The Web | Seek-Locate-Destroy

by Gary Russell

Genres: Science Fiction

135 pages, Hardcover

Published March 27, 2023

About the author

Gary Russell is a British freelance writer, producer and former child actor. As a writer, he is best known for his work in connection with the television series Doctor Who and its spin-offs in other media. As an actor, he is best known for playing Dick Kirrin in the British 1978 television series The Famous Five.

Reviews

[Jon Arnold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gary Russell makes a smart structural decision early on here, shifting the opening of Seek-Locate-Destroy to the front of the book and moving other Federation based scenes into the chronological narrative of The Web. This becomes a stronger, more cohesive story than might be expected from two mid-season episodes. It also has the effect of adding an extra underlying tension to The Web, adding the threat of the Federation to a story which relied upon memorable imagery but otherwise was a fairly straight Nation survival narrative, and having Seek-Locate-Destroy play out over a longer time suits the introduction of the long-term gameplaying of Servalan perfectly.

[Adam Sharples · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Web was never my favorite episode in season 1. There was just something about it, some unknown which made the whole premise of the shriveled dude in the vat and two clones on a planet of "Decimas", a bit odd. And why did the little savages want to get into the complex???? And there was a loose reference to Auron and the Lost, but I just never got it. In this book though, number 3 in the Origins collection, Gary has managed to put a lot of backstory which makes this episode suddenly all make sense. The Decimas are now real, they talk to each other and we get the sense of a civilisation in it's infancy. With Servalan, I used to see her as just an evil character. But here we discover she is a power hungry, sexually manipulative, narcissistic sociopath. The differing perspectives of Blake and Travis and the driver behind Travis' endless quest to end him was also fleshed out. To be honest, it made me like the character of Servalans lap dog even better.

I agree with the other reviewer in that Russell's choice of re-editing the stories, to create tension, which lends itself well to this format, was a great idea. It's also why there that even though there are two distinct episodes here, the two are interlaced, so unlike that previous two books, there is no visible delimiter between the two.

Enjoyable

[Alex Sarll]

This was a sufficiently unappealing prospect that I'd distracted myself by getting into a whole different set of Blake's 7 novels instead - Paul Darrow's, which obviously make the story all about Avon. Now, as we know, Blake's 7 is really only 80-85% about Avon, so that was a sufficiently wonky take to prepare myself for Gary 'Why does he keep getting work' Russell. And, expectations suitably lowered after Cornell and Platt's opening volumes, this is...fine? There's some plodding prose in places, and especially early on a few irritating internal repetitions, but working from an existing story reveals Russell as at least a reasonably competent adaptor. Pulling the opening of Seek-Locate-Destroy, and thus the introduction of Servalan, back to the beginning makes The Web feel slightly less like the utter filler it is, but leaves the arrival of Travis to kick things up a gear later. And if Russell's attempts to fill out the stories largely leave us with a bunch of uninspired fluff about the backstory of the various generic SF bods on the nameless Web planet, at least he hasn't felt compelled to fill them with clunking in-jokes. Also, right, you'll never believe this, but apparently Servalan fucks! A pleasantly surprising read if only by dint of being bearably unremarkable.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this to be the weakest of the novelisations so far, not really taking its source material anywhere wildly interesting or new, and I thought it was a bit too obvious about signalling what's to come for all these characters at times. That being said, it's still a decent read, and there are some parts I really liked: the second conversation between Servalan and Travis especially, where the narrator traces every evaluation she makes and vulnerability she spots to exploit.

[Marcel Driel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written and engaging but the episodes it covered weren’t the best of the season. The book is probably better!

[Constant_reader_UK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant