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Past Doctor Adventures #60

Doctor Who: Loving the Alien

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A novel featuring the Seventh Doctor and his fan-favorite sidekick Ace. The Doctor knows Ace is going to die. Knows very well, because although she is sitting in the TARDIS watching the TV news, she is also beside him as a corpse. And there is something very, very strange about the autopsy results. In London, 1959, the Doctor does all he can to prevent Ace's tragic death, due to occur in a few hours. In the process, he discovers further anomalies - swarms of giant ants emerging from the ground being among the least of his worries. A disturbing fetish for Cyberisation has taken hold of Britain, and the Doctor can probably guess who's behind it Against a background of international (and trans-dimensional) espionage, giant ants and Cyber-primates, and quite possibly the end of the world as we know it, the Doctor struggles to save his companion from a fate which she seems more and more determined to bring upon herself.

288 pages, Paperback

First published May 19, 2003

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About the author

Mike Tucker

106 books46 followers
Mike Tucker is a special effects expert who worked for many years at the BBC Television Visual Effects Department, and now works as an Effects Supervisor for his own company, The Model Unit. He is also the author of a number of original tv tie-in Doctor Who novels (some co-written with Robert Perry), and three books based on episodes of the television series Merlin. He co-wrote the factual books Ace! The Inside Story of the End of an Era with Sophie Aldred in 1996, and BBC VFX - The Story of the BBC Visual Effects Department with Mat Irvine in 2010.

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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
Profile Image for Sean Homrig.
88 reviews2 followers
March 25, 2014
Mike Tucker is best known for his model work in the current television series, but his Seventh Doctor and Ace story arc in the BBC range is admirable. This, the arc's conclusion, involves alternate universes, the dangers of tinkering with leftover Cyber technology, and a pack of cyborg primates that are as creepy as the Fleshsmiths in Tucker's "Prime Time". Tucker and Perry obviously live the Seventh Doctor's era, and write him without the annoying angst and manipulativeness seen in the New Adventures. The story is not without its faults: there's a revelation about one character, Jimmy, that I could have done without, and Ace's return in the final pages left me scratching my head. (Here's hoping the synopsis from the Doctor Who Reference Guide will help.) There's nothing here that can be called a breakthrough, but it's a damn entertaining story.
Profile Image for Michael Battaglia.
531 reviews64 followers
February 8, 2013
I'm not even sure what the title of this has to do with the rest of the book. Which means they're either working at an angle totally tangential to my view of the book, or I missed the point entirely. It would certainly be easier if everything was my fault.

For quite a few Past Doctor Adventures, Tucker and Perry have been carving out their own little section of the Who universe by crafting a mini-arc around the Seventh Doctor and Ace. Taking place after the show is over (but sometime before the Virgin Adventures really seem to get going), they've been writing a continuing series of stories featuring Our Heroes, but with one little long-running plot thread. For reasons that haven't become clear until now, the Doctor has Ace's corpse from the future buried in a TARDIS basement. She's been murdered, you see, or will be, and he's trying to figure out how and where and why, presumably so can he stop it. At least that sounds like a reasonable plan, even if it does skirt the Laws of Time slightly.

Unfortunately, what does the Master Planner, the manipulative and clever, Mr Sleight of Hand and Back Up Plan the Seventh Doctor do? He figures out the how and the when and in an effort to figure out the why, he takes her to that period of time and place. Which is kind of like being told by a fortune teller that you're going to die in a horrible fire and then proceeding to attend Bonfire Night at your local high school. Sure it may not happen but no one is going to feel that bad that you went in asking for it.

As it turns out the Doctor has plenty of other distractions besides Ace's imminent and somewhat avoidable demise. A rocket test has managed to come down with a different pilot than the one who went up, which is even funnier because it's one of the pilots who is already on the ground. Also, giant ants are appearing and weird soldiers keep popping up. So it's no surprise that with all that going on, in the midst of it Ace gets away from the Doctor and manages to get capped in the head, just like Time has predicted. It's not even a spoiler.

From that point on the plot almost forgets about Ace entirely as it brings in characters from all the other Tucker and Perry novels just in time for it to become clear that parallel universes are afoot and things are about to get quite messy. Fortunately we know that the Doctor and Ace have to survive to go on to have the Virgin Adventures so it's more or less a matter of waiting for the resolution to occur and the reset button to get hit.

I'll give the authors credit, they ARE trying. But it seems that they're trying to appease the fans of the old Virgin Adventures by being utterly traditional, which misses the point somewhat. Footnotes to other Tucker/Perry romps abound, which never strikes me as a good sign, and the book is once again shoehorned into that four part format meant to mimic the television show we all think we remember. Bringing in all the old characters and referring to what happened only accentuates that it's been a while since we've read these other novels and too much seems to depend on us remembering what has happened before, otherwise all our emotional hooks become blunted. They're trying to write the Seventh Doctor as the figure we all remember from those "stories too big to fit the small screen" as best they can and some parts do have that feel but their portrayal of the Doctor lacks that edge of mystery and . . . alienness for lack of a better word. This Doctor feels familiar when he should be keeping us off-balance, our old buddy instead of the man kept at a slight distance that we have to meet all over again because we only think we know him.

Even worse the book keeps throwing out these ideas that could be neat but wind up being tossed aside in favor of focusing on characters that we've seen from other books. The giant ants are more or less window dressing but we've given an entire parallel world that could be worth exploring but we barely scratch the surface before it becomes just another function of the plot. The invasion of a parallel world isn't the most original idea in SF (for a more recent example, see the "Sliding Albion" arc from "The Authority" comic) but what do see makes it a shame that more isn't revealed, especially since the little glimpse is so frustrating. The main villain of the piece is a step in the Tobias Vaughn direction, and while he lacks that man's verve or personality, he seems to be clever enough and its a change of pace to see someone with evil motivations act through actual sociopathic tendencies as opposed to grandiose egomania.

But too many other parts feel off. A famous dead actor appears no longer dead but there's hardly any emotional weight or tragedy to it, the world seems to be the same as it ever was. When the Doctor sends cybernetic apes against the oncoming soldiers it doesn't have the urgency or last ditch desperation that it should and so feels wrong (especially since he knows they're going to kill everyone in sight). Ace is gone for many a page and then just as suddenly is back in what feels like an extreme cop-out as the whole point of the book is wondering how the Doctor is going to get around Ace's undodgeable fate. Turns out she can't avoid the fate but it doesn't matter but somehow she's okay anyway. It becomes the plot equivalent of painting yourself in a corner and then getting out by drawing a door in the wall. At times it feels like they were going to string out the Ace subplot for as long as they could until they were suddenly forced to wrap it up.

It's a shame because you get the sense they are trying very hard and what it makes even more frustrating is how close they come. A few more tweaks in a different direction would have made a world of difference. Though its possible now, with the Ace stuff out of the way, they can push further with the stuff that did work and give us something utterly new next time out. That's enough to hope for, really.
Profile Image for Daniel Kukwa.
4,763 reviews125 followers
June 10, 2025
The Tucker/Perry 7th Doctor novels are very much their own attempt at a pseudo-season 27/continuation of classic Who, and on that level they do succeed. But in terms of style and taste I do prefer the efforts of other 7th Doctor authors, in novels such as "Heritage", "The Algebra of Ice" and "Relative Dementias" -- I find them deeper, darker, and willing to delve into the more ambiguous moral corners of the 7th Doctor & his relationship with Ace. The Tucker/Perry books I find to be much more simple and straightforward by comparison. I also don't believe "Illegal Alien" was a novel that needed a sequel, but here we are. In the end, this is perfectly fine for what it is, but I'll satiate my 7th Doctor fixes with other novels.
640 reviews10 followers
January 17, 2022
This book is a sequel to Tucker & Perry's earlier 7th Doctor novel "Illegal Alien." It also rounds off a story arc begun in "Prime Time" and continued in "Heritage" about why The Doctor is acting weirdly around Ace. Most of the novel is a fairly good alternate realities thriller along the lines of "The Outer Limits." There were some annoying bits, such as the writers' repeatedly telling us how clever George Limb is. Our heroes really get beaten up - beaten, battered, bullied, and bombarded beyond anyone's realistic tolerance for pain and abuse. And then, a scene later, they are going along as if had not happened. Granted that occurs only sometimes, but the characters are definitely going to need more recovery time than they get. What does not work for me is the last 40 or so pages. The ending is a mess. There are too many things happening, and the writers resort to "dimension hopping, multiple universes, so we can throw in any weird thing we like" as a way to get themselves out of the tangle they've written. There are some loose ends as well, such as the Dumont-Smith couple. What happened to them? So, tight writing at the beginning gets undermined by sloppy writing at the end.
Profile Image for Nicholas Whyte.
5,372 reviews208 followers
August 22, 2016
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2683562.html

This is the culmination of the arc of Seventh Doctor novels by Mike Tucker and Robert Perry, the previous stories being Illegal Alien, Matrix, Storm Harvest and Prime Time. I really enjoyed this, as I really enjoyed them all, and I've realised that this sequence is one of the unsung successes of Who spinoff literature.

The story is suitably complex; the Doctor investigating Ace's murder, even though she is still alive; confused astronauts arriving from another timeline; cyber-technology and giant ants infesting London. There is sensawunda and emotional intensity. There is homage to Quatermass (and perhaps one or two Tuckerisms). I think I couldn't recommend this to readers, even Who fans, who had not read the previous four in this mini-series, but I would warmly recommend reading the whole lot.
Profile Image for Ian.
1,341 reviews6 followers
March 6, 2020
A Past Doctor Adventure which concludes Tucker and Perry's subseries, begun in 'Illegal Alien', starring the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Ace.
Having discovered Ace's murdered body from a future timeline, the Doctor takes the living Ace back to the 1950s in an attempt to thwart her murder. However, the walls of reality begin to fracture when a British rocket test opens a gateway to a parallel dimension and the Doctor finds himself once more facing off against the amoral mastermind George Limb.

These authors write really good Who together and this book shows all of the maturity and complexity, both of plot and morality, which was so prevalent in the other books of this Seventh Doctor series-within-a-series. So, overall, this is a very well-written book but it has to be said that there are a number of factors which combine to hold it back from the greatness of the likes of 'Illegal Alien'.

First and foremost, there is just too much crammed into this novel. As readers we have to contend with Cold War paranoia, cybernetic experimentation, Ace's time-bending murder plot, giant killer ants, parallel worlds, Ace being a giant, James Dean being mysteriously resurrected and more.
It's just too much and the ending fails to round out all these plotlines in a way that feels natural and satisfactory.

There are also two elements that are more weird than bad, but nevertheless detract from the overall quality of the book.
The first is that elements of this book feel all too similar to the Cybermen two-parter from Series 2; what with the parallel world, the experiments into cyber-augmentation and even the fact that zeppelins are still in use there. I mean, this book was published three years before the TV story aired, so it's not the authors' fault, but it still spoils things a bit.
The other thing is that although the story is set in 1950s London, almost all of the supporting cast, antagonists and protagonists alike, are American. The private eye is American, the sassy reporter is American, the villain's bodyguard is American and the warmongering General is American. I've nothing against Americans (unless they voted for Trump) but it seems really odd to have so few British characters in this story set in Britain.

The final problem with this book is that the characterisation of the Doctor and Ace is noticably off. I imagine it's intended to reflect them having changed since their TV story days, but it just makes them feel unfamiliar. I couldn't imagine either McCoy or Sophie Aldred saying their characters' dialogue from this book and that spoilt things a bit for me.
Also, whilst the Seventh Doctor is known for being a bit cold and ruthless at times, the scene at the beginning where he autopsies Ace's corpse whilst the still-living version of her is relaxing in the TARDIS' pool is too creepy for my taste (particularly considering he takes special note of the love bites on her breasts and the, quote, 'deeper evidence' that she had sex before she died). It's just not what I want from a Who story.

*More reviews here: https://fsfh-book-review2.webnode.com/ *
Profile Image for Michael T Bradley.
996 reviews6 followers
November 11, 2024
I accidentally read this way in advance of finishing all the books in the 'arc' this ends (I mixed up Hollow Men and Storm Harvest, because I was like, scarecrows are out in fields that are harvested, so that must be the book w/them in it ... whoops! Anyway, I still read the main core books, so I think I'm okay to review here.

While a lot of what's covered in here is fun and shocking at times (there are a couple of scenes that felt like they utterly shouldn't work, like the cyber-ape cage scenes, the ridiculously fast romance between Ace and ... eh, I won't spoil it ... yet somehow they do work, because these authors honestly get these characters), my main issue is the same as the last 'core'-feeling story in this arc, Illegal Alien, which is there are way too many characters. I got seriously confused about who all the damn characters are. For the climax we're juggling something like a dozen or so characters (some of them AU versions of themselves), and that was just ... too much for my poor brain.

So it sort of fell apart as it went along, but especially the first 2/3 are extremely enjoyable. I'd say the PDAs are often like that, which is sort of the opposite of the Virgin New Adventures. Those that I've read are often like 150 pages of trudging through meaningless meandering, then an exciting ending that makes it all feel worth it. Sometimes.
Profile Image for Eli Seibert.
Author 3 books9 followers
July 23, 2018
Wow this book had a lot of balls in the air.
So, to understand what is going on in this book fully, I recommend reading Illegal Aliens first (it was completely by chance I already had). It’s written by the same author, and has several characters that return in this book and are integral to the plot. It also may help to read Prime Time and Heritage too, but it’s not as important (I didn’t read the latter).
I was about to give this five stars, it was well paced, and it kept me intrigued, but the ending kind of left me wanting and confused. I don’t really understand how the problems were resolved, and it seemed a little rushed near the end.
But I still liked it, and when written well, the seventh Doctor is probably one of my favorites to read. I feel like writers are able to do things with him and take him places that they can’t with other Doctors. And in this novel, this mysterious, manipulative little Scotsman with heavy eyes and a melancholy soul is pushed very far, and- usually five steps ahead of everyone- is for once not sure if he can save the day, as universes start colliding, and the very fabric of reality starts to unravel.
Profile Image for Cindy Matthews.
Author 21 books44 followers
June 14, 2012
I hadn't read a Doctor Who novel in a while, and this is a good one if you're into the classic series with Sylvester McCoy as the 7th Doctor. Thing is, it's part of trilogy, so reading the last one in the trilogy first was a bit confusing! Anyway, the premise is very interesting and the level of action is intense. About the only thing I wasn't too thrilled about was how little Ace played a part of the story and also the level of violence visited upon her. When I read or watch a Doctor Who fiction, I sort of want the Doctor's companions to be "safe" and not quite so violated. To each their own I guess, but this isn't exactly a warm, fuzzy type of yarn, as we have killer bionic apes, rips in the fabric of space/time, giant ants, and post-war British recovery problems all at once. The villain of the piece didn't seem as villainous as expected, but that could be because he was fleshed out in earlier stories. A good read for fans of the 7th Doctor, who is at his moodiest and most somber ever.
Profile Image for Mark C.
6 reviews1 follower
May 21, 2010
Not a bad conclusion to the story arc that has run through the Mike Tucker and Robert Perry novels. However, like most novels and stories that involve messing with time or alternative dimensions, it all gets very muddled and confused by the end.

Cheif amongst these confusions is the death and apparant resurrection of Ace. The build up to her death at the end of the first half of the book is well done. However her resurrection is not so well handled. I'm still not sure if she's an Ace from an alternative reality or whether she's been brought back from the dead because of time being altered. The book doesn't really explain and both options seem equally valid.

Aside from that niggle, it's not a bad book and the characterisation of the Doctor and Ace is spot on as usual.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Andrew.
934 reviews14 followers
December 28, 2016
Enjoyable enough but as it's part of a series arc and I haven't picked up the others I can't help but feel I'm maybe missing something.
That said the story was enjoyable enough and not overtly complex ..it's pretty much a tale of alternate universes bleeding into one another due to excessive meddling in time..in such a way it's a familiar Doctor who type plot.
I never really enjoyed the Sylvester McCoy years as much as other incarnations of the Doctor ..however these literary incarnations make me feel I was either missing something or he is better served in book form.
Ultimately good fun..a typical Dr Who novel.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews

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