Customer Reviews

The Space Age (Doctor Who Series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Where did THE SPACE AGE go wrong? The premise to the book is fascinating. It has several interesting things to say about maturing and the nature of conflict. It even has a very good characterization of the Doctor. So why was it such a chore to read?

From reading the back cover, one can tell that the setting of this book will be captivating. It promises the flying cars and jetpacks that the future as seen from the 50s predicted. It's the Year 2000 AD and mankind has an advanced civilization with hot and cold running robots and computers so that every single human need is taken care of. The life of the each person can be spent in the pursuit of pleasure with none of the dirty work that everyday life in the present affords us. Unfortunately after delivering this wonderful setup to the story, Steve Lyons does nothing with it. After reading the book in its entirety, I can say that the story doesn't touch a fraction of the potential that it had going in to it. With only a few alterations, the book could have been set almost anywhere.

The inhabitants of this Future City are all natives of an English town in 1965. Somehow they were taken from their proper location and placed in this luxurious city. Virtually everyone that was taken was a member of one of two 60s gangs, the mods and the rockers. This sets up the middle of section of the book in which various people do very little else than beat the living daylights out of each other (and during the slow moments, they make elaborate plans about how they will next beat the living daylights out of each other). It's extremely tedious, and unfortunately, this sort of boring runaround makes up almost the entire book. Although I suspect this was done on purpose, it was difficult to read about the two groups, as they were virtually indistinguishable, so it was very hard to keep track of which side was which.

There are a few nice sections. Compassion is barely featured in the book, but the little pieces that we do get are extremely well written. Also, there is some fairly interesting stuff about growing up and moving on. The problem is that this theme is spread so thin that it almost isn't worth the effort - a shame this wasn't really followed up on.

In short, the beginning of book is super, the ending of the book is quite good, but the middle hundred and fifty odd pages or so are mind numbingly boring. It's extremely frustrating to read as one can almost taste the excellent story that's down here begging to get out. The sections that follow the end of hostilities reach excellence and it's really a shame that they didn't occur about fifty pages earlier.

It's definitely a good Doctor Who book, but just let me tell you, pay no attention to back cover. The only other thing that I've got to say is that I've read almost all the the eighth doctor's books and, well, this just book makes me want read the next one in the series. It's as simple as that.

This is the first Doctor Who book I have bought. But I bought it in a mall in Norfolk, Virginia. It is a good depiction of rival gangs fighting for control like in the movie "The Outsiders". This time the gang fight is on an airless planetoid in the year 3012. The gangs believe it to be 2019, nearly 1000 years off, wouldn't you say. And the book nearly had elements of "West Side Story" with the characters Alec and Sandra, but weren't the happy couple. Alec was always eager to wipe out the Mods. As a result, Sandra left him. Next time make sure that the one you love has the best interests at heart as you do, that's what I say. It could keep you from making a serious mistake.

This book has an interesting setting, the characters are passable, but it is a snoozer. There is only a brief passage or two to tie it in with the story arc from the books before and after. This is not enough to make you care about the secondary characters or the world they inhabit. I love Doctor Who and have read all of the books since the original Target books, but I had to work to maintain my interest in this one. It is important for the story arc, but not much else goes on to recommend it.

If nothing else, there appears to be a bit of a disconnect between the author and whoever writes the cover copy for the novel. Because what it should really say, "In a city that seems to be from the future, two aging groups of toughs clinging to their old rivalries will spend a good portion of the book scheming to kill each other, with the science-fiction setting mostly used as background noise. Oh, and the Doctor shows up too."

The Doctor does indeed show up, with Fitz and a near comatose Compassion (conveniently, since her being heavily involved in this story would make it entirely unfair to everyone) on some random planet with a city straight out of the future, at least the future as everyone envisioned it in 1950. Gleaming towers, sleek skylines, you've got all that fun stuff. Even better, the city robots seem to take excellent care of the people who live in it, thus raising all kinds of exciting questions. Who built it? How did the city get here? Who could live in such a place, and why.

Unfortunately, the book proceeds to ignore all of them for a big SF version of "Krazy Kat" where two opposing teams of people try to hit each other repeatedly to no real effect, eventually just going around in circles. You see, the city is populated by grown up versions of people who were "rockers" and "mods" (imagine a less romantic "Grease" or "West Side Story" if everyone listened to better music) who never got out of the habit of beating the heck out of each other all the time. And "by never got out of the habit", I mean the entire book is about this. Seriously. Once the initial premise is established, we are treated to pages and pages of the two sides fighting and when they aren't fighting they are coming up with new ways to kill each other, most of which fail.

There are plenty of interesting themes to play with in this novel, especially the idea of maturing and the consequences of not doing so. Unfortunately, Lyons does very little with that, as we are subjected to yet another scene of a rocker and/or mod going, "With THIS plan, this time we'll really come out on top!" and fling themselves into another futile effort. It would help if this were over the top or played for satire, but alas it's all being done perfectly straight. They want to fight, and fight they do. Just like that cartoon on "The Simpsons". It would help if the characters were more fascinating than they were, but all the interesting bits tend to get pushed aside so they can plot how to kill the other side, but with jetpacks this time. Partway through you start to wish that the Doctor would just give up and leave, or both sides would just wipe each other out and the rest of the pages would be blank.

I have a feeling that the way the novel as conceived didn't exactly turn out the way it was written, as the theme just ran away with him and he wasn't sure how to reel it back. I don't know whose fault that is, but two groups of people I feel nothing for are fighting for reasons I don't care about (and are really silly, after all these years nobody said, "You know, hey, this isn't getting us anywhere.") and that's not really a recipe for wall to wall entertainment.

Are there good parts to the book? Sure. While Lyons doesn't do a whole lot with the setting (one flying car would have been nice) the whole idea of how it came about is interesting, and it would have been nicer to see a contrast between an optimistic view of the future and how it actually turns out through their eyes (in that sense, the book ends too soon). The Doctor is well done, even if I can't figure out how he doesn't strangle all these people out of sheer frustration. Fritz is back to being cowardly but quick on his feet, making up lies like he was born to it and basically being a faster-talker who gets his butt kicked a lot. Compassion, of course, really has no place in this story, but Lyons does use her few scenes effectively and somewhat justify her role in the story. I have a feeling that, having been changed, the writers aren't entirely sure what to do with her as a combination team member and vehicle.

All told, a little disappointing, though. Especially being that music plays a very small role, considering that these are rockers and mods (for non-Brits, if you've ever seen a picture of British punk band, the Jam, that's basically how mods dressed . . . or if you've seen "Quadrophenia") and the essential repetitive nature of the plot doesn't seem to delve into anything as much as kill time. It does read quickly so you won't spend that much time with it, but they probably could have figured out a better way to spend two hundred and forty pages.

One word to describe this novel - BLAND. The subject matter is about two rival gangs of the 60's, the Mods and Rockers, taken to `the future' by an alien race where they wage a war on each other that keeps going on and on and on. The `future' environment they are in consists of buildings and robots and weapons you would expect to find in a 60's comic magazine. I'm thinking that the tone and subject matter of this novel would have fit better with a 2nd Doctor adventure rather than an 8th Doctor one. The characterisation of the Doctor and Fitz are great though and Compassion is hardly even in the book. But of all the other characters - they are just really annoying and frustrating. The book is still worth a read - but don't expect much from it.