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TITLE Escape Velocity AUTHOR Colin Brake PREVIOUS FORM He script-edited EastEnders for a while. Is that defence or prosecution? You decide! WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT ALFIE? A battlefleet of aliens is twiddling its thumbs on the outskirts of the solar system waiting for a report from its scout party, who are about three years late (clearly a race of aliens with almost as much bureaucracy as we have). Two opposing factions of the aliens' scout party are stuck on Earth helping two opposing men - both of them want to be the first private individual in space and the aliens want to thumb a lift back to their fleet. One is French, so he is obviously the villain; the other is American, so of course he's the good guy (if it's any consolation he dies in the end). Oh, and the Doctor finally meets Fitz. And gets his TARDIS back. He also acquires a new companion, called Anji Kapoor. THE 100 WORD REVIEW This book tends to be dismissed as a dull climax to the 'Doctor Stuck on Earth' arc, but I rather enjoyed it. It's not an all-time classic, nor a great work of literature, but as an instalment in a monthly series it's a very refreshing and engaging story with an unassuming prose style. The 'reunion' scene between the Doctor and Fitz is not at all as I had imagined it, but was lovely nonetheless. My only real complaint is the end, where after a book striving towards a hopefully-peaceful settlement the Kulan fleet is accidentally blown to smithereens. THE C WORD Surprisingly less than one might think. The Doctor does remember Fitz, after a moment or two, and his memory of what his blue box really is comes back as soon as the TARDIS' interior does. But other than several references to the Doctor's having destroyed Gallifrey (in The Ancestor Cell) and a mention of past companion Sam Jones (no, not the character in Sex & The City, and not the 'actor' from the 1980 Flash Gordon film either) that's about it. Confusingly, well for me anyway, the implication here is that Gallifrey was not only destroyed but in fact erased from history (ie, so that it never had existed). This doesn't seem to be what happens in my copy of The Ancestor Cell but maybe I'm just misinterpreting it. Doubtless this plotline will recur in future books (probably until I'm thoroughly sick of it). Not exactly continuity at this stage, but Anji's sci-fi obsessed boyfriend (Dave) dies during this book, stabbed by an alien and then promptly cremated by a spaceship's taking off right above him. Well we've all had days that don't work out... Lastly, the book ends with the police box TARDIS arriving on a prehistoric landscape. A shadow falls across the ship... Maybe I'm just a human seeing patterns in things that aren't there, but that sounds an awful lot like a rip-off of the very first TV cliffhanger from 1963! And here, as there, it serves as a direct lead in to the next exciting adventure... I - AM - THE - DOCTOR! Perhaps against expectation, the Doctor does not suddenly remember every single thing about his past once he claps eyes on Fitz. Far from it in fact, and a final scene between the Doctor and Fitz indicates that the Doctor does not remember anything about the destruction of Gallifrey. In fact he doesn't even seem to remember Sam his former companion. Again, the idea of the Doctor being more violent than normal is suggested, with some ambiguity over whether the Doctor battered one of the aliens against the bulkhead of his ship, or whether the alien just in fact tripped. The Doctor works on instinct in his guiding of the TARDIS; also with his working of the rediscovered sonic screwdriver, which he can only get to work if he is distracted by something else and thus not really thinking about it! MONEY IN THE BANK ZILDA! This Book: £3.00 for a brand spanking new edition, a saving of £2.99... however, since I bought it from Amazon there was a whopping £2.75 postage on top. Which means I managed to save an enormous 24p. Harumph! Running Score: £19.26 against RRP |
