Customer Reviews

The Well-Mannered War (Doctor Who the Missing Adventures)

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The TARDIS approaches its maximum distance into the future, and the Doctor forces an emergency materialisation to prevent its destruction. The TARDIS crew find themselves arrive on Barclow, which is a planet claimed by both the humans and the Chelonians, who are waging a war in a very polite fashion (hence the title). But there are also other matters afoot, and a great enemy (whose identity I'm not at liberty to divulge here) is behind a complex plot to destroy the Doctor. Oh, and K9 runs for president as well...

This book is the last of Virgin's Missing Adventures series, featuring past incarnations of the Doctor. The decision not to renew Virgin's license plays a subtle role throughout the book, up to an including the very tongue-in-cheek ending.

The Doctor and Romana are yet again well characterised by Gareth Roberts, and the return of the Chelonian (originally created by Gareth Roberts for the seventh Doctor novel, 'The Highest Science') make a welcome return. The book also looks at a few other important aspects of Doctor Who history and plays a role in setting up the Bernice Summerfield adventure series that Virgin published following BBC re-claiming the Doctor Who license.

It is both a great book and important for defining what was to come.

This novel commemorates two endings - it's the last of Virgin's Missing Adventures, set at the end of the period during which Graham Williams produced the TV series. The book consequently has a slightly more melancholy tone than Gareth Roberts' other Missing Adventures, but the wit that made his other stories such a joy to read is still present. The Chelonians - the militaristic giant tortoises featured in Roberts' New Adventures The Highest Science and Zamper - are back, but they're not the villains this time round. The main enemy is initially revealed as a darkness, though there's more to it than that. Then again, there's more to almost everything in TWMW than meets the eye. The last episode (the story being structured as a classic four-parter) has an impressive selection of twists, and a thought-provoking conclusion. TWMW includes plenty of bizarre and witty concepts of the type so often found in Roberts' work and the DW era in which the story is set. The sequence with the possessed photocopier is arguably the best fusion of the comic and the chilling ever to be found in DW in any format. Definitely worth getting if the opportunity presents itself.

This is a great 4th Doctor Story. It's absolutely hilarious. Roberts is at his best. Tom Baker and Lalla Ward and K9 are written superbly, as are all the other supporting cast. The plot is interesting, and keeps you guessing with a terrific twist at the end. One piece of irony: you'd think that being free of production budget constraints, Doctor Who writers would expand the sets and locations in their novels, but where does the TARDIS land? Right in a deserted rock quarry!! Where does a lot of action take place? In the quarry! However, even this funny irony makes the book even more charming and captivating somehow. Highly recommended--and easily available as an ebook on the BBC Doctor Who site.

Mr. Roberts has written a masterpiece! This book kept me guessing until the very end. Not only was the ending quite a surprise, it was also a very logical ending. Furthermore, getting to the end of this many-paged Dr. Who book happens very quickly as each page leaves the reader anxious to get to the next. This tale was told the way a Dr. Who story needs to be told. Each chapter was a cliffhanger; the Doctor was his wonderfully charasmatic self (as only Tom Baker could portray); K-9 was fabulous (I don't care what others say, I like K-9!); and Romana is simply charming (I love the final scene between the Doctor and Romana). Having not read the New Adventure The Highest Science, I cannot say if the Chelonians are accuratly portrayed in this novel. However, being both a history teacher and a prior military serviceman, - history is full of examples of how enemy soldiers developed friendships- I can appreciate the friendships displayed between the Chelonians and the humans in The Well-Mannered War. All in all, well worth buying at any price. If you are lucky enough to find it, buy it before someone else beats you to it!

If you're any kind of respectable Dr. Who fan, go now (don't wait) go right now to the store and get it - or order it through Amazon. You won't be disappointed!

Back in the day, Virgin had quite the line of Doctor Who books out. Not all of them were winners and some were rather mediocre (none were super-bad but I read some that came close) but it was nice to have someone publishing Who books on a more or less regular basis. And then, apparently out of nowhere, the BBC decided that they could do a better job and yanked the license away from Virgin, ending both the Missing Adventures line (which this particular book was part of) and the Seventh Doctor focused New Adventures line. You think that none of this is relevant? Well, I'm not finished yet. The last of the Missing Adventures features the fourth Doctor, Romana (the second one, played by Lalla Ward) and the ever-cheerful K-9. Still running from the Black Guardian (don't ask) they wind up on a planet near the end of Time and quickly get wrapped up in events. And what events they are. The humans who live there are at war with the Chelonians who have suddenly decided they want the planet also. Except nobody is really interested in fighting so you have a pseudo-war of sorts, where the respective parties go through the motions of war but basically make empty threats, meet for tea and give each other gifts. It's pretty funny, actually, at least in the beginning. Of course, a third-party decides to interfere with this cheerful balance and starts manipulating the sides closer to actual war, while a fourth-party allows this all to happen for different reasons entirely. Confused, yet? The book is almost too much at some points, with all the different clashing plots going on (oh and K-9 starts running for premier as well) and the tone veering from comedy to a more horrific scenario. Only Roberts' heart doesn't seem to be into the horror and suspense stuff as much, and the book always crackles more when he's trying to be funny. The book is structured just like a regular episode, with four parts and cliffhangers, and it really has that "traditional" feel of the original series, this could have in theory been a story in that season and that's probably the best praise you can give one of these novels. They even land in what appears to be a quarry, a nod to the old series inability to secure a budget for anything, when such quarries were often stand-ins for alien planets and whatnot. Roberts' fourth Doctor is a lot of fun to read, he gets most of the mannerisms right (best scene: getting shot at, the Doctor ducks behind a rock and pulls out a pamphlet called "So You're Caught in a Rocket Attack") and manages to strike a balance between the Doctor's ego and his brilliance, tempered with his slight wackiness. I think he captures Romana fairly well too, the banter between her and the Doctor seems spot-on. The ending is probably the only point where the doom and gloom stuff works, the sense of foreboding feels honest for the most part, even if it verges on info-dump just as it reaches the climax. It's a complex resolution and chances are you're not going to guess every aspect of it but it works for me. And then there's the actual ending, where the writer and the publisher sort of a bid a wink-and-a-nod goodbye to the character and series that served them well for so many years. It's not literature and it's not even the best Who novel but it's well written and entertaining and you can't ask for much more than that, sometimes.

Gareth Roberts is one of the best Drwho novelists and this is one of his best. He has wrote the last book for the missing adventures very well.The Doctors' TARDIS goes off course and lands at the end of the time and space and meets humans and chelonians in the middle of a war. but not one shot has been fired in 100s' of years. But something is going toput a stop to that. Garth Roberts' menlove stokes makes a reappearnce in this book and the ending is a big surpirse.