GodEngine (Doctor Who: The New Adventures) [Paperback]

Craig Hinton (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: London Bridge (Mm) (July 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0426204735
• ISBN-13: 978-0426204732
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,906,988 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Daleks and Ice Warriors make up for Godawful start!, September 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: GodEngine (Doctor Who: The New Adventures) (Paperback)

This book is set on Mars during the Dalek occupation of Earth during the 2150's. The story deals with the Doctor and company joining up with a diverse group of humans and religious Ice Warriors on a trip to the North Pole of Mars where strange energies are being brought into play. Along the way, we are treated to two mysteries, who is up to no good at the North Pole of Mars, and wich member of the Doctor's group is a murderer. Also, we are treated to new insights into the Ice Warrior culture, as well as a reinstatement of the Daleks as the badest of the bad as far as Doctor Who monsters go. Unfortunately, no book is without problems, and Godengine has a few. First of all, except for a truley exciting prolog, the begining of the book drags along at a snails pace, also, the Doctor's explination of how he destroys the Godengine and repairs the destroyed TARDIS leaves alot to be desired. These elements drag down what could have been a five star book to only three.

1.0 out of 5 stars With a title like "GodEngine", the obvious joke is..., December 23, 2003

By 

Andrew McCaffrey "The Grumpy Young Man" (Satellite of Love, Maryland) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: GodEngine (Doctor Who: The New Adventures) (Paperback)

I feel cheated by the fact that I have only just got around to reading GODENGINE. Now all my "GodAwful" jokes are going to be seven years out of date.

GODENGINE has an abysmal beginning. It gradually improved through the middle and the end, albeit not by much. This was something of a relief though; if the book hadn't improved at all, then I'm not sure I'd be sitting here in possession of enough faculties to write this humble review.

Where to begin, where to begin? Well, let's start by mentioning the staggering overload of continuity references. If you can believe it, this book is a follow up to at least three stories (TRANSIT, DALEK INVASION OF EARTH, and SEEDS OF DEATH) and contains pointless mentions of dozens of others. Set on Mars, every Doctor Who villain who ever even thought of vacationing on the red planet is given at least a name-check, and the Ice Warriors themselves feature prominently. Two people are even blood relatives of characters from previous tales. What is the point of this kind of thing? Continuity references can add an interesting layer to an individual story, or give it a flavor unique to that series. But these constant and random mentions of much better stories make this book look like a quiche designed by someone who's never even heard of food before.

GODENGINE wants to be a TV story so badly it hurts. Character motivations are betrayed by facial expressions. A double agent's identity is revealed because he/she accidentally drops the act while thinking he/she is alone. Important plot points are passed on to the audience by having people making speeches at each other about things that they should already know. There's even an "our story so far" recap at the beginning of the book's Part II. (Why? Why do I need to be reminded of stuff that only just happened a little while ago? Granted, I was falling asleep during most of it, but it's not like we were dealing with difficult to grasp concepts here.)

The development of the Ice Warriors' back-story that takes place while those monsters are off-screen is relatively effective. We see their architecture, their culture, and a little bit about what makes them tick. But when they're actually on the page, they descend into the worst clichés imaginable. They're like the very worst of the TNG-era Klingons, endlessly spouting on about honor and duty. ("You have no honor!" "No, you have no honor!" "No, you have no honor!" "By belittling my honor you have shown yourself to be totally without honor! You have dishonored your family's honor!" "Argh, poo-fart!")

When it became clear that this wasn't going to be a story too broad or too deep for the small screen, I attempted to enjoy the book purely on a pulpy action-adventure level. But even the shallowest dime novel has to have something good to latch onto: a fast-moving plot, or some interesting characters, or a witty style. None are to be seen here. This plot is awkwardly paced with long, long gaps of filler. Too much of it relies on the most unbelievable of coincidences. Characters are stupid one minute, and geniuses the next. One of the funniest contrivances is that apparently the ID card of the Adjudicators goes virtually unchanged for over eight centuries. Eight centuries of the same design! In my four and something years as an undergrad, my school changed ID card formats three times, but the Adjudicators of the thirtieth century will still be using logos designed in the twenty-second. I've got to admire that consistency, but you have to imagine that their PR budget is around zero.

The characters are, unfortunately, molecule-thin. So thin, in fact, that I believe that Wile E. Coyote himself personally ran over each and every one of them with a steamroller before their inclusion in this book. I could ramble on for a few hundred more words about how silly these people were, but I'll limit myself to just saying one additional thing. To any prospective Doctor Who author: please, don't ever, ever, ever include an Ice Warrior love triangle. Oh, the pain, the pain, the pain.

Ultimately, I was glad to see the end of GODENGINE. One of the most derivative novels that the New Adventures produced, I'm not sure I can point to a single original idea on any of the book's pages. I have no doubts that if I were to go back with a magnifying glass, I'd be able to conjure up at least one inventive turn of phrase or line of dialog. But I think you'd have to pay me to reexamine my copy of GODENGINE.

(To be fair, I should point out that in my travels through the Google Groups archives, I discovered that apparently this book was written in quite a bit of a hurry. I'm guessing that if the author and the editor had more time available to them, this book would have turned out very different. It's a pity that the extra months weren't there, because this book really could have used them.)