Doctor Who: Invasion of the Cat-People

Doctor Who: Missing Adventures #13

by Gary Russell

An original novel featuring the Second Doctor, Ben and Polly.

'Explode the buoys? But that will destroy the Earth!'
'Oh dear, so it will. Pass on my apologies to the humans, won't you?'

Earth has been invaded. Twice. Thousands of years ago by a race searching for a new power source. More recently by the galactic marauders known as the Cat-People, who intend to continue the work done by the earlier visitors, with devastating results.

The recently regenerated Doctor, along with companions Ben and Polly, teams up with a group of amateur ghost-hunters and a mysterious white witch on a journey that takes them from twentieth-century Cumbria to the Arabian deserts of folklore and Australia 40,000 years in the past. Can the Doctor stop the invaders and disarm the bombs left buried beneath the planet's surface - or have the ancient Aborigines of Australia sung the seeds of their own destruction?

This adventure takes place between the television stories The Power of the Daleks and The Highlanders.

Gary Russell, author of the Doctor Who New Adventure Legacy, is Group Editor of Marvel Comics' award-winning Doctor Who Magazine. He also adores cats and has spent much of his time while writing this story apologizing to his own felines for portraying them as vicious, warmongering baddies.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction, Media Tie In, Ebooks

259 pages, Paperback

First published October 17, 1995

About the author

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

Reviews

[Hidekisohma · Rating 1 out of 5]

So full disclosure, I don't like the 2nd doctor. From what i've seen, The power of the daleks, tomb of the cybermen, and war games, he comes across as whiny and childish and I just don't enjoy his rendition.

However, as is the case with some other doctors, (especially 6) a lot of the time, the novels do the doctors a justice the series did not. and i REALLY wanted to give 2 a try. maybe the novels would show me a side of the 2nd doctor i didn't see before. So i did my best to find a plot i would like. I found Ben and polly (my favorite 2nd doc companions) and a story about invading cat people. it sounded straight forward and fun. like the doc and crew would have to fight off a band of evil cat people. i was actually kind of looking forward to it.

Silly me, i didn't bother to look at the goodreads score before buying this book. Welp, that was a mistake.

I should have been first clued in to why this is a bad book when i saw the author, gary russell. I have previously read a single book from gary and that was "Placebo Effect", an 8th doctor book. and it was incredibly convoluted with the titular "placebo effect" only taking up about the last 15 pages of the entire book. and, surprise surprise, it's the same situation here. I don't know WHY he feels he needs to have multiple plots rather than just 1, but he doesn't have the capability to pull off more than one story at a time.

You'd THINK with a book titled "Invasion of the cat people" the focal point would be....you know..an invasion of cat people. Instead the focal point is on a group of ancient immortals who use songs as power.

I know right? who couldn't have figured that out from the title?

This story gets so sidetracked and convoluted i actually sat there going "am i just stupid or something? i'm just not absorbing this book. i'm not understanding half of what they're throwing at me. The sheer level of mind numbing universe talk and technobabble turned me off nearly immediately. and this is not my first rodeo into doctor who either. i've read books from 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 12 before and normally, i don't have this issue. (with the exception of eleventh tiger and beltempest, but those are whole other cans of worms)

All the author had to do was have ben and polly go on a wacky adventure with 2 stopping cat people from destroying the earth. THAT'S ALL HE HAD TO DO. Instead he made 60% of the story about polly going off with this guy and having multiple tarot card readings and psychic power transportation and deadly songs and the college students in a house looking for ghosts and, it was just SO convoluted. He tried to basically squeeze two books into 1.

Which is a real shame, because, i actually enjoyed the cat people parts. I thought it was kind of interesting when he talked about the hierarchy of a cat like alien race and how they were conquerors and having the doc/ben trying to outsmart them. that was kind of interesting. the problem IS is that they only took up about 20% of the book while the rest focused on the stupid annoying immortal people and their stupid songs and philosophy. THEY DIDN'T NEED TO BE THERE.

The weirdest part was, some of the least bad parts were the 2nd doctor talking. I followed along and understood what he was doing. However, whenever the author cut away from the main 3 and followed the stupid song people it became an incomprehensible mess that i really didn't want to continue reading.

If I didn't say i'd finish this book as part of a deal, i absolutely would have dropped it. Gary tried WAY too hard to be convoluted and sound smart in this book. it's what i call "jim mortimore syndrome".

I can normally plow through a doc who book in 2-3 days. this one took me 7. Just every time i looked at it i dreaded picking it up again. and that's enough to give this a low score.

Maybe there are better ben/polly 2nd doctor stories out there. Who knows. The problem is, this book soured me on that idea.

1.5 out of 5, rounded down to a 1.

[Ken · Rating 2 out of 5]

There’s so much potential with setting a story just after The Doctor has changed for the first time.
With Jamie joining the TARDIS soon after, it’s just a shame that this ended up being a dull invasion story.

[Bennó Bártfai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Doctor Who – Invasion of the Cat-people by Gary Russell is a British science-fiction/adventure novel, which was published in 1995 by Virgin Publishing Ltd in London. It is a part of the Doctor Who The Missing Adventures series, which basically serve as extra episodes for the long-running British TV series, Doctor Who. While the original television program is basically a family-friendly show with teaching message in every episodes, the Virgin Missing Adventures books are more for adults, with a lot of bloody scenes, violence, strong language and sexuality, just like the most trendy TV programs of our times.

Invasion of the Cat-people follows the adventures of the second Doctor, an alien from the planet Gallifrey, who travels through space and time with his time machine called the TARDIS, which looks like a blue English police box. For this adventure his companions are Polly Wright, a young girl, and Ben Jackson, a sailor who are both from the London of the year 1966. This time they travel to modern day Cumbria, England, where they meet with university students and their professor, who are doing paranormal researches in an old mansion, but the ghosts they are hunting for turn out to be ancient humanoid aliens, called Euterpians, who are stranded on Earth in the year 3978 BC, and trying to get home somehow since then. While the mystery is slowly solved by the smart and always cheerful Doctor, another threat starts to danger our planet in the form of the Cat-people, a technologically developed feline alien race, who are aggressively conquer planets for their resources, then destroy them. If the Doctor, Polly, Ben and their new human and Euterpian friends want to avert the catastrophe, they have to travel to the Baghdad of the Middle Ages and Australia in the prehistoric times.

Firstly it sounds like a silly sci-fi novel without any means, but I think there are some very interesting questions raised and issues shown through the story. The Euterpians are originally a good hearted and wise alien race, who has the power to change reality itself and create anything their imagination allows by just humming. Unfortunately, they can’t build a ship for themselves to get away from Earth, just in a special time period, which is the present of the novel, 1995. They are immortal, but time goes just as slow for them as for us, and we can see how waiting for almost six thousand years changes a person. They are not hostile for humans, they live amongst us, but if they have to kill to reach their goal, they would not hesitate for a moment: ending a human life for them is just like trampling on an ant for us.

Another interesting side of the story is to see how the time travelers react when they arrive in London, in 1995, 29 years after their own time. They have been to a lot of amazing places with the Doctor, the past, Earth in the future and even other planets, but they’ve never been to their own city in the future. Ben and Polly immediately gets curious about what happened since they have left 1966, but they know they can’t know much about their own future. In the end, they can’t even adapt to the modern world, so they leave it behind.

I think Invasion of the Cat-people is an interesting story for those who like Doctor Who. What is unique is that Gary Russell gives us the cast at the end of the novel, who would play the characters on the TV screen: for me it is cool to imagine for example Jude Law playing Atimcos, one of the Euterpians while I am reading the book. I haven’t read any other Doctor Who novels besides this one, so I can’t compare this to others, but as an independent reading I can recommend it for you all.

[B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Polly, Ben, and the Doctor land in 1994, interrupting a professor's ghost-hunting outing with a few of his students in a cliff-side Cumbria holiday house. Forty thousand years prior, before the last great continental shift, five aliens who can shape reality with song touch down on Earth and begin to shape its development. These events are more related than they seem. Also featuring: tarot cards, lots of betrayals, a flying carpet ride sequence, and, of course, cat-people. The "campy, pulpy sci-fi" warning goes without saying.

I've read better-written books and rated them lower, so let me just say that if you're looking for a really well-written DW novel, this is not that. The rating was boosted by how interesting the plot was alone. Seriously, there were some really original, neat story elements in here; I really like when sci-fi really takes into account real scientific that would influence the plot, and this book did that well with the continental drift thing, among others. It's just grounded enough in Earth's science and history to be super entertaining, while still having really out there super sci-fi parts too.

The best thing for me, other than some of the plot stuff, was the character work! I can't say I'm super happy with everything they did with Ben and Polly, but the things I didn't like were small, one-off lines rather than big overarching stuff. On the whole, Russell did a fantastic job with them, and really put the work in to elaborate on their canon characterization - especially with Polly - in a way that I loved. And I loved the backstory content he wrote for her and Ben too!

My biggest issues were that the cat-people were sometimes a little too silly and pulpy, even for me. It was kind of hard to take them seriously. And then the stuff to do with race. I know Russell probably had completely good intentions, but he was still a white British guy in the 90s writing about Australian history; some of the stuff about Native people came off as weird and a little fetishistic.

[Jacqueline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Invasion of the Cat People is part of Virgin Publishing's Doctor Who the Missing Adventures series. The Missing Adventures series features Doctors 1-6. This novel has the unusual Doctor and companion combination of, the Second Doctor (Patrick Troughton) with Ben and Polly. Ben and Polly were the First Doctor's final companions, who carried over. Troughton is more famous for having as his companions the Scottish Highlander, Jaime McCrimmon, with either Victoria or Zoë. But it was interesting to read a story that features Ben and Polly with the Second Doctor.

Overall, this story of dual invasion. Four aliens landed in pre-Colonial Australia and not only taught but learned from the Aboriginal people there. Several thousand years later, a race of, well, Cat-People, arrives, meaning to destroy the Earth to use it as a power source.

Overall, I'd give this particular Doctor Who novel a 3.5 rating. It was interesting to see Ben and Polly, and I liked the way the other wrote their confusion and "out-of-sync-ness" at being just a few years in their own future. But I felt the plot would have been better not split between the two groups of invaders. I tended to pick-up and put-down the book a lot, and that's not a good sign.

[Frank Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Second Doctor story about a terribly unappealing adventure.

My main problem was that I found the evil, singing, gypsy kittens unimpressive and their tarot guided, mystical plan was perfectly uninteresting. It isn't that I didn't buy it. The Whoniverse is full of ridiculous aliens with equally ridiculous plots. It just isn't an intriguing concept to me. Maybe it's because I'm not a cat person. Maybe it's because...

This book started off well written but it descended below my minimum decency bar. There's actually a lot more historical and political commentary than I would call reasonable. Kudos for doing some background and aiming at some cultural content but a major fart in your general direction for a disrespectful attempt.

The way the author described scenery and the darker events was a positive aspect of the writing, it gets fairly devilish at times even if not appealing. The main team are often recognisable, The Doctor especially so, although it's becoming par for the course that many of the authors do slip up on this at times and this one did that too.

This still managed to have some fun moments, it also had a fair sprinkling of gore in it. I'm glad I read it... but this one is only for the completionists among us. Nothing special.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 1 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1942887.html

this early Missing Adventure is not a hit. Aliens who look exactly like cats plan to tear the earth in half, as you do, but are stymied by the fact that continental drift has moved crucial equipment out of alignment over a few dozen millennia (when continents would only have drifted by about a kilometre). Some nice descriptive passages, especially about Cumbria and Polly, admitted by the author to be particular interests in the foreword, but otherwise the narrative is confused and cluttered.

[The Master · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story was mad fun. Two different alien races pitted against one another with the TARDIS crew caught in the middle.

The only thing that felt peculiar was that the Doctor would be absent for large chunks of the story, then burst onto the scene for some brief Troughtony clowning, then vanish again. I would have liked more Doctor in this book -- Gary Russell captured the Second Doctor's persona quite well.

Other than that, I liked it!

[John Bullock · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Euterpians are an ancient powerful race who visited the earth 40,000 years ago, a landing party ends up trapped on earth after their mother ship is destroyed by a solar flare. One of the five Euterpians has managed to contact the Cat-people and has offered the Earth a much needed fuel source in return for passage off the Earth. The Euterpians have placed beacons around the earth, which when activated will destroy the earth turning it into the much needed fuel source. Fortunately they can't locate the beacons because continental drift has moved them around.

When you read a book called Invasion of the Cat-people you expect Cat-people and an Invasion by them, with this you get very little of either. The Cat-people play second fiddle to the Euterpians for most of the book and never actually get round to an Invasion. The story makes little sense, the Euterpians are made out to be a powerful race who can shape matter with their song and even move through time, yet they can't locate the beacons they placed 40,000 years ago, but Polly somehow is able to help Tim locate and activate these beacons destroying the Earth. The whole idea of the Beacons lost through continental drift doesn't work as Pangaea is believed to have broken up over 200 million years ago yet the Euterpians only arrived 40,000 years ago (the prologue actually dates their arrival as 3978 BC which I assume is a typo) Once the Euterpians have destroyed the Earth and captured the energy Godwanna reveals her and Atimkos can use the energy to get them home without any assistance, this then raises the question why they couldn't have done this 40,000 years ago when they first arrived? I have a feeling Gary Russell may of written some reason to prevent this somewhere in the book, but the story is such a jumbled mess, if it was addressed I certainly can't remember.

There's lots of stuff in here that really does not need to be and other stuff that is not explained. George Smithers introduced given a few pages of back story then killed. Why is Tim attacked in his flat by the Cat-people? What is Thorsuun actually trying to achieve with the Ghost Hunters? Why was the Doctor able to locate the RTC's but Thorsuun hadn't found them? The whole travelling back in time to visit ancient Baghdad, subsequently leaving Thorsuun there, she then spends the next 10 thousand years with only one thing to plan, stopping herself from leaving for Baghdad in the first place, only to arrive too late and be shot and killed, even though she could have found herself at any point in the preceeding 10,000 years and said 'don't get involved with the Cat-people, it won't work'. It felt like Adoon is introduced ( unsuccessfully, I might add) as means of trying to explain in simpler terms what's going on, on page 142 Gary writes 'Adoon had completely lost track by now' all I could think at this point is 'me too'. On the train to London the conductor tells Polly and Tim the train is being diverted to Kings Cross from Euston because of trouble at Chester, firstly I'm from Liverpool and I'm pretty sure the Train from Cumbria doesn't go anywhere near Chester, (please correct me if I'm wrong), secondly later in the book Polly talks about having to deal with the concrete Euston station, why would she know about this is this if the train had arrived at Kings Cross. At the end of chapter 5, Mrs Wilding, Dent and Bridgeman succeed in reaching the Garden, only to be captured by Godwanna and her army of insane people, Godwanna ordering them to kill the intruders. When we meet them again in the final chapter they just reappear in the white void of the Nexus, no mention of the insane people or the garden.

Other reviews I've seen of this commend the characterisation of the regular TARDIS crew, whilst Ben and Polly seem okay, I didn't feel Gary captured Patrick's Doctor particularly well, slipping occasionally into dialogue that sounded more like the 3rd Doctor and behaviour that is more reminiscent of the 7th doctor as seen in the NA's.

With a title like 'Invasion of The Cat-people' I expected a wacky fun adventure book, instead we got a dull unintelligible hard going slog of a book. The best thing about this book is the rather lovely cover artwork by Colin Howard.

[Tom Jones · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh dear me. That was a massive chore.
I plan to review this book on YouTube (TJ Productions) in December as it's going to be another Synthespians review. I am not disappointed because I knew this book wasn't very well liked overall. I was guessing a 4/10 or 5/10. It turned out to be lower!

No clue why I read this and not "The Murder Game" which I am told is perfect 2nd Doctor storytelling.

I haven't read a lot from the Virgin Missing Adventures range. I am aware of some classics in the range but the range is known to be very hit and miss with stories. With some true classics and some real stinkers. This one is awful. It developed so many negatives to the point the review was almost 100% negative and not a single positive.

It has one positive. One noticeable positive.
The main characters are very well portrayed and characterised

Then to the negatives. Besides the main characters, it fails in every single area. It's either done rubbish or really lacking.

The story and plot is okay with The Cat People and The Immortal Witches at war but it's not developed well at all and to get any form of investment to the story is impossible.

Supporting characters are 2D and boring like cardboard. None jump out. Very bad drive, structuring is messy, the stakes don't seem to increase and it tends to waffle with dialogue.

The worst part is the Cat People. The villains. They are a joke. Gary Russel who I hate to rip this novel apart because I like the guy and his novels do get slaughtered by people, but how he establishes the Cat People is very cliche and I cannot take them seriously. Maybe I went into this novel thinking of a brutal conflict between two alien races and not more a fun and odd novel? Back to The Cat People. Even though this book is called "Invasion of the Cat People" they did very little in the story. The hiss, threatening with words from time to time, look a tiny bit in their culture and understand they are space mercenaries, shoot 2 or 3 people and that's pretty much it. The Immortal Witches feel like they are getting more and The Cat People are done very poorly.

My least favourite 2nd Doctor story and the first one I can call awful. I tried to find something else, another noticable positive but to be honest it's extremely small. Like how Ben and Polly act in the 90s when they are from the 60s. Not enough to affect the rating.

Overall, really don't waste your time with this book. It was a chore. Completed it in two days and I am surprised It didn't take me a week the content was that dry and stale. This belongs with Synthespians, Nekromanteia, The Leisure Hive, Nocturne and Timewyrm: Genesys for the worst doctor who stories.

This book also made history for scoring the worst In-depth rating out of all Doctor Who books i've read that I do in YouTube videos. I will save the score for the video review. Maybe because for the first time I ever have done a review on a Doctor Who story, it was almost one sided with a ton of negatives. Some of them I will save for the In-depth YouTube review coming in December. Should be about a 45-50 min review perhaps by looking at the script. Maybe longer. My distaste and massive disappointment with Synthespians still ranks the worst but Invasion of the Cat People belongs with it.

1/10

My next review will very likely be a positive one as it's Stephen King's Misery. :)

[Leila Anani · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really struggled with this 2nd Doctor story - It throws so many things into the pot we have a confused mess: Cat People Invaders, Ancient alien singers who influence the aborigines, ghost
hunters, Arabian nights & flying carpets, ley-lines & tarot, magic books that age people backwards.
There's definitely some Survival in here and Ghostlight

A space ship of aliens known as Euterpians crash land on Earth and get stranded -the teach the aborigines all they know. They set up beacons along the ley lines and hope to one day get home. They use these magic books to keep them from aging. of the 5 - One Atimkos went off to do his own thing, two are a loving couple with the man seeming to have dementia and the other two are evil? or want to destroy the earth at any rate and use the explosive power to get home.

Then there are the invading cat people. I have no idea how the two are related - I thought that the Euterpians were cat people but they blend in with regular people and look like humans and I'm at a total loss - I thought they might be a rescue party but then I don't know maybe they just came to invade and have no relation. And to make it more complex there are two groups of cat people - the queen mother and her rebel daughter aiming to ovverthrow her mum.

There are some human ghost hunters who seem to be working for a couple of the Euterpians who are using them to find ley lines i think

The Doctor, Poly and Ben get involved and Polly gets kidnapped by Goth Tim really Atimkos - rebel of the Euterpians and he has his own plans - he drags her to Australia because of her 'open mind'

Somehow the Doctor and Ben end up in fantasy Arabia and meet a young thief and have a magic carpet ride that has nothing to do with anything.

The bad guys get defeated of course - And I really liked the destruction of Tim - The doctor removes the inside from the outside of the Tardis turning the shell into an anechoic chamber so when he sings the waves bounce back and he explodes. Nice use of the TARDIS and a very visual finale.

I thought this had some lovely Polly moments as well - like when Tim takes her to Carnaby Street in 1994 and he remincess about the 60's.

There are some great individual scenes - I liked the initial set up and they dynamics of the cat people with the rebel daughter and men as slaves almost.

But overall this is a confusing mess - there's waaaaaaaaaaaaaayy too much in here - some great ideas, but too many vying for space. I'd have been content with the Doctor simply foiling the invading cat people. It's easier with aliens we know (Daleks, Cybermen, zygons etc) here - fine I can visualise a cat person, but then we've got the Euterpians who look like people and can change their appearance? And change their names (Thorgarsuunela becomes Ms Thorsuun and Thor-Sun, Tarwildbaning becomes Mrs Wilding etc....) and I'm juggling who the characters are what race or faction they belong to, as well as trying to piece together what's going on - it's a struggle.

It also feels like a story for the wrong doctor. It's set in '94 which obviously isn't Troughton era for a start. I can Picture the 7th Doctor far more easily (maybe simply because of the similarities to Survival and Ghostlight) but it doesn't really feel very 2nd Doctor. He does play his recorder but other than that I just wasn't feeling this was a particularly good vehicle for the 2nd doctor.

[DevryBasketball · Rating 2 out of 5]

I knew this book by reputation, not a great reputation all told, but I was intrigued both by what seemed like a fairly fun (if rote) premise and the prospect of being an exceedingly rare story which featured the group of The Second Doctor, Polly and Ben without Jamie. Even rarer it's a story which seemed to want to flesh out Polly and put her quite central to the story. So perhaps I could tolerate a bit of contrived, knowing camp for that.

Thing is, it's about as far from a typical alien invasion story as you can get. In fact, I'd hardly call what the cats do here "invading" at all. They're quite sidelined by mysticism, ghost-hunting, pocket dimensions, diversions into ancient Arabia, mental illness, time displacement and Doctor Who's fortieth (thereabouts) explanation for the origins of life on the planet. It's all tenuously strung together, and excessively confusing even when each individual component isn't fighting with each other component for space.

There are good ideas to be explored, and the book is at its best when dealing with Polly's malaise over her being displaced from time. It does have the strange side effect of the things considered futuristic and alien to her (like compact CDs and the music of Bjork) feeling just as antiquated to a reader in 2021, but if anything that only enhances the message. Gary Russell seems to like Polly as much as I do. Less care can be given to The Doctor. Troughton's physicality is very hard to write in prose, and not much of an attempt has even been made here. Even worse is the serially underused Ben, at his most superfluous here.

Ultimately what should have been a two day read was dragged kicking and screaming over a week because I couldn't bring myself to pick up the damn thing. Loaded with potential but bogged down in its own confusing lore and wrongheaded overabundance of ideas, I dreaded having to read it. Skippable unless you're obsessive.

[Steven Andreyechen · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first glance this novel may seem like the run of the mill pulp Sci-Fi romp but it is anything but. This story jumps wildly from topic to topic that really don’t seem like they could ever be released but in the end are woven into a compelling story. From Ghosts and the occult to the beliefs of the Australian Aborigines, this books got it fused with an interesting science fiction premise.

The characters are well rounded, Ben and Polly in particular are well realized, which is good as it is their only outing in the missing adventures range.

This book however is full of faults, with regards to its plot. Many of the complex elements of the plot are somewhat confusing or poorly explained. As well, the historical inaccuracies of the book (in particular when did the continents move) are so blatantly wrong that it actually impacted my ability to understand the timeline of evens depicted.

Overall a fun but very flawed book.

[Mars G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a bit hard to follow, truth be told. I wasn't sure who the good or the bad was at any point - but I mean, I supposed it showed itself in the end.

Either way, it was fun, and I enjoyed the novel. I especially enjoy that Ben and Polly were the companions - I wish desperately for more of them with Two.

[Pietro Rossi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall this book doesn’t sing to me. There are some very lovely passages, such as Ben and Polly seeing 1990s London, so familiar yet so strange. The Tarot cards, feline offworlders, concept of RTC, Polly and Tim. 

But collectively as a novel,  these ingredients don't gell, leading to an unsatisfying read, which is a shame. 2/10

Scoring: 0 bad; 1-3 poor; 4-6 average; 7-9 good; 10 excellent.

[Saoki · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only good thing this novel has is the main trio characterization. Everything else is boring, with way too much repetition and scenes that add nothing to the story. After a while I found myself dynamic reading so I'd get to the parts with the Doctor.

[Arthur B · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yeah, maybe don't just rehash the period sexism even if you're writing a book based on a 1960s version of Doctor Who, please and thank you. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...

[rabbitprincess · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5

[John Wilson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nah.

[Jade · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meehhhh, this was all over the place and really hard to follow. I enjoyed the Polly and Tim storyline, but everything else was a little messy.

[Alex Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great second doctor fun, Polly and Ben get the screen time they deserve very wacky concept that pays off

[Mia · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot may be rather nonsensical, but I enjoyed the overall characterisation of 2 and Ben in particular in this novel.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

August 2021
Not by any means one of the great Doctor Who novels, but I liked it fine even if it's nowhere near perfect. I'd much rather read something slightly forgettable than truly awful. I guess if I have one BIG gripe it's that I felt the plot was leading somewhere that would give Polly a lot to do under her own steam, but she just ends up getting pushed around by the bad guys for the majority of the second half.

July 2025
Easily the most up and down experience I've had on my reread of the VMAs so far. I suppose it's got two central problems: it wants to give Polly an emotional arc but doesn't actually seem to have much for her to do, and one of the alien races that lands on Earth to take its energy is significantly more interesting than the other, the Cat-People, who are a pretty bogstandard matriarchal pulp scifi race in a book which I don't think is actually going for as pulpy a tone as its title suggests. Also, there's some questionable engagement with Aboriginal cultures, of the usual 'religious and cultural practices of ethnically other-to-the-author group was actually originated by aliens' variety, which I'm never a fan of. When it works for me it actually works pretty well - some of the scenes between Dent and Wilding, Polly and Ben wandering into a McDonalds, the Doctor confusing a guy so badly that he just hands him a gun - but there are also points when it really doesn't.

[Grendel 23 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would have been a great episode of Classic Who.

A fun story that feels like an actual
missing episode of the classic series. This Doctor acts and sounds like he should, and companions Ben and Polly are shown as real, fully formed characters. They feel accurate to the show, and the author imagines some interesting anachronistic situations for the pair from 1966 learning about the ‘future’ of 1994. The references to previous episodes, and flashes of even the previous Doctor, are nice little Easter eggs for the die hand fan.

The villains - a race of fascistic cat people - remind me of the explicitly referenced feline species from the 7th Doctor episode ‘Survival’. These cats love violence and have weapons that can explode a person or even microwave a nice leg of lamb!

A quick read with great pacing, this oldie is still just as enjoyable to read, even decades later. There’s a fun bit at the end with the author’s mental casting of his characters, with Jude Law playing the lead Cat Person!

[Steve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I find the Missing / Past Doctor adventures fascinating, especially when they take Doctors from the 60s or 70s and deposit them closer to the present day. Setting The Tenth Planet in the far-off year of 1986 is one thing, but here we have the 2nd Doctor (very specifically early in his life) in the mid-90s.

The plot itself gets a bit of time to get going, and I sometimes had trouble following who was who with the two alien factions. At times it feels like one of those 4-part TV stories which has been unnecessarily padded out to 6 episodes.

But those are minor niggles. Gary Russell has a pitch-perfect ear for the Doctor's mannerisms and speech patterns. It was so easy to imagine Patrick Troughton speaking these lines. There are a couple of great scenes of the out-of-time Ben and Polly encountering modern society and technology. The MacDonalds scene is surprisingly touching. And the diversion to Baghdad is hilarious.

[David Layton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Even Gary Russell sheepishly admits that this novel is not particularly good. Dreadful is the most apt adjective. The plot makes little sense. The worst part is the Cat-People themselves. These come off as 1950's C movie alien baddies, like the Lobster Man. Every cat cliché imaginable gets used, down to the kitty-litter. The book might have made a half-decent pardody, had it been written that way.

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nice characterization of the three leads. Despite never having seen a TV show with them, I always liked Ben and Polly.
The cat aliens are interesting, but there's so much flitting about that you end up more puzzled than interested in the plot.

There is a cute scene where Ben and Polly, who are from the 60's, visit a McDonalds in the 80s.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Irreverent, turn-off-your-brain fun. It captures the 2nd Doctor's early clownishness perfectly, and it manages to translate the zaniness of the early 4th season to the printed page with considerable skill. It's not exactly a filling meal, but it's a great tasting dessert.

[Kelsey F · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of the weirdest books i have ever read.

[Simon Curtis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Er...