The Doctor and Sam have been separated. Landing on Haolem, Sam finds herself employed by INC, a company that dominates the planet and one of its major employers. Sam learns that decisions and actions can be made as fast as INC employees think. Is this a workforce of computerized zombies?
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Seeing I is the second in the BBC range from coauthors Kate Orman and Jonathan Blum. The first 170 or so of the book's 279 pages drag interminably as Sam and the Doctor spend three years being unable to meet up due to the fact that the Doctor has been locked up in an inescapable prison for the crime of trying to locate his companion using somewhat unorthodox methods. Sam in the meantime becomes a quasi-ecoterrorist seeking to undermine the controlling techno-company on the planet. It's this same organization that holds the Doctor, and it isn't until Sam finds his details on a file pirated from the company that they get to finally meet, after almost three whole books spent apart.
It's not explained quite how Sam knows this is the Doctor (presumably there was a photo) since he was going under the name of Doctor Bowman, but within a few pages she manages to break into the prison and rescue him. Bang. All over in a flash.
Then the rest of the plot kicks in. The company has been using eye-implant technology, which the Doctor has realized is alien to this culture at this time. The trouble is traced to a Gallifreyan mind control device, which is supplying power to the company. Furthermore, this device has been "seeded" on the planet by an insectoid race of aliens called the I so that they may come along later and harvest whatever use the indigenous population have made of the technology.
Seeing I is a curious mixture of well-written character pieces and a paper-thin plot designed only to achieve the objective of forcing the characters to develop. The authors have decided to push against the general trend of the BBC's range and to present a work that only just manages to stand alone in its own right.
If you like talk, internal angst, and uncertainty as opposed to action, plot, and adventure, this novel is doubtless going to please you. For those who prefer a more traditional WHO yarn, you'd be better off starting elsewhere. --David J. Howe, Amazon.co.uk
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here,
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This review is from: Seeing I (Doctor Who Series) (Paperback)
Wow, what a book! Starting with Sam in a homeless shelter (It's gritty, but good to see a companion live in the Real World for a change); to the Doctor fighting for his sanity in a kinder, gentler prison, this book will rock your socks off by the end. First of all, THANK GOD Sam gets to grow up! Secondly, I must admit my skin started to crawl at the description of what is done to the Doctor; how it affects him and the aftermath. Yikes. Thirdly, the "I" are a very interesting creation. They sound pretty, and yet if you see one you should run as fast as you can (and faster) in the opposite direction. And ladies, if you are into Hurt/Comfort stories at all, this book is for you. Fans of Sci-Fi will understand this reference. I promise you will ache to hold the poor, battered Doctor in your arms and smother him with love and protection. You get to pick the method of Love and Protection, of course. All in all, I still say the team of Orman and Blum make a perfect story and understand the heart of the Doctor Who fan intimately. They write the best DW books around!
5.0 out of 5 stars
Featuring the Doctor against his greatest adversary: tedium!,
This review is from: Seeing I (Doctor Who Series) (Paperback)
"Traditional" Doctor Who adventures are fine with me to a certain extent, since that kind of thing is what got us liking the show to begin with but for some reason I tend to expect more from the Eighth Doctor novels, since those are supposed to be continuing the story of the show and I'd rather see it pushing the show into new directions and doing things that we wouldn't necessarily see with serialized episodes and measly budgets and whatnot. For the people who insist on traditional stories, we have the Past Doctor Adventures, which seem to be filling that niche nicely.Not that I want everything to be experimental and boundary pushing all the time but a little change of pace to show that the writers are at least trying to think outside the box is nice. The risk you generally run with that is you tend to have a tradeoff between "technically dazzling" and "emotionally engaging" where they might impress you with ideas but at the end of the day you really don't care that much about anything that's happened. Fortunately, with Blum and Orman that isn't as much a problem. Her novels tended to be the highlights of the Virgin line in that she was consistently decent, able to set up scenes nicely and convey actual emotion. Their previous novel for the BBC line "Vampire Science" nearly singlehandedly saved it after the bad tasting "Eight Doctors" and here they go and take a storyline with a dubious goal and bring it to a somewhat satisfying ending. That storyline is the "Missing Sam" story, where the Doctor and Ms Samantha Jones were separated a few books back and have been kind of trying to find each other ever since. Well, by this point Sam has stopped assuming that she's going to find the Doctor and is just trying to get on with her life in the future. The Doctor, meanwhile, is busy getting captured. The authors do an interesting thing here where the typical "Who" plot of an alien menace and so on is almost an afterthought to the character dramas going on, with chapters alternating between Sam's new life and how she copes with it and the Doctor being stuck in a prison for three years and being unable to get out. This is where the interesting parts come in. By putting Sam on her own the authors force themselves to turn her into an interesting character and for the most part they succeed. Not completely because they don't have a lot to work with, but for the first time she's not totally annoying or the character equivalent of wallpaper. Exploring in great detail what happens when a companion leaves the Doctor isn't something we've really seen in a lot of, and contrasting her new life with the borderline hilarity of the Doctor being trapped in the friendliest prison ever works better than it should. Is it typical? No, not really, and I can see why a lot of fans might get ticked with the pages of the Doctor doing nothing, or learning Sam's dating history, but for those of us who like to see different things tried, it's a nice change of pace. And does it work? Yes, strangely enoguh, they keep the book interesting and the plots moving and while all the alien stuff seems a bit thin and rushed, that's not the goal of the book. By the end of it Sam is different and even the Doctor is a little bit different for the experience. Whether future authors will keep the pace remains to be seen but it's nice to know that some of them out there are still trying.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Sounds familiar, but still a good read,
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This review is from: Seeing I (Doctor Who Series) (Paperback)
Let's see, the Doctor's companion has to deal with living in one place and time, years pass, the Doctor is imprisoned, and alien insectoids are involved somehow. Now which novel am I talkng about?A. Set Piece B. Seeing I C. All of the above The answer is C, of course. That said, I really enjoyed both novels. There was more focus on the Doctor trying to escape this prison, and although it happens several times, it's new and interesting each time. The changes that Sam goes through while trying to carve out a life for herself on an alien world are reminiscient of our own experiences in finding our way as new adults in our own world. This book went really quickly for me, and I was done before I knew it, and wanted more. The Orman/Blum gestalt always produces thoughtful, entertaining, and interesting stories, and this is no exception. Buy it now!
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