Doctor Who: Burning Heart (Missing Adventures) [Paperback]

Dave Stone (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: London Bridge (Mm) (February 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0426204980
• ISBN-13: 978-0426204985
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,294,207 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dave Stone attempts to be serious (for once), March 18, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Doctor Who: Burning Heart (Missing Adventures) (Paperback)

I'm not a huge Peri fan. In fact, I never particularly liked her.
But, in this book, I began to see her as a person, who was human just like the rest of the Doc's companions.
The story is incredibly serious, with a lot of time spent on devolving/evolving the church, religion, etc. Which was actually kinda interesting.
And Dave got to sneak in yet another character who used loooong, many sylabled words. Great stuff!

5.0 out of 5 stars I don't know what happened, October 16, 2006

By 

Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Doctor Who: Burning Heart (Missing Adventures) (Paperback)

At least this book was short. It has that going for it at least. Dave Stone is an interesting writer because he definitely has a different tone than the other Who writers. It's a bit denser, a little looser, more prone to strange metaphors and being goofy purely for the sake of being goofy, regardless of whether the story demands it or not. Most of the time it feels like he writes whatever story he wants and then sort of shoves Doctor Who material into it wherever he can. This story is really no exception, at times it feels like the Doctor and Peri have just wandered into someone else's novel. Word is that this was supposed to be some kind of Judge Dredd crossover, which mercifully was either cancelled, or saner heads prevailed. I don't know if that's true or not but the book cover certainly suggests it, with that MegaCity One looking fellow standing there with the handgun. Still, the Judges get converted into Adjudicators, which makes more sense from a Who standpoint, but it doesn't make the story anymore coherent. Basically, you have a religious nut and a racist nut and between them they're trying to kill everyone. And it's the fault of this entity that's trying to bond with a computer. Or something. The Doctor and Peri really don't try and make sense of it and neither should we. Stone's novels work best when you just sort of go with it and enjoy the ride. He separates the Doctor and Peri early on, which is good because he's kind of a jerk to her (though an anecdote near the end nearly redeems him) and Peri nearly becomes Warrior Woman, which feels just a bit out of character but hey, it's a Dave Stone novel. His mad ideas and prose are what saves this novel for the most part. He's clearly in love at times with the sound of his own writing but the little bits he throws in (the people who blow up livestock are hilarious!) are sometimes more worth it than the main plot, which is a variation on "this happened and this happened and then this and then, oh, it's over." His charactization of the Sixth Doctor seems a tad off, but he does capture that overweening arrogance of the character to a good extent and manages to rationalize Peri's friendship with him in the face of that, so that she doesn't look like a total idiot. Who readers are going to devour this regardless, everyone else is going to look at us and wonder why we like the show so much. It's readable, but there's better out there, including stuff from Stone.

2.0 out of 5 stars The worst aspects of the Sixth Doctor revisited, February 9, 2001

By 

"grrreg" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Doctor Who: Burning Heart (Missing Adventures) (Paperback)

The Doctor takes Peri to the planet Dramos, curious as to why a three month period of the planet's history is not recorded in the TARDIS databank. It's the Sixth Doctor, so you know the answer to this question is bound to be both violent and unpleasant...

I have heard this book was originally planned to be a Doctor Who-Judge Dredd crossover. The fact that it isn't is, I think, a good thing - Earth's history in Doctor Who is convoluted enough without adding another fictional history on top of it. And I'm not terribly fond of Judge Dredd.

However, it seems that the storyline wasn't sufficiently rewritten to cope with Dredd's excision. With the Doctor spending much time incarcerated, Peri is portrayed in an uncharacteristically violent way which I assume is in part because she takes on roles that were set for Dredd.

That said, Dave Stone does find some replacement of the missing Judge Dredd trappings by using the Adjudicator's Guild, much expanded upon while Virgin had the licence to produce Doctor Who, and so fits the story back into the Doctor Who universe quite successfully.

Not the greatest of Doctor Who novels, and perhaps too reminiscent of the worst aspects of the Sixth Doctor's tenure, it probably isn't a book that will satisfy the casual Doctor Who readers. Those of us who read them all will read it anyway, and it may also be good for Dredd fans as it contains (I think!) quite a bit they will like.