Longest Day (Dr. Who Series) [Paperback]

Michael Collier (Author)

Book Description

Series: Dr. Who Series | Publication Date: April 1998

Having landed on the strange planet of Hirath, the Doctor and Sam become separated as they both strive to understand and help the inhabitants of a world where different time zones mean that the planet's biosphere is out of control and heading for disaster.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: BBC Pubns (April 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0563405813
• ISBN-13: 978-0563405818
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,037,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Series

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Depressing, December 22, 1999

By 

Pamala P. Ritchie "pamr6" (Houston, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Longest Day (Dr. Who Series) (Paperback)

What a depressing book! This one was a trial to read. How much can one person be expected to take? Since when did Sam become Superwoman? There's nothing but violence in this book. The poor Doctor has nothing but unhappiness and gets to see just about everyone used, abused and eventually killed.

This book is the start of a trilogy. One hopes the next two books are more upbeat than this. Even in the worst situations of Real Life one experiences black humor. There's none of that here - yet one of The BEST one liners the Doctor has ever had occurs on page 222. Go straight to this page, enjoy the paragraph and go on.

I feel the creation of the Kusks were a waste in this story. Shame. I don't intend to ever read this one again.

5.0 out of 5 stars I refuse to make any kind of joke about the title, so there, February 11, 2008

By 

Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Longest Day (Dr. Who Series) (Paperback)

First off, I just want to say that the cover depicted here is much cooler than mine, which just has some picture of a generic ugly alien. By looking at what other people have said, this book gets quite the bad reputation and while I'd like to be the maverick and give a contrary opinion, I can't disagree too much with everyone else. What makes it worse is that the author takes what really could be a great idea and squanders it by running the plot into the ground and layering on too many subplots so that by the time the resolution shows up, you just don't care anymore. For those who aren't going to read the book, the Great Idea is the concept of a planet where time is all messed up, so that different sections are existing in different times and the states of flux make it almost impossible to move from one section to another. It's a fascinating setting, but unfortunately it all gets bogged down in plots that hardly seem to have any bearing on anything. We start in the moonbase that is keeping it all under control, with a character who's more annoying than interesting, before the Doctor and Sam get separated and stuck in different adventures. The Doctor's winds up being halfway decent, as he's actually trying to figure out how to keep the planet from rupturing and taking the galaxy with it. Meanwhile Sam gets rammed into a plot involving a penal colony and rebels that just goes nowhere and has a rather surprising amount of brutal violence, bordering on the sadistic. So you have her plot spinning its wheels and the Doctor sliding through some nice set pieces (the repeating soldier was a nice visual image) and none of it going anywhere fast . . . and then the aliens show up. What should become fast paced and exciting as everyone races to either achieve their goals or get out alive remains plodding and somewhat dull. There are some nice moments, the Doctor is actually written fairly well, he gets some good Tom Baker-ish scenes and other assorted eccentricities, but the big problem is that the supporting cast is basically boring. The rebels just sort of blend together with their jailers after a while, the people on the moonbase are kind of blah and the aliens are just your average bloodthirsty conquerers after a while. Memorable bits are few and far between, with probably the best being the entire sequence with the guy who has metal legs (you'll know it when you get there). It all wraps up more or less predictably . . . but wait! there's a cliffhanger. In what appears to be a sign that the BBC definitely had an overall plan for the line we get a setup for the future. Unfortunately by the time you get there, you're just glad it's over. Not a badly written book, it shows a lot of imagination and ambition but it either has too much padding or needed another run through Editor Central before being released, as the good stuff just sort of vanishes amidst all the noise.

2.0 out of 5 stars The Long and Winding Day, May 18, 2001

By 

Andrew McCaffrey "The Grumpy Young Man" (Satellite of Love, Maryland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Longest Day (Dr. Who Series) (Paperback)

The hardest thing about reviewing LONGEST DAY is that by the time I got to the end of the book, I'd already forgotten the events of the first half. There's nothing there to hold the reader's interest through to the end. The plot is about average with one or two bright spots here and there, but any ground made up is swamped by the poor execution.

Pacing, or the lack thereof, is probably the book's worst sin. No tension or excitement is built, things just sort of happen without any rhyme or reason until the end when they just sort of stop happening. The characterization is fairly decent, but the alien names are so confusing and interchangeable, that I reached a point where I stop bothering about trying to keep the characters in mind and just started winging it. This didn't seem to make much of a difference.

The bottom line is that it took me almost three times as long to plow through LONGEST DAY than it has for any other BBC Doctor Who book. It's a long, drawn-out story punctuated by occasional violence (which I didn't find as intrusive or as sickening as other people apparently did). There are some nice touches (such as the Doctor zooming through the corridors of an alien dome in his purple VW Beetle), but the book makes the reader work so hard to get to them that it really isn't worth the effort.