Customer Reviews

Doctor Who: The Doctor Trap (Doctor Who (BBC Hardcover))

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The Doctor Trap starts out as a promisingly complex story in which the Doctor and Donna are lured to the legendary Planet 1 by its psychopathic ruler Sebastiene, to be hunted by exotic and cruel experts from across the universe. It genuinely seems there is no escape for the Doctor, and Donna is nowhere to be found.

It all starts to go wrong when the writer starts giving everyone magical powers of escape and it is impossible to follow who is controlling who and just how was it they escaped in the first place - in other words - plot holes. Several chapters later very flimsy excuses will be given in half a sentence as to how this all took place, but it is never satisfactorily explained

The worst of it though is poor Donna who is depicted as selfish and useless, when she's trapped her solution is to eat herself sick for days on end. When they're in a jam, she sacrifices other people to save herself and the Doctor, and suggests such sacrifices to the Doctor several times in the book. This is not Donna - the Doctor's good conscience, this is a complaining, useless, "why me?" character who played no part in forwarding the plot at all.

The worst part of the book is the ending, in which two characters get sacrificed; a good guy and a bad guy. Donna chuckles over the way the Doctor lies to the bad guy and leaves him to die, and the good guy doesn't even get a mention! This is very uncharacteristic of both the Doctor and Donna, to leave people in peril.

I have read every book in this series, this is the first I've read with Donna in it, I hope the others are better. Generally this series depicts the main characters well and presents fantastic science fiction stories that are challenging and unique. This book starts out really well but it seems the writer both wrote himself into a corner and had not seen any of season four before writing for the character of Donna. Fans will be very dissappointed.

This is a great Doctor Who book. Or would have been but for one tiny flaw. It has aliens, robots, guns, jungles, action, adventure, humor. But Donna is pushed to one side by the author and not used properly. And while there is a big twist near the end of the book most of the story really isn't very interesting.
Frankly, if you get it as a gift read it. But if you see it in a book store, you may wish to just pass it by.

"Excitement, tension, the thrill of the chase, these were a few of his favourite things." - The Doctor Trap, p. 187

Sebastiene is physically flawless, incredibly powerful and more than a little bit maniacal. As the ruler of Planet 1, Sebastiene has everything he could ever want, but that will never be enough. He's taken to hunting down alien species, the more dangerous the better. For his ultimate prize, however, Sebastiene must enlist the help of the Endangered Dangerous Species Society, a group of the most ruthless hunters in the galaxy. Sebastiene wants to add the most dangerous being in the universe to his collection: the Doctor, the last of the Time Lords.

Sebastiene uses a genetic copy of the Doctor, a man named Baris, to steal the TARDIS and kidnap Donna. The doppelganger lures the Doctor to Planet 1, but it doesn't take long for the Doctor to turn the tables on his twin. He manages to switch places with Baris, which only complicates matters. Now he has to save Donna, recover the TARDIS and keep the hunters from killing Baris. Can the Doctor escape Sebastiene's trap or will Sebastiene find himself in a trap of the Doctor's design?

The Doctor Trap is an action-packed story filled with twists and turns, alternating between confusing and clever. Sebastiene was an interesting villain but I felt that the story would have been stronger without the final twist; it felt rather anticlimactic compared to earlier revelations.

This is one of the first novels to feature Donna Noble as the Doctor's companion. While they spend most of the story separated (one of my personal pet peeves with the Doctor Who novels), there are some nice moments of Doctor/Donna banter that the show's fans came to expect during Series 4.

When I first read the description of this book, it really intrigued me. A Doctor Who version of "The Running Man," sounded pretty cool. What Messingham has crafted is an exciting, natural feeling Doctor Who story with plenty of twists and surprises. The author really has the voice of the characters solidly and the book never feels redundant. My only problem would be with the pacing, it seems that the book spends too much time on some of the ancillary characters and not enough on The Doctor or Donna.

While it has a somewhat overused idea at its core there was a lot of potential in this novel. Sadly, it fails on so many fronts I found myself finishing it out of pure bullheadedness while wishing I was doing something else. I'm going to go into some spoilers so consider yourself warned.

The biggest problem here is that author Simon Messingham has several elements of his plot that really, really shouldn't work and he does a *terrible* job in trying to gloss over them. Someone making their own key to the TARDIS is the worst offender. The Doctor simply remarks that it was done "somehow" and the plot bolts along hoping we won't notice just how absurd that was. Sadly, it's not the only time something that really shouldn't be possible is "somehow" (that word is used literally in the story) done and we're not really supposed to think too hard about it.

Also, there are supposed to be about a dozen hunters after the Doctor. We only learn the names of six of them and three of them are killed off within a few pages of their introduction giving us just enough time to get a sense of their cliched personalities before they die. Only two of the hunters get any real screen time. Though I will say that they were at least somewhat interesting and it was unfortunate that they were a small part of the story. But they still fare better than the unnamed hunters who are all killed in just a few sentences which do nothing to make the reader care.

I also had some issues with the way the Doctor and Donna were presented. Donna just does nothing for most of the story and the Doctor makes a morally questionable decision at the end which I felt was rather out of character. To be fair to Mr. Messingham he does write some fairly good interplay between the two and Donna's "The Shining" moment was pretty funny.

I'll also give the author points for doing a pretty good job with the funky way the 10th Doctor spoke as well as giving the Doctor a great "I tried to give you and out but now you're going to get it!" speech that were always a favorite moment of mine when watching the show.

Overall, while there are some bright spots, this retread of "The Most Dangerous Game" just doesn't work and is not worth your time.

This book was enjoyable and worth the read. The beginning was a little slow, but as the story progressed I began to be drawn in by the author's villain.

The world where this takes place (Planet 1) is run by a maniac narcissist who is eager to have the Doctor destroyed and also delightfully paranoid. It was fun to have the Doctor come up against such a strong personality, and I think that's why this book works.

There are some "huh?" moments where the reader will get lost, but I think it's purposely written that way. You have to leave your confusion at the door at times and press on to get the answers. For some that can be annoying.

Also, Donna seems a little bland. Her character is a strong personality who has a sharp and sarcastic wit about her but it doesn't come across in the book. She doesn't really spark with the Doctor in the story like she does in the show.

The ending was the best part by far. The book isn't perfect and has a few faults but the good heavily outweighs the bad. Just know my opinion is it was a decent story.

I got the book in a timely manner. It was in great shape. Thank you.