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Past Doctor Adventures #67
Doctor Who: Synthespians™
In the 111th century, nostalgia is everything. TV from the 20th century is the new obsession, and on Reef Station One, Dixon of Dock Green and Z-Cars are ratings winners. But an ancient, dying race sees this human outpost as a last hope for survival...and millionaire Walter J Matheson III sees it as a marvelous business opportunity. When the Doctor and Peri arrive they find a fractured society dependent on film and TV. They also discover that the Republic's greatest entrepreneur is in league with one of the Doctor's oldest enemies. If they can't unravel the link between the two, they could end up in the deadliest soap opera of all time...
276 pages, Paperback
First published October 6, 2004
1 person is currently reading
256 people want to read
About the author
Craig Hinton
25 books7 followersCraig Paul Alexander Hinton was a British writer best known for his work on spin-offs from the BBC Television series Doctor Who. He also wrote articles for science fiction magazines and was the Coordinator of the Doctor Who Appreciation Society. He taught mathematics in London, where he was found dead in his home on 3 December 2006. The cause of death was given as a heart attack.
Hinton first was known for his articles about science fiction television programmes, including Doctor Who and Star Trek. These brought him to the attention of the editor of Marvel UK's Doctor Who Magazine, who offered him the job of reviewing merchandise for the magazine's Shelf Life section. Whilst writing for the magazine, Hinton had his first novel published. The Crystal Bucephalus was part of Virgin Publishing's Missing Adventures range. The book - which Hinton often jokingly referred to as "The Crystal Bucket" - was originally submitted for Virgin's New Adventures, and 50,000 words of this version were written before the change was made.
This novel was followed by a further Missing Adventure, Millennial Rites in 1995, and then by Hinton's only New Adventure in 1996, GodEngine, which features the Ice Warriors as well as oblique appearances by the Daleks.
Following Virgin's loss of their licence for Doctor Who merchandise, Hinton began submitting proposals to BBC Books. In 2001 they published his novel The Quantum Archangel as part of their BBC Past Doctor Adventures range. This was followed in 2004 by Synthespians™. This had started life as a proposal for the Eighth Doctor before being adapted to a previous Doctor. An image of the television show Dynasty was used on the cover: the cover's creators had arranged for permission to use the copyrighted image, but had neglected to get permission to alter it. At the last minute a replacement cover had to be produced. It is this that appears on the cover.
Hinton's Doctor Who novels often contain references to or explanations of elements of past continuity. He claimed to have been the originator of the term "fanwank", which he applied to his own work.
Hinton continued to work with Virgin, writing pseudonymously under the name Paul C. Alexander for their Idol range. He wrote three books in the range: Chains of Deceit, The Final Restraint and Code of Submission. These titles were a major departure from his science fiction. They explored aspects of his sexuality only suggested in his other works.
Hinton wrote for Big Finish Productions' Audio Adventures. The play Excelis Decays was produced in 2002 for their Doctor Who range and The Lords of Forever in 2005 for their The Tomorrow People range. Hinton also wrote short stories for their short fiction collections.
Outside of the science fiction world Hinton was a noted IT journalist in the UK. He edited magazines in the mid-1990s for VNU Business Publications in London and moved on to ITNetwork.com shortly afterwards.
Hinton first was known for his articles about science fiction television programmes, including Doctor Who and Star Trek. These brought him to the attention of the editor of Marvel UK's Doctor Who Magazine, who offered him the job of reviewing merchandise for the magazine's Shelf Life section. Whilst writing for the magazine, Hinton had his first novel published. The Crystal Bucephalus was part of Virgin Publishing's Missing Adventures range. The book - which Hinton often jokingly referred to as "The Crystal Bucket" - was originally submitted for Virgin's New Adventures, and 50,000 words of this version were written before the change was made.
This novel was followed by a further Missing Adventure, Millennial Rites in 1995, and then by Hinton's only New Adventure in 1996, GodEngine, which features the Ice Warriors as well as oblique appearances by the Daleks.
Following Virgin's loss of their licence for Doctor Who merchandise, Hinton began submitting proposals to BBC Books. In 2001 they published his novel The Quantum Archangel as part of their BBC Past Doctor Adventures range. This was followed in 2004 by Synthespians™. This had started life as a proposal for the Eighth Doctor before being adapted to a previous Doctor. An image of the television show Dynasty was used on the cover: the cover's creators had arranged for permission to use the copyrighted image, but had neglected to get permission to alter it. At the last minute a replacement cover had to be produced. It is this that appears on the cover.
Hinton's Doctor Who novels often contain references to or explanations of elements of past continuity. He claimed to have been the originator of the term "fanwank", which he applied to his own work.
Hinton continued to work with Virgin, writing pseudonymously under the name Paul C. Alexander for their Idol range. He wrote three books in the range: Chains of Deceit, The Final Restraint and Code of Submission. These titles were a major departure from his science fiction. They explored aspects of his sexuality only suggested in his other works.
Hinton wrote for Big Finish Productions' Audio Adventures. The play Excelis Decays was produced in 2002 for their Doctor Who range and The Lords of Forever in 2005 for their The Tomorrow People range. Hinton also wrote short stories for their short fiction collections.
Outside of the science fiction world Hinton was a noted IT journalist in the UK. He edited magazines in the mid-1990s for VNU Business Publications in London and moved on to ITNetwork.com shortly afterwards.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 10, 2013
It can be said that there is a visceral thrill in experiencing synthetic people committing dire and heinous acts that defy all common sense. But we're not here to talk about "Jersey Shore", so why don't we discuss the man in his amazing technicolor uglycoat?
Craig Hinton's novel takes the Sixth Doctor and Peri to a world that has been cut off from the rest of the empire years ago. However, it is also just far enough away to start receiving old transmissions from Earth several thousand years in the past. As it turns out, those transmissions nicely tie into the grand old golden days of eighties soap operas. Cue the "Dallas" theme and start the catfighting! The net result is that they encounter a society that has been influenced extensively by eighties fashions and television shows, to the point where people are quite vain and devoted to their shows, as the people in charge of the media constantly try to recreate the vibe from reconstructed transmissions in order to keep people glued to their sets. One particular CEO, Walter Matheson has pioneered not only several techniques to keep people beautiful but also created the Synthespians to help out with the shows, acting as extras and minor parts. But as one of nine prominent businessmen in the system, he'd like to be in charge of quite a bit more. As in, everything.
Anyone who looks at the cover will probably figure out in all of five seconds who's really behind the Synthespians but even if your cover has been torn off, the image of silent mannequin type people wandering around will probably narrow down the list of villains to about one, even as you're thinking, "Nah, that's too obvious." And you'd be right. But it isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Hinton has given us a breezy novel that never conveys the dire peril it so desperately wants us to feel, and yet it manages to remain readable despite itself. Part of the reason is because he has a tremendous feel for the characters. His Sixth Doctor manages to strike that line between "boorish and bombastic" and "smartest and most moral person in the room" without sucking all the oxygen out of the surrounding area, even if his reaction to all the violence later in the novel is a bit underwhelming. But Hinton gives us a relationship between Peri and the Doctor that for once doesn't revolve around them insulting or exasperating each other in equal measure, he calls Peri "possibly his best friend" at one point and the tone is that they're finally getting used to each other and in fact genuinely seem to like each other. He does a nice job with Peri as well, not forgetting that she studied botany (even if it makes little difference to the story) or that she's a girl in her mid-twenties and would like to just enjoy herself instead of carousing about with a man with terrible dress sense and getting shot at by men in fake-looking silver suits. This winds up forming the core of the book, with a handful of decently sketched secondary characters (a young rich girl and a former soap star) for them to play off of and give us something to work with.
Which is good, because the plot doesn't exactly steep itself in nuance. The villain is practically "bwah-ha-ha" and the scenario of the world is paper-thin . . . if the conceit of having a whole planet be held in rapture by "Dynasty" reruns and be influenced by it doesn't lead to some kind of satire or commentary on eighties excess, then what exactly is the point. There's no over the top setpieces to rivet our attention and considering the ridiculousness of the core concept, it's a shame Hinton didn't just go all the way and give us a Grand Guignol of bad taste, forcing the Doctor to navigate everything that was garish about the era, but in space. Instead of feels like wallpaper, a concept to hang that story on that isn't developed beyond that. Which is a shame when your villains literally are plastic people.
The villains of course are the other problem. The Autons are primarily a villain that depends on a visual to have them achieve their full creepiness (as the cover can attest) and relegating them to pure text means that they become no better than silent Daleks or Cybermen randomly blowing people away. And since they don't talk it means you need an arresting villain to anchor all the bad deeds, someone who can do the talking for them and use them as supremely effective foot soldiers while being as bad as bad can be. Walter Matheson does not quite fit that bill, coming off as a surprisingly less ruthless Gordon Gekko, even if he has big goals. Giving us the origin of the Nestene Consciousness doesn't help matters either, as "scary bodiless intelligence from space" becomes a poor man's version of Lovecraft, retaining none of the dread or existential horror such a thing might entail. If not for the mannequin people, they might as well not even be in here. Hinton does get some mileage out of plastic things as lethal weapons, giving us a series of people getting killed by ordinary objects but it really comes across as a bloodier version of "Terror of the Autons", with less shock value (the Doctor, for one, seems to talk all the mass slaughter in stride). Hinton does toy with some more frightening ideas, such as people being controlled by plastics and the idea of vanity ruling people, but doesn't go anywhere truly unsettling with it, undoing his own horror before it even gets a chance to sink in.
All this means the plot hinges on coincidences and lucky breaks, not the best formula for a gripping read. Yet Hinton has a way of making it all go down easy, keeping enough balls in the air that you don't really think about looking down to realize you're not standing on anything solid. It's far from the deepest read (perhaps befitting its subject matter) but you don't find yourself being bogged down either. Good Sixth Doctor stories on air were far and few between for the most part, and even a story that doesn't break free from well trodden territory (not for nothing, but wasn't a planet controlled by its media the subject of "Vengeance on Varos"?) can still be entertaining. Since Colin Baker's a nice bloke and worthy of a good tale, I'll take this. Just don't expect any depth.
Craig Hinton's novel takes the Sixth Doctor and Peri to a world that has been cut off from the rest of the empire years ago. However, it is also just far enough away to start receiving old transmissions from Earth several thousand years in the past. As it turns out, those transmissions nicely tie into the grand old golden days of eighties soap operas. Cue the "Dallas" theme and start the catfighting! The net result is that they encounter a society that has been influenced extensively by eighties fashions and television shows, to the point where people are quite vain and devoted to their shows, as the people in charge of the media constantly try to recreate the vibe from reconstructed transmissions in order to keep people glued to their sets. One particular CEO, Walter Matheson has pioneered not only several techniques to keep people beautiful but also created the Synthespians to help out with the shows, acting as extras and minor parts. But as one of nine prominent businessmen in the system, he'd like to be in charge of quite a bit more. As in, everything.
Anyone who looks at the cover will probably figure out in all of five seconds who's really behind the Synthespians but even if your cover has been torn off, the image of silent mannequin type people wandering around will probably narrow down the list of villains to about one, even as you're thinking, "Nah, that's too obvious." And you'd be right. But it isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Hinton has given us a breezy novel that never conveys the dire peril it so desperately wants us to feel, and yet it manages to remain readable despite itself. Part of the reason is because he has a tremendous feel for the characters. His Sixth Doctor manages to strike that line between "boorish and bombastic" and "smartest and most moral person in the room" without sucking all the oxygen out of the surrounding area, even if his reaction to all the violence later in the novel is a bit underwhelming. But Hinton gives us a relationship between Peri and the Doctor that for once doesn't revolve around them insulting or exasperating each other in equal measure, he calls Peri "possibly his best friend" at one point and the tone is that they're finally getting used to each other and in fact genuinely seem to like each other. He does a nice job with Peri as well, not forgetting that she studied botany (even if it makes little difference to the story) or that she's a girl in her mid-twenties and would like to just enjoy herself instead of carousing about with a man with terrible dress sense and getting shot at by men in fake-looking silver suits. This winds up forming the core of the book, with a handful of decently sketched secondary characters (a young rich girl and a former soap star) for them to play off of and give us something to work with.
Which is good, because the plot doesn't exactly steep itself in nuance. The villain is practically "bwah-ha-ha" and the scenario of the world is paper-thin . . . if the conceit of having a whole planet be held in rapture by "Dynasty" reruns and be influenced by it doesn't lead to some kind of satire or commentary on eighties excess, then what exactly is the point. There's no over the top setpieces to rivet our attention and considering the ridiculousness of the core concept, it's a shame Hinton didn't just go all the way and give us a Grand Guignol of bad taste, forcing the Doctor to navigate everything that was garish about the era, but in space. Instead of feels like wallpaper, a concept to hang that story on that isn't developed beyond that. Which is a shame when your villains literally are plastic people.
The villains of course are the other problem. The Autons are primarily a villain that depends on a visual to have them achieve their full creepiness (as the cover can attest) and relegating them to pure text means that they become no better than silent Daleks or Cybermen randomly blowing people away. And since they don't talk it means you need an arresting villain to anchor all the bad deeds, someone who can do the talking for them and use them as supremely effective foot soldiers while being as bad as bad can be. Walter Matheson does not quite fit that bill, coming off as a surprisingly less ruthless Gordon Gekko, even if he has big goals. Giving us the origin of the Nestene Consciousness doesn't help matters either, as "scary bodiless intelligence from space" becomes a poor man's version of Lovecraft, retaining none of the dread or existential horror such a thing might entail. If not for the mannequin people, they might as well not even be in here. Hinton does get some mileage out of plastic things as lethal weapons, giving us a series of people getting killed by ordinary objects but it really comes across as a bloodier version of "Terror of the Autons", with less shock value (the Doctor, for one, seems to talk all the mass slaughter in stride). Hinton does toy with some more frightening ideas, such as people being controlled by plastics and the idea of vanity ruling people, but doesn't go anywhere truly unsettling with it, undoing his own horror before it even gets a chance to sink in.
All this means the plot hinges on coincidences and lucky breaks, not the best formula for a gripping read. Yet Hinton has a way of making it all go down easy, keeping enough balls in the air that you don't really think about looking down to realize you're not standing on anything solid. It's far from the deepest read (perhaps befitting its subject matter) but you don't find yourself being bogged down either. Good Sixth Doctor stories on air were far and few between for the most part, and even a story that doesn't break free from well trodden territory (not for nothing, but wasn't a planet controlled by its media the subject of "Vengeance on Varos"?) can still be entertaining. Since Colin Baker's a nice bloke and worthy of a good tale, I'll take this. Just don't expect any depth.
December 30, 2021
I have heard mixed reviews on this novel with some saying it was a decent read whilst others claimed it to be one of the worst who novels ever written, but with me being curious I decided to pick this novel up and give it a go and I was pleasantly surprised to find it to be much better then I thought it would be!
A very underrated novel with a bit of a slow pace at the start but soon picks up with an engaging story, plenty of action, and a menacing, intimidating, and clever villain with Mathieson and the return of the Nestene Consciousness! But with a bit of a backstory to their beginnings!
I have heard Craig Hinton is an author who relies on a lot of fanwank for his stories but I found there wasn't that much in this one, but I have heard the results of Time's Champion and Quantum Arcangel which sound utterly bonkers! But I think he can be very good at his own ideas and characterization. The Sixth Doctor and Peri are really good in this, whilst the story contained many interesting ideas about missing media being restored and the concept of nostalgia which is a huge basis for this story.
Overall: A novel I really enjoyed and find to be an underrated gem. 8/10
A very underrated novel with a bit of a slow pace at the start but soon picks up with an engaging story, plenty of action, and a menacing, intimidating, and clever villain with Mathieson and the return of the Nestene Consciousness! But with a bit of a backstory to their beginnings!
I have heard Craig Hinton is an author who relies on a lot of fanwank for his stories but I found there wasn't that much in this one, but I have heard the results of Time's Champion and Quantum Arcangel which sound utterly bonkers! But I think he can be very good at his own ideas and characterization. The Sixth Doctor and Peri are really good in this, whilst the story contained many interesting ideas about missing media being restored and the concept of nostalgia which is a huge basis for this story.
Overall: A novel I really enjoyed and find to be an underrated gem. 8/10
August 11, 2021
A really nice doctor who adventure featuring the long awaited return of the Autons before the revival of the new series. I thought the plot was inventive but the writing of the sixth doctor was lacking somewhat; he didn’t take as much control of the situation. Chronologically, this is (possibly) the last adventure before the events occurring in the TV serial ‘Trial of a Timelord’ and I appreciated the continuity of the story. Overall, it was good but I’m a sucker for autons so that made the story a whole lot better.
July 9, 2013
Two issues keep this novel at only three stars: (1) It's too long -- cut the explanations down, remove many of the more indulgent digressions, and the result would be a much trimmer, streamlined adventure; (2) I don't believe Mr. Hinton captures the 6th Doctor here as well as he did in his sublime "Millenial Rites".
All that aside, as a spoof of television and late-20th century pop culture (especially the 80s), it's a much more satisfying read than the last "Doctor Who" novel to cover similar ground, "Time of Your Life".
All that aside, as a spoof of television and late-20th century pop culture (especially the 80s), it's a much more satisfying read than the last "Doctor Who" novel to cover similar ground, "Time of Your Life".
June 13, 2012
At times, it's difficult to figure out just what exactly Synthespians™ is supposed to be. Is it supposed to be a send-up up the popular television shows of the 80s? Is it supposed to be warning to fans about expecting too much for a returning TV favorite? Is it supposed to be an action/adventure story?
What you get is a novel that is all of these things and, unfortunately, ends up being less than the sum of its parts.
That's not to say I didn't enjoy Synthespians™. I did enjoy it while reading it, but it's just after I was done, I didn't feel completely satisfied by the experience.
A large part of this dissatisfaction is thanks to the front cover, I accurately guessed who the recurring villain/monster in the story would be long before the novel actually gets around to that revelation. Not that author Craig Hinton doesn't do his best to keep you entertained up until that point -- the first 100 or so pages of this novel are a great deal of fun to read as Hinton satirizes everything that is or was 80s television. But, it's once you hit the 100 page mark that things start to go awry.
The novel stops being a satire and becomes a standard Who story with the sixth Doctor and Peri battling an old evil that has brought them to this place. Here is where a lot of the motivation of the story begins to break down. The villain of the novel has been defeated by the Doctor several times before and, yet, brings him into the plan so that it can gloat. Honestly, I kept expecting something more in terms of motivation. Or else to find another old villain behind all of this (until the last page of the novel, I fully expected the Ainley Master to crop up, cackling all the way).
Alas, none of that come to pass. Hinton does a pretty good job of tying together some things from the Colin Baker era and making you consider them in a new light. He gives a new spin and motivation to why the Doctor is put on trial in The Trial of a Time Lord, but it's certainly not any better reason than the Doctor's interference on Ravalox.
As I said before, Synthespians™ was a fine enough story for what it was -- bubblegum reading. You can't really dwell on it too much. It is fun, though I will admit that the last 50 or so pages weren't the most compelling or the most page-turning. The first half of the book is funny, witty and entertaining. Then we meet the main villain in a huge cliffhanger-like reveal and the fun factor drops considerably. Part of that is the means of dispatching said villain comes out far too early and easily for my liking. It's almost as if Hinton painted himself into a corner and didn't quite know how to get out of it, so he came up with the solution he does.
All in all, Synthespians™ is trying very hard to be more than it is. For the first half, it works brilliantly. But the second half isn't nearly the equal of the first and ends up making the entire experience less than it could be.
What you get is a novel that is all of these things and, unfortunately, ends up being less than the sum of its parts.
That's not to say I didn't enjoy Synthespians™. I did enjoy it while reading it, but it's just after I was done, I didn't feel completely satisfied by the experience.
A large part of this dissatisfaction is thanks to the front cover, I accurately guessed who the recurring villain/monster in the story would be long before the novel actually gets around to that revelation. Not that author Craig Hinton doesn't do his best to keep you entertained up until that point -- the first 100 or so pages of this novel are a great deal of fun to read as Hinton satirizes everything that is or was 80s television. But, it's once you hit the 100 page mark that things start to go awry.
The novel stops being a satire and becomes a standard Who story with the sixth Doctor and Peri battling an old evil that has brought them to this place. Here is where a lot of the motivation of the story begins to break down. The villain of the novel has been defeated by the Doctor several times before and, yet, brings him into the plan so that it can gloat. Honestly, I kept expecting something more in terms of motivation. Or else to find another old villain behind all of this (until the last page of the novel, I fully expected the Ainley Master to crop up, cackling all the way).
Alas, none of that come to pass. Hinton does a pretty good job of tying together some things from the Colin Baker era and making you consider them in a new light. He gives a new spin and motivation to why the Doctor is put on trial in The Trial of a Time Lord, but it's certainly not any better reason than the Doctor's interference on Ravalox.
As I said before, Synthespians™ was a fine enough story for what it was -- bubblegum reading. You can't really dwell on it too much. It is fun, though I will admit that the last 50 or so pages weren't the most compelling or the most page-turning. The first half of the book is funny, witty and entertaining. Then we meet the main villain in a huge cliffhanger-like reveal and the fun factor drops considerably. Part of that is the means of dispatching said villain comes out far too early and easily for my liking. It's almost as if Hinton painted himself into a corner and didn't quite know how to get out of it, so he came up with the solution he does.
All in all, Synthespians™ is trying very hard to be more than it is. For the first half, it works brilliantly. But the second half isn't nearly the equal of the first and ends up making the entire experience less than it could be.
October 3, 2017
I absolutely despise this book. An insulting, stupid, embarrassing and a really painful read. Had so much potential and it does show some good but the negatives are awful.
I reviewed this almost a year ago on YouTube (TJ Productions) last year and it really left a bad taste in my mouth and a bad taste for the PDA range as I didn't have the best luck when it came to the range.
The Doctor and Peri arrive on reef station one. A colony and a future society that's dependent on film and television. From the cover it's doing a homage to the soap Dynasty. The dialogue from the supporting characters to me is annoying and grating at times but that's a small issue compared to what I am going to discuss. We are later aware of a character called Walter J. Matheson who is head of the WJM Corporation and this business empire. Plus what are the connections with him and the alien influence. I don't think it's a spoiler at all because the cover tells it. This novel features the Autons.
First big problem is the first 100 pages. The book is soooo slow. Tedious is an understatement. It's onerous. Very little plot build up. The supporting characters I don't find likeable. But Matheson was great. A very two faced, devious and nasty villain. We see his real bad side by breaking down a character by taking over his business (A Mobile Phone Technology Company) and he goes so mental by the fact he ends up killing himself after because he couldn't handle the fact the business he build from the ground up is gone by a greedy, selfish and evil man. That stuff is good and the best part of the book but get's worse sadly.
The Sixth Doctor is done well but I had a problem with Peri's characterisation. It wasn't right. Not on the level of being incorrect like Warmonger.
The middle of the book I can tolerate but the concluding parts of the book I could not believe how far the book went in the shit territory. Matheson's character fell flat at the end of the book and his motives I thought were terrible. How could such as good character fall so far! Craig Hinton destroyed the character in the concluding parts. The Autons get overshadowed by Matheson and didn't have enough time to build up any kind of a threat. And come on. Baby Autons??? A Cringy and camp auton??? Exploding breasts??? What on gods earth was that? Why? Nonsensical.
The overall resolution of the book was a massive disaster. It does at the a final section reference Time's Champion which never made it as a BBC PDA because of its controversial plot which the BBC didn't approve of to be apart of the range and was published as a unofficial charity book.
I think this book struggles to identify what it really wants to be. Sometimes it's goes for humour and comedy and other times the book can be really dark and gravitas. The humour is stupid. Baby Autons? Cringy Auton at the end? The exact line: 'We are the autons darling!" I almost flipped out at that part it annoyed me that much. It Didn't work and the book just doesn't come together.
When reading the final pages of the book, all I did was sigh in utter disappointment. Apparently it's a sequel to Spearhead from Space? It insults the story.
Overall, this is the most disappointing, embarrassing, stupid and insulting Doctor Who book I've ever read. To be honest by thinking about it more, it might be the worst Doctor Who story of all time for me. If not, absolutely the most disappointing Doctor Who story.
Not just Doctor Who but this is one of the worst books I've ever read. Some people do like this book and I wish I was one of them. Sadly I am not.
1/10
YouTube In-Depth Review (TJ Productions): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lfyb...
I reviewed this almost a year ago on YouTube (TJ Productions) last year and it really left a bad taste in my mouth and a bad taste for the PDA range as I didn't have the best luck when it came to the range.
The Doctor and Peri arrive on reef station one. A colony and a future society that's dependent on film and television. From the cover it's doing a homage to the soap Dynasty. The dialogue from the supporting characters to me is annoying and grating at times but that's a small issue compared to what I am going to discuss. We are later aware of a character called Walter J. Matheson who is head of the WJM Corporation and this business empire. Plus what are the connections with him and the alien influence. I don't think it's a spoiler at all because the cover tells it. This novel features the Autons.
First big problem is the first 100 pages. The book is soooo slow. Tedious is an understatement. It's onerous. Very little plot build up. The supporting characters I don't find likeable. But Matheson was great. A very two faced, devious and nasty villain. We see his real bad side by breaking down a character by taking over his business (A Mobile Phone Technology Company) and he goes so mental by the fact he ends up killing himself after because he couldn't handle the fact the business he build from the ground up is gone by a greedy, selfish and evil man. That stuff is good and the best part of the book but get's worse sadly.
The Sixth Doctor is done well but I had a problem with Peri's characterisation. It wasn't right. Not on the level of being incorrect like Warmonger.
The middle of the book I can tolerate but the concluding parts of the book I could not believe how far the book went in the shit territory. Matheson's character fell flat at the end of the book and his motives I thought were terrible. How could such as good character fall so far! Craig Hinton destroyed the character in the concluding parts. The Autons get overshadowed by Matheson and didn't have enough time to build up any kind of a threat. And come on. Baby Autons??? A Cringy and camp auton??? Exploding breasts??? What on gods earth was that? Why? Nonsensical.
The overall resolution of the book was a massive disaster. It does at the a final section reference Time's Champion which never made it as a BBC PDA because of its controversial plot which the BBC didn't approve of to be apart of the range and was published as a unofficial charity book.
I think this book struggles to identify what it really wants to be. Sometimes it's goes for humour and comedy and other times the book can be really dark and gravitas. The humour is stupid. Baby Autons? Cringy Auton at the end? The exact line: 'We are the autons darling!" I almost flipped out at that part it annoyed me that much. It Didn't work and the book just doesn't come together.
When reading the final pages of the book, all I did was sigh in utter disappointment. Apparently it's a sequel to Spearhead from Space? It insults the story.
Overall, this is the most disappointing, embarrassing, stupid and insulting Doctor Who book I've ever read. To be honest by thinking about it more, it might be the worst Doctor Who story of all time for me. If not, absolutely the most disappointing Doctor Who story.
Not just Doctor Who but this is one of the worst books I've ever read. Some people do like this book and I wish I was one of them. Sadly I am not.
1/10
YouTube In-Depth Review (TJ Productions): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lfyb...
April 19, 2019
"Synthespians," Craig Hinton's final Doctor Who novel, is probably his best Doctor Who novel. However, because the others are not particularly good, I am merely saying that this one is somewhat more tolerable than the others. The problem of Hinton's writing, in my view, was that he tried to go too big, but was rather limited in his imagination of what big was. This led to trying to write from the perspective of godlike beings, but only imagining them with flimsier motivations and more adolescent emotions than the human characters had. Thankfully, Hinton resists this impulse here, though he had the opportunity to do so had he wished. The story itself is a camp sendup of late 20th-century television, and in some ways anticipates the "Bad Wolf" episode that would be broadcast a year later. The TARDIS is dragged off course, arriving on Reef Station One in the 101st century. Here, a long isolated human colony has been reshaped to conform to Earth television broadcasts that are only just arriving. The station has zones set up like sets for various kinds of TV drama - a gritty, depressed 1960s style noir London, a glitzy night-time soap opera land of mansions full of bickering billionaires, and so on. At the heart of all this is Walter J. Matheson III, the owner of virtually everything, who is ruthlessly destroying the remaining owners of what he does not have. He is in league with the Nestene Consciousness and the Autons (no giveaway there to anyone who knows Doctor Who lore). Doctor 6 and Peri get separated for most of the novel. The early parts work as a slow buildup of menace - things seem normal, but something is lurking there. The action slowly picks up pace toward a melodramatic and gory conclusion. The plot is fairly predictable. Hinton, as is his wont, drops in dozens of throw-away cultural and Doctor Who references, and sometimes awkwardly breaks his role as third-person narrator to make ironic asides. It is readable enough. The superficial characterizations and predictable plot drag it down.
December 8, 2024
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/synthespians-by-craig-hinton/
To be honest, I didn’t get much out of this; the Doctor and Peri land on a planet where Autons are re-enacting the dramas of 1980s soaps, a cultural phenomenon that I’m not especially invested in. It turns out that the Nestene Consciousness is the offspring of Shub-Niggurath from the Lovecraft mythos. There are some fun nods to other parts of the Doctor Who canon. One for completists.
To be honest, I didn’t get much out of this; the Doctor and Peri land on a planet where Autons are re-enacting the dramas of 1980s soaps, a cultural phenomenon that I’m not especially invested in. It turns out that the Nestene Consciousness is the offspring of Shub-Niggurath from the Lovecraft mythos. There are some fun nods to other parts of the Doctor Who canon. One for completists.
July 14, 2024
Just okay. Didn't feel like much of a threat, the 6th doctor didn't stand out personality wise, and I can't even remember how it ended.
November 11, 2023
Love Six and Peri, love the concept here. I'm docking a point for the awful stuff about Peri's backstory, which I know had been introduced in a prior novel but it still feels tasteless and pointless. Putting that aside, this was a fun, light, exciting read.
December 22, 2008
I have to admit, if there's anything more challenging than writing a Fifth Doctor novel and bringing out his subtler finer qualities, it's writing a Sixth Doctor novel and doing your level best to keep him from being annoying. Craig Hinton's SynthespiansTM makes a valiant effort at this: there was only one time I found the Doctor acting in a way that seemed actively irritating, and it was done in a way that was mercifully brief. At other points in the book, he had more of an air of just being loud and impulsive and brash--as well as being slow on the uptake to figure out what was going on and kind of random in what he chose to do about it. All of which seems in keeping with what I know of Six.
I've been advised by LJ user solarbird and LJ user spazzkat that one of the biggest points of annoyance for his Companion Peri is her acutely irritating "American" accent--which, thankfully, isn't a problem in the slightest when you're reading her in a book. She was a perfectly acceptable Companion in this storyline, proactive both on her own and with the Doctor, and with a side helping of facing some of her personal issues.
As for the story itself... not half-bad, though it occasionally got a little too cutesily self-referential for my tastes: there's a lot of in-jokes about twentieth-century television, including some about a show that's clearly standing in for Doctor Who. (On the other hand, I was also quite amused by the reference to Tomorrow People, which has been getting watched around the Murk too.) There's also a tie-in to Lovecraftian mythos, which was kind of weird and amusing, as I think I'd seen in other contexts that some of the Cthululoid mythology is considered canon in the Whoverse. I found the writing a little clunky, but only occasionally, and overall a fun read. Two and a half stars.
I've been advised by LJ user solarbird and LJ user spazzkat that one of the biggest points of annoyance for his Companion Peri is her acutely irritating "American" accent--which, thankfully, isn't a problem in the slightest when you're reading her in a book. She was a perfectly acceptable Companion in this storyline, proactive both on her own and with the Doctor, and with a side helping of facing some of her personal issues.
As for the story itself... not half-bad, though it occasionally got a little too cutesily self-referential for my tastes: there's a lot of in-jokes about twentieth-century television, including some about a show that's clearly standing in for Doctor Who. (On the other hand, I was also quite amused by the reference to Tomorrow People, which has been getting watched around the Murk too.) There's also a tie-in to Lovecraftian mythos, which was kind of weird and amusing, as I think I'd seen in other contexts that some of the Cthululoid mythology is considered canon in the Whoverse. I found the writing a little clunky, but only occasionally, and overall a fun read. Two and a half stars.
February 8, 2011
Past Doctor Adventure (PDA) with the sixth Doctor and Peri. If you want to read a competently written Doctor Who book, you can skip this one with a clear conscience. Luck takes a hand too often, there are sequences that turn out to have no point or relevance or which don't mesh with others, and the climax fails to convince. The author keeps tossing in puzzling little irrelevancies that seem to contradict the show, including one bafflingly irrelevant subplot that never comes to a point because it's forgotten about halfway through the book. You can tell where the editor(s) left off: It's a pleasant enough read for the first six chapters, although sometimes it feels staged. It's refreshing to encounter a culture that has history and reason behind its quirks--I can't recall reading any other Doctor Who 'original novels' that bothered to try. It's VERY refreshing to encounter a BBC Book with so few spelling errors (most during the climax).
September 17, 2012
the Dr. doctor
September 27, 2012
Hinton's plotting is strong and his characters are usually well-nuanced. But this book is soooo damned slow. For the first 100 pages nothing happens, and even after that, it's no page turner.
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