It's swinging London, 1968. The Tardis crew are investigating an anarchist set using a drug that seems of an extra-terrestrial nature and how it connects to a series of bizarre, violent events worldwide.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The potential was there,
By Andrew McCaffrey "The Grumpy Young Man" (Satellite of Love, Maryland) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Revolution Man (Doctor Who Series) (Mass Market Paperback)
The cover of REVOLUTION MAN is gorgeous, simply marvelous. It's almost worth picking up the book just for the cover-art; digital reproduction just doesn't do justice to the colours. Fortunately, the book itself is also worth owning for the stuff printed on the inside, despite a number of near-fatal flaws that detract from the main feature.The regulars are handled adequately here, with special credit going to Paul Leonard's treatment of Sam. When I read that Sam Jones was going to be spending time hanging out with sixties radicals I experienced a sick feeling in my stomach. A lesser author might have brought the worst of Sam's qualities to the foreground, having her deliver an infinite number of speeches on how backwards and out-of-touch that decade was from her oh-so-enlightened point of view. However, Leonard manages to give us an insight into Sam's thought processes without allowing them to come across as overbearing and arrogant. He did go a little overboard in describing her reaction to the sexism inherent to the sixties, but then anything less would be out of character. Fitz on the other hand seems much weaker than in previous stories. Granted, he hasn't been shown as the most aggressive of companions, but he manages to go from completely normal to utterly brainwashed by a totalitarian government back to being (almost) himself again within forty pages. Within the structure of the book, the brainwashing procedure lasts for about a year (none of which we witness) and appears to be totally successful, yet it takes much less than a day for it to all work out of his system. This could have been handled in a much more interesting way, yet the rushed ending (which I shall discuss in a moment) to the book and to this section are very frustrating. We don't experience any of the reaction to his entire world-view being shattered twice within a relatively short amount of time. It just seems like a quick plot device that should have been either further developed or just dropped completely. Plot-wise this book is a real page-turner for its initial two-thirds. There's a powerful drug that is being used by different military and civilian factions, most attempting to harness its energy for their own irresponsible deeds. The Doctor must attempt to defuse the situation and restore the status quo. Unfortunately this book suffers from the lack of a proper resolution to several fundamental plot-threats. By the end we haven't been told where the mysterious drugs have come from, or what damage has been done to the time-line. It is implied that these events have only been set in motion because of some outside, unseen, time-sensitive force, but apart from the mention at the beginning, these are completely ignored. These may be addressed in future "arc" books, but as I have been avoiding spoilers, I have no way of knowing. It certainly doesn't excuse the lack of acknowledgement of these problems within the narrative of this particular story though. This is a shame, because as I noted, the opening and middle sections of this book are fabulous. The very ending of the book has been surrounded in controversy and I'll attempt to discuss this without the need for any spoiler warnings. In short, the Doctor is quickly forced to do something that seems quite shocking. While it may be bordering on being out of character for the Doctor to do this, I think that the situation he had been placed into required his acting in the manner in which he did. I do not think this would be a big problem if only the book had not ended so abruptly just after this point. Leonard seemed to be deliberately manipulating the situation so that the Doctor is forced to act in the way that he does. In fact, several events occur purely to bring him to that point. And I have to say that the situation that the Doctor is placed into is an interesting one, worthy of more attention. It appears as though Leonard deliberately put the Doctor into the situation that he wanted to, which forced him to act in a certain way, but then forgot to put in the big payoff at the end. As it stands now, the narrative seems incomplete, as if it is relying on the following book to clean up the mess that's been left behind. We only get a few sentences from the Doctor saying he's upset and a few passages from Sam relaying the same information to Fitz. What we don't see is how this has affected the crew. While this may or may not lead to great and wonderful writing in the next part of the series, it does detract from the enjoyment that one takes out of this particular volume. An extra thirty pages at the end that dealt with the reaction would have done a lot to put these concerns to rest. All in all, if more care had been taken to the conclusion of this story, I would probably have a higher opinion of it. It certainly is not a poor book and I quite enjoyed reading it, but the flaws that I have pointed out negatively affected my enjoyment of the novel.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Somewhat distasteful ending,
By
This review is from: Revolution Man (Doctor Who Series) (Mass Market Paperback)
I liked this book most of the way through it. I enjoyed the setting of the turbulent 60s. I enjoyed the character development throughout the book. Fitz seemed to gain a lot more of a personality in this book, but he still seems as if he doesn't fit in, somehow. He seems to disbelieve in the Doctor one moment, and then try to totally emulate him in the next.The Doctor and Sam, and to some degree Fitz, spent so much time searching for someone when it was fairly obvious who their real target was. Even when it seemed he couldn't be a suspect anymore. I felt the author had tried to introduce a mystery, but didn't give us enough suspects that there was any work in figuring it out. This made the Doctor seem unusually dense when he didn't figure it out. This in itself did not slow the story down. But what really left a bad taste in my mouth was the ending. Without spoiling it, I should say that it just seemed so totally uncharacteristic of either the Doctor or Fitz. A disappointing end to an otherwise decent novel.
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's hard to claim drugs are bad when they seem so cool here,
This review is from: Revolution Man (Doctor Who Series) (Mass Market Paperback)
One of the problems with doing these books as a sort of semi-monthly serial is that you have situations where an event in one book is merely setting up things that will become more important later, or at least have bigger repercussions. That itself isn't the problem, it's nice to get a set of continuity and that this is all going somewhere instead of just being a series of unlinked random adventures that the TARDIS crew is having, each without any bearing on the other. I like the idea of a progression . . . maybe not quite in the style of the current TV show where each season appears to have one major arc that sets up the season finale, but subplots and foreshadowing are cool with me.
The problem with that is that you don't know if something weird or vague happening is setting you up for further chaos down the line or it's just the author needing one more go-round on the editorial train. This book may be a good example of that. It starts out promising enough: an anarchist is roaming around the sixties carving a giant "R" in the sky, in monuments, causing all kinds of mischief. He's calling himself the Revolution Man and appears to be screwing things up rather nicely. Needless to say, the Doctor and team swoop in to try and stop him. Unfortunately it's not really that simple. The events appear to be caused by an alien drug (or flower or something) that was introduced into this world . . . people who take it seem to become capable of telekinetic abilities, among other things. With it, the Revolution Man is really messing up the time-line by causing disasters and whatnot that weren't supposed to happen. This is one of those stories where setting it in some other time than the sixties might have been a good idea. Because try as they might, the disasters that are caused by the drug are so big that you know the author has no choice but to hit the big reset button by the end and put all the toys back where they started, while it may be daring and radical for history to be changed, I doubt the BBC is going to go for it. That aside, the meat of the story is actually fairly interesting. With the addition of Fitz, the crew is much more interesting, with Sam and the Doctor being the veterans and Fitz trying to figure out where exactly he fits in. His banter with Sam is generally amusing and they're starting to have a brother/sister relationship that's rather nice. For once, the Doctor seems to be caught flat-footed, while he may once again instantly know the type of drug that he's encountering (I prefer the moments when he has no idea what the heck is going on, as opposed to being a big galactic almanac) it really doesn't seem all that crucial. The team bounces all through the sixties, mirroring the decline from hopeful free love to the reality that being nice wasn't really going to make the world do what you want, for once making Sam's strident non-conformist/pacifist/whatever stance not totally annoying. But in the end it's just too darn linear and leaves a lot open. The plot just seems to happen as opposed to moving organically, operating by coincidences and left-field events (Chinese army? what?), leaving you not really trying to puzzle it out as much as just waiting for the book to tell you. Everyone's the Revolution Man but what was the point of the alien drug and where did it come from? What were the actual effects? Is the big reset button hit in the end and if not, what were the consequences? A lot of people will pay attention to the rather shocking thing the Doctor does toward the end . . . it's not without precedent and somewhat justifiable given the situation, if a bit cold-blooded. But it's done in such a perfunctory manner that the impact of what just occurred doesn't hit you right away and the book basically ends right after that, with only a brief argument between Sam and Fitz really touching on the new tensions. Something I imagine will get explored later. Which is where this book unfortunately fails to completely satisfy. Subplots are fine and dandy, and introducing themes for later teams to carry on with is also fine, but each book should be able to stand alone and even if the author never meant for any of this to get touched on again, it feels like things were left dangling or at least somewhat unexplained, without even a nod toward "Well, I'm just not going to explain this." If the world changed, we need to feel like it did. Or just like a lot of folks from the sixties, you may feel like you were part of something that never actually occurred.
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