Doctor Who: Cat's Cradle - Warhead

Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures #6

by Andrew Cartmel, Peter Elson (Cover Illustrator)

The place is Earth. The time is the near future - all too near.
          Industrial development has accelerated out of all control, spawning dangerous new technologies and laying the planet to waste. While the inner cities collapse in guerrilla warfare, a dark age of superstition dawns.
          As destruction of the environment reaches the point of no return, multinational corporations and super-rich individuals unite in a last desperate effort - not to save humankind, but to buy themselves immortality in a poisoned world.
          If Earth is to survive, somebody has to stop them. From London to New York to Turkey, Ace follows the Doctor as he prepares, finally, to strike back.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction, Cyberpunk, Science Fiction Fantasy, Thriller, Ebooks

262 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published April 16, 1992

Reviews

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

I still can't believe I'm giving five stars to a Doctor Who novel, of all things. After the last DW I read, I figured I was done with such dreck. And yet here we are...!

For one thing, unlike the previous entry, this one avoids all of the schlocky things I dislike about sci-fi, and Doctor Who in particular. There's no fan-wankery about Gallifrey, the origins of the Time Lords, or any of that twaddle. It's also not a space romp about fighting space aliens in big space battles, full of sound and fury but wholly unrelatable.

Instead, this is a Doctor Who novel in which the Doctor appears only occasionally - and the story is far better for it. The Seventh Doctor was increasingly conceived as a master manipulator (seeds of which have carried over into the recent incarnations), always with good intentions and a mind-boggling scope, yet disturbingly at ease with the idea of moving everyone around as chess pieces in order to bring about his intended effect. A force for good, yes, but a frightening one. (Accordingly, the book is split into sections - the first of which, "Assembly", takes up the bulk, while the brief latter part, "Detonation", shows the culmination of his plans.)

Mostly, though, what impressed me about this novel above all else was what it taught me about plotting. As mentioned, the Doctor only rarely appears. Instead, the early movements were somewhat shocking by having each chapter introduce a new character and follow them around in the part they had to play (which might or might not include meeting the Doctor), until their story met their conclusion. The next chapter would then introduce ANOTHER new character, follow them on their small story, and do the same. These early chapters were thus almost a set of linked short stories - except that you absolutely see the larger story emerging from their movements when taken as a whole. Honestly, when Ace finally took over the story a few chapters later, and claimed the narrative for the next sixty-something pages, it was almost disappointing (but only briefly).

With its near-future setting, and commentary on the dangers of both unchecked technology and increased centralization, it's a novel that absolutely speaks to the fears of our times (as the best sci-fi novels should). And the innovative approach to plot prevents one from ever getting bored with one character or viewpoint for much too long. All in all, it was certainly the most engaging Doctor Who novel I've read to date, and - to my great shock - one of the best sci-fi novels I've read in a long, long time.

[Leo H · Rating 3 out of 5]

Books like this make me annoyed at the 5 star rating system, because it's better than 3 stars but not quite 4 stars. Probably my favourite of the New Adventures I've read so far, it's a part cyberpunk, part Weird Teens with Psychic Powers, part corporate espionage thing that manages to humanise its characters in a way that is very prescient in comparison with New Dr Who.

A couple of things I didn't like, firstly there's a fairly creepy bit where Ace is naked after having just got out of a shower and a teenage boy having just got out of a coma feels her up, which is just... not necessary at all. Secondly, it's mentioned a couple of times throughout the book that the big evil corporation who the Doctor and Ace are fighting are literally killing poor people and harvesting their organs to give to rich people to combat the deadly pollution that covers the world, and the Doctor doesn't seem bothered about this at all? He fights them because they're taking people minds and putting them in computers, which is bad I guess, but the harvesting the poor thing seems a whole lot worse, y'know? Perhaps it's just me.

[April Mccaffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

I flew through this novel pretty quickly which is rare for a VNA!

I highly enjoyed this one purely because it didn't feel like a doctor who story, featuring little of Doctor and Ace. Though, Ace had a whole few chapters to herself without her saying a word.

I felt the relationship between Justine/Vincent was rushed and the ending on defeating O'Hara was a little flat but otherwise, enjoyable.

[Matt Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Part of the reason I'm reading these Doctor Who books is to explore the last great frontier of Doctor Who I haven't delved into yet. So far, that's basically been the Timewyrm tetralogy, which was a rollercoaster of quality. One chapter into the fifth book (Marc Platt's Cat's Cradle - Time's Crucible) I bounced because I wasn't big on the style and my research into the book didn't lead me to think it would be all that good. I figured Cat's Cradle-Warhead would be much more my speed especially given it's Andrew Cartmel, a man who is mainly responsible for one of my favorite eras in Doctor Who.

Unfortunately, this took me three months to read. Problematic because I want these books to take me 1-2 weeks at most when I read them. And this isn't exactly a long book. But it was one that I felt content to put down for long stretches of time. And every time I hopped back into it the prose would put me to sleep.

I've been trying to figure out what exactly is wrong with it, and I think the prose is it. Unsure if this is Cartmel's style going forward (because I do want to read more of him), but it felt disjointed, difficult to parse out what was happening, unclear, purple. It's not a style I particularly liked and it really felt like this was a first novel from a guy who hadn't ever planned to write one. On that alone, it's extremely hard to recommend this.

And yet, what Cartmel is actually doing with this book is fantastic. Sure, I didn't find the overall plot terribly interesting, but the actual execution of it was fresh and interesting and important. It was fabulous characterization of The Doctor, incredible because at no point is The Doctor the center of the narrative, opting instead to flit in and out of the lives of the people he's touching in his plan to stop this horrific plot from the big bad corporation. It's a take on The Doctor that explains why the 7th Doctor was just so compelling on television, a welcome shift in how The Doctor was portrayed for the first 23 seasons on television.

So overall I'm glad I read this, and I really do come away from it liking it in concept and ambition and freshness rather than in actual execution. That gets it enough points that I'm glad I read it, but it's also a book that really emphasizes just how much I don't need to read all of these novels as we go. Most of my entire time in the back half of reading this was looking forward to the other, future novels I am so very much looking forward to. This shouldn't be painful, it shouldn't be pulling teeth, and I should be entirely invested in the book I'm reading, rather than wishing I could be anywhere else.

2.5 Stars, rounded down

Virgin New Adventures Rankings
1. Timewyrm: Revelation
2. Timewyrm: Exodus
3. Cat's Cradle: Warhead
4. Timewyrm: Apocalypse
5. Timewyrm: Genesys

[Brian Moreau · Rating 4 out of 5]

An experimental Virgin Doctor Who novel- that works! Maybe because it was written by someone who worked on the show.

Others have remarked on the James Bond vibe in certain parts of the novel. Bond with a little cyberpunk and William S. Burroughs thrown in. The villain’s base in upstate New York feels like something from a Bond movie/ novel.

Couple of questions/ observations:
1. Where was UNIT?
2. O’Hara’s plan sounds a lot like the creation of the Cybermen. This is never remarked upon.
3. Was the woman dying in the hospital in the beginning from an episode? I’m drawing a blank.

There’s other things I could mention but I’m not going to. I really liked this book and started it thinking I wouldn’t. I look forward to reading the other two “War” novels by Cartmel.

[David Layton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The second of the Cat's Cradle trilogy is written to be a taught thriller, James Bond style. It conforms to Cartmel's view of The Doctor from the time Cartmel was script editor. The Doctor here is a kind of criminal mastermind working on the side of good. Thus, there is a running conflict between the questionable morality of The Doctor's methods for putting together a "team" and the supposed larger morality of the cause he uses the team to bring about. As with Doctor Who 1988-9, it appears in this novel that Cartmel has not thoroughly thought through the ethics, nor has he thought through what this portrayal does to perceptions of The Doctor's character. Basically, I really don't like this Doctor as a person. He's superficially charming while being mostly callous and insensitive. I also have some troubles with how Cartmel characterizes Ace. In this novel, Ace is basically the James Bond character. Thus, she acts as commando, spy, streetfighter, and wisecracking badass throughout the novel. She gets beat up, knocked down, bruised and abused. Cartmel seems to forget that she is a small, teenaged girl from Perivale without any of the formal training necessary to do what she does in this novel. And then, there's the cat. Or rather, there isn't. As a middle novel in a trilogy, the book should move along the arcing plot. The cat from book 1 appears briefly in the first few chapters of Warhead, to no discernible purpose, and then vanishes without any more mention. What Warhead has to do Time's Crucible is anyone's guess.

The plot of the novel itself has some interesting features that would work better if Cartmel had not force-fit Doctor Who into it. Basically, in the near future (2020s or 2030s), the world is a burning mess. Nature is in collapse, pollution covers everything, humans are dying in the millions because of diseases caused by environmental toxins, national governments are useless, and corporations run everything. In the background of all this is the corporation Butler Institute, run by a cold, humorless man named Mathew O'Hara. The Butler Institute has been buying out virtually every tech company, sending agents to collect bodies and even living specimens from among the homeless and imprisoned, and has been carving some giant project into the side of the Catskill Mountains. O'Hara is a kind of Ray Kurzweil as Bond villain, a man who believes that the only salvation for humanity is for the rich people to all upload themselves into computers, thus "live" virtually forever and never have to suffer from the problems of the body. O'Hara is willing to sacrifice anybody to achieve this end, even his wife and young son. The Doctor's project is O'Hara, stopping him from achieving his goal of computer utopia for the rich. Apart from O'Hara's methods, there does not seem to me to be reason enough to bring down O'Hara, or for The Doctor to go to such elaborate lengths to do it. Yes, O'Hara is a murderer, and a murderer with power, but in the world that Cartmel depicts, that does not make him all that much worse than thousands of others. The plan for computer utopia itself is riddled with difficulties that make it unlikely ever to succeed, and on the face of it is dubious practically rather than morally. Again, O'Hara's methods are the problem, and the "evil" plan really is not all that evil. So, in the end, it is not clear just exactly what The Doctor has accomplished.

To give credit where it is due, Cartmel handles the pace of the novel very well. He writes action scenes so that a reader is not confused by all that is going on. He knows how to keep relevant details hidden in plain sight, so that a reader is unaware of their relevance until they become relevant. Apart from the cat there are no loose ends. On the whole, Cat's Cradle: Warhead is a decent action-adventure spy thriller, but it is problematic Doctor Who.

[Numa Parrott · Rating 2 out of 5]

I barely made it through this one. Despite the whole host of interesting and deeply developed local characters, I couldn't really cope with the fact that there isn't a plot until the end of the book. Also, I don't see how this 'Cat's Cradle' series is connected at all. There was a shiny cat at the beginning, but no one bothered to explain it.
While I enjoyed aspects of the vivid futuristic dystopian society stuff, it just isn't really what I wanted from a Doctor Who book. The gritty reality of it was cool, but there was just too much of that and not enough story.

[Pietro Rossi · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the sixth book in the New Adventures series, and, sadly, only the second that I've finished.

This is not a Dr Who book. Sure there's a character called the Doctor and another called Ace, but the tone, style don't screech Dr Who.

People seen to come and go, and I'm sure there's a plot there somewhere. But I just don't care.

After a good start with the Doctor we then go to Ace, but the first half of the book seems unrelated to the second half.

As you may have guessed, not a fan.

[Shane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Certainly the best NA I've read so far. Characterising the 7th Doctor as the manipulator and using the ferocity of Ace to great effect. Their felt a certain disjointedness throughout the book as it went from character to character, plot to action, however the setting was bold for Doctor Who and after a few rather bad NAs this one was welcome.

[Joe Kessler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Cartmel served as the script editor for the last three seasons of Classic Doctor Who (1987-1989), which were also the years that produced the final protagonist team of the Seventh Doctor and his companion Ace. The author thus had great control over their specific personalities, which he transfers well into this first novel he contributed to the ongoing Virgin New Adventures line in the 1990s that continued their journeys through time and space after the TV series went off the air. It's technically the middle volume in the Cat's Cradle trilogy too, although it's almost entirely unrelated to the book that came before it, Time's Crucible by Marc Platt. (That story set up a strange glowing feline as a sort of avatar for the TARDIS, which was going through a bit of a crisis. The timeship is still largely out of commission here, and the cat makes a cameo appearance, but that's about it as far as the continuity goes.) Meanwhile, two characters introduced midway through this adventure, Justine and Vincent, would reappear in the subsequent Cartmel titles Warlock (VNA #34) and Warchild (VNA #47), though that's all I know about the later works so far.

As for this installment, it's a thrillingly globe-hopping spectacle, set in a dystopian cyberpunk near-future in which the world is choked by smog and one corrupt megaconglomerate functionally runs everything. The Time Lord is in his full manipulative chessmaster mode, operating less as a traditional action hero and more as a quiet presence nudging pieces into place from behind the scenes. Ace is his reluctant catspaw -- pun intended -- and it's clear that she's growing into a more battle-hardened and jaded young woman than she'd previously been characterized as, although the development certainly fits her character and what all she's been through. The Doctor drops her in Turkey with no support to recruit a dangerous group of mercenaries, one of whom she ultimately has to kill in desperate armed combat, on a mission to retrieve what turns out to be the cryogenically-preserved body of a teenage boy with latent psychic powers.

I do have a few critiques. This is a tale that's heavy on atmospheric worldbuilding but thin on a legible plot, and the ultimate aim of the villain is to create a process for digitally uploading the consciousnesses of the uber-rich… which isn't particularly evil save for his methods to accomplish it, which for some reason require sacrificing his wife and son. And while the Doctor foils that scheme, he doesn't even attempt to topple the overarching system that preys on the working class -- literally harvesting them for body parts after arresting and executing them on trumped-up charges -- and is steadily poisoning the planet, driving girls into underage prostitution, and other such sins. He and Ace stride off triumphantly in the end despite the widespread suffering they're leaving behind, which doesn't feel especially earned. There's also a totally unnecessary scene at one point when that heroine, stepping naked out of the shower to save the still-drowsy telepath from drowning in the nearby bathtub, gets groggily groped for her efforts. It's a step up from the pervasive misogyny and threats of sexual violence that hung over John Peel's Timewyrm: Genesys, but maybe only just -- and the one genuine romance of the piece is too predicated on instantaneous attraction to ever register as a meaningful opposite.

And yet! This is overall a neat departure for the franchise, and one not bogged down in the usual lore-heavy complications. It's full of clever insights into the Doctor and how he thinks about history, and my understanding is that its darker turn proves very influential on the volumes that follow. There's little indication of the so-called Cartmel masterplan, in which the former editor apparently intended to reveal if the show had gone on that the Doctor was a mysterious figure from Gallifreyan prehistory -- as the preceding Platt title did ironically start to explore -- but we do get a strong sense that that character constitutes an ancient and implacable force hiding behind a jester's act, somehow powerful and inscrutable beyond normal human morality, which is one of my favorite characterizations in Doctor Who. We see those hints through the eyes of the ordinary people who populate this text, as he repeatedly swirls into somebody's life and completely upends it with but a few well-placed words.

Does it hang together as a coherent narrative? I'm not so sure. But the mood is fairly intoxicating throughout.

[Content warning for gun violence, racism, and gore.]

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[Seb Hasi · Rating 3 out of 5]

After the last novel in the series, anything is up and thankfully, this was up. I’m not saying this was the best book I’ve ever read or anything but I did enjoy it, especially the start and the finish. The Doctor and Ace end up on a future earth that has basically been destroyed by global warming and essentially humanity, where they go about putting an end to a madman’s plans to change the human race forever. That is only the vague outline of course given anything more than that does spoil elements of the book; annoyingly.

The first thought that comes to mind is the complete dissonance between this book and Time’s Crucible, with it being clear that the importance of arcs is much more subdued in the Cat’s Cradle trilogy, than it was in the Timwyrm quadrilogy. The arc driving the four novels in Timewyrm was interesting but I remember often thinking to myself ‘I can’t wait to get to the standalone Virgin novels’. The cat from the previous book wanders about and that’s it in this one, farcry from a few books ago where the arc led to turning Hitler into a god.

The book has about 6 different plot threads that don’t really wind through the book, they just sort of appear at the start and vanish until reappearing right at the end. It was nice to have a brief cameo from one of Ace’s friends from Survival right at the start, I feel referencing what has come before in the show now and then means it remains linked to the past even while forging new stories ahead. The problem with all these plot threads is that, even though it only took me two weeks to read the book, I had forgotten about half of them by the point in which they reemerge. There’s a subplot that involved two police officers that I had to go back and literally read all over again just to have basic understanding of their relevance.

There is incredibly large number of changes in setting which on the whole was quite nice: a building site, Turkey, New York, dilapidated house in some woods, and skyscrapers (possibly in london). This kept the book interesting, not just because of new scenery and things to describe, but simply because each location had a story to tell, one second the Doctor is subverting this 1984-esque corporation, next Ace is having shootouts in Turkey. Even though I talk about this with such praise I do have to address the one pitfall with that; plot. The book’s remain narrative doesn’t actually get resolved until about the last ten pages and even though it was a reasonable enough resolution, it still was a shame that there was no final confrontation, just a quick simple resolution.

I love the kind of story that was being told, an almost film noir kind of atmosphere, and it worked really well as part of a Dr Who story, I just felt that you could’ve cut down certain sections of the book, and lengthened others to create a more evenly paced and consistently interesting story. As I said at the start though, compared to the last book this was heaven, so maybe that’s why I was more fond of this one. Perhaps I’ll re-read it in seclusion from the previous one day and see if I like it as much.

[Hidekisohma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well that certainly was a chore to get through. My god. This one was just plain bad. I actually feel bad marking this with the "Doctor Who" Tag. Why? Because this wasn't a doctor who book. This was a book about some kinda dystopian thing that Andrew Cartmel wanted to write about and then haphazardly slapped the Doc's name on it so it could get published.

Ace doesn't show up until 1/3 ish ito the book and the doctor's barely even in it. he kind of pops up every now and then, strokes his chin and goes "I see...." but doesn't do anything. It's the BARE minimum to be called a doctor who book.

You may have seen this in other reviews, but yes. the fact that this book is the 2nd in the "Cat's Cradle" Trilogy means nothing. it has nothing to do with the previous book and i think the only thing connecting it is that a cat shows up in it for a few pages. Other than that, they barely even mention the first of the trilogy if they even do at all.

The story has 3000 side character to the point that i don't even know who's who. The side character took over the story and barely let the doctor even be in it. They try to build up this world about how it's a dystopian future with terrible pollution and how this guy O'hara wants to like, put people's brains in computers so the pollution won't matter.

However that's only a small part as we spend a LARGE portion of the book following randos around as they talk about how the current situation they live in is bad and then flashback to their childhoods for 20 pages. and i know it's shocking, but i don't care.

The book is wrapped up STUPIDLY fast. like the last 12 pages is the climax, the resolution, and the epilogue all in one shot and MAN does it feel rushed. And of course, the doctor doesn't DO anything. he kind of just stands there and goes "yep, i'm going to let this play out."

I CALL him the doctor, but for the short time he's in it, he doesn't even FEEL like the doctor. he feels like a random guy who just happens to be walking around.

The side characters were are terrible and boring, Ace acted really weird in this one too. Like the fun Ace from the TV series is gone and replaced with this hardened, boring no-nonsense person that i don't know WHO this was supposed to be, but it wasn't Ace.

I'm sticking by my theory that Andrew wrote this as a separate dystopian novel about pollution but couldn't sell it so when he got commissioned to write a doctor who book he just pulled it out of the closet and slapped the Who logo on it.

This book was not fun, not entertaining, and doesn't even qualify as a who book. The only POSITIVE thing about it was that the writing wasn't as convoluted as "Time's Crucible". That's seriously the only thing good i can say about it. I'm hoping Witch Mark is better because WHEW this wasn't good.

Even 2 out of 5.

[Kris · Rating 2 out of 5]

More so than any of the prior books, this probably sets up a lot of what many the VNAs would be. A dystopian future, a large array of disparate characters and The Doctor as a mysterious outsider manipulating events. These elements are probably the most interesting part (in particular the world building is quite solid if very early 90s cyberpunk).
There are however two major problems I have with this again:
First is the style but it is the total opposite problem to Time's Crucible. Whilst that long descriptions and musings but little incident. This is nothing but incident. It jumps between different scenes around where and describes in the most straightforward way possible what is happening, there are just pages with almost no dialogue or adjectives at all. As such it ends up being a rather flat reading experience.
The other is that is quite a bit of casual racism peppered throughout this. I would almost wonder if there was some point being made but lacking a narrative conceit and the fact that this occurs in others of his novels, I think it is just a blind spot.
It does do a number of interesting things and is very important setup for what comes later, but comes in the bottom half of the first six for me.

[Peer Lenné · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cartmel hat zwar einen ausschweifenden, aber dennoch angenehmen Schreibstil, so dass das Lesen dieses Romans ansich eigentlich sehr angenehm war. Er hat sich die vor allem in den späten Achzigern und frühen Neunzigern beliebten, heute fast (zurecht) vergessenen dystopischen Romane zum Vorbild genommen, in denen die Geschichte oft aus der Sicht von Nebenfiguren erzählt wird, um den Leser näher in die Emotion der Handlung zu bringen. Das ist Cartmel aber nur sehr eingeschränkt gelungen, was vor allem daran liegt, dass er so sehr darauf versessen war, den Doctor als Strippenzieher des Geschehens darzustellen, dass er dabei scheinbar vergaß, eine Umgebung zu schaffen, die dem Leser vertraut erscheint. Dadurch fällt es schwer, sich mit den Protagonisten zu identifizieren und sich von der Handlung, welche zugegeben dreimal in einen Fingerhut passsen würde, mitreißen zu lassen.
Warhead ist kein schlechtes Buch, aber einfach viel zu lang und für den weiteren Verlauf der Reihe (scheinbar) irrelevant. Cartmel gelingt es hier zwar hervoragend den Doctor als Enigma darzustellen, aber das ganze hätte als Kurzgeschichte vielleicht sehr viel besser funktioniert.

[Gareth · Rating 4 out of 5]

A New Adventure by the guy who orchestrated the really good Seventh Doctor and Ace stuff on TV? Yes please.

Warhead (along with Cartmel’s other Who books) is well known for being dark and gloomy. I think that’s an exaggeration: it’s certainly dark and pessimistic about Earth’s future, set in a Blade Runner-esque near future and telling a violent story about a psychic child and a plot to control him. The Doctor sits some of it out, but in a way where he pulls the strings, which rings true of McCoy’s version of the character. It’s a strong story for Ace, essentially working as a mercenary for the Doctor. The prose is action packed and cinematic, and it has the anti-establishment tone that helped define Andrew Cartmel’s time script editing Doctor Who.

It’s a satisfying self-contained sci-fi story, and my favourite of Cartmel’s New Adventures. Awesome stuff.

8/10

NB: Cat’s Cradle isn’t much of an arc. The TARDIS suffers some damage in Time’s Crucible, and that is somewhat referenced in the next two. That’s it. Good or bad, the three books can be read in isolation.

[Ndrwjns · Rating 4 out of 5]

At this point in the run, the New Adventures were very much still finding their feet and working out just what was possible with the range.

Warhead is a bit jarring when read in order, but provides a good taster of what some of the later books would offer.

This is Doctor Who as directed by Paul Verhoeven, and is therefore probably not to everyone’s taste.
Andrew Cartmel’s prose style is a revelation, and all of his characters are brilliantly drawn. However, most of them are hard to like, including the Doctor and Ace. Ace is almost unrecognisable from the teenage girl of season 26, and in some ways it’s easier to regard this as a the more mature and battle-weary version of the character from later in the range. The Doctor is even more transformed, seemingly stripped of any compassion that might get in the way of his plan. This version of the Doctor is never dull, and his absence from much of the first half of the book is keenly felt, but he’s often just not very nice.

Few things are faster than depictions of the future, but Cartmel does a pretty good job of presenting a ‘day after tomorrow’ world, with a mixture of dilapidated current technology and miraculous innovations. There is now humour at all, resulting in a book that seems so desperate to be regarded as ‘adult’ that is happy to ditch such niceties and therefore feels unrelentingly bleak.

This is a good book, and one that can be enjoyed with zero prior knowledge of Doctor Who, but I hope that the range soon injects some of the lighter elements that have always been a key part of the show.

[John Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting read. Feels like this is where Cartmel always wanted the 7th Doctor to go. He shows up in seemingly unconnected people's lives gathering information, he gives Ace a life threatening mission without telling her why and then leaves her to it and you just see her side of the story for a while. He seems more mysterious and dangerous than usual, not a single scene is from his point of view so you're always seeing different people react to this odd small man who seems to know everything. The book spends a lot of time illustrating how hellish this future world is and different subsections of its culture, maybe a little too much considering the uncomfortable casual mentions of child prostitution and death, so yeah this is definitely R rated. But overall I'd say it was an engaging story and I always wanted to know where it was going next.

Also in case you were wondering this book has absolutely no connection to the previous one, expect the cat shows up in one scene with no explanation then never again.

[Domiron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really, really excellent characterisation of both the Seventh Doctor and Ace (which makes sense since it is effectively the main person who, as far as I understand, invented them for TV).
Cartmel also writes very well, with distinctly unamateurish prose. I don't know if this just stands out with other books in the series but I do think this is generally good writing for any book. There's a great deal of confidence to it, which doesn't always work in its favour though. There are a few tacky images that are presented with as much pride and enthisiasm as everything else, which does feel a little off.
The worst moment, which I think is the single reason this isn't 5 O'star, is a particularly bizarre argument. The points on both sides of the argument are bizarre enough, though in a tolerable way, however but its conclusion is beyond anything..
Timewyrm Revelation definitely went beyond what Doctor Who TV stories were, but I think this here (compared to how singular Revelation was) seems like a proper, repeatable kind of new school story.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The least Doctor Who of these Doctor Who books I've read so far, Warhead is also one of the better ones. It feels more like a Paul Verhoeven film than a Doctor Who television serial, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's a very solid dystopian thriller that just happens to star Ace and The Doctor.

This supposed "trilogy" feels even more loosely connected than the Timewyrm series did, but after the slog that was Time's Crucible I was glad to have something completely detached from it. It's not a perfect book, I lost count of how many times Cartmel had a dying character flash back to their youth in vivid detail during their moment of death and for something with the structure of a technothriller it's a bit handwavey on the tech side, but it handles mystery a hell of a lot better than most of this series has and I found it to be a real page turner, so I can easily forgive that.

[The Bookseller · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I enjoyed the world building, portrayal of the Doctor and social political climate, I just found this novel rather boring. I think the main problem is that Andrew Cartmel spends a lot of time setting up this novel. However, it's too much set up.

I found myself halfway though the novel and still it felt like it was setting up a grander story. I wanted to see the characters deal with the problems presented rather than being kept in the dark about them.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

While it's vision of the future is...pretty depressing (and occasionally depressingly likely) I did really enjoy this one. Ace and the Doctor aren't really that involved in the plot until later on but I liked the stuff showing different characters before they become the main focus. There is also a lot of build-up in this one before the pay-off. I was personally satisfied with the ending and how everything tied together but I don't know if everyone would be.

[Campbell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Look, this was undoubtedly better than the first Cat's Cradle book, in that it actually made sense and didn't drive me insane. However, it had too many characters for my liking and the ending felt very rushed; it felt at points like Cartmel was trying to do a bit too much, and none of the ideas were ever fully developed, which was unfortunate because it had some great things to say, but not enough pages to do it in.

[Stephen Wood · Rating 2 out of 5]

Philosophically very rich and interesting (its politics are sharp, the Doctor-as-chessmaster is an appealing take, the disconnected narrative heightens his alienness, the endlessly bleak future is a bold and cool departure from the TV show)… but while I can really get into the ideas and analysis, it was just such a slog to read.

[Michael Holloway · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book.

But it is not a Doctor Who book. The characterisation, the tone, the structure are decidedly not Doctor Who; you could change the names of the Doctor and Ace, and it would not make any material difference.

It was still a fun read though.

[Arcturus · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5! Really enjoyed this one, although I have to say Time's Crucible is still my favorite so far. Pretty dark in a lot of places, some heavy themes, but overall a very uplifting message, and a very fun book.

[City Mist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Andrew Cartmel's attention to detail in his descriptions aids in the development of the dystopian setting, but the overall plot feels more like something inspired by Tomb Raider or 2000 AD than a Doctor Who story.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

‘Okay,’ said O’Hara. ‘Memo to all departments, special attention Social and Biological Stock Acquisition. Attach copies of the article and get a hard copy for me.’

‘Contents of memo?’ prompted Jack Blood politely, waving his knives.

[C S · Rating 4 out of 5]

The manipulations of the shadowy Doctor lead to the downfall of an Orwellian corporation in this dystopic, gritty page-turner.

[Jamie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is supposed to be part two of a three part series within the New Adventures series. I know I've read them out of sequence again, but I can't see any connection with the other two novels

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Far more entertaining than a DW novel has any right to be. It's nice to abandon the standard template sometimes, you know?