Customer Reviews

Superior Beings (Doctor Who)

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The Fifth Doctor and recently acquired companion Peri attend a party thrown by some Eknuri, members of an alien race who look human but are genetically enhanced beyond humanity. This party, though, is about to gatecrashed by the Valethske, a race of vulpine hunters. But even they are no threat compared to the past of xenologist Aline Vehlmann...

With his third Doctor Who novel, Nick Walters assembles a promising cast and some excellent concepts, but sadly fails to deliver what should have been a good book.

One of the principle problems is that he builds and builds and builds the story but, like many readers, I expect pay-offs along the way. While things happen that appear to be meant to be pay-offs, they don't feel that way to me.

I also found myself asking "so when does the main part of the story begin?", and when your doing that 100 pages into a 280 page novel you have to wonder.

Mr. Walters two previous novels, 'The Fall of Yquatine' and 'Coldheart', seemed better plotted and constructed than this, which is a bit sad as I think the ideas behind this novel were excellent.

In particular, I'd be happy to see the Valethske come back for a second appearance.

In this adeventure which takes place after "Planet of Fire", Peri and the Doctor land at a party. Both fall in love with different people. The party is attacked by human eating aliesn. They capture everyone but the Doctor and his love interest. The Doctor and his new girl friend travel in the Tardis to rescue Per and the others. The Doctor saves everyone, but they have time traveled several centuries into the future. The Doctor loses the Tardis on the alien ship. But the Doctor and his friends find a planet to land on they think is safe. The aliens find the remaing humans. But the aliens have bigger problems of their own(something which I wanted to see more addressed by the writer). Events get out of control from here and all hell breaks lose on the planet. The Doctor along with Peri's help and their remaining friends put everything back to where it should be.

I wish this book would of been a little longer as I wanted to more of the plant's world "gardeners" to be more than just a army . It would of been nice if these creatures could of spoken. I doubt the Doctor will ever visit this planet again, but again who knows with him and his TARDIS?

For me it is one of my favorite 5th Doctor books. The Doctor and Peri are just they were in the TV series. I thought I saw Peter Davison as the Doctor and Nicola Bryant as Peri as I read this adventure. It's worth a least checking out if you like the 5th Doctor, Peri or the series in general. There are some boring parts in the book,do'nt most books and movies have some boring parts anyway? But once you get into it, it goes by fast! If I was not behind in my readings of the 8th Doctor,I'd read it again !

I've probably said this before, but it's amazing what a little focus can do. And while in the past I might have meant it in a slightly complimentary fashion, here it's more my attempt at sage advice.

Fifth Doctor stories are troublesome anyway, since he was probably the most passive of the lot (and my favorite of the old crew, just so it's clear where my loyalties lie) and this does not often make for good prose drama in the style of story to which all the new fans are accustomed to. Done properly, and with the right visuals to carry it along, it can make for some contemplative and thought-provoking stuff. When it's not done well it can make him seem like a guest star inside his own story. We sort of have that problem here, but it's not the only problem.

One thing that strikes me as amusing right off the bat is the contrast of tones between the cover description of the plot and what we actually get . . . I've noticed this in the past and here it makes you seem like you're going to get a story of the Doctor and Peri's new friendship that's super cute (aw, the TARDIS leaves gifts for her!) while they run into danger and Peri pals around with a hunk. Sort of like those "Gigi on the Beach" movies, but in space.

Instead we get a rather brutal tale where aliens land and attempt to hunt and eat everyone in sight, and that's before the plot actually starts. And then they continue to do so when what resembles the plot actually kicks in. Whoops.

There's so much window dressing here that it's hard to tell what is window dressing for what. When the Doctor and Peri land on a new world we run into archeologist Aline and the people she's studying, who are designed to be genetically superior to regular human beings and mostly spend the time idly exploring or engaging in frolic. Nice work if you can get it but they're not so superior that they don't get their metaphorical heads handed to them when the Valethske land and eat/capture to eat later everyone in sight, since they are hunters and that's what hunters do (for a probably more thought out and nuanced take on this, check out CJ Cherryh's "Hunter of Worlds" where the entire society is based around the notion that they are predators, and are portrayed as quite alien in the process). This, oddly enough, isn't the point to the story.

What is the point? The Valethske are capturing people for their long voyage in search of the old gods who once disrespected them, scouring the universe for those beings so they can have one big happy throwdown. This sort of takes a backseat as we're subjected to repeated scenes where people are brutalized/eaten (or the other way around) or the Valethske talk about eating people or people try to escape only to be recaptured and maybe eaten or maybe just yelled at a lot. This all ends up on a garden planet tended to by weird plants and here is where the plot sort of becomes important but then again, maybe not.

The story gets hamstrung to some extent because it hardly feels like any of the main motions of the plot are caused by any of the character deliberately taking action. Any action that is taken is either truncated or reversed shortly after with the plot continuing because it has to continue or the story will never end. The plot creates and discards characters without much of a thought (most of the super-advanced human don't stick around long enough to make a good impression . . . the one who tries to romance Peri lasts the longest, but none of them ever rise any further than "ineffectual"), resulting in one character, introduced late, vanishing into the plot and then the reader being told at the end that he probably died in the climax. Oh, well. Glad I cared about him then. Even more frustrating is when characters just aren't fleshed out enough . . . Aline is supposed to be the Doctor analogue for the journey but she can't go two paragraphs into an appearance without remarking internally about the dread "Encounter" that left her unable to deal with aliens. This is supposed to be tragic but mostly turns into "get over it, already."

Yet it figures into the climax. So does the fact that the very next planet the Valethske land on may be the one they're looking for, after a thousand years. The plot abounds with coincidences that make sense only because the plot says it does. And if you're wondering why I haven't mentioned the Doctor in all this, it's because he does very little except stand around, try to manipulate the aliens and have very little bearing on anything that happens. Peri does better but having your main character observe events without really having an effect on then can dull the impact of your plot slightly. The story rests on Peri, who turns out to be quite a trooper. Go, girl!

There are some nice moments and the inner workings of the garden planet has a Jim Woodring level of surreality to it, while the society of the Valethske has the markings of some kind of thought-out structure (like if all the laws of society were based on mixed martial-arts) but the late start to the real plot and the passiveness of Our Hero mean that you can't get too emotionally engaged in anything that's happening. Oh, people are being graphically eaten. Again. Sigh. As others have mentioned, Walters is capable of good work so either this one wasn't a hundred percent thought out or he was just having an off period. Better luck next time!

Superior Beings could have been so good. It has an interesting "monster," nice interplay between the Doctor and Peri (a pairing that I'd like to see more of), and an interesting concept.

Unfortunately, there doesn't appear to be much point to the whole thing. It's a very violent novel, but there doesn't seem to be much of a reason for that, other than to show bloody violence. The Velethske are an interesting race, but they deserved a better book. The "Superior Beings" of the title originally seems to be referring to the Eknuri, but then they turn out to be nothing much of interest. Then it turns out that it might be referring to something else (no spoilers), but that turns out to be anti-climactic.

The main story doesn't even seem to begin for at least 150 pages, if not longer. The prelude to this main story does nothing except establish how vicious the Velthske are. Humans and humanoids are nothing but prey to them. Fine, Nick, we got the point after the first 10 iterations of it. Could we move on now? Thank you.

I do have to say that the Doctor and Peri are characterized very well, though. I saw a review somewhere that said that anybody who has watched Caves of Androzani would not recognize these characters. I don't quite agree. Yes, Peri is a bit whiney, but she was in Planet of Fire, too. Even in Caves she was. Here, she does whine a little bit, but she's also strong, carrying on when a lot of weaker people would have just given up.

Peri's jealousy of Aline is well-portrayed. Here is a girl who has just joined up with the Doctor (you get the idea that this book takes place shortly after Planet of Fire), who's still new to this adventuring thing and has only the Doctor as a lifeline to any kind of normalcy. It's only natural that she would be jealous of Aline moving in on this. I found it completely understandable.

One other bad thing about this book, though, is the Doctor's almost complete ineffectiveness. He really doesn't have anything to do with the resolution. The only thing he does do is make sure that Peri stays alive (and he doesn't even do that, in the end...it's someone else). Why do the BBC books continually have a Doctor who doesn't do anything? Isn't he supposed to be the hero of the book?

I don't think you'll regret reading it, but only if you're a Fifth Doctor fan. Dominion, Walters' first novel, was decent. His second, Fall of Yquitane, was wonderful. And then there's this. Is there such a thing as Junior Jinx?

I really enjoyed this addition to the Doctor Who line. The fifth incarnation and Peri didn't have much time together in the tv series and I'm glad Nick Walters chose this pairing for his adventure. It reads very easily and I thought it was a lot of fun!

The baddies: The Valethske would have been a worthy addition to the television series. Imagine them attaining recurrent villain status in the show! Ruthless, without conscience, and not to mention constantly hungry! They're right up there with some of the classic Who villains.

I admit I got a little tired of them referring to humans as "prey" throughout the novel. But to be fair, is this any different than a Dalek screaming, "You will be ex-ter-mi-nated!" every five seconds? I don't think so. It's part of their character. It works.

The supporting cast: The treatment of the Eknuri, as characters, seemed a bit muddy. But then again, the story really wasn't about them, was it? We're also told of an "Encounter" Dr. Aline Vehlmann went through in her past, but that isn't really delved into with a lot of detail. Suffice it to say, she's now a xenophobe and feels that her destiny is elsewhere in the cosmos. Thawed out soldiers Capt. Melrose and Lt. Meharg are there to provide the bang-bang element needed to counteract the savagry of the Valethske.

I found this to be a fun outing for the Doctor and company. Fans of Peter Davison will enjoy this novel.