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3.0 out of 5 stars
Tune into Channel 400 for the new adventures of the Doctor, March 16, 2001
This review is from: Prime Time (Doctor Who) (Mass Market Paperback)
Picking up a broadcast from Channel 400, the Doctor and Ace head to Blinni-Gaar to investigate how they received it. The natives of Blinni-Gaar are TV-addicted zombies, but the TV company has a very hidden agenda. As they investigate, Channel 400 announces its latest star - the Doctor himself!
Treading well-trodden ground ('Vengeance on Varos' is the best-known, but the novel 'Time of Your Life' is also up there), the novel takes a leaf out of the books of both 'The Truman Show' and 'Edtv', in the story it depicts.
Having said that, the book is a Doctor Who story, so there are alien menaces to be considered, threats to the lives and welfare of the inhabitants of Blinni-Gaar is a substantial consideration in the Doctor's plans.
This is Mike Tucker's first solo novel (his previous have been with co-author Robert Perry), and his style is confident. I would like to read another solo novel by him as I think this one lacked some of the zing the writing partnership had, but whether it is simply the nature of the story or Mr. Perry's absence remains to be seen.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
But what he really needs is his own cooking show, January 4, 2011
This review is from: Prime Time (Doctor Who) (Mass Market Paperback)
A story about a character from a television show inadvertently starring in a television show isn't exactly the most revelatory or groundbreaking idea in the history of plots especially as other folks have pointed out, the show had used it just as recently as the Sixth Doctor in his story "Vengeance on Varos", which wasn't exactly ancient history at this point.
But as television becomes more and more prominent in our lives, especially as reality shows proliferate, it's probably a topic worth revisiting every so often (the show in fact did it again, with the new series episode "Bad Wolf" in the first season) and there's some vicarious glee in seeing the Doctor get into and out of scrapes while literally being on camera.
And this book was actually fun, I have to say. Basically a less mean version of "Vengeance on Varos" and with a slightly more convoluted plot, it benefits from having the most action packed of TARDIS teams, the Seventh Doctor and Ace, on board to create some mayhem. They land on a planet where television rules all and everyone is glued to their sets all day long. Before too long the Doctor is caught up in a plan to make him a television star whether he wants to be or not, and is also forced to reunite with an old enemy to keep everyone involved from getting killed. Meanwhile, Ace blows stuff up. But you knew that.
What works here are the little touches, structuring the book like a typical "Doctor Who" episode, complete with commercials breaks and pre-credit sequences. The plan of the malefactors involved actually does make sense from a television point of view . . . it's entirely ridiculous and depends on way too many details going exactly right (seriously . . . TWO TARDISes are required? you don't even know how they work!) but being that these are people who depend on ratings and advertising money, it's complete understandable from a motivational standpoint. And the author takes a page from "The Truman Show" (which had been released two years earlier) by having plenty of scenes where the writers try to devise plot twists or introduce other characters in order to keep the plot more interesting for people watching at home. It's not exactly high level satire, unless you take the general and rather obvious "Watching too much television is bad for you" line, but that's not really anything new or special.
Tucker could have gotten a lot of mileage out of the concept but for some reason decided to stick some action in there as well, not only having the Doctor spend a good portion of the book being chased around by vicious hyena aliens, but also throwing in (SPOILER ALERT) the Master, who considering that "Survival" wasn't that long before this story in the show's theoretical timeline, is probably a bit much. Fittingly, the Master is rarely onscreen with Ace, who is the most likely person to shoot him in the face given half the chance, almost like Tucker is acknowledging that getting him involved makes things problematic and rather thorny, both for the characters and for him. "Survival" was the type of story that acts as a swansong for the character . . . you know he's going to come back but in this case it might have been too soon. Which is a small concern but a concern nonetheless. Still, it is nice to see the chuckletastic Ainley Master one last time.
And, for kickers, he also throws in another race of aliens called the Fleshsmiths, who seem like something out of "Saw" and more or less exist to do all the horrifying things that the rest of the characters can't be bothered to do. They're an interesting concept and visual (kudos to the person who wore a Fleshsmith costume for the cover!) but seem a bit gruesome for "Doctor Who" and aren't really that memorable beyond the whole "we steal the bodies of other species to fuel our life" concept. Which considering that the book is supposed to be about television and how it affects our perception of reality, seems like getting off-topic slightly.
Fortunately, Tucker has the best "Doctor Who" team to pull this all together, since it's set after the show was over he's not as bound by continuity but can still keep things light without having to worry about getting dark or experimental like the Virgin New Adventures. The Doctor is manipulative but not callous and his actions are more the result of deft planning instead of moving everyone in an elaborate chess game (his speech about how unique he is, however, is more than a little self-serving). So what you get is a fairly entertaining episode of the show with a little more of an edge to it (the scene where they try to break Ace via the medium of the tube is rather brutal, and leads to one heck of an epilogue) that tries to gently push the Seventh Doctor into newer territory by simply setting things up for future Past Doctor Adventures, something that isn't really possible with the other Doctors. It's heartening to see Tucker use this opening for all its worth and it appears to be a territory he's staked out for his very own. As much as I gently came down on "Storm Harvest", I can't find anything really wrong with this one. As I said, it'd be nice if it were deeper or more cutting but it's also nice to see an author who knows when to stop (it's like thirty pages shorter than most of these novels, so you can't really accuse it of being padded), which, no matter what medium you're in, is a good skill to have.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Prime Time, April 24, 2005
This review is from: Prime Time (Doctor Who) (Mass Market Paperback)
This new adventure finds The Doctor tracking a curious broadcast signal to the planet of Blinni-Gaar, where the populace is hopelessly addicted to television, particularly the programming of the immensely powerful Channel 400. Channel 400 is constantly trying to top themselves in an effort to keep from losing viewers, and they believe they've found the next big thing in The Doctor - televising his adventures as a live reality show.
The plot doesn't end there, however. Hiding in the shadows is a hideous race of dying creatures knows as the Fleshsmiths, and they want The Doctor for their own reasons.
Mike Tucker co-wrote one of my favorite new Doctor Who novels, `Illegal Alien,' so I had high expectations for his first solo run. I came out from it a little disappointed. It's a rather run-of-the-mill adventure, with typical characters, typical villains, and a typical story. Romance begins to develop for Ace, but she gets her heart broken - again. (Inevitable, I suppose, but predictable.) It just all feels a bit formulaic. There is a gratuitous epilogue that I thought was unnecessarily grim - even more so if it's not followed up on in later novels.
To the author's credit, the characters from the show are handled very well, though it's too bad that The Doctor and Ace are separated most of the time. The self-referential concept of turning the Doctor into a television serial is amusing. And there is a nice surprise about halfway through. It's not a bad book, but it's not great either.
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