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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
OH, PLEASE... NOT AGAIN, April 16, 2001
This review is from: Option Lock (Dr. Who Series) (Paperback)
A better title for OPTION LOCK might be - DOCTOR WHO, OR HOW I STOPPED WORRYING ABOUT THE BOMB AND LEARNED TO LOVE SAM IN A WET T-SHIRT... and yes, the wet t-shirt does make it into this novel, and it's just as odd and misplaced as pretty much everything else found between the pages. OPTION LOCK, the Eighth 8th Doctor adventure, is an odd mix - just by reading it you can tell that nearly all of this book must have been written and submitted by Justin Richards to other publishing houses and rejected. It's a gripping tale of US nuclear policy and a secret space defense platform known as STATION NINE - with this in hand, he hammers in the Doctor and Sam, steals BIG from the Third Doctor's adventure - THE DAEMONS (almost all the plot and feel from that adventure is in OPTION LOCK - if the BBC didn't own it, and this wasn't a DOCTOR WHO novel... they would have sued), plus adds in the Fifth Doctor's THE AWAKENING - and hopes for the best. But it dosen't work - Sam and the Doctor are hardly in this novel, and even when they are, they are reduced to playing roles that just outright bore you and make you cringe (see said passage about the wet t-shirt). Sam still is one of the worst WHO companions - and I think I finally have found the reason why, and it's this: she has no skills. None. Other than biting her fingernails, hiding, and still making eyes at the Doctor - she does nothing. At least with other companions, they had a talent - Ace could fashion explosives (and she could fight), Susan was a Time Lord, Viki was a mental giant, and on and on and on... the only companions Sam might feel at home with are Mel (who never got an introduction in the series proper) and Dodo (who never got an exit - she just disappears about two episodes into THE WAR MACHINES and is never seen again) - but they are rare cases. Overall, this book is just plain dull and offers nothing new to the DOCTOR WHO universe. But, they are becoming harder to find... so if you're a collector, I recommand picking one up to make the set - but as for entertainment, you're better of either writing your own - or watching the series on tape.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Dull, dull and... more dull, November 14, 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Option Lock (Dr. Who Series) (Paperback)
This book is not especially hard to get into, but finishing it really is a challenge. The whole plot centres around a group of alien beings who crashed on Earth in the thirtienth century and now a wealthy Englishman is trying to revive them, even if it means starting a nuclear war. A solid enough plot. However, its just the way it's done that I dont like. The aliens feature in it at only two points both of which are relatively short. If it wasn't for those two brief sections of the story you wouldn't know the plot even involved aliens and at times it seems to run independently of them. It does feel very Bondian at some points, especially in the parts involving the Russians and the Americans. Not a bad novel, just incredibly boring.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Who is the plan, the plan is Who, January 7, 2008
This review is from: Option Lock (Dr. Who Series) (Paperback)
Sometimes you get the impression that the writers of these books really wanted to write another type of novel, but the BBC requires their Doctor Who line of novels to actually mention the title character once in a while and so suddenly they have to shoehorn the Doctor in there somehow. Granted, the inclusion of the Doctor isn't that awkward here but one does get the impression that Richards wanted to write a suspense filled novel of high espionage but instead settled for a novel of nuclear war and aliens and oh, right, the Doctor. That aside, the bits with the Doctor are pretty good, he and Sam are pulled off course and land on present-day Earth and find themselves guests in a house where some strange plan seems afoot. These sections are interesting as the Doctor tries to piece together an unfolding mystery before the people in the house figure out that he isn't on their side and afterwards he's just trying to stay one step ahead. However, interspersed with all the alien fun as scenes involving the US government either engaged in conspiracy, being victims of a conspiracy or discussing whether a conspiracy is actually present. As much as I enjoy global politics, for some reason I don't find the sequences with the US President interesting at all and found myself flipping pages to get back to whatever the Doctor is doing. This is sort of a compliment because I think Richards writes a really good Eighth Doctor, he's got a mixture of the other incarnations but slightly different enough that he stands out and he does manage to carry most of the novel without doing anything too mysterious or deus ex machina. He even get to be an action hero for a little bit. The aliens' scheme may not exactly live up to the complexity it's clearly hoping for but it at least seems partially well thought out, although sometimes unduly complicated and if a secret platform existed orbiting the planet I suppose the plan would be entirely plausible. And things do get better whne the global hijinks start to dovetail with whatever the Doctor is doing and they don't seem to be occurring in two entirely different novels. But the end starts to go over the top just a little bit, although admittedly the blood and violence is a change of pace. Sam is a little bit better than normal although she's still nothing special (everyone seems mad over the wet T-shirt scene, but it's just so much static with her) the authors do seem to want to subject her to at least one trauma per novel so that she can weep uncontrollably, plus it gives them something to comment on in the next book for the sake of continuity. There's nothing really bad about this book and it's actually well written and well constructed but when you're finished it's just kind of there, without any real excitement or any striking images or themes to take home. Even the secret of the paintings (it drove the artist mad and he killed himself) really isn't that spectacular once you find out. It's a book that goes down easy but leaves you with nothing to take out of it, so I can recommend it as a not-bad book, I can't really recommend it as a great book. Does that make any sense?
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