Customer Reviews

Doctor Who: The Gallifrey Chronicles (Doctor Who (BBC Paperback))

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

 

 

A mysterious Earth-bound Timelord watches, evaluates the Doctor in a stream of seemingly unrelated adventures, the Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey, the Timelords, their TARDISes, a companion all dead and gone the Doctor's memories maybe gone too. Is the Doctor responsible?

It's fitting that Lance Parkin writes the last (of the continuing) adventures featuring Paul McGann's 8th incarnation of the Doctor, since Parkin wrote the first original novel featuring this Doctor in The Dying Days (The New Adventures from Virgin Publishing). It is a well-earned honor, because like his other novels ("The Infinity Doctors" is brillant!), this is another great one. The voices of the Doctor and his companions, Trix and Fitz, who are preparing to depart, are clear and consistent. This is a good novel to make way for the Eccleston 9th incarnation novels soon to the "flood" shelves. As "The Gallifrey Chronicles" represent the end of an era of sorts and the begining of a new one, a personal irony in this regard is that this novel is all that remains of my Dr. Who book collection due to Katrina. Hopefully future offerings from Mr. Parkin and BBC books will be as good as this and make rebuilding my collection worthwhile.

are inside this book. Though the author himself has said you did not need have read any of the previous EDA books, it would be better if you had, especially the past 5 or 6, to catch all of the references.

That being said, though, I have read this book twice now and have enjoyed most of it, if not all. I found the romance between Fitz and Trix boring (which is why I don't read romances) and could have lived without the constant move away from the main characters of the story, namely the Doctor himself and Marnal, whose interaction with the Doctor lead to some of the more interesting revelations of the book.

No, it does not go into how Gallifrey is destroyed the first time (an important point to remember is that it is *not* the same destruction of said planet which has taken place before the beginning of the current series). That was covered in Ancestor Cell several years ago. It does, however, clarify certain points from that particular book and actually makes sense of some of the actions which took place at the time.

More importantly, The Gallifrey Chronicles pays tribute to all the fans of Doctor Who who have kept faith with the series over the years and kept it alive so that it could return in triumph (if with some questions) this past year.

This book is superb. I haven't read many Doctor Who novels, and I didn't feel left out at all. It was a very clever book, a strong Doctor Who story that's also a commentary on Doctor Who stories. What surprised me is how funny it was. I'm a big fan of Alias and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials stories and it doesn't surprise me that Mr Parkin has also written about both of those. This book has the same pace and complexity. Lots of really big ideas, but never losing track of the story and characters. Very impressive stuff, and the author clearly loves Doctor Who ... but I'd say it was also a good novel in its own right. Are all the other Doctor Who novels this big and clever? If so, I've got a lot of catching up to do.

This novel deftly ties up(well, almost....) the Eighth Doctor arc begun all the way back in "The Ancestor Cell". We discover the actual fate of the Doctor's home planet of Gallifrey (I won't give this away here!), which was believed to be destroyed, of necessity, by the Doctor's own actions; we discover that there are Timelords still about; and the way is also paved for the emergence of Christopher Eccleston's Ninth Doctor in both the literary and television mediums. Don't expect a regeneration, though; that's widely avoided to give further wind to the McGann era, as this leaves open the possibility of further Eighth Doctor Adventures. Solid story and characters, well paced, and a neat bridge between the mythos of television Doctor Who and the Doctor's adventures in the literary medium. This one is not to be missed; it delivers even for the reader who hasn't faithfully followed the BBC books Eighth Doctor arc, as well as leaving the "door" wonderfully wide open...............

The eighth Doctor gets a spectaular send off in popular author Lance Parkin's books. Despite criticism from some fan quarter about what the book doesn't cover, people should look beyond this and simply see this as a celebration of the 10 years of the eighth doctor.

The Gallifrey Chronicles is the last book of the Eigth Doctor's adventures and one would expect something great; something spectacular. But this book isn't it I'm sorry to say.

The problem is that this book is a hardcore fan's book. In order to understand all of the references to events that are mentioned in the Gallifrey Chronicles, you would have to have read maybe six or more other Doctor Who books, otherwise you feel lost when you read that the Doctor's daughter had died and the Doctor didn't remember it. And for us who hadn't read the book where that had taken place, we don't know what happened either because the author doesn't bother to take a few lines to show us what had happened.

This book is filled with references to other books-- most of which I haven't read yet or may not read at all-- and Lance Parkin expects you to have read the previous books and will get the references.

To somebody like me who is a casual Doctor Who book reader, I find it annoying as hell to have so many unexpanded upon references. But this, while I think is the biggest flaw of the book, isn't the only one. The story also contradicts earlier things already established about the Doctor's origins, leaving one confused as to what to believe. And lastly, the story is just plain dull in places when you get right down to it. You get to the end expecting a great payoff, but the book pretty much comes to a screeching halt with no real resolution; the biggest disappointment of them all.

I won't advise people not to buy this book, but they should be aware that it's not a really great book. Don't expect any answers to any of the questions you might have had before you bought the book or to find any answers to the questions the book itself raises. I think the book was written in such a way to make people have to buy many of the preceeding books just to get answers, but maybe I'm just being cynical. It could simply be just a matter of bad writing.

The is a lot going on in this book, including a number of brief backflashes to adventures the 8th Doctor has had but which aren't in any of the so far published books. As a conclusion to the series it is unsatisfying, as the book seems to end abruptly, as if there was a page limitation. There is no final confrontation with the adversary and you are left to assume that the Doctor is successful in defeating them. There is a regeneration scene in this novel, but it isn't the Doctor, at the end of the novel he is still the McGann incarnation, although there is allusion that he may be going to regenerate as a result of the unrecorded final confrontation. What happened to Gallifrey is explained (sort of), but it is still destroyed by the Doctor at the end of the novel, not restored to be destroyed by the Daleks in the Time Wars prior to the new series. This book could have used a couple more chapters to bring the story to a conclusion.

It's hard to swallow that Gallifrey is gone, but it is an interesting twist. I must admit at the end of the book I was very interested in what was to happen next. The bit about everyone who died really didn't wasn't quite so believable, but it is science fiction. A good Who read.

I was hoping to "see" the regeneration from the 8th to the 9th Doctor, but we did not get it. Just a quick, "Well I'm off to die!" at the end of the book. The story was good enough, but it headed in a completetly different direction two thirds of the way through. If you like the 8th Doctor, this is a good book. It just didn't quite answer all the questions I had.

I've been a Doctor Who fan for thirty years or so, and I eagerly anticipated the novel that would tell me how Gallifrey was destroyed and what role the Doctor had in it. After all, these are big questions in the new series.

But I only made it about halfway through the novel before I threw it in the garbage can. To me, "shock value" writing, such as unnecessary gore, has no place in quality writing. To me, shock value writing says one thing: Danger, Hack Writer Ahead.

The writing also feels disjointed, as though it were an advanced draft, not a complete product. At times the writing flows and is very clever; at other times, it hits fits and starts, gets choppy, and seems to lose its way. The editors at BBC probably should have sent the manuscript back and told the writer to go over it one more time. Considering the release was delayed, perhaps they tried, and perhaps the writer simply wasn't up to the task.

At any rate, I won't waste my time or money on another book by this author, and I'll seriously consider whether to buy another BBC Doctor Who book. (The other recent title I tried, Timeless, was not much better. It read like pulp aimed for 14-year-old boys.)