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Adventures of the Second Doctor #60
Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice
Resilience. Remembrance. Restoration.
Whatever the cost.
Hurtling through a vortex beyond time and space is a police box that’s not a police box. The TARDIS has carried the Doctor (as portrayed by Patrick Troughton) and his companions, Jamie and Zoe, to all sorts of places, but now, when they don’t want to go anywhere, the TARDIS makes a decision for them. Like it or not, they’re coming in for a landing, who knows where or when…
The Wheel. A ring of ice and metal turning around a moon of Saturn, home to a mining colony supplying a resource-hungry Earth. It’s a bad place to live—and a worse place to grow up.
The colony has been plagued by problems. Maybe it’s only a run of bad luck, but the equipment failures and thefts of resources have been increasing. And there are stories among the children of mysterious creatures glimpsed aboard the Wheel. Some of the younger workers are even refusing to go down into the warren-like mines any more.
And then one of them, surfing Saturn’s rings, saves an enigmatic blue box from destruction.
Once on the Wheel, the Doctor and his companions face a critical situation when they become suspected by some as the source of the ongoing sabotage.
They soon find themselves caught in a mystery that goes all the way back to the creation of the solar system. A mystery that could destroy the Wheel—and kill them all...
Whatever the cost.
Hurtling through a vortex beyond time and space is a police box that’s not a police box. The TARDIS has carried the Doctor (as portrayed by Patrick Troughton) and his companions, Jamie and Zoe, to all sorts of places, but now, when they don’t want to go anywhere, the TARDIS makes a decision for them. Like it or not, they’re coming in for a landing, who knows where or when…
The Wheel. A ring of ice and metal turning around a moon of Saturn, home to a mining colony supplying a resource-hungry Earth. It’s a bad place to live—and a worse place to grow up.
The colony has been plagued by problems. Maybe it’s only a run of bad luck, but the equipment failures and thefts of resources have been increasing. And there are stories among the children of mysterious creatures glimpsed aboard the Wheel. Some of the younger workers are even refusing to go down into the warren-like mines any more.
And then one of them, surfing Saturn’s rings, saves an enigmatic blue box from destruction.
Once on the Wheel, the Doctor and his companions face a critical situation when they become suspected by some as the source of the ongoing sabotage.
They soon find themselves caught in a mystery that goes all the way back to the creation of the solar system. A mystery that could destroy the Wheel—and kill them all...
Paperback
First published August 16, 2012
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About the author
Stephen Baxter
403 books2,608 followersStephen Baxter is a trained engineer with degrees from Cambridge (mathematics) and Southampton Universities (doctorate in aeroengineering research). Baxter is the winner of the British Science Fiction Award and the Locus Award, as well as being a nominee for an Arthur C. Clarke Award, most recently for Manifold: Time. His novel Voyage won the Sidewise Award for Best Alternate History Novel of the Year; he also won the John W. Campbell Award and the Philip K. Dick Award for his novel The Time Ships. He is currently working on his next novel, a collaboration with Sir Arthur C. Clarke. Mr. Baxter lives in Prestwood, England.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 281 reviews
August 12, 2023
Ever since I started watching the second doctor’s surviving stories I’ve completely fallen in love with this cosmic hobo, particularly in combination with his companions Jamie and Zoe. So when this book caught my eye, I very much wanted to read it.
What’s most important in this kind of book is the characterization of these beloved characters. And overall I think it worked out pretty well. It’s unfortunate though that the Doctor and Jamie are kept separate for most of the story as their chemistry is such a vital element of their success in the original series.
As is expected of a good Doctor Who story it features an engaging mystery with a subtle alien presence, while focusing mostly on the human characters. It’s pretty much a base under siege story, an absolute classic kind of story the second doctor’s run was known for. So the plot definitely has some potential. Though the execution does feel a bit lacking, there’s never a sense of urgency or even real danger until we get to the very end of the book. The addition of the little mischievous blue dolls also reminds me a bit of the smurfs.
It very much feels like a story from this time period, with a budget the show back then probably wouldn’t have been able to properly do justice. Overall, not a bad story but I can’t help but feel that there was potential for more.
What’s most important in this kind of book is the characterization of these beloved characters. And overall I think it worked out pretty well. It’s unfortunate though that the Doctor and Jamie are kept separate for most of the story as their chemistry is such a vital element of their success in the original series.
As is expected of a good Doctor Who story it features an engaging mystery with a subtle alien presence, while focusing mostly on the human characters. It’s pretty much a base under siege story, an absolute classic kind of story the second doctor’s run was known for. So the plot definitely has some potential. Though the execution does feel a bit lacking, there’s never a sense of urgency or even real danger until we get to the very end of the book. The addition of the little mischievous blue dolls also reminds me a bit of the smurfs.
It very much feels like a story from this time period, with a budget the show back then probably wouldn’t have been able to properly do justice. Overall, not a bad story but I can’t help but feel that there was potential for more.
December 24, 2012
The Second Doctor, Jamie, Zoe, written by Stephen Baxter. A sure winner right? Nope.
While the voices of the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe were great, the storyline was bland, the idea bland and the execution was bland. Stephen Baxter can write much better and past Doctor adventures have been much much better.
Disappointed.
While the voices of the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe were great, the storyline was bland, the idea bland and the execution was bland. Stephen Baxter can write much better and past Doctor adventures have been much much better.
Disappointed.
April 3, 2016
I am just as surprised as you are that I’m reading another Doctor Who novel! As I explained when I reviewed
Engines of War
, media tie-ins are not my thing. Especially for something as iconic as Doctor Who, I need the actors to pull off that characterization. Maybe I should check out the audio plays—I think I would genuinely enjoy those. So what compelled me to pick this up when I spied it in the library stacks? It has been a while since I read anything by Stephen Baxter—his hard SF novels fascinated me as an adolescent, but his flat characterization started to bore me as I grew older. I was curious, then, to see what a Doctor Who story as told by Baxter would bring.
The Wheel of Ice is a Second Doctor story with Jamie and Zoe as companions. The TARDIS takes them to the rings of Saturn, slightly in our future, where humans are preparing to mine the moon Mnemosyme for its abnormally rich deposits of bernalium. The TARDIS has detected a “relative continuum displacement zone” and refuses to take off until the Doctor does something about it. But that means navigating the politics of interstellar profit lines and trying to communicate with a billions-year-old, failing artificial intelligence with tremendous guilt. Oh, and Jamie goes skiing or something.
I love the atmosphere of this story. It definitely feels Doctor Whoish, and it feels Second Doctory, with his penchant for history, science, and generally trying to avoid authority figures as much as possible. There are plenty of subplots and underlying themes about social organization, surveillance states, corporations overreaching themselves, etc.; this is as socially conscious as any other Doctor Who story. And even the threat is that most classic of Doctor Who monsters: an alien being that just wants to go home.
Alas, The Wheel of Ice does not serve up an equally enthralling story. The plot feels like one of those TV serials that got stretched for four twenty-minute episodes when it could have been two (and in the Second Doctor’s day they still sometimes even did six, yikes!). There’s a lot of aimless gadding about and repetitive trips to Mnemosyme; in general, the pacing just feels off. I am also disappointed by the portrayal of the human antagonist, Florian Hart, who transforms from a thorn in the side to a megalomaniac with very little prompting. Doctor Who is at its worst when its human villains are cartoonish, and having a more nuanced antagonist would have done a lot for this book.
One thing that intrigues me about this book: it’s very odd reading a Second Doctor story written in the present day compared to watching a Second Doctor story from the 1960s. The Doctors and their adventures are as much a product of the times as they are a product of the actors and writers involved. Baxter is inevitably influenced by twenty-first century events and ideas, such as the Internet, that shade and otherwise nudge this story into dimensions not necessarily seen in contemporary Second Doctor stories. I do not have the requisite experience in reading tie-ins to know, but I’d be curious if anyone has ever taken a closer look at this phenomenon—that is, has anyone done an analysis comparing contemporary stories with stories written about a previous Doctor decades afterwards?
Largely unremarkable, The Wheel of Ice was a welcome distraction—a cold, wet, March “beach read” if you will. I don’t regret suppressing my urge, as it came up next off my to-read shelf, to put it on the pile of books to return to the library without even cracking the cover. But it’s not how I like to experience my Doctor Who, and I suspect that even regular readers of these novels won’t find this one particular energizing or unique.
The Wheel of Ice is a Second Doctor story with Jamie and Zoe as companions. The TARDIS takes them to the rings of Saturn, slightly in our future, where humans are preparing to mine the moon Mnemosyme for its abnormally rich deposits of bernalium. The TARDIS has detected a “relative continuum displacement zone” and refuses to take off until the Doctor does something about it. But that means navigating the politics of interstellar profit lines and trying to communicate with a billions-year-old, failing artificial intelligence with tremendous guilt. Oh, and Jamie goes skiing or something.
I love the atmosphere of this story. It definitely feels Doctor Whoish, and it feels Second Doctory, with his penchant for history, science, and generally trying to avoid authority figures as much as possible. There are plenty of subplots and underlying themes about social organization, surveillance states, corporations overreaching themselves, etc.; this is as socially conscious as any other Doctor Who story. And even the threat is that most classic of Doctor Who monsters: an alien being that just wants to go home.
Alas, The Wheel of Ice does not serve up an equally enthralling story. The plot feels like one of those TV serials that got stretched for four twenty-minute episodes when it could have been two (and in the Second Doctor’s day they still sometimes even did six, yikes!). There’s a lot of aimless gadding about and repetitive trips to Mnemosyme; in general, the pacing just feels off. I am also disappointed by the portrayal of the human antagonist, Florian Hart, who transforms from a thorn in the side to a megalomaniac with very little prompting. Doctor Who is at its worst when its human villains are cartoonish, and having a more nuanced antagonist would have done a lot for this book.
One thing that intrigues me about this book: it’s very odd reading a Second Doctor story written in the present day compared to watching a Second Doctor story from the 1960s. The Doctors and their adventures are as much a product of the times as they are a product of the actors and writers involved. Baxter is inevitably influenced by twenty-first century events and ideas, such as the Internet, that shade and otherwise nudge this story into dimensions not necessarily seen in contemporary Second Doctor stories. I do not have the requisite experience in reading tie-ins to know, but I’d be curious if anyone has ever taken a closer look at this phenomenon—that is, has anyone done an analysis comparing contemporary stories with stories written about a previous Doctor decades afterwards?
Largely unremarkable, The Wheel of Ice was a welcome distraction—a cold, wet, March “beach read” if you will. I don’t regret suppressing my urge, as it came up next off my to-read shelf, to put it on the pile of books to return to the library without even cracking the cover. But it’s not how I like to experience my Doctor Who, and I suspect that even regular readers of these novels won’t find this one particular energizing or unique.
April 21, 2015
The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive at The Wheel of Ice, a mining operation on the moons of Saturn, in this adventure which could have been wrenched from black and white television broadcasts in 1969. The characterisation is perfect, with all three leads (particularly Troughton) captured so well, so as they dash down various corridors and dark tunnels, that any fan can picture them doing it as we’ve seen those images so many times before. Of course this being a novel, it’s far more ambitious than anything which could have been achieved in 1960’s television. The huge base with many different bubbles and areas, and the armies of blue children and blue men would all have been impossible to capture in this era of ‘Doctor Who’. What’s more interesting though is that The Doctor actually stays around for a little while at the end to try and sort everything out, something classic ‘Doctor Who’ noticeably never did on TV. It makes a nice change, with The Doctor using his large intellect and grasp of history to put forward ideas and raise points of concern and lay the groundwork to set them on their way. Not long after he does slip away, of course he does, there’s a world of adventure out there and I think ‘The War Games’ is next.
What works less well is the execution of the plot. The plot itself is hoary and sturdy, torn from the pages of dozens of Victorian melodramas – the factory/mine boss who places profit and productivity before all else, and the rebellious youth she sorely underestimates. Unfortunately the less good aspects of Victorian melodrama have also been dragged forward, with the villain being so calculating and remorsefully evil that you half expect by the end for her to have spouted an elegant moustache with which to turn. I criticise it as it did seem so wildly over the top, but then over the top villains do fit beautifully into the Troughton era.
I particularly like that ‘The Wheel of Ice’ is not a science fiction novel in the 2012 (the year of publication) sense, but a science fiction novel based on science fiction as perceived by the Patrick Troughton era of Doctor Who. So that whilst some claims about the future look absolutely outlandish, other things which are not science fiction but very much part of our present seem to have been missed altogether. So we’re in the latter 21st century on a base in the fantastical locale of the rings of Saturn, and yet digital technology as we know it doesn’t exist at all. In fact one of the characters is so suspicious of embryonic digital technology she grew up with (?!) that she insisted on having every document printed out on paper. The dissonance, the fact that it’s based on a vision of the future now elapsed, makes for a very pleasing historical science fiction. And why not? ‘Doctor Who’ is a perfect source for this as all (most, anyway) eras are different and have different visions of the future. What’s more. ‘Doctor Who’ remains culturally relevant. So why not extrapolate that version of the future out (even if it’s sometimes inconsistent within its own eras) and create stories set in that universe? The possibilities of historical science fiction are endless.
And, really, why stop at ‘Doctor Who’? I know that there were comic book artists delighted when a rights issue were sorted and they were able to draw for Adam West’s version of ‘Batman’. But why aren’t new novels being written about what happened on Moonbase Alpha after the moon spun out of orbit fifteen years ago? Or catching up with an incongruous, ageless English gentleman and his kitten-heeled lovely young companion still fighting robots in a weird psychedelic 2014 London? Or seeing what Adam Adammant thinks after another forty years in hibernation? Come on, fans of old genre television, this is truly a call to arms!
What works less well is the execution of the plot. The plot itself is hoary and sturdy, torn from the pages of dozens of Victorian melodramas – the factory/mine boss who places profit and productivity before all else, and the rebellious youth she sorely underestimates. Unfortunately the less good aspects of Victorian melodrama have also been dragged forward, with the villain being so calculating and remorsefully evil that you half expect by the end for her to have spouted an elegant moustache with which to turn. I criticise it as it did seem so wildly over the top, but then over the top villains do fit beautifully into the Troughton era.
I particularly like that ‘The Wheel of Ice’ is not a science fiction novel in the 2012 (the year of publication) sense, but a science fiction novel based on science fiction as perceived by the Patrick Troughton era of Doctor Who. So that whilst some claims about the future look absolutely outlandish, other things which are not science fiction but very much part of our present seem to have been missed altogether. So we’re in the latter 21st century on a base in the fantastical locale of the rings of Saturn, and yet digital technology as we know it doesn’t exist at all. In fact one of the characters is so suspicious of embryonic digital technology she grew up with (?!) that she insisted on having every document printed out on paper. The dissonance, the fact that it’s based on a vision of the future now elapsed, makes for a very pleasing historical science fiction. And why not? ‘Doctor Who’ is a perfect source for this as all (most, anyway) eras are different and have different visions of the future. What’s more. ‘Doctor Who’ remains culturally relevant. So why not extrapolate that version of the future out (even if it’s sometimes inconsistent within its own eras) and create stories set in that universe? The possibilities of historical science fiction are endless.
And, really, why stop at ‘Doctor Who’? I know that there were comic book artists delighted when a rights issue were sorted and they were able to draw for Adam West’s version of ‘Batman’. But why aren’t new novels being written about what happened on Moonbase Alpha after the moon spun out of orbit fifteen years ago? Or catching up with an incongruous, ageless English gentleman and his kitten-heeled lovely young companion still fighting robots in a weird psychedelic 2014 London? Or seeing what Adam Adammant thinks after another forty years in hibernation? Come on, fans of old genre television, this is truly a call to arms!
August 5, 2014
Those of a certain age recall late Saturday nights on your local PBS station (if you were lucky) devoted to a BBC phenomenon. The show was called "Doctor Who", and it has the distinction of being the longest-running TV show ever. (I have no idea if that is an accurate statement or not, but I'm running with it…)
I remember loving the show---its cheesy special effects, ridiculous costumes, cheap set designs, and incredibly hammy British acting---even though I more often than not fell asleep before the ending, mainly because PBS aired what was originally four or five 30-minute programs (minus commercial breaks) as one long two-hour episode. It was too much for my feeble human brain to handle.
The show is still running today, and it has garnered quite a following. The f/x are far better, and the acting has improved somewhat, but what consistently drew fans to the classic episodes as well as the new ones is great writing. The same can be said for the literally hundreds of paperback tie-in novels that have been published over the decades. Granted, I can't vouch for all of them, as I have not read them all myself.
Recently, some well-known British science fiction authors have penned a few Doctor Who novels, to great acclaim. Stephen Baxter, an award-winning engineer/mathematician-turned-novelist, published "The Wheel of Ice" in 2012.
Fans of the show will be pleased to know that the Doctor in this book is the Doctor played by Patrick Troughton, the one who bore a striking resemblance to Moe Howard, whose companions were a young Scotsman named Jamie and a girl from our future named Zoe. These shows aired during the mid- to late 60s, and they were trippy.
In this "episode", the TARDIS lands on a mining station on a moon of Saturn, where the colonists---especially the children---are practically being used as slave labor by a mega-corporation that is extracting a rare and powerful element. There have been a recent spate of sightings of little blue men in the mines, but the corporate bigwigs dismiss them as mass delusions. The situation escalates when equipment and materials begin to go missing, and the corporation immediately blames the labor force of sabotage in an attempt to stop mining.
The Doctor, of course, quickly discovers that an ancient alien presence buried beneath the surface of the moon is the culprit, which is all well and good, but he must also deal with the reprehensible issue of child labor and a megalomaniacal corporate administrator who is solely motivated by profit, at the expense of worker's lives and the safety of the solar system. Rather weighty issues, to be sure.
"The Wheel of Ice" is as fun and endearing as a classic episode, and it will certainly be a must-read for die-hard Who fans, but it is also a decently-written science fiction story written by someone who knows what he is doing.
I remember loving the show---its cheesy special effects, ridiculous costumes, cheap set designs, and incredibly hammy British acting---even though I more often than not fell asleep before the ending, mainly because PBS aired what was originally four or five 30-minute programs (minus commercial breaks) as one long two-hour episode. It was too much for my feeble human brain to handle.
The show is still running today, and it has garnered quite a following. The f/x are far better, and the acting has improved somewhat, but what consistently drew fans to the classic episodes as well as the new ones is great writing. The same can be said for the literally hundreds of paperback tie-in novels that have been published over the decades. Granted, I can't vouch for all of them, as I have not read them all myself.
Recently, some well-known British science fiction authors have penned a few Doctor Who novels, to great acclaim. Stephen Baxter, an award-winning engineer/mathematician-turned-novelist, published "The Wheel of Ice" in 2012.
Fans of the show will be pleased to know that the Doctor in this book is the Doctor played by Patrick Troughton, the one who bore a striking resemblance to Moe Howard, whose companions were a young Scotsman named Jamie and a girl from our future named Zoe. These shows aired during the mid- to late 60s, and they were trippy.
In this "episode", the TARDIS lands on a mining station on a moon of Saturn, where the colonists---especially the children---are practically being used as slave labor by a mega-corporation that is extracting a rare and powerful element. There have been a recent spate of sightings of little blue men in the mines, but the corporate bigwigs dismiss them as mass delusions. The situation escalates when equipment and materials begin to go missing, and the corporation immediately blames the labor force of sabotage in an attempt to stop mining.
The Doctor, of course, quickly discovers that an ancient alien presence buried beneath the surface of the moon is the culprit, which is all well and good, but he must also deal with the reprehensible issue of child labor and a megalomaniacal corporate administrator who is solely motivated by profit, at the expense of worker's lives and the safety of the solar system. Rather weighty issues, to be sure.
"The Wheel of Ice" is as fun and endearing as a classic episode, and it will certainly be a must-read for die-hard Who fans, but it is also a decently-written science fiction story written by someone who knows what he is doing.
April 7, 2013
I've got to give the tie-in line of Doctor Who novels credit -- at least the line is willing (once a year or so) to take a risk and give the fans something different from the standard tie-in novel.
First it was Michael Moorcock playing in the Doctor Who sandbox and now it's Stephen Baxter. And the line is even willing to allow the big-name sci-fi and fantasy authors to play with other Doctor/companion teams besides the ones currently seen in the latest batch of episodes. That alone intrigues me enough that I'm willing to put aside my preconceptions and at least give these annual offerings a chance.
In the case of The Wheel of Ice, I have to admit I wondered how Baxter's usual hard-SF style would fit with the less-than-hard-SF style of the classic series and, specifically, the second Doctor's era. For the most part, it's a successful hybrid. The result is a hard-SF based base-under-seige story in which Baxter comes closer than many other writers in the Doctor Who fold have come to capturing the second Doctor on the printed page.
The Wheel of Ice feels like a six-part Patrick Troughton era story, with all the strengths and weaknesses. The TARDIS trio of the Doctor, Jaime and Zoe come across well on the printed page and while the central dilemma and threat facing the TARDIS crew and a group of isolated humans is a bit more modern feeling, it all still works well enough to keep the pages turning. Baxter even throws in some continuity references to the second Doctor era to make fans happy.
All that said, the story isn't perfect. There's a lot of shuttling back and forth between various locations. And while that might work on the TV screen, in the novel it becomes a bit tedious. Add in that Baxter tries to translate Jaime's Scottish accent to the printed page and there were moments that the novel became a bit frustrating.
First it was Michael Moorcock playing in the Doctor Who sandbox and now it's Stephen Baxter. And the line is even willing to allow the big-name sci-fi and fantasy authors to play with other Doctor/companion teams besides the ones currently seen in the latest batch of episodes. That alone intrigues me enough that I'm willing to put aside my preconceptions and at least give these annual offerings a chance.
In the case of The Wheel of Ice, I have to admit I wondered how Baxter's usual hard-SF style would fit with the less-than-hard-SF style of the classic series and, specifically, the second Doctor's era. For the most part, it's a successful hybrid. The result is a hard-SF based base-under-seige story in which Baxter comes closer than many other writers in the Doctor Who fold have come to capturing the second Doctor on the printed page.
The Wheel of Ice feels like a six-part Patrick Troughton era story, with all the strengths and weaknesses. The TARDIS trio of the Doctor, Jaime and Zoe come across well on the printed page and while the central dilemma and threat facing the TARDIS crew and a group of isolated humans is a bit more modern feeling, it all still works well enough to keep the pages turning. Baxter even throws in some continuity references to the second Doctor era to make fans happy.
All that said, the story isn't perfect. There's a lot of shuttling back and forth between various locations. And while that might work on the TV screen, in the novel it becomes a bit tedious. Add in that Baxter tries to translate Jaime's Scottish accent to the printed page and there were moments that the novel became a bit frustrating.
September 2, 2012
This was really good in the end, but for entirely the opposite reasons from the ones I expected. The whole thing reads like a really good, utterly faithful second-Doctor base-under-siege story written by someone who plots intelligently, writes excellent prose and dialogue and has a bit of a thing (but only a bit of one) for space hardware.
There's absolutely no embarrassment about writing a Who novel (I counted explicit references to more than a dozen 20th-century stories, from The Daleks' Master Plan to Black Orchid) but there's also no attempt to innovate, subvert, revolutionise or otherwise step outside the box. It's just a very very good Doctor Who story, written well.
I like it a lot, but it's not really what I want from this range of Doctor Who books (if range is what it is) by big-name SF authors. I was hoping for something a lot larger-scale and more conceptually daring. Admittedly there's a hundred-million-year subplot involving the creation of the rings of Saturn, but it accounts for a handful of pages. I was hoping the whole book would be like that.
It's so good, though, that I can't honestly call it a disappointment.
There's absolutely no embarrassment about writing a Who novel (I counted explicit references to more than a dozen 20th-century stories, from The Daleks' Master Plan to Black Orchid) but there's also no attempt to innovate, subvert, revolutionise or otherwise step outside the box. It's just a very very good Doctor Who story, written well.
I like it a lot, but it's not really what I want from this range of Doctor Who books (if range is what it is) by big-name SF authors. I was hoping for something a lot larger-scale and more conceptually daring. Admittedly there's a hundred-million-year subplot involving the creation of the rings of Saturn, but it accounts for a handful of pages. I was hoping the whole book would be like that.
It's so good, though, that I can't honestly call it a disappointment.
February 10, 2013
Although this was published in 2012, it is a story of the second Doctor with companions Zoe and Jammie. The story is reminiscent of the Doctor Who adventure in which Zoe first appears, The Wheel in Space, which aired in 1968. The recordings of it, unfortunately, were ‘misplaced’ by the BBC and it now exists only in fragments. It, too, takes place in the future, in space, and features the rare element ‘bernalium.’
In Baxter’s tale of the Doctor, the TARDIS detects a ‘Relative Continuum Displacement Zone’ and interrupts their journey in order for the Doctor to investigate. They materialize in the rings of Saturn where a mining colony is harvesting one of the gas giant’s icy moons for bernalium. This is annomalous. Beranalium is almost unknown in our solar system. Why such a concentration of it exists here and why there are indications of time travel are the mysteries the Doctor must solve.
The second Doctor was my first, the one I first watched on TV, and I could picture him and his companions in this story. If I had not already been familiar with them, I doubt Baxter’s characterizations in this book would have been sufficient, though. This may have been intentional. If you did not already know these characters, you would not be reading this book, and any development the author tried to do, might conflict with your already established mental images of them.
The other characters were also sketched just enough to get an idea of who they were. Perhaps the one developed most was MMAC, an artificial intelligence embodied in a large construction machine. I found the idea of this gentle android with a heavy Scottish accent endearing. His backstory about having been raised to believe he was human was intriguing.
The villain in this story is a beautiful but otherwise loathsome corporate lackey, whose only goal is the efficient extraction of bernalium. She’s a bit one-dimensional and not easily believable, but she suffices for the sake of the story.
The setting is, I think typical of Stephen Baxter, at least judging from the few books I’ve read of his. It goes into detail about aerospace type science elements of the story, especially about Saturn’s rings and moons, in this case. There are other similarities with his other science fiction, too.
I’ve read a few books by Baxter, and I’ve always found his prose it a bit, well, ‘stiff’ for my taste. I also noticed the inclusion of something called skinsuits, clear, lightweight spacesuits, which I’ve seen in at least one of his other books. I imagine them to be something like cellophane but with amazing thermal properties. They don’t make sense to me, so much so that I find them distracting from the story.
Other than that, I found this to be a well-done Doctor Who tale. It held my interest and I found the read enjoyable. But then, I’m a fan of the Doctor. He’s a kind of anti-action hero in that violence is never his first and best solution to a problem. I find this refreshing.
I recommend the book to all Whovians, especially those who remember the second Doctor.
In Baxter’s tale of the Doctor, the TARDIS detects a ‘Relative Continuum Displacement Zone’ and interrupts their journey in order for the Doctor to investigate. They materialize in the rings of Saturn where a mining colony is harvesting one of the gas giant’s icy moons for bernalium. This is annomalous. Beranalium is almost unknown in our solar system. Why such a concentration of it exists here and why there are indications of time travel are the mysteries the Doctor must solve.
The second Doctor was my first, the one I first watched on TV, and I could picture him and his companions in this story. If I had not already been familiar with them, I doubt Baxter’s characterizations in this book would have been sufficient, though. This may have been intentional. If you did not already know these characters, you would not be reading this book, and any development the author tried to do, might conflict with your already established mental images of them.
The other characters were also sketched just enough to get an idea of who they were. Perhaps the one developed most was MMAC, an artificial intelligence embodied in a large construction machine. I found the idea of this gentle android with a heavy Scottish accent endearing. His backstory about having been raised to believe he was human was intriguing.
The villain in this story is a beautiful but otherwise loathsome corporate lackey, whose only goal is the efficient extraction of bernalium. She’s a bit one-dimensional and not easily believable, but she suffices for the sake of the story.
The setting is, I think typical of Stephen Baxter, at least judging from the few books I’ve read of his. It goes into detail about aerospace type science elements of the story, especially about Saturn’s rings and moons, in this case. There are other similarities with his other science fiction, too.
I’ve read a few books by Baxter, and I’ve always found his prose it a bit, well, ‘stiff’ for my taste. I also noticed the inclusion of something called skinsuits, clear, lightweight spacesuits, which I’ve seen in at least one of his other books. I imagine them to be something like cellophane but with amazing thermal properties. They don’t make sense to me, so much so that I find them distracting from the story.
Other than that, I found this to be a well-done Doctor Who tale. It held my interest and I found the read enjoyable. But then, I’m a fan of the Doctor. He’s a kind of anti-action hero in that violence is never his first and best solution to a problem. I find this refreshing.
I recommend the book to all Whovians, especially those who remember the second Doctor.
July 12, 2014
So this is an adventure with the 2nd Doctor, Jamie & Zoe. While I have seen a wee bit of the 2nd Doctor both companions are while not unknown new to me.
So what do you get if you get a real scifi writer write a Doctor Who tale?- The name Stephen Baxter is well known as scifi writer but has not before meddled in the Who-verse. And he does so in a splendid way and had written the story in such a way it is a pleasure to just read it and suddenly find yourself at the end of the book before I even had the urge of putting it down. Which in itself I find quite a brilliant thing to be able to do when you are a writer. This makes me curious about his own creations which will now most certainly be looked into on the basis of the skill shown in telling a book in an established universe. Writing for Doctor Who one must always be aware of the mad fans, the ones who are really bonkers and have been known to terrorise the odd writer because of what she did and they did not agree with her.
Anyhow the Doctor, Jamie & Zoe are pulled out of flight with the TARDIS and end up somewhere in the rings of Saturn. A timey whimey thing has stopped the TARDIS in its tracks and revert to it original purpose so repair stuff concerned with any Timelord business. So the Doctor & companions are stuck in teh rings of a gasplanet and have to find out what the heck is going on. Why are people & material being attacked by small blue dolls?- How come the cooperate interest seems so lacking in response untill they go over the top?- What role do the children play?- And why does Jamie go skiing, does Zoe as spot of babysitting and is the Doctor challenged by and alien entity, which seemst to be the natural state of things?
An nicely written tale with insight of the atmospheres of the Saturn moons and how live out there being early colonists. The questions get answered and the whole story gets nicely wrapped up. It is not the best Doctor Who story I have read, but it is an entertaining one that is easily read and enjoyed.
Well worth you time in my humble opinion.
So what do you get if you get a real scifi writer write a Doctor Who tale?- The name Stephen Baxter is well known as scifi writer but has not before meddled in the Who-verse. And he does so in a splendid way and had written the story in such a way it is a pleasure to just read it and suddenly find yourself at the end of the book before I even had the urge of putting it down. Which in itself I find quite a brilliant thing to be able to do when you are a writer. This makes me curious about his own creations which will now most certainly be looked into on the basis of the skill shown in telling a book in an established universe. Writing for Doctor Who one must always be aware of the mad fans, the ones who are really bonkers and have been known to terrorise the odd writer because of what she did and they did not agree with her.
Anyhow the Doctor, Jamie & Zoe are pulled out of flight with the TARDIS and end up somewhere in the rings of Saturn. A timey whimey thing has stopped the TARDIS in its tracks and revert to it original purpose so repair stuff concerned with any Timelord business. So the Doctor & companions are stuck in teh rings of a gasplanet and have to find out what the heck is going on. Why are people & material being attacked by small blue dolls?- How come the cooperate interest seems so lacking in response untill they go over the top?- What role do the children play?- And why does Jamie go skiing, does Zoe as spot of babysitting and is the Doctor challenged by and alien entity, which seemst to be the natural state of things?
An nicely written tale with insight of the atmospheres of the Saturn moons and how live out there being early colonists. The questions get answered and the whole story gets nicely wrapped up. It is not the best Doctor Who story I have read, but it is an entertaining one that is easily read and enjoyed.
Well worth you time in my humble opinion.
October 23, 2012
Disappointing. Exactly what I expected but still, disappointing.
Why are they advertising this new set of thicker novels as Doctor Who for adults. They go and find good authors and have great ideas, but still trap the writers into the usual basic doctor who formula. Stick the doctor and companions into a confined space, limited characters and simple to grasp threat. This is fine for kids books and for a show with a limited budget and limited time slot, but if you are going to add several hundred more pages to this basic formula, you have to expand the themes, the story line, the universe and the characters. I don't know how these authors don't get terribly frustrated. As a reader, even a single volume scifi story covers many planets, complex political structures, sprawling history, cultures, fear, death, hope blah blah blah. Placing such a basic set of themes into a very long book just makes it a really boring book. This would have fit nicely in about 120 pages.
Why are they advertising this new set of thicker novels as Doctor Who for adults. They go and find good authors and have great ideas, but still trap the writers into the usual basic doctor who formula. Stick the doctor and companions into a confined space, limited characters and simple to grasp threat. This is fine for kids books and for a show with a limited budget and limited time slot, but if you are going to add several hundred more pages to this basic formula, you have to expand the themes, the story line, the universe and the characters. I don't know how these authors don't get terribly frustrated. As a reader, even a single volume scifi story covers many planets, complex political structures, sprawling history, cultures, fear, death, hope blah blah blah. Placing such a basic set of themes into a very long book just makes it a really boring book. This would have fit nicely in about 120 pages.
January 7, 2017
Stephen Baxter is no stranger at tapping into the zeitgeist of the genre, having penned homages to both Arthur C. Clarke and HG Wells. Here, with great affection, and a welcome modicum of scientific rigour, he gives us his take on one of the grandest humanist cornerstones of SF: the irascible, lovable, and quite impossible Doctor Who ... (Apart from attracting notable heavyweigts like Baxter, Michael Moorcock and Alastair Reynolds, Doctor Who is pehaps unique in launching the careers of other writers as well, such as Paul Cornell. Baxter is a superb addition to this stellar pantheon.)
February 26, 2013
Shortay: Baxter plus Doctor Who. Read it.
Longer review: Perfect combination of 2nd Doctor, 60's style pacing/tone and updated modern scientific sensibilities. No previous knowledge of Doctor Who is required, though it helps with catching in-jokes and appreciating the well executed continuity pron.
Epoch spanning review on a galactic scale: Resilience. Remembrance. Restoration. Read it, whatever the cost.
Longer review: Perfect combination of 2nd Doctor, 60's style pacing/tone and updated modern scientific sensibilities. No previous knowledge of Doctor Who is required, though it helps with catching in-jokes and appreciating the well executed continuity pron.
Epoch spanning review on a galactic scale: Resilience. Remembrance. Restoration. Read it, whatever the cost.
September 16, 2013
Doctor Who: The Wheel of Ice gets the prize for being the dumbest sci-fi book I've ever read and probably the worst adapted-from-a-tv-show novel. I've read a lot of Star Trek books over the years (even if that is not reflected in my gr book collection) so I know. This book isn't good sci-fi and it's definitely not worthy of Doctor Who.
Thanks to BBC America's The Doctors Revisited series, I’ve seen at least one episode featuring Doctors One through Eight. Wheel of Ice features the second Doctor (played by Patrick Troughton) and his tv show companions, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot. They are traveling through space when the TARDIS decides for itself (or for those who are current on their DW—herself) to land on The Wheel, in a structure composed of ice and steel and home to a mining colony orbiting a Saturn moon. It’s the twenty-first century. Authorities on the mining colony suspect the Doctor and his companions of being the cause of on-going sabotage that has plagued the mining operations and they are immediately arrested, but eventually released to Jo Laws, the colony’s mayor. Supposedly she is monitoring their activities, but the Doctor and his companions do pretty much whatever they want. The colonists are classed by their abilities and that classification sticks with a person for all of his life and no chance to improve a low classification. This causes problems within the colony. Also, the sabotage of the mining equipment continues and the lower-class teenagers are often blamed. Reports of mysterious blue child-sized entities (known as “Blue Dolls”) being seen are ignored by authorities even though they could be causing the sabotage. The Doctor and his companions have to solve the mystery of the Blue Dolls and why the TARDIS landed here before they can leave.
Nothing works for me. Granted, I’ve only seen one episode featuring the second Doctor and his companion Jamie (not sure if the one I saw featured Zoe) so I can’t comment on how closely the book characters follow their tv characters in personality and dialogue style, but I will say that generally, the Doctor in this book seems very non-Doctorish to me. He is indecisive, boring, and silly. Granted, the Doctor (no matter which one) is often silly, but he’s silly for a reason. Silly-smart. This Doctor just seems dopey. Plus, this Doctor drinks a lot of coffee and sleeps a lot and that seems weird. The Doctor is not human and to see him engaging in boring human run-of-the-mill everyday activities bores me and takes away much of his mysterious Doctor aura. Generally, Zoe and Jamie aren’t interesting people. Hell, no one is in this book. The characters are so one-dimensional (she is GOOD, he is BAD) and the dialogue is so wooden and poorly written that no one left an impression on me, not even the mysterious entity causing all the problems and the Very Bad Guy who behaves in a Very Bad Guy stereotypical manner.
The plot is boring. It basically comes down to this entity crashed into the moon, it’s trying to do something but because it is damaged it’s not very successful and the Doctor and company must help this entity and save the day before the Bad Guy (who isn’t necessarily male) blows it up. While the Doctor and Zoe are puzzling this out, Jamie is hanging out with Jo Laws’s son and his buddies and surfing in space and having all sorts of not-so-exciting adventures that really have nothing to do with the book except it pads the word count. The plot is extremely slow-moving. It’s nothing like the show in which the Doctor swoops in, sees the problem and gets started on it immediately. Granted, a book format doesn’t have the same time constraints as a television show, but that doesn’t mean the plot should drag. Book Doctor drinks coffee and sleeps more than anything else. TV Doctor would have kicked him in the ass.
This book is badly written. It’s not glaringly bad—the book is coherent, but that’s about all I can positively say. There is no depth to the characters, the dialogue is dumb, and the author tries to force certain scenes in the book to have that “Doctor Who” feeling of awesomeness—when the Doctor stops being silly-smart and calls out his enemies and tells them that HE is the Doctor and they should be Very Afraid. That’s great on tv. I love those scenes. But in the book when that (kinda) happens, that scene should be awesome enough to stand on its own—the author shouldn’t have to write this kind of a scene (below) to make sure the reader understands that this is one of those awesome DW scenes:
If the scene were really that wonderful, I wouldn’t need two characters telling me how wonderful it is (it’s not really). This book is also full of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. Although, considering the author is trained in aero-engineering research (American translation—aerospace engineering?), maybe it’s not all mumbo-jumbo. I’m not a trained aero-anything, so I don’t know. I found the phonetically-spelled Scottish words really really irritating. I don’t know why. I know Jamie is a Scotsman. I personally like the Scots accent (the rolling of the Rs!) but I found Jamie’s phonetically accurate dialogue annoying as shit. I don’t blame the book for that—it’s probably my quirk.
Overall, this book is mostly boring. And dumb. I finished it just because it is a Doctor Who book and it is so fluffy that I read it in two days (one half of the book on Friday, the other half on Saturday). It made absolutely no impression on me except that Stephen Baxter is not a good writer and I won’t read anything else by him. I don’t care how many awards the inside jacket cover says he has won. It’s possible there are good writers of Doctor Who fiction out there. After all, a lot of the Star Trek (classic series) authors are amazingly good (specifically novels written in the 1970s-1980s: James Blish, Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, Joe Haldeman, Vonda McIntyre). Maybe I’ll eventually stumble upon an author who can write good DW fiction, but right now the television show is awesome enough for me.
Thanks to BBC America's The Doctors Revisited series, I’ve seen at least one episode featuring Doctors One through Eight. Wheel of Ice features the second Doctor (played by Patrick Troughton) and his tv show companions, Jamie McCrimmon and Zoe Heriot. They are traveling through space when the TARDIS decides for itself (or for those who are current on their DW—herself) to land on The Wheel, in a structure composed of ice and steel and home to a mining colony orbiting a Saturn moon. It’s the twenty-first century. Authorities on the mining colony suspect the Doctor and his companions of being the cause of on-going sabotage that has plagued the mining operations and they are immediately arrested, but eventually released to Jo Laws, the colony’s mayor. Supposedly she is monitoring their activities, but the Doctor and his companions do pretty much whatever they want. The colonists are classed by their abilities and that classification sticks with a person for all of his life and no chance to improve a low classification. This causes problems within the colony. Also, the sabotage of the mining equipment continues and the lower-class teenagers are often blamed. Reports of mysterious blue child-sized entities (known as “Blue Dolls”) being seen are ignored by authorities even though they could be causing the sabotage. The Doctor and his companions have to solve the mystery of the Blue Dolls and why the TARDIS landed here before they can leave.
Nothing works for me. Granted, I’ve only seen one episode featuring the second Doctor and his companion Jamie (not sure if the one I saw featured Zoe) so I can’t comment on how closely the book characters follow their tv characters in personality and dialogue style, but I will say that generally, the Doctor in this book seems very non-Doctorish to me. He is indecisive, boring, and silly. Granted, the Doctor (no matter which one) is often silly, but he’s silly for a reason. Silly-smart. This Doctor just seems dopey. Plus, this Doctor drinks a lot of coffee and sleeps a lot and that seems weird. The Doctor is not human and to see him engaging in boring human run-of-the-mill everyday activities bores me and takes away much of his mysterious Doctor aura. Generally, Zoe and Jamie aren’t interesting people. Hell, no one is in this book. The characters are so one-dimensional (she is GOOD, he is BAD) and the dialogue is so wooden and poorly written that no one left an impression on me, not even the mysterious entity causing all the problems and the Very Bad Guy who behaves in a Very Bad Guy stereotypical manner.
The plot is boring. It basically comes down to this entity crashed into the moon, it’s trying to do something but because it is damaged it’s not very successful and the Doctor and company must help this entity and save the day before the Bad Guy (who isn’t necessarily male) blows it up. While the Doctor and Zoe are puzzling this out, Jamie is hanging out with Jo Laws’s son and his buddies and surfing in space and having all sorts of not-so-exciting adventures that really have nothing to do with the book except it pads the word count. The plot is extremely slow-moving. It’s nothing like the show in which the Doctor swoops in, sees the problem and gets started on it immediately. Granted, a book format doesn’t have the same time constraints as a television show, but that doesn’t mean the plot should drag. Book Doctor drinks coffee and sleeps more than anything else. TV Doctor would have kicked him in the ass.
This book is badly written. It’s not glaringly bad—the book is coherent, but that’s about all I can positively say. There is no depth to the characters, the dialogue is dumb, and the author tries to force certain scenes in the book to have that “Doctor Who” feeling of awesomeness—when the Doctor stops being silly-smart and calls out his enemies and tells them that HE is the Doctor and they should be Very Afraid. That’s great on tv. I love those scenes. But in the book when that (kinda) happens, that scene should be awesome enough to stand on its own—the author shouldn’t have to write this kind of a scene (below) to make sure the reader understands that this is one of those awesome DW scenes:
Zoe smiled at Phee. “You’ll always remember this day,” she whispered. “This moment. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
Phee stared. “Is it always like this for you?”
“Pretty much,” Zoe said. (237)
If the scene were really that wonderful, I wouldn’t need two characters telling me how wonderful it is (it’s not really). This book is also full of pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo. Although, considering the author is trained in aero-engineering research (American translation—aerospace engineering?), maybe it’s not all mumbo-jumbo. I’m not a trained aero-anything, so I don’t know. I found the phonetically-spelled Scottish words really really irritating. I don’t know why. I know Jamie is a Scotsman. I personally like the Scots accent (the rolling of the Rs!) but I found Jamie’s phonetically accurate dialogue annoying as shit. I don’t blame the book for that—it’s probably my quirk.
Overall, this book is mostly boring. And dumb. I finished it just because it is a Doctor Who book and it is so fluffy that I read it in two days (one half of the book on Friday, the other half on Saturday). It made absolutely no impression on me except that Stephen Baxter is not a good writer and I won’t read anything else by him. I don’t care how many awards the inside jacket cover says he has won. It’s possible there are good writers of Doctor Who fiction out there. After all, a lot of the Star Trek (classic series) authors are amazingly good (specifically novels written in the 1970s-1980s: James Blish, Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath, Joe Haldeman, Vonda McIntyre). Maybe I’ll eventually stumble upon an author who can write good DW fiction, but right now the television show is awesome enough for me.
July 31, 2023
Rating: 3.5 stars
I was super excited to read this book. However, after I started reading it, I quick realized that I didn’t know the companions or which Doctor it was, which left me disappointed. I then dragged out reading the first 50 pages because I didn’t think I’d enjoy it. I was wrong though. I’m so glad that I picked this one up and pushed through because I did end up enjoying this one once I got about 100 pages in. For Doctor Who fans, this is definitely a perfect read!
I was super excited to read this book. However, after I started reading it, I quick realized that I didn’t know the companions or which Doctor it was, which left me disappointed. I then dragged out reading the first 50 pages because I didn’t think I’d enjoy it. I was wrong though. I’m so glad that I picked this one up and pushed through because I did end up enjoying this one once I got about 100 pages in. For Doctor Who fans, this is definitely a perfect read!
January 3, 2021
Gave me a lot of expectations but turned out a bit boring. I struggled through it to finish. But in the end, a good end!
November 6, 2012
Don't understand why anyone would like this book. This book is written terribly, the way the writer says things makes everything going on extremely hard to imagine. He is very weak at visually describing things and the events that take place are just ridiculous to imagine in your head. (A spider machine flying the Tardis through space with it's doors open having a conversation with the crew while a girl rides outside on a flying space bike also talking to the Tardis crew.) Wtf.
Very poorly written, by a poor writer and on top of that, the story is actually very boring. I couldn't finish this book it was that ridiculous and boring.
Very poorly written, by a poor writer and on top of that, the story is actually very boring. I couldn't finish this book it was that ridiculous and boring.
November 22, 2023
I have a confession to make. The second Doctor is not a favorite of mine. In fact, this incarnation is at the bottom of my list. I have seen key episodes of his including Tomb of the Cybermen, War Games and The Two Doctors, so I know his mannerisms, his quirks, and his way of solving problems. None of that was evident here. The two in Wheel of Ice seemed like a strange combination of Doctors one and three, not the childish, fumbling space hobo that we know him to be. He had long descriptive monologues of scientific concepts, of strategy, and diplomacy. It was quite odd and removed me from the story on several occasions. I appreciated it, surely, but it wasn't the second Doctor I know.
Storywise, it was just fine, but outstayed its welcome by about 100 pages. In this case, it did feel repetitive like a second Doctor TV story arc. They went into the moon to investigate, they ran out. Rinse and repeat three times. Jamie hung out with the teens and went skiing/sailing on Titan and its rings. Someone gets in trouble and needs rescuing. Rinse and repeat. The story itself was also nothing new. If you've seen Jetsons The Movie (an animated flick from the nineties), then you'll find this story familiar. Dial up Mr. Spacely to megalomaniac status, change the furry creatures to blue dolls with a computer creator, and that's this story.
All in all, it would have been so much more enjoyable had it been shorter and less repetitive, but as it stands, it's an ok installment of the Who-niverse, and I appreciated seeing a different take on the Second Doctor.
Storywise, it was just fine, but outstayed its welcome by about 100 pages. In this case, it did feel repetitive like a second Doctor TV story arc. They went into the moon to investigate, they ran out. Rinse and repeat three times. Jamie hung out with the teens and went skiing/sailing on Titan and its rings. Someone gets in trouble and needs rescuing. Rinse and repeat. The story itself was also nothing new. If you've seen Jetsons The Movie (an animated flick from the nineties), then you'll find this story familiar. Dial up Mr. Spacely to megalomaniac status, change the furry creatures to blue dolls with a computer creator, and that's this story.
All in all, it would have been so much more enjoyable had it been shorter and less repetitive, but as it stands, it's an ok installment of the Who-niverse, and I appreciated seeing a different take on the Second Doctor.
February 21, 2013
Stephen Baxter is a well-known and well regarded science fiction author, so I was interested in his new Doctor Who novel because the number of authors of his caliber who deign to write media tie-in books is rather low. Also, rather than write a book that centers around one of the modern incarnations of the Doctor that might score lots of fans, Baxter uses the second Doctor and his companions, Jamie, a Scottish Highlander and Zoe, a young super genius from the future.
Setting the story in a time of the Doctor's history when the television series was geared more towards children and a time when the kind of stories that could be told on television was more constrained due to the mores of the 1960s makes for some odd reading. For instance, it is extremely unlikely that Jamie would comment that a young man Zoe was becoming interested in is gay when the second Doctor was around.
Also, the violence is more visceral, the characterization given more depth, and the technobabble is updated to the present day, more or less. This has the advantage of making Baxter's choice of Doctors relevant and refreshing, but also makes the book seem less like an adventure that particular Doctor might have.
Over all the story is satisfyingly told if also a little underwhelming. I liked many of the incidental characters, especially MAC, a robot that in lesser hands would have been revealed to be the big villain of the piece, but in Baxter's hands becomes a fully fleshed out character in his own right. I give the book three stars because it is good, not great. I look forward to more, though.
Setting the story in a time of the Doctor's history when the television series was geared more towards children and a time when the kind of stories that could be told on television was more constrained due to the mores of the 1960s makes for some odd reading. For instance, it is extremely unlikely that Jamie would comment that a young man Zoe was becoming interested in is gay when the second Doctor was around.
Also, the violence is more visceral, the characterization given more depth, and the technobabble is updated to the present day, more or less. This has the advantage of making Baxter's choice of Doctors relevant and refreshing, but also makes the book seem less like an adventure that particular Doctor might have.
Over all the story is satisfyingly told if also a little underwhelming. I liked many of the incidental characters, especially MAC, a robot that in lesser hands would have been revealed to be the big villain of the piece, but in Baxter's hands becomes a fully fleshed out character in his own right. I give the book three stars because it is good, not great. I look forward to more, though.
April 27, 2013
I am a HUGE Doctor Who fan. The campy BBC show that has been on for almost 50 years has a unique place in my heart. It is both popcorn fun and thought provoking at the same time. So I was happy to see a new Doctor Who book at my local library.
The book is good...I mean...it's ok. It's a Doctor who book. Stephen Baxter's Wheel of Ice takes place during the time period of the Second Doctor, a Doctor I am not too familiar (his time on the tv show was 1964-1968 or thereabouts).
The plot takes place on the rings of Saturn and has to do with an alien life form threatening a Berylium mine that has taken up operations. The Doctor and his companions Zoe and Jamie show up just in time to take place in the Havoc that is erupting.
The writing is slow paced...especially for a Doctor Who episode. Baxter seems to have captured the characters of the Doctor, Zoe, and Jamie fairly well. This incarnation of the Doctor is not as well known as Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor or David Tennant's 10th Doctor, but he is quirky enough to still be the DOCTOR.
This book is for die hard Doctor Who fans, or people who are just looking for an interesting science fiction read. Don't expect too much from it and it won't disappoint.
Grade: B-
The book is good...I mean...it's ok. It's a Doctor who book. Stephen Baxter's Wheel of Ice takes place during the time period of the Second Doctor, a Doctor I am not too familiar (his time on the tv show was 1964-1968 or thereabouts).
The plot takes place on the rings of Saturn and has to do with an alien life form threatening a Berylium mine that has taken up operations. The Doctor and his companions Zoe and Jamie show up just in time to take place in the Havoc that is erupting.
The writing is slow paced...especially for a Doctor Who episode. Baxter seems to have captured the characters of the Doctor, Zoe, and Jamie fairly well. This incarnation of the Doctor is not as well known as Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor or David Tennant's 10th Doctor, but he is quirky enough to still be the DOCTOR.
This book is for die hard Doctor Who fans, or people who are just looking for an interesting science fiction read. Don't expect too much from it and it won't disappoint.
Grade: B-
June 16, 2013
Some time ago the BBC (finally) decided to put out Who books again that one beyond the age of 12 could actually read and enjoy. Meaning something "meatier" like the books that came out during the years in which the show was off the air. The strategy was to knock on doors of big names like Michael Moorcock, and well, Stephen Baxter.
Anyway, keep your expectations low when you start reading this one. This is no new "Alien Bodies" or a new "Human Nature". In levels of quality it doesn't even get near those. What it actually is is a rather pedestrian "Missing Adventure" that, had it come out in the 90s or early 00s, everyone would have forgotten about by now. The plot(ting) is thoroughly unexciting, the characters are even less so... and when you finish the last page and close the book it's all gone from your head. It's really not that memorable. It isn't awful either, however. Just very disappointing and disposable.
Only buy and read it if you want to keep this line going. Or if you happen to be a Baxter superfan. In all other cases: Don't bother.
Anyway, keep your expectations low when you start reading this one. This is no new "Alien Bodies" or a new "Human Nature". In levels of quality it doesn't even get near those. What it actually is is a rather pedestrian "Missing Adventure" that, had it come out in the 90s or early 00s, everyone would have forgotten about by now. The plot(ting) is thoroughly unexciting, the characters are even less so... and when you finish the last page and close the book it's all gone from your head. It's really not that memorable. It isn't awful either, however. Just very disappointing and disposable.
Only buy and read it if you want to keep this line going. Or if you happen to be a Baxter superfan. In all other cases: Don't bother.
March 2, 2013
The Doctor and Jamie are in fine form, but Zoe's role in this story was at first oddly lacking then incredibly irritating. Genius astrophysicist spends the whole book watching the Doctor be brilliant, then for some reason gets stuck in a shuttle with Random Adorable Toddler and has a big Bonding Experience that changes her whole perspective. All while Jamie (Highlander from 18th century Scotland) gets to disarm a bomb and build a neutrino detector. Are you freaking kidding me? I expect to have to look past casual sexism from stories that were actually written in the 60s, but am not willing to do so for modern writers.
Plotwise - Starts out slow, picks up a bit, then gets draggy and predictable to finish, with cardboard cutout corporate baddie making exactly the trouble you expect when she first appears & sneers at the Doctor. Disappointing.
Plotwise - Starts out slow, picks up a bit, then gets draggy and predictable to finish, with cardboard cutout corporate baddie making exactly the trouble you expect when she first appears & sneers at the Doctor. Disappointing.
November 10, 2016
I listened to the audiobook version, which is a delight - narrated by David Troughton, the son of the 2nd doctor, who sounds just like him. Troughton does an excellent job on all the voices, including Jamie McCrimmon (the Scotsman from the 18th century) and Mac, a robot built by people in Scotland who has a very thick accent.
I was comforted to hear the voices of the 2nd Doctor, also there are sound effects for other things, such as the Tardis and various explosions. However, unlike most novels, I did not follow the plot too closely! I lost interest at one point early this year and came back to it later when I wanted some Doctor Who silliness and looking forward to the Power of the Daleks event coming up. There are some interesting concepts thrown in by Baxter, the Artifact, the mining colony, etc.
I was comforted to hear the voices of the 2nd Doctor, also there are sound effects for other things, such as the Tardis and various explosions. However, unlike most novels, I did not follow the plot too closely! I lost interest at one point early this year and came back to it later when I wanted some Doctor Who silliness and looking forward to the Power of the Daleks event coming up. There are some interesting concepts thrown in by Baxter, the Artifact, the mining colony, etc.
April 27, 2018
Notably the first Past Doctor Adventure since 2005, The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive a wheel. A space station orbiting a moon of Saturn.
Baxter really captures this TARDIS team perfectly, it’s an enjoyable Sci-Fi adventure. He takes he’s time describing the world.
It’s a welcome addition to the collection, I’d hope the BBC will continue to release more stories aimed at a slightly older audience alongside the current New Series Adventures.
Baxter really captures this TARDIS team perfectly, it’s an enjoyable Sci-Fi adventure. He takes he’s time describing the world.
It’s a welcome addition to the collection, I’d hope the BBC will continue to release more stories aimed at a slightly older audience alongside the current New Series Adventures.
October 2, 2021
A very good adventure, much more sciencey than the Second Doctor episodes but this felt apt for the rather curious personality of the Second Doctor, himself. The characterisation of the main three familiars was not perfect, but good enough to enjoy.
February 12, 2013
From William Hartnell’s swansong “The Tenth Planet” to series 6’s “The Rebel Flesh/The Almost People,” the ��base under siege” has been one of the two or three basic plots of Doctor Who. Arguably it is the single most frequently utilized narrative template in the show’s now five-decade history. Some of the new series’ finest moments have come from reviving this hoary formula; e.g., “The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit,” “The Time of Angels/Flesh and Stone.” From First to Eleventh, sooner or later every Doctor finds himself in a base under siege. No Doctor, though, found himself in more bases under siege than Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor. Because of stories like “The Underwater Menace,” “The Moonbase,” “The Wheel in Space,” and “The Seeds of Death,” to name just four, no era of the program is more associated with this formula than his. So it was only fitting that when the BBC decided to publish a novel featuring a past Doctor for the first time since 2005, and that that novel would feature the Second Doctor, that Stephen Baxter’s The Wheel of Ice finds the Second Doctor and his companions in a situation they know so well.
The plot can be summarized easily, because it hews so closely to the standard base under siege template. The TARDIS detects an anomaly in the space-time continuum and materializes close by. Close by happens to be near one of Saturn’s moons, around which has been erected a small mining colony from which humans are mining a rare metal which, of course, is associated with the space-time disturbance. The TARDIS is almost smashed by Saturn’s rings but is rescued by a teenage girl and her robot. When the girl enters the TARDIS it detects evidence that something in her possession has traveled through time. As the formula requires, the time disturbance, the time-traveling object, and the mining colony are all related. Once the TARDIS and crew are on the colony, the titular “Wheel,” everything falls into place. The Doctor and his companions, Zoe and Jamie, are arrested but then released. They meet the humans in charge, who represent the usual factions: the civilian administration, the police authorities, and the corporate management. The factions have conflicting agendas and are at loggerheads over various issues. The colony has been subject to minor but increasingly damaging incidents of sabotage. The authorities, especially the representative of the corporate backers of the colony, a woman called Florian Hart, blame the children and young adults who provide much of the labor for the mining. The children, especially the youngest, claim they have seen some sort of blue ghosts or blue dolls, which they blame for the vandalism and sabotage. As they investigate and talk to the various people in charge, the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe eventually split up, as the Doctor and his companions have done since 1963. Eventually they learn just why the humans have been drawn to Saturn, and the nature of the threat facing the wheel.
Baxter has the formula down pat. It would seem like an easy thing to do, but getting the feel of the various eras of Doctor Who’s long history right is something the writers of the novels have over the years never been able to do consistently. This feels like it could have been a televised serial circa 1968. Baxter also does a fine job evoking the setting. The colony is described as being on the frontier of human civilization for that time (which seems to be early in the 22nd century, though it is never spelled out), put together with spare parts and space refuse, the odds and ends of the previous 100 years of human space exploration. Baxter conveys this impression vividly. He also has a good handle on the characters of Zoe and Jamie, two of the better known companions from the show’s early years, but increasingly distant from the show’s current viewers. The story also doesn’t end predictably. The alien menace is not destroyed, the base isn’t destroyed, and even the human villain, Hart, survives. Nor is she in cahoots with the alien. She has motives which can be considered clichéd (which relate to the events of “The Seeds of Death”) but her interest in the alien extends no further than exploiting its raw materials.
Where Baxter comes up short is in an area that has troubled many of his predecessors: getting the Doctor’s character right. The Doctor has a distinct personality; eleven of them now, in fact. But for whatever reason it has proved hard not reducing him to a generic figure called “The Doctor” who has a set of interchangeable personality quirks. Troughton’s Doctor was clownish and whimsical, but easily became waspish and sharp when provoked. These are perhaps not the easiest traits to convey without caricaturing them. I’m not sure that someone unfamiliar with the Second Doctor would get a good sense of what he was like. But it can be argued that the only way of doing that is watching the few of Troughton’s stories which survive.
Another problem is that a key plot element is never resolved. The time anomaly which the TARDIS detects early on in the book in the possession of Phee Laws, the girl who rescues the TARDIS, turns out not to be of any major significance. It’s a MacGuffin. The amulet she wears about her neck turns out to have been sent back in time by the alien machine buried in the heart of the moon as a way to facilitate its rescue. In a nice nod to Who lore, the amulet turns out to be a message intended for the Silurians, the race of intelligent reptiles which ruled Earth before humanity, to get them to come to Saturn to rescue the alien. But the message goes astray and isn’t recovered for eons. Eventually it makes its way to Phee, who finally brings it into the presence of its sender. But then nothing is made of it. It really is just a plot device, designed to facilitate everything else that happens. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not even mentioned again. It’s not even clear if she’s wearing it at the end. It simply drops out of the story and is never seen again.
Overall, the book is something of a mixed bag. The setting and some of the secondary characters are well realized, as are Jamie and Zoe. Baxter has recreated the feel of the Troughton era remarkably well. On the other hand, it might be said he hews a little too closely to the formula. And he doesn’t do a great job with the Doctor himself. On both those counts The Wheel of Ice falls short of something like David McIntee’s The Dark Path. Nonetheless, it’s good to see the Second Doctor return to print. Hopefully the rest of the “classic” Doctors will join him sooner than later.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
The plot can be summarized easily, because it hews so closely to the standard base under siege template. The TARDIS detects an anomaly in the space-time continuum and materializes close by. Close by happens to be near one of Saturn’s moons, around which has been erected a small mining colony from which humans are mining a rare metal which, of course, is associated with the space-time disturbance. The TARDIS is almost smashed by Saturn’s rings but is rescued by a teenage girl and her robot. When the girl enters the TARDIS it detects evidence that something in her possession has traveled through time. As the formula requires, the time disturbance, the time-traveling object, and the mining colony are all related. Once the TARDIS and crew are on the colony, the titular “Wheel,” everything falls into place. The Doctor and his companions, Zoe and Jamie, are arrested but then released. They meet the humans in charge, who represent the usual factions: the civilian administration, the police authorities, and the corporate management. The factions have conflicting agendas and are at loggerheads over various issues. The colony has been subject to minor but increasingly damaging incidents of sabotage. The authorities, especially the representative of the corporate backers of the colony, a woman called Florian Hart, blame the children and young adults who provide much of the labor for the mining. The children, especially the youngest, claim they have seen some sort of blue ghosts or blue dolls, which they blame for the vandalism and sabotage. As they investigate and talk to the various people in charge, the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe eventually split up, as the Doctor and his companions have done since 1963. Eventually they learn just why the humans have been drawn to Saturn, and the nature of the threat facing the wheel.
Baxter has the formula down pat. It would seem like an easy thing to do, but getting the feel of the various eras of Doctor Who’s long history right is something the writers of the novels have over the years never been able to do consistently. This feels like it could have been a televised serial circa 1968. Baxter also does a fine job evoking the setting. The colony is described as being on the frontier of human civilization for that time (which seems to be early in the 22nd century, though it is never spelled out), put together with spare parts and space refuse, the odds and ends of the previous 100 years of human space exploration. Baxter conveys this impression vividly. He also has a good handle on the characters of Zoe and Jamie, two of the better known companions from the show’s early years, but increasingly distant from the show’s current viewers. The story also doesn’t end predictably. The alien menace is not destroyed, the base isn’t destroyed, and even the human villain, Hart, survives. Nor is she in cahoots with the alien. She has motives which can be considered clichéd (which relate to the events of “The Seeds of Death”) but her interest in the alien extends no further than exploiting its raw materials.
Where Baxter comes up short is in an area that has troubled many of his predecessors: getting the Doctor’s character right. The Doctor has a distinct personality; eleven of them now, in fact. But for whatever reason it has proved hard not reducing him to a generic figure called “The Doctor” who has a set of interchangeable personality quirks. Troughton’s Doctor was clownish and whimsical, but easily became waspish and sharp when provoked. These are perhaps not the easiest traits to convey without caricaturing them. I’m not sure that someone unfamiliar with the Second Doctor would get a good sense of what he was like. But it can be argued that the only way of doing that is watching the few of Troughton’s stories which survive.
Another problem is that a key plot element is never resolved. The time anomaly which the TARDIS detects early on in the book in the possession of Phee Laws, the girl who rescues the TARDIS, turns out not to be of any major significance. It’s a MacGuffin. The amulet she wears about her neck turns out to have been sent back in time by the alien machine buried in the heart of the moon as a way to facilitate its rescue. In a nice nod to Who lore, the amulet turns out to be a message intended for the Silurians, the race of intelligent reptiles which ruled Earth before humanity, to get them to come to Saturn to rescue the alien. But the message goes astray and isn’t recovered for eons. Eventually it makes its way to Phee, who finally brings it into the presence of its sender. But then nothing is made of it. It really is just a plot device, designed to facilitate everything else that happens. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not even mentioned again. It’s not even clear if she’s wearing it at the end. It simply drops out of the story and is never seen again.
Overall, the book is something of a mixed bag. The setting and some of the secondary characters are well realized, as are Jamie and Zoe. Baxter has recreated the feel of the Troughton era remarkably well. On the other hand, it might be said he hews a little too closely to the formula. And he doesn’t do a great job with the Doctor himself. On both those counts The Wheel of Ice falls short of something like David McIntee’s The Dark Path. Nonetheless, it’s good to see the Second Doctor return to print. Hopefully the rest of the “classic” Doctors will join him sooner than later.
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
June 26, 2021
J’aime beaucoup lire les romans publiés dans l’univers de Doctor Who parce qu’ils permettent de mettre sur papier des aventures qui n’auraient jamais pu être mises en scène pour la télévision, mais surtout parce qu’on peut y retrouver nos petits personnages préférés.
Si je ne connais que très mal Zoé, je suis une fan inconditionnelle de Jamie et de l’équipe qu’il forme avec Two et je me réjouissais à l’avance de suivre tout ce petit monde dans une aventure prenant place sur une des multiples lunes se situant dans les anneaux de Saturne. Le TARDIS y est attiré par une anomalie dans le continuum espace temps et le Docteur et ses compagnons se retrouvent au milieu d’un imbroglio impliquant une compagnie minière, des colons installés sur un anneau artificiel en orbite autour de Mnemosyme, des enfants utilisés comme ouvriers dès leur plus jeune âge, des adolescents qui se rebellent contre leurs parents, des sabotages, du matériel qui disparait et des présences indésirables.
Tout ça est très confus mais heureusement les personnages sont assez bien caractérisés pour qu’on comprenne ce qu’il se déroule là. Et en plus il y a un robot écossais très amusant et touchant dans cette historie.
Le problème c’est qu’il y a sans doute un peu trop de monde et que pour occuper une partie des personnages, Jamie est utilisé pendant une bonne partie du récit pour chapeauter les adolescents. Du coup, c’est à se demander si le récit n’aurait pas mérité d’être un peu plus court parce que j’ai trouvé que toutes les escapades pour aller faire du ski, pour se retrouver en confinement dans une bulle, puis la fugue sur Titan, c’était quand même fort longuet pour un résultat assez proche du néant.
Mais comme dans le même temps, Two et Zoé passent leur temps à faire des allers-retours entre Mnemosyme et la Roue de glace sans se presser, on peut dire que c’est un livre qui sait prendre son temps.
On est en plein dans un univers de science fiction, avec une action prenant place dans l’espace et dans le futur et pourtant l’intrigue est très terrienne et très représentative de Doctor Who. Le mystère temporel qui a attiré le TARDIS est lui complètement incompréhensible et à la limite de l’accessoire, et on se trouve plutôt dans un drame sociétal où le Docteur n’hésite pas à prendre position pour remettre en cause certaines des situations présentes.
C’est donc un peu dommage que certains passages soient si inutiles et présents seulement pour éloigner Jamie de l’action principale parce que l’intrigue en elle-même est plutôt agréable à suivre, avec des références à la série télévisée agréables mais loin d’être indispensables pour comprendre ce qui se déroule.
Si je ne connais que très mal Zoé, je suis une fan inconditionnelle de Jamie et de l’équipe qu’il forme avec Two et je me réjouissais à l’avance de suivre tout ce petit monde dans une aventure prenant place sur une des multiples lunes se situant dans les anneaux de Saturne. Le TARDIS y est attiré par une anomalie dans le continuum espace temps et le Docteur et ses compagnons se retrouvent au milieu d’un imbroglio impliquant une compagnie minière, des colons installés sur un anneau artificiel en orbite autour de Mnemosyme, des enfants utilisés comme ouvriers dès leur plus jeune âge, des adolescents qui se rebellent contre leurs parents, des sabotages, du matériel qui disparait et des présences indésirables.
Tout ça est très confus mais heureusement les personnages sont assez bien caractérisés pour qu’on comprenne ce qu’il se déroule là. Et en plus il y a un robot écossais très amusant et touchant dans cette historie.
Le problème c’est qu’il y a sans doute un peu trop de monde et que pour occuper une partie des personnages, Jamie est utilisé pendant une bonne partie du récit pour chapeauter les adolescents. Du coup, c’est à se demander si le récit n’aurait pas mérité d’être un peu plus court parce que j’ai trouvé que toutes les escapades pour aller faire du ski, pour se retrouver en confinement dans une bulle, puis la fugue sur Titan, c’était quand même fort longuet pour un résultat assez proche du néant.
Mais comme dans le même temps, Two et Zoé passent leur temps à faire des allers-retours entre Mnemosyme et la Roue de glace sans se presser, on peut dire que c’est un livre qui sait prendre son temps.
On est en plein dans un univers de science fiction, avec une action prenant place dans l’espace et dans le futur et pourtant l’intrigue est très terrienne et très représentative de Doctor Who. Le mystère temporel qui a attiré le TARDIS est lui complètement incompréhensible et à la limite de l’accessoire, et on se trouve plutôt dans un drame sociétal où le Docteur n’hésite pas à prendre position pour remettre en cause certaines des situations présentes.
C’est donc un peu dommage que certains passages soient si inutiles et présents seulement pour éloigner Jamie de l’action principale parce que l’intrigue en elle-même est plutôt agréable à suivre, avec des références à la série télévisée agréables mais loin d’être indispensables pour comprendre ce qui se déroule.
July 4, 2024
Snoooooooooze. Honestly, this is so boring. A zillion OCs who don't feel distinct and interesting, and almost no time spent with the Doctor, who one is presumably reading a Doctor Who book to hang out with.
Positives, that I am putting effort into scraping together: I like the AI that is Scottish, and that Jamie gets to interact with a Scottish AI; there are a few nice moments of characterization for Zoe; Jamie, originally an 18th century fella, meets some gay guys and his only reaction is to tease Zoe that she's not going to score with the one she has a crush on.
But this is a Second Doctor story; where's my favorite funny little guy?
Positives, that I am putting effort into scraping together: I like the AI that is Scottish, and that Jamie gets to interact with a Scottish AI; there are a few nice moments of characterization for Zoe; Jamie, originally an 18th century fella, meets some gay guys and his only reaction is to tease Zoe that she's not going to score with the one she has a crush on.
But this is a Second Doctor story; where's my favorite funny little guy?
January 8, 2014
This was... okay.
I think I expected a bit more, seeing as it's one in the range of hardbacks penned by big name authors, not the usual tie-in writers - who generally do a pretty good job, so it's not like I'm dissing them, but when you have a range of tie-ins by the usual suspects and then a range of special hardbacks written by people who don't usually write tie-ins, you expect the special books to be a bit, well, more, right?
Anyway. For a Doctor Who tie-in, this was good. Not brilliant (and there were things that bugged me a bit), but entertaining, with a good enough mixture of action and philosophy. I really liked the descriptions of Saturn's rings, and the ice moon, and the ice moon's rings, and basically everything to do with space; the parts I found lacking had to do with characters, mostly.
My biggest problem, character-wise, was the Second Doctor. He just didn't sound like Two to me at all. I tried my best to hear his dialogue in Patrick Troughton's voice, and I couldn't. Other than the physical description of his hair and clothes, there was really nothing of specifically Second Doctor about him; almost none of the quirkiness and the serious moments, although there was a clear attempt to tell us how almost scary he could be, didn't at all capture Two for me either.
Jamie, on the other hand, was great. I loved Jamie. I thought his character was captured pretty well, with that cute charm of a boy well out of his time, with no book knowledge, but intelligent, inquisitive and adaptive.
Zoe... Zoe was okay, but captured a little worse than Jamie to me, and I'm not sure I liked the whole line of thought that seemed to go "well, here we have a brilliant young astrophysicist girl who is too cold and logical, so let's stick her away somewhere babysitting a toddler so she can bond with a childlike a young woman should" (I hope that last bit wasn't meant as such, I really do, but I couldn't help but feel that was the way it came off).
The original characters were ... well, they did their job, but I can't say I really bonded with any of them (I have to say MMAC was kinda cool in a way though, and an interesting concept). And Florian Hart was a far too cliché, boring villain.
One plot-related thing I had a problem with ... This really stems, partially, from the way 1960s TV's optimism about the 21st century and its state of technology, I suppose, but while I can suspend disbelief when watching the old episodes, it's much harder to do it with books published in 2012. I mean - Zoe is from the late 21st century. Okay. Fair enough. I don't have a problem with that, or space stations in her era and what not, but I'd really rather not see a book set in - well, no year given, but before Zoe's time, and at least a couple of generations before, I'd say (30 years? 40 years?), which would set the book in around 2050-2060, at the latest.
How likely is it that we'll have Saturn colonised and mining systems in place by 2040 (seeing that one generation of young adults has already been born in the Saturn colony in the book)? I'm going to go with "not very likely", I'm afraid. So seeing late-21st-century Zoe sneer at the antiquated tech of these people on Saturn just plain didn't work for me. I'd have been much happier if the book had taken place at some point after Zoe's time - 22nd century, perhaps. A hundred years from now.
Ah well. It was fun, anyway, and I'm rather looking forward to reading something non-Who from Baxter at some point.
I think I expected a bit more, seeing as it's one in the range of hardbacks penned by big name authors, not the usual tie-in writers - who generally do a pretty good job, so it's not like I'm dissing them, but when you have a range of tie-ins by the usual suspects and then a range of special hardbacks written by people who don't usually write tie-ins, you expect the special books to be a bit, well, more, right?
Anyway. For a Doctor Who tie-in, this was good. Not brilliant (and there were things that bugged me a bit), but entertaining, with a good enough mixture of action and philosophy. I really liked the descriptions of Saturn's rings, and the ice moon, and the ice moon's rings, and basically everything to do with space; the parts I found lacking had to do with characters, mostly.
My biggest problem, character-wise, was the Second Doctor. He just didn't sound like Two to me at all. I tried my best to hear his dialogue in Patrick Troughton's voice, and I couldn't. Other than the physical description of his hair and clothes, there was really nothing of specifically Second Doctor about him; almost none of the quirkiness and the serious moments, although there was a clear attempt to tell us how almost scary he could be, didn't at all capture Two for me either.
Jamie, on the other hand, was great. I loved Jamie. I thought his character was captured pretty well, with that cute charm of a boy well out of his time, with no book knowledge, but intelligent, inquisitive and adaptive.
Zoe... Zoe was okay, but captured a little worse than Jamie to me, and I'm not sure I liked the whole line of thought that seemed to go "well, here we have a brilliant young astrophysicist girl who is too cold and logical, so let's stick her away somewhere babysitting a toddler so she can bond with a child
The original characters were ... well, they did their job, but I can't say I really bonded with any of them (I have to say MMAC was kinda cool in a way though, and an interesting concept). And Florian Hart was a far too cliché, boring villain.
One plot-related thing I had a problem with ... This really stems, partially, from the way 1960s TV's optimism about the 21st century and its state of technology, I suppose, but while I can suspend disbelief when watching the old episodes, it's much harder to do it with books published in 2012. I mean - Zoe is from the late 21st century. Okay. Fair enough. I don't have a problem with that, or space stations in her era and what not, but I'd really rather not see a book set in - well, no year given, but before Zoe's time, and at least a couple of generations before, I'd say (30 years? 40 years?), which would set the book in around 2050-2060, at the latest.
How likely is it that we'll have Saturn colonised and mining systems in place by 2040 (seeing that one generation of young adults has already been born in the Saturn colony in the book)? I'm going to go with "not very likely", I'm afraid. So seeing late-21st-century Zoe sneer at the antiquated tech of these people on Saturn just plain didn't work for me. I'd have been much happier if the book had taken place at some point after Zoe's time - 22nd century, perhaps. A hundred years from now.
Ah well. It was fun, anyway, and I'm rather looking forward to reading something non-Who from Baxter at some point.
February 23, 2013
Three cheers for new novels about old Doctors! There are so many asides in Doctor Who episodes that suggest great stories -- I would love it if The Wheel of Ice starts the trend of authors filling in these blanks. (Come on, don't you want to know how the hordes of Genghis Khan tried to get into the TARDIS? Or how David Tennant's Doctor infuriated Queen Elizabeth?)
The Wheel of Ice expands on the mostly lost season 5 (1968) episode "The Wheel in Space" featuring the second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and two young companions, the 18th century Scot Jaime and 21st century astrophysicist Zoe. The TARDIS is drawn to a space-time anomaly at a near-future frontier mining operation on Saturn, and find it roiling with problems from power-hungry leaders to erratic, angry teens to creepy-cute fuzzy blue aliens, with even more lurking beneath the surface.
This is definitely a novel for fans, not an introduction to the Whoverse. Just like a Doctor Who screenplay, the action reels from one crisis to another, in scenes and beats that are very easy to see in your mind's eye. However, characters are not drawn with enough detail to make first-timers fall in love. Hard-core fans may also be dissatisfied with the flatness of the Doctor. The story mentions some of the Troughton Doctor's habits and accoutrements (such as his coat and the recorder) but the story isn't saturated with well-known lines, moments, and references the way some other spinoff novels are. On the other hand, you may like it better that Baxter creates more original material and does less rehashing.
Overall, The Wheel of Ice provides a well-mixed blend of classic and updated Doctor Who features. It includes classic Who staples like the Doctor's disdain for guns, crabby intelligence, and that the Doctor instantly falling under suspicion when he arrives to help. Like the relaunched Doctor Who series, the companions get more "screen-time" and more intelligent involvement in the story than was usual in the 60s and 70s, more in line with modern sensibilities. Like the relaunched Who (especially the first two seasons), Baxter tells this story from the perspective of the companions, observing the Doctor from the outside and inviting us to relate to being in an adventure with the Doctor. Doctor Who is an all-ages show, and this novel also has both adult and kid-friendly features, like cool robots and moon-skiing. In classic Who many alien enemies were very 'other', fantastic monsters for kids to imitate (Exterminate! Exterminate!) This novel relates to alien life more like modern Who, showing the pathos of the alien alone, struggling to survive. It makes you relate to pain of even those making the most destructive decisions. Highly recommended to whet your appetite for the upcoming Doctor Who season.
The Wheel of Ice expands on the mostly lost season 5 (1968) episode "The Wheel in Space" featuring the second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) and two young companions, the 18th century Scot Jaime and 21st century astrophysicist Zoe. The TARDIS is drawn to a space-time anomaly at a near-future frontier mining operation on Saturn, and find it roiling with problems from power-hungry leaders to erratic, angry teens to creepy-cute fuzzy blue aliens, with even more lurking beneath the surface.
This is definitely a novel for fans, not an introduction to the Whoverse. Just like a Doctor Who screenplay, the action reels from one crisis to another, in scenes and beats that are very easy to see in your mind's eye. However, characters are not drawn with enough detail to make first-timers fall in love. Hard-core fans may also be dissatisfied with the flatness of the Doctor. The story mentions some of the Troughton Doctor's habits and accoutrements (such as his coat and the recorder) but the story isn't saturated with well-known lines, moments, and references the way some other spinoff novels are. On the other hand, you may like it better that Baxter creates more original material and does less rehashing.
Overall, The Wheel of Ice provides a well-mixed blend of classic and updated Doctor Who features. It includes classic Who staples like the Doctor's disdain for guns, crabby intelligence, and that the Doctor instantly falling under suspicion when he arrives to help. Like the relaunched Doctor Who series, the companions get more "screen-time" and more intelligent involvement in the story than was usual in the 60s and 70s, more in line with modern sensibilities. Like the relaunched Who (especially the first two seasons), Baxter tells this story from the perspective of the companions, observing the Doctor from the outside and inviting us to relate to being in an adventure with the Doctor. Doctor Who is an all-ages show, and this novel also has both adult and kid-friendly features, like cool robots and moon-skiing. In classic Who many alien enemies were very 'other', fantastic monsters for kids to imitate (Exterminate! Exterminate!) This novel relates to alien life more like modern Who, showing the pathos of the alien alone, struggling to survive. It makes you relate to pain of even those making the most destructive decisions. Highly recommended to whet your appetite for the upcoming Doctor Who season.
August 22, 2015
I love Stephen Baxter's books and I love Doctor Who so it baffles me that I've not read this book before now. The Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe arrive on the Wheel of Ice, a mining facility around Saturn. The TARDIS thinks something is wrong there and not just the increasing dissatisfaction of the residents and the way they are treated by the mining company. Blue creatures keep being spotted and there's a desperate intelligence at the heart of it all trying desperately to achieve it's aeons old mission: Resilience, Remembrance, Resolution.
As ever, this has the usual scientific accuracy you can expect from the author. It feels fairly plausible for a future society mining around Saturn. However, it has that element of fantasy that Doctor Who so often contains, something not really based on any science but works excellently for the story.
Baxter's weakness is so often his characterisation but he's given the lead characters of the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe already. Each is characterised really well and he delves well into the minds of Jamie and Zoe, making them more well-rounded characters than they were often written for the show. His supporting cast is also unusually strong, from the villain of the piece Florian Hart to MMAC, a Scottish robot. I really think it's the best characterization I've ever read from Baxter.
The story feels fairly like a story from it's era, but there's something about it to make it a bit faster and more engaging than many of the stories feel now. It manages to fit its era yet feel modern at the same time. It's also really steeped in Who mythology. As well as loads of minor references to the Second Doctor's adventures, one of the characters has a direct link back to The Ice Warriors and in many ways the book is a prequel to Zoe's debut story, The Wheel in Space. The Silurians also make an appearance, sort of. Plus, for Stephen Baxter fans, this book can genuinely be considered part of his Manifold series- Bootstrap Industries is the company involved and the Doctor mentions having met its founder once- Reid Malenfant presumably!
This is everything you want from a Doctor Who story really. It is lots of fun and has strong characters, a decent and interesting plot and feels like it has some genuine depth. I really hope Baxter gets to do another Who novel at some point because I'd love to see what he does with other incarnations of the Doctor!
As ever, this has the usual scientific accuracy you can expect from the author. It feels fairly plausible for a future society mining around Saturn. However, it has that element of fantasy that Doctor Who so often contains, something not really based on any science but works excellently for the story.
Baxter's weakness is so often his characterisation but he's given the lead characters of the Doctor, Jamie and Zoe already. Each is characterised really well and he delves well into the minds of Jamie and Zoe, making them more well-rounded characters than they were often written for the show. His supporting cast is also unusually strong, from the villain of the piece Florian Hart to MMAC, a Scottish robot. I really think it's the best characterization I've ever read from Baxter.
The story feels fairly like a story from it's era, but there's something about it to make it a bit faster and more engaging than many of the stories feel now. It manages to fit its era yet feel modern at the same time. It's also really steeped in Who mythology. As well as loads of minor references to the Second Doctor's adventures, one of the characters has a direct link back to The Ice Warriors and in many ways the book is a prequel to Zoe's debut story, The Wheel in Space. The Silurians also make an appearance, sort of. Plus, for Stephen Baxter fans, this book can genuinely be considered part of his Manifold series- Bootstrap Industries is the company involved and the Doctor mentions having met its founder once- Reid Malenfant presumably!
This is everything you want from a Doctor Who story really. It is lots of fun and has strong characters, a decent and interesting plot and feels like it has some genuine depth. I really hope Baxter gets to do another Who novel at some point because I'd love to see what he does with other incarnations of the Doctor!
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