4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
X-Files meets Doctor Who, June 5, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Dominion (Doctor Who Series) (Paperback)
Nick Walters makes a stunning debut in his first solo Doctor Who novel. With its dark, contemporary Earth setting and sinister, mysterious military figures, this is maybe the closest a Doctor Who story has felt to an X-Files tale. Separated from Sam and the TARDIS, the Doctor and Fitz have to rely on their wits alone as they try to uncover the truth behind the mysterious disappearances plaguing a small area in Sweden.
Between the previous book (Revolution Man) and this, Fitz has really come into his own as a character and a companion. This story nicely follows on from events in Revolution Man, while still being a strong story on its own, and leads nicely into the next book. This series is finally starting to feel like a series, rather than a collection of separate adventures, and I couldn't be more pleased.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Solid story, with a sudden ending, April 28, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Dominion (Doctor Who Series) (Paperback)
Dominion was the kind of Dr. Who novel that begins off by throwing the reader straight into the action and proceeds to tell a good story, but is let down by it's ending which is sudden and expected. The characterisation of the Doctor feels a little too much like the 4th Doctor in places and not enough like the 8th that the series has developed. Although I think the main hero of this novel is Fitz, who possibly has his best story yet. It was also a pity that Krestin didn't join the TARDIS crew, as that would have led to some interesting future plot lines. The book that followed Paul Leonard's Revolution Man was always going to be a disapointment, but Dominion succeeds in being good, if not outstanding.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
5.0 out of 5 stars
Don't shoot, the bloke with the tenacles wants to be your friend!, November 2, 2009
This review is from: Dominion (Doctor Who Series) (Paperback)
Hey, a new writer! And he seems to know what he's doing!
With the cast growing larger and the Eighth Doctor books starting to form more of a serial as opposed to a bunch of standalone adventures that merely took place one after the other, it's clear that the dynamics of the line were starting to shift somewhat and being that the majority of the stories were good but nothing special probably meant that it was getting time to shake things up a little. And while we don't really get that here, certain things are clarified or brought into a stronger focus before we had to move toward whatever grand plan the line was beginning to envision.
Walters does shake things up right away by having the action happen pretty much on the first page, with Sam being snatched away from the TARDIS by something mysterious, throwing off Fitz and the Doctor to such an extent that neither of them seems to recover fully until the book is nearly over. Sidelining Sam was probably a good idea as Fitz was still new and we needed to see what his character could do without her relative experience to balance out the fact that often he didn't know what the heck he was doing. So far he works out well, lacking Sam's overriding sense of superiority that she could often irritate with and more prone to be sure about the mistakes he was making, he provides a necessary change from Sam's lockstep trusting of the Doctor. Fitz doesn't automatically want to do things his way, even if the Doctor's tends to be right. For most of the novel he's on the wrong foot but manages to stay afloat anyway, though he's still got far to go.
Meanwhile the Doctor is really off-balance and almost ineffectual for most of the novel, dazed by Sam's sudden absence and fretting about the TARDIS, this is the most unnerved we've seen him in a while and Walters showcases this incarnation's compassion and openness well, but also highlights why he's not really as formidable as, say, the Seventh Doctor as for most of the time he's making this up as he goes along and if he's right it's often by accident. And yet his humanity helps him relate to the people around him probably better than any Doctor we've seen since the Fifth.
You'll noticed I haven't said much about the plot yet. That's because it's no real great shakes. People are disappearing and strange aliens are attacking folks in the woods. The aliens are admirably grotesque and Walters does get some mileage out of the gruesomeness (with one rather well done and out of left field scene in the hospital, even if it does homage a certain movie with Sigourney Weaver somewhat) but once it's clear that nobody is talking to them you'll know that they actually don't mean any harm. Then it's up to the Doctor and crew to save the day from the headstrong humans who just want to wreck everything.
So far Walters ideas are interesting, but more the sum of his influences than anything new. The aforementioned "Alien" reference notwithstanding, the alien Dominion, once we reach it, reeks more than a little of Asimov's "The Gods Themselves" but lacking that novel's sheer alienness in how one universe is unwittingly screwing the other over. The interactions between the Doctor and the military are almost rote by now, with soldiers getting in the way simply to keep the plot going for a few more pages. There's good material here (the alien world is fascinating and does feel sharply off-kilter from what we've seen before) but a lot of it is spent on secondary characters or the Doctor arguing with yet another soldier about the narrowness of the military mind. It's interesting but there's no real sense of urgency involved.
And yet Walters does show signs of not wanting to be a standard Who writer . . . the resolution is remarkably imperfect and oddly lyrical at the same time (all the authors seem to like using the butterfly room, to good effect), representing the Doctor salvaging what best he can out of a failure and the actual ending is surprisingly downbeat, if a bit rushed (it's clearly trying to make room for the next novel, spinning us off already into the next plot with this danger barely over).
This wasn't perfect but it was decent. Walters gets a lot of details right (the Doctor shouting off a plan number to Fitz like he used to do with Sam, only to have Fitz stare at him blankly and force the Doctor to explain, is priceless) and with a bit of plot tightening and a little accentuation of the horror/strangeness of it, this could have been pretty excellent. As it is, it's promising and if the line doesn't get too caught up in a grand overarcing scheme and subplots, this could be an interesting direction.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
