Customer Reviews

Imperial Moon (Doctor Who Series)

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

 

 

...you'll like Imperial Moon. It might have the steampunk/Jules Verne trappings, but it reads like something out of a Flash Gordon serial. Cliffhangers, attractive alien princesses (a whole race of them, of course!), clanky robots, evil aliens, a man and a woman fighting in an arena of death, strange yet oddly-familiar alien landscapes.

In fact, the oddest part here is probably the Doctor and companions, who necessitate some rather odd add-ons to become part of the story. The whole "we have a diary of the expedition's future before we meet them" seems kinda like a waste. It's an interesting idea, mind you, but it doesn't really add much to the story except for the brief bit with Turlough trying to assure the "right" future from the diary comes about. Kamelion the shape-shifting robot is similarly wasted except for a brief bit.

The best part of the novel is probably the expedition and the events surrounding--it's not really much of a Doctor Who novel, although it probably couldn't be expected without a DW framing structure.

Generally, an okay novel. The Doctor doesn't have much character, but that's how many writers tend to write him. DW and steampunk fans will probably like it, although I suspect you'd have to be an afficianado of both to really get into it.

Christopher Bulis' "Imperial Moon" starts off as a lovely homage to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Britain lands on the Moon in the year 1878. It is the Moon of early films and some early beliefs. Dense jungle and dangerous wildlife. Her Majesty's astral ships: Lynx, Draco and Cygnus carry their crews into the unknown and adventure.

Enter the fifth incarnation of the Doctor and his companion Turlough, who discover the moon landing when they cross over their own temporal wake. A never heard before alarm goes off within the TARDIS and the Doctor produces a small battered journal from a time safe. It is the account of the British moon landing.

This adventure in and of itself was a pleasant read. However, very much like the series of the time, the character of Kamelion was never used to his full potential. Kamelion has the ability to assume any form set forth by its controller, but I think rather than use his imagination to its fullest extent, Mr. Bulis conveniently left poor Kamelion onboard the TARDIS with nothing to do but make the prerequisite cameo in the beginning and end.

Also by this time in the series, the character of Turlough had long since been an accepted member of the TARDIS crew and wasn't nearly as cowardly or self-centered as he is made out to be in "Imperial Moon". Granted, the sequence where he "borrows" the journal of Captain Richard Haliwell in order to impress the Doctor by his leadership skills was a dead-on interpetation. It's just that some of the other Turlough sequences I found to be lacking. On the plus side for Turlough, there's even a possible love interest in the form of an alien named Lytalia. She is a member of the Phiadoran race. I think Turlough really wants to impress this woman I more than the Doctor. He's smitten.

This isn't really a spoiler I think, but... something I feel that needs to be addressed. I was having a fun time reading this novel until the Doctor resorts to using a blaster in a most un-Doctor-like way. But, that's not really fair, per se to the novel. The fifth incarnation had no hesitation picking up a blaster in the series, most notably in "Earthshock" and "Resurrection of the Daleks". Rather than having the villain(s) do themselves in as a result of their own nastiness, as was the case in almost every fourth incarnation adventure, the fifth incarnation goes "Rambo".... which doesn't mesh with the rest of this story. I could have done without this poorly scripted section. It was as if Mr. Bulis said, "Let's just end this now and tidy up loose ends."

Fifth Doctor novels I pick up without hesitation, as I enjoyed Peter Davison's tenure greatly. This installment, though, felt hurried at the end. It could have been an actual episode. One that I think would have fit nicely into the history of the series. However, it's missing the charm of the fifth Doctor. I agree with another reviewer that he was only a supporting character and not the star.

It's still a fun read. 3-1/2 stars .... it lost a 1/2 star due to some minor items. This certainly will not disappoint most Who fans.

The 5th Doctor, Turlough, and Kamelion (though he's 'off-screen' for most of the story) join up with a British space expedition to the moon--in the late 19th century. What are the British doing in space almost a century before Sputnik & Gemini? What is the secret of the tropical pocket they've discovered hidden on the dark side of the moon?

I'm a big steampunk fan (modern science incorporated into a Victorian setting), so I was inclined to like this story from the start. Along with the steampunk elements, there are traces of pulp science fiction reminiscent of the 1920's (beautiful alien women trapped in a fantastic jungle on the far side of the moon, for example) that make this a very fun read.

There are a few weak spots, however--certain conflicts are resolved too easily, the final twist is fairly obvious, and the whole thing wraps up far too neatly for my tastes. And, for those who care about such things, this is not a 5th Doctor story per se--it's a story with the 5th Doctor in it. On the plus side, this means that Turlough and some of the other supporting characters get some good development (though a couple who need it don't). Finally, a couple times events just happen for no good reason that I can see (one character dies of a heart attack fairly early--no real need to, except that it's important for that character to not be around at the end of the story).

Literary critiques aside, however, this is, all-in-all, a good, fun story, with a Doctor/Companion mix that's not too common in the novelizations.

'Imperial Moon' is a Doctor Who story set in 1878, which features the British conquest of space by its first manned moon flights. Whether this is an alternate universe, someone tampering with history, or some other explanation is one of the nubs of the story.

Being set in 1878, Christopher Bulis has drawn from the literature of the time for the feel of the story. The ghosts of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard and Arthur Conan Doyle appear to have been whispering in Mr. Bulis' ear. However, in advancing the story and bringing it to its conclusion, it is contemporary science fiction of Doctor Who that sets the tone.

The Doctor is in his fifth incarnation (portrayed on TV by Peter Davison) and is assisted by the less than trust-inspiring pairing of Turlough (who joined the TARDIS crew to kill the Doctor for the Black Guardian) and Kamelion (a former slave of the Master). Like in real life, Kamelion plays a relatively minor role (the Kamelion robot proved too problematic to use prominently in filming the series), so it largely falls to the Doctor and Turlough, and their astral mariner allies, to deal with the mysteriously populated jungle crater on the lunar surface.

The novel has obviously been well thought through by Mr. Bulis, who displays his influences proudly, and the moral dilemma of Turlough is well-portrayed and within the established scope of his character. The portrayal of the Victorian characters is good, and I especially enjoyed the inclusion of Queen Victoria and her gillie, John Brown, who open the book and... but that would be telling! Captain Richard Halliwell and Miss Emily Boyes-Dennison, who carry a moderate portion by themselves, appear to be included in part to show the impact of the "New Woman" on Victorian society.

I found it a good read, which I believe would benefit from close attention however having the advantage of not requiring it. It seemed well-suited to the Davison-era of Doctor Who, although perhaps earlier than it is set as it doesn't suffer from the efforts of the script editor of the season it was set in trying to make the show more "grim and gritty".

This one is wearing all its influences on its sleeve and that's not necessarily a bad thing. "Doctor Who" as an entity has no problem co-opting any possible influence in sight to feed into its vast time-sprawling adventures, which is one of the facets that makes the show so versatile and long-lived. Most of the time when the television show was at its best, it would take those influences and transcend, or at the very least tweak them just enough to defy expectations. Think the Daleks showing up in the otherwise initially standard Victorian romp "The Evil of the Daleks", or for an example perhaps a bit closer to home, the bait and switch at the end of the first episode of "Enlightenment", which takes a scenario much like this one but drags it somewhere else entirely before you can even protest.

Here, things go pretty much as expected. In what is basically Bulis' attempt at a Victorian era Jules Verne type romp, the Doctor and Turlough encounter through a time displaced diary contrivance a groups of stalwart Brits who are flying to the moon. In the 19th century. Tally-ho, and all that. Upon landing with them, they find a crater on the moon flush with life, which winds up being both good and bad news, mostly bad. Because while the prospect of life on the moon would be a marvel to science, literally everything in the crater is trying to kill them. Well, almost. Fortunately they run into a group of friendly warrior-women who are trapped here after being exiled from their own world. They're super-friendly and would be really grateful if someone helped them get the heck out of Dodge. What possible problem could there be with that?

All of the people on the British ships are straight out of someone casting a period BBC drama, all stiff upper lips and "For Queen and country!" . . . which gives Bulis more space to winnow people down as the body count rises alarmingly. His depiction of the dangerous crater is actually fun and his imagination for coming up with deadly alien life to slaughter people is fairly effective. But he doesn't attempt to do anything new with them, which becomes even worse when he calls attention to his own attention to cliches, by having Turlough sarcastically comment that the good and properly formal British officer and the professor's snippy "women have equal rights too" daughter are going to fall in love . . . and then have just that happen later. Even Turlough seems surprised at how much the characters are following the script.

He tries to wrap this all in a "we have to make sure time goes the right way" dilemma when the Doctor finds the old diary and realizes he needs to make a decision at some point, but all that gives us is a bunch of chapters in the beginning alternating between Bulis' best Verne impression with the Doctor and Turlough commenting on what they just read, like a kind of literary MST3K. Fear not, the whole book isn't like that but I was afraid for a moment. But we're not really treated to what the consequences would be if the wrong scenario were to go forward (other than an obvious "aliens take over the planet" option) and his solution to solving that is, shall we say, out of character. But we'll get to that. Meanwhile, people explore, bridge gaps between human and alien, people crack under pressure, and the danger incrementally ramps up around them. It's all very entertaining, but not exactly stretching any muscles.

Unfortunately, the main cast isn't used as well as they could be. Bulis tends to write the Fifth Doctor as fairly colorless, gentle to the point of being nonexistent. Turlough is still a coward and Kamelion mostly exists for a couple brief scenes until the book can come up with a contrivance as to why he can't come with them, but keep him in reserve until he can act as a deus ex machina. So you have stock characters roaming around with a not real distinctive TARDIS crew. Fortunately, the setting is keen.

The resolution, too, is vaguely unsettling. After the twist (which the back cover copy sort of telegraphs, by highlighting the dangers of an alien race that is barely mentioned in the book, cluing you in that a feint is taking place), the stakes are rather high and the Doctor's solution doesn't so much involve using his brains as finding the biggest gun he can and mowing down everyone in sight. Done properly, it could have felt like a last ditch effort (like when he held a gun on Davros) or the culmination of a series of mistakes resulting in the unwanted inevitable (the tired "There should have been another way" ending of "Warriors of the Deep"). Instead it comes across as the Doctor just choosing the easiest solution at hand, or like Bulis was running out of pages. Meanwhile, the reset button is sort of hit and there's a happy ending.

On the plus side, Bulis knows how to craft a standard tale of authentic Victorian action, and taken on those terms it winds up being entertaining, if derivative. But making it a "Doctor Who" adventure does add on certain other expectations and as much as I did enjoy parts of this, to find that he didn't do anything radically different with the basic concept is, in all honesty, somewhat disappointing.

One of the most steampunk Dr. Who novels, with the British space program of 1878. Seems in a lot of ways like a novel that had the "hey, let's bring in the Doctor" (or more likely, I got a Dr. Who book to deliver, let me add him to what I'm working on...) motif added in late in the game. That said, it works better than I would have expected though. The plot is fairly predictable, with a few oddnesses of characterization, but solid and some good scenes to visualize.

I found "Imperial Moon" very reminiscent of Conan-Doyle's "The Lost World" (various TV versions, not the book) - Victorian adventurers of the Royal Navy discovering a mysterious crater on the Moon, filled to the brim with more exotica, danger and scantily-clad women than you can poke a stick at. Lucky for them the Doctor is around to save their necks when it all goes horribly wrong . . .
It's a fun read in its own right, just as an adventure story. The writing flows, the setting is really well done, and the monsters and the secret of the crater are suitably horrible. It's as a Doctor Who novel that this book falls down a little. The Doctor has little to do and is not particularly well characterised, and is rather surprisingly gung-ho at the end. Turlough is not particularly well-characterised, either. I find it hard to see him doing a number of the things he does in "Imperial Moon". The whole bit about the diary and temporal paradoxes didn't work very well to my mind, either. The Doctor's dire warnings to Turlough and what actually happens don't seem to match up.
But still, a fun, well-crafted read.

I liked the way the Doctor and Turlough found the Diary left by Captain Haliwell. I respected the way the Doctor decided not to read about what happened with him and Turlough in the Diary. I personally don't want to know about my future ahead of time. Another thing, the Phiadorians make very good femme fatales, especially when being possessed by the Vrall. I found that out when I read the end of the book. Next time Turlough could watch his back when meeting a pretty woman.