Customer Reviews

Doctor Who: The Slitheen Excursion (Doctor Who (BBC Hardcover))

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

 

 

On the whole, I've enjoyed most of the books in the Doctor Ten series; they're quick, fun little reads and I don't ask much from them other than being good with characterization (check) with a good story (check) and marginally good editing (well...); and it's that last that lead me to a written review.

While overall, I found "The Slitheen Excursion" one of the finest of the Doctor Ten series -- it's sharp, it's funny, it's fun, it's well-researched, and author Simon Guerrier has created one of the best companions for Ten since Donna in vacationing university student June (who I'd actually love to see again), the problem I had with this book was the preponderance of misused words -- constant uses of your in place of you're (or reversed), a merman alien who slithered on his "fishy tale" (big oops there) and when June "laughed out loud at the site of the TARDIS" (as in, she was beholding it -- sight -- not reaching the site where it stood). Every time I'd run into one of these mistakes I found it very jarring, and it increases my worries about publishing houses that rely on spellcheck programs over a line editor they can't afford to pay.

But other than those errors, it's really a good book, and I'm glad they're still printing them for us; and for a while, anyway, we'll have Doctor Ten to enjoy.

I agree with K. Coleman's review. This is an excellent Doctor Who spin-off story about the Slitheen and Doctor Ten. Excursion travel into Earth's past is just the sort of scam that you might expect from the Slitheen, and it's a fun read. But the editing is really poor, something unexpected from the Beeb. It is annoying, and K Coleman is right, when you run across one of the more egregious errors it does jar you out of the story.

I should have known better than to buy a book with spelling/grammar errors. If the editors miss mistakes like that, they surely haven't bothered to actually read it. I have read fanfiction that has better quality than this.

The doctor was unrecognizable (so much so that I checked the cover twice to make sure that this was indeed the 10th doctor), the supporting character June a total bore and the rest of the characters one-dimensional, interchangeable and acting completely illogical.

This gets two stars instead of one because it started out fairly good, describing June's first encounter with The Doctor (which is why I bought the book). The story is for the most part told from June's point of view, which isn't a bad thing in itself as long as the story focuses on The Doctor. Instead we see her running around a lot with no real purpose.

I'm sorry to say that I didn't finish the book, so I can't comment on the plot, except that up to the point where I got, it was all over the place.

I greatly enjoyed 'Prisoner of the Daleks' and 'The Nightmare on Black Island' and I recommend those instead of this one. I will not be reading any more books from this writer.

As usual, the Slitheen try to muck about with earth's history and the Doctor hands out the lesson.