Customer Reviews

Doctor Who: Autonomy (Doctor Who (BBC Paperback))

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
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This book is good and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. The writer potrays the doctor just as good as david tennant potrays him in the TV series. The characters are good, some complex and some predictible, and the plot is has suspense and intrege just like you would expect from any good Dr. Who novel. But you're gonna have to read it yourself to know that it's good, because you can see how the opinions vary!

Daniel Blythe completely captures the essence of David Tennant's 10th doctor. In the not so far away future, the Doctor encounters the Nestene Consciousness again as it attempts to take over the earth. We see the Autons in a different light as they have evolved in ways the Doctor never imagined.

As he attempts to stop the Nestene Consciousness, the Doctor encounters an odd assortment of allies. Kate would've made an awesome companion and Chantelle was refreshing as the bright, intelligent teenager who figures out how to stop the Autons.

Simply put, this is a run romp with the Doctor. I think any Doctor Who fan would enjoy it. It's a fast, easy read. I finished most of it sitting by the pool while my kids played.

This was actually a gift for my wife ... the writing is about as terrible as one would expect, but any hard-core Doctor Who fan will likely get over that fact and enjoy seeing another glimpse into that universe.

I cannot disagree more heartily with the preceding review. Granted, I am only 80% through reading this book. I read a few pages every day and set it down in favor of something more invigorating, something better written. I have enough OCD that I WILL finish the book, but it has been tough.

Okay, so first and foremost, it's a story about plastic invaders. That's tough enough in itself. And in this regard the author does quite well. He actually manages to make the plastic peril convincing and even "fully fleshed."

I also enjoyed the very clear and unambiguous moral message of the piece about plastic and malls and consumption, etc. I like a message piece. No problem there.

However . . . the writing is about as canned as I've ever seen. Certain descriptions and lines are repeated ad nauseum and verbatim throughout the book, such as the effect of the Auton weaponry. Secondly, the author uses this awkward phrasing dozens of times throughout the novel, that of characters "pulling a face." If this is a common British expression, I am not familiar with it, and every time it came up, it was jarring and bizarre. The Doctor is constantly "pulling a face" without establishing what face or mood this is meant to portray.

The various "companions" here are utterly two-dimensional. I am not merely being snarky to say that they have less development than the plastic menace with which they are faced. We are given no real reason to care about them or to see them as anything other than flat characters against which a danger can be thrust.

The Doctor here is NOT true to form as stated in the earlier review, but is rather the worst and most cartoonish caricature of Mr. Tennant's work imaginable. Take any of the wonderfully eccentric phrasings or mannerisms of the character, then amplify two- or three-fold, put it into a context it doesn't quite fit into, and then combine with several other eccentricities and you've got a sense of how the Doctor is portrayed here. It is jangled, over-played, and lacking in the sensitivity that makes the character endlessly fascinating.

Finally, scenes typically end in a line that is too clever by half or intended to be tension-building, while merely making the action hokey. You'd have to read the book to see.

Yes, I am a bit of literature snob, but I have generally loved the BBC Doctor Who books as I am a big fan of the modern franchise. This book is one of the few that has really disappointed.