System Shock (Doctor Who the Missing Adventures) [Paperback]

Justin Richards (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 309 pages
• Publisher: London Bridge (Mm) (August 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 042620445X
• ISBN-13: 978-0426204459
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,984,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Justin Richards has written dozens of novels as well as non-fiction books. He has also written audio scripts, a television and stage play, edited anthologies of short stories, been a technical writer, and founded and edited a media journal.

Justin is the author of The Death Collector, The Chaos Code, The Parliament of Blood and The Invisible Detective series. He is also Creative Consultant to the BBC's best-selling range of Doctor Who books.

His novel 'The Skeleton Clock' is available as a Kindle eBook.

He lives in Warwick with his wife and two children, and a lovely view of the castle.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Internet welcomes alien invaders, December 2, 2000

By 

"grrreg" - See all my reviews

This review is from: System Shock (Doctor Who the Missing Adventures) (Paperback)

[Not sure what is happening here - like 'Managra', the earlier reviews, including one by me for 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' are not for this book!]

Something that Doctor Who is usually bad at is the return of regular characters in such a way as to show the passage of time. With 'System Shock', Justin Richards gives this a go by reintroducing Harry Sullivan some twenty years after his travels in the TARDIS.

The Doctor and Sarah arrive on Earth in 1998, where they are drawn into an MI5 investigation of I2, a software company. They meet up with Harry, now an Assistant Chief of Staff of MI5, who assists them in this story of alien takeover via the Internet.

I found the returning Harry to be an excellent addition to the story. At the time of his travels with the Doctor, Harry was an often bumbling do-gooder who seemed more capable of getting in people's way than assisting. His time post-UNIT has made him a much more competent character without destroying his essential Harryness.

Also pleasing are the different reactions of the Doctor and Sarah to this older Harry. It's normal for the Doctor, but Sarah is shocked. It brings home the reality of time travel to her.

The story is pretty stock-standard, not different enough to warrant that close an examination, but it does provide a background on which the interaction of these characters can be watched.

'System Shock' has generated a sequel, 'Millennium Shock' which should please those who enjoy this book.

3.0 out of 5 stars Good fun; pleasant way to kill some time, October 27, 2011

By 

gfs "stuffed fantod" - See all my reviews

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This review is from: System Shock (Doctor Who the Missing Adventures) (Paperback)

Pros:

1. Justin Richards doesn't take the obvious path of being blindly pro-tech or anti-tech, but delivers a more nuanced picture.
2. He also has a great ear for dialogue, both internal and external. Sarah, the Doctor, and Harry's voices ring true and clear.
3. The villains aren't your typical cyborgs, an imaginative choice.
4. The story is, at least in retrospect, a very amusing and incisive satire of 90s business culture.
5. The choice to explore the emotional impact of time travel, seeing an old friend suddenly aged or suddenly young, gives the story a lovely emotional resonance.
6. Sarah Jane gets some truly kickass moments.

Cons:
1. The prose is a bit off. You cannot grin or smile dialogue, and there was one point where somebody shrugged with their eyes or their eyebrows that jolted me out of the story to try to attempt that for thirty or so seconds. There's definitely a sort of eyebrow motion that goes along with a shoulder shrug, but it doesn't really work without the shoulder involvement. Anyway, I spent too much time thinking about this, which in my opinion is an indication that just saying that the character had shrugged would've worked much better.

Other:
The cover art is kind of hilarious. The reptilian cyborg is pretty cool, and okay, I guess the CD was a plot point so it can be on there, whatever. But then the Doctor shows up in the background, pretty clearly having been drawn from one of the first publicity shots to pop up on Google (or whatever we had back in the nineties; was that Ask Jeeves?), but in such a way that half of his face looks furious and the other half looks about to weep. Meanwhile gun-toting Sarah Jane's head looks too small for her body, or possibly it's just that certain parts of the body seem a bit overlarge--methinks the artist forgot which brunette he was drawing once he got past the neckline and starting going for Peri.