell inserted a decently long section right into the middle of the book where a pre-TV show First Doctor, still on Gallifrey, winds up running into the Toymaker and loses a friend to him. While this section winds up being integral to the point, as storytelling it seems to exist more as a "spot the continuity" reference, postulating that the Doctor was close friends with every Time Lord that has ever appeared on the show and then turned evil. On the plus side, it borrows Marc Platt's concepts from "Lungbarrow" although they don't seem to work as well when stripped of their Gothic mystery. But it has the usual problem with Gallifrey stories in that the more we see of early Time Lords, the more it just looks like a rather dull costume drama featuring people with weird names. And I'm on two minds whether we should see a prior encounter between the Doctor and the Toymaker . . . while it's certainly hinted at in the original episode, it seems best to leave it as a piece of mythology that the show never needed to explain.

That said, we're left with a rather standard adventure that takes a detour in the middle for an interlude before rocketing back to get the story finished. It's nice to see the Toymaker again but the fact is, we didn't really need a story explaining why he got meaner and while I won't say that means we didn't need this story, it certainly doesn't make a resounding case for it's existence.

Media tie-in novels often get a bad reputation in the science-fiction community; it's books like DIVIDED LOYALTIES that bring that about. Characters are two- and one-dimensional, the plot is less exciting than the opening credits from the television show, and the prose itself would not be deemed publishable anywhere else.

There are a lot of good media tie-in novels out there. This is not one of them. Try your luck elsewhere.

This is one of the best Doctor Who books in a long time. A long, long time! It's writing style is straightforward and enagaging, much like the literature of Terrance Dicks. The companions were fleshed out as to reveal insights and opinions on issues we always wondered about. Tegan's disgust with Adric's poor teenaged hygene, Adric missing "His" Doctor, the Fourth, and the like. The passions and hidden resentments make this very soap operatic for Doctor Who, but it works. It's fun and yet quite insightful and revealing. Even the young First Doctor's "Luke Skywalker" type yearning to escape into adventure makes its mark. Granted, the entire second part dedicated to the early days can EASILY have "Toymaker" replaced by "Q" or "Trelane", the "Gallifreyan Academy" replaced by "Federation Academy" and "The Doctor" replaced by "Kirk" or "Picard". But that's what adds to it's fun and appeal. This book isn't overly complex and full of high level concepts like other books in the range. It's an entertaining tale in the spirit of the original series that deals with beginnings and relationships. It DOES feel a lot like a Star Trek type of novel, but I was pleased with that. Through many references (DW Television, novels, even comics) and by utilizing elements that DO work for other sci fi (such as Star Trek and Star Wars), Gary Russell brought back style, humility and a sense of "fun" to Doctor Who. As a devout fan of Parkin's A HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE and Platt's LUNGBARROW, I really liked the Academy scenes and the appearance of Badger, Koschei (and others) and the mention of the nickname "Snail". I can see how many die hard fans who dislike too much of Gallifrey revealed may be a bit hostile. But I just think this novel was so full of rich characterization and held such a fun mood that I was overjoyed with every bit of it, Trek-like or otherwise. Tegan's descriptions of her companions on pages 24-25 and the Doctor's teacher's lecture on pages 108-110 are alone worth buying and cherishing this richly rewarding book. This is TRUE Doctor Who if EVER such a thing existed in any form. I loved it.

This missing adventure features the fifth doctor ,tegan,nyssa and adric. The doctor and his companios get into a squabble over how the TARDIS lands in a space station over a planet in the future.Meanwhile the Toymaker is screwing around with the doctor companions minds of their trust of the doctor. The Doctor goes back in his mind to his school days back home on gallifrey. This brings some answers but not enough to stop the Toymaker plan with his friends. Eventually the Doctor and his friends escape the Toymakers world. The Toymaker leaves his world for other places while the world his lives is repaired. This novel also explains how the guradians came to be ( such a example Black/white guradians)! This novel is a fast story and it a little slow at first, but gradually the pace of the story picks up! Over all a fun read with my favorite doctor and companions! please do more adventures of the 5th doctor please (this a note to the authors! ) there a great addition to the novels of my favorite doctor (besides Tom Baker! )