Customer Reviews

Kursaal (Dr. Who Series)

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

 

 

Kursaal is a dark story containing well constructed, essential, and sharp characters that we actually watch change. We catch glimpses of the Doctor's weariness, we see his companion - Sam - with her teeth for much of the story, and the other detective of the story transforms from a glutton into an introspective street-smart chief of police.

Angelides credits his reader with a good deal of intelligence. He deals with politics, drugs, capitalism, archaeology, and an alien civilisation that with all its technology and culture raises Kursall at times to the level of the Alien moves. This is a superb story where much is gained yet also much is lost that explores environmental degradation, land rights and the loss of cultural diversity - issues all too topical to our own age.

Enjoyed the idea, but Dr. Who is not a horror movie. I love how Mr. Anghelides wrote Sam. BRAVO! I'm glad you took a risk in this story and I enjoyed it.

Overall very enjoyable, though not a classic. Although the writing is not quite the caliber of the Orman/Blum duo who wrote "Vampire Science," I actually enjoyed "Kursaal" better. The relationship between the Dr. & Sam is well-explored, as in "Vamp" and "Legacy of the Daleks." The storyline is quite typical of a BBC-TV story, so if you don't expect too much, you'll fly through this one with a smile. Enjoy.

This is a non-story that reads like the author didn't like the editor's instructions for revisions, featuring a full cast of unlikable characters.

The Doctor and Sam land squarely in the middle of a 90s-esque debate about environmental activists who are accused of using terrorist tactics. As they say at tvtropes, Warning: Writer On Board. The story reads as if the author intended to wield some heavy-handed story about archaeologists vs corporate developers, was told to defuse the message, bitterly phoned in some revisions, was told the novel was 80 pages too short, and bitterly phoned in an extension which reads as if the first version of the book had been hit with a duplicator and a shrink ray.

I disagree with reviewers who say gore and horror don't belong in Doctor Who - but if you agree with that, then skip almost all the Eighth Doctor Adventures. They are very dark.

That said, the Jax - this novel's race of werewolves - are whatever the plot needs them to be. Highly advanced civilization lost to time? Check. Mindless throat-ripping wolves? Check. Long-game-playing, calculating masterminds with ambitions at the cellular level a-la Tooth and Claw? Check. Free ticket to extending the story for 80 pages after it's already concluded? Check.

At the beginning of the story, all the guest characters in this book have the personality of nails on chalkboard, except for the villain, who is instantly likable. We get a heel-face turn in an archaeologist who is then killed in a way that is horrific even by the standards of a story with werewolves. We get a protracted, off-page face-heel turn in the most predictable place possible. Etc ad nauseum.

One positive: I can tell Anghelides is a good writer. Despite too many cop-outs in word usage, which are often inappropriately-flowery, the pacing and use of action kept me engaged. The unlikable characters do grow into _enjoyable_ unlikable characters. But this is a story where nothing is at stake except characters' lives. The plot collapses in on itself in a way that feels like revisions were imposed until the author ran out of ideas. The answer: more characters should die, and more face-heel turns should occur.

Skip this one.

I do enjoy DOCTOR WHO - always have, always will, but I have to admit that these early books (KURSAAL being the seventh book in the adventures of the Eighth Doctor and Sam), really fail to capture the imagination or the attention of the reader. How many times in DOCTOR WHO's history have the Doctor and his companion(s) set forth on a vacation only to end up at a resort that is mired in corruption, alien attack, and endless running? All too often - so much so that I won't even bother to list them here - because KURSAAL sums them all up in one. Taking Sam to Kursaal for a vacation, they arrive fifteen years too early while it's still under construction to find a group of scientists (mixed with a PETA like activist group called HALF), who have stumbled onto a lost ruin of a lost race called The Jax, who happen to be werewolves... or a virus, it's never made clear as to just what the Jax are and what the virus they carry is - or why it turns people into werewolves (with full moon and all), but no one stops to question too much as there is a lot of killing (by the time I stopped counting nearly one hundred people had died), running, hiding, playing doctor, stealing corpses and werewolves on the prowl. There are no surprises here - when Sam is not on the run, hiding, crying, making eyes at the Doctor, or being attacked by EVERY werewolf she comes across - she gets swiped by a claw and is infected by the Jax - and then the Doctor ignores this, takes the TARDIS fifteen years in the future to continue their vacation on Kursaal - only to have Sam become the lead werewolf... and the rest you can guess on your own. Dull, but there are a few moments of interest which if expanded on could have made for a real solid read. As it is, Kursaal is a true blue Doctor Who adventure in the classical sense... limited in scope and limited in budget. A let down... but as these early adventures are becoming harder and harder to find, I do recommend picking it up if only for the collectors value. Now on to book eight...

All through this book I kept thinking it could have been set on Earth. Or Transylvania. We're talking warewolves here. Big, nasty ones. And they are playing havoc with a pleasure world under construction. And just wait until the construction is finished!

I liked protions of this book better than others. Sam's conversation with the Doctor in the ambulance; the Doctor's piloting "skills" as they fly through a wall of water; the explosion at the theme park; the Doctor's flight from the hospital pursued by the police only to escape by dressing up in a costume for a parade (although, the noise of a parade might bother sick people in a hospital); the Doctor's conversation with Sam in the cave of the Jax ("You can call me Rex."), and the fact that the wolves show up everywhere and never seem to die! Creepy!

Parts of this book are funny, parts are sad and parts are predictable. Rule of thumb here is don't get too attached to any of the characters in this book - it isn't a happy ending for most of them. Methinks the author was trying to get a point across about conservation. A worthy topic and one the Doctor always rallys round. It would make a wonderful video though if done like a Hammer Horror Film.

The Doctor and Sam fight werewolves on a resort world. Sounds like a typical Doctor Who adventure, right? Anghelides somehow makes the whole idea of "wolfmen" seem fresh. The Jax (wolfmen) are treated like they are infected with a virus (one that the head honcho of Kursaal thinks can be cured with a healthy dose of explosives). What really made this book work for me was the fact that the Doctor and Sam got the heck out of there as soon as they could and returned to the planet 15 years later when they thought the heat was off. The characters of the Doctor and Sam are still a bit clumsy and underdeveloped but overall this was a good read.

Boy, things went back to being run of the mill very quickly. After the depth charge that was "Alien Bodies" the line clearly wasn't ready to build on its innovations right away (granted these books were probably being written around the same time, so the author here had no idea what he was even following) we more or less went back to business as usual. And what business we get here is werewolves. Sure we're on another world and the "wolves" are actually aliens but what you get in the end are people changing into wolf-like creatures, no matter how much you try to dress it up in science. The Doctor and Sam arrive on a world that is being converted into an amusement park, a world where the dominant race died out centuries ago or (ominious music) did they? Before long exploration teams are finding hidden lost cathedrals from the vanished race and giant wolf-men are starting to attack people left and right. And the people who are attacked are being changed in strange ways. Does the Doctor need to get involved? You bet! The story does try to mix a lot of elements together, you not only have werewolves but environmental concerns rammed in there as well, with an ongoing battle between those who want the planet left the way it is and the security forces for the developers, which adds a nice wrinkle to all the bloodletting going on. But unfortunately all the wrinkles serve to do is try to disguise the fact that the story really is rather pedestrian at its heart, you can put it on another planet, you can make the wolves aliens, you have the supporting cast be police and tree-huggers but it's still a werewolf story. And a werewolf story needs to be scary, which this really isn't. There are some creepy scenes, especially in the beginning when you don't know where all the bodies are going but once it becomes clear that it's wolves, wolves, wolves! you more or less shift into the typical Who running around corridors, with the occassional death of a supporting character. It doesn't help that there's really nothing special about it, although it's well told and moves things along at a nice clip, but it's also clear there isn't much "there" present, once you have the basic concept down it's just marking time until you get to the conclusion. There are some nicely rendered scenes, a scattering of gore here and there but nothing really shocking. By the end you've got Sam converted (and in the beginning she's very annoying, I lost count of how many times they had her say, "My Dad says" . . . don't take this the wrong way, kid, but who cares?) and a time jump that really only serves to pad out the page count. On the plus side we get a lot of the Doctor this time, probably more so than the other books and he acquits himself well here, clever and bold and moral and slowly starting to take on his own identity. But in the end it can't hide the fact that we're dealing with a very deep story and now that we've seen what the line is capable of, merely "okay" isn't going to do it anymore. A way of pass the idle time, but not much more, unfortunately.

I didn't really like this story that much. I thought it was terribly predictible and even the action scenes were slow-moving. But the Doctor and his companion did something that I've never seen in any Doctor Who show or book. They left the planet without resolving the problem. Now THAT was different. Of course, as there is a lot of the book left when they leave, you know they're not finished. But still, it was original.

Unfortunately, I kind of got the impression while I was reading this that Anghelides was saying, "If Orman/Blum can do Vampires in Doctor Who, by golly, I can do Werewolves." In other words, perhaps it premature to have an old horror movie monster as the villain so soon after the vampire story.

Doctor Who-Kursal is a book that is based in the future. A group of archealogists in a coorperation called HALF, find a fasinating site on a different planet. This planet was being built as a theme park and "gettaway" vacation spot. A Doctor and a girl named Sam were trying to get the theme park stopped so they could perserve sites that hold the almost exstinct SJax. The Jax act like they on the planet, and murder anyone who goes down there. I'll leave the rest for you to read. I liked the book in someways. The author uses great detail on specific things. Anghelides has a very creative imagination in the gizmos he invents to solve problems throught the story. This book was written in England, so some of the owrds and phrases are hard to understand. The author has a tendency to create long and boring situations that take about 2 chapters to get through. Also, this book is part of a series, so you have to start at the 1st book to learn what all the characters are and what is happening, and you have to buy the next copy to find the ending result. I would only recommend this book to people who are english and like all the high-tech sci-fi stuff. Words are hard to understand if you are not English or if you don't know what they mean.