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Eighth Doctor Adventures #60
Doctor Who: Time Zero
With Fitz gone to his certain death and Anji back at work in the City, the Doctor is once more alone. But he has a lot to keep him occupied. At the Naryshkin Institute in Siberia, scientists are busily at work in a haunted castle. Over a century earlier, creatures from a prehistory that never happened attack a geological expedition. Pages from the lost expedition's journal are put on display at the British Museum, and a US spy plane suffers a mysterious fate. Deep under the snowy landscape of Siberia the key to it all remains trapped in the ice. Only the Doctor can see that these events are all related. But he isn't the only person involved. Why is Colonel Hartford so interested in the Institute? Who is the mysterious millionaire who is after the journal? How is the Grand Duchess, descendent of the last Tsar, involved? Soon the Doctor is caught up in a plot that reaches back to the creation of the Universe. And beyond... ...to Time Zero.
275 pages, Paperback
First published September 2, 2002
1 person is currently reading
308 people want to read
About the author
Justin Richards
330 books241 followersJustin Richards is a British writer. He has written many spin off novels based on the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, and he is Creative Director for the BBC Books range. He has also written for television, contributing to Five's soap opera Family Affairs. He is also the author of a series of crime novels for children about the Invisible Detective, and novels for older children. His Doctor Who novel The Burning was placed sixth in the Top 10 of SFX magazine's "Best SF/Fantasy novelisation or TV tie-in novel" category of 2000.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 1, 2023
Really enjoyed this book! Three completely different plot threads slowly weave together, bringing the characters together in a very reasonable and plausible (for sci-fi) way. Found it very engaging!
Diving back into 8th Doctor Adventures novels. Of the 73 EDA books, I’ve only got 13 more to read. Absolutely loved TIME ZERO! If more 8th Doctor Adventures novels were as compelling as this one, would have flown through all of them already!
Diving back into 8th Doctor Adventures novels. Of the 73 EDA books, I’ve only got 13 more to read. Absolutely loved TIME ZERO! If more 8th Doctor Adventures novels were as compelling as this one, would have flown through all of them already!
October 20, 2014
I don’t think I read this one properly the first time round, so I’ll use this space to apologise to Justin Richards. For some reason I missed the fact that this is intricately-plotted, perfectly paced and ingeniously characterised.
I also missed the fact that it introduces a new companion, Trix MacMillan, one who’d stay with the BBC Books range until its demise three years later. I don’t think anyone was quite as able to write convincingly for this rather complex character as well as Richards does, though, but I suppose that’s the trouble with ‘agenda’ companions. She’s clearly a mistress of disguise, which works well here – it’s no spoiler to say that the Romanov duchess we meet is actually nothing of the sort, but there’s a great deal of pleasure to be had in the scenes where the Doctor pretends to play along with the game.
Fitz and Anji are also very well catered for – both decide to go off on adventures of their own, and are both understandably dismayed at being brought back into the fold when their bold steps take them in unexpected directions and bring them to the attention of several very unsavoury characters. Richards conveys their friendship and respect for each other rather better than most authors. It’s also pleasing to see how much both have learned from their time with the Doctor, as well as slightly jarring to imagine these books without them – a possibility which rears its head frequently in this book’s 280-odd pages.
The book’s structure is ingenious – it’s rare for the ordering of a book to match the promises implicit in the title so well, and the impression of counting down to a catastrophe really adds to the atmosphere. It’s clear that something momentous is about to happen, even if it’s not clear what that catastrophe is, and for once the Doctor and the ever-present Sabbath’s differing views on how to solve the crisis actually add to the whole.
It’s not always a good idea for editors to write for the series they’re responsible for. Objectivity isn’t always the easiest thing to achieve, and there’s a danger they may be accused of expecting authors to do as they say, not as they do. Not in this case. It was absolutely right for Richards to take on the writing chores for this game-changing novel himself. He not only sets the tone for a new direction, but demonstrates, in his mastery of style, form and content, *how* a Doctor Who book should be done.
In any other era, format or publisher, I think this would be lauded as a classic. Perhaps it’s that few people can really bring themselves to love BBC Books as a range. Perhaps it’s that the context of this one means it’s hard to separate it from the tone and direction of these that followed. But this is a strong, confident, genuinely gripping read which, dare I say it, is as close to faultless as it can get.
I also missed the fact that it introduces a new companion, Trix MacMillan, one who’d stay with the BBC Books range until its demise three years later. I don’t think anyone was quite as able to write convincingly for this rather complex character as well as Richards does, though, but I suppose that’s the trouble with ‘agenda’ companions. She’s clearly a mistress of disguise, which works well here – it’s no spoiler to say that the Romanov duchess we meet is actually nothing of the sort, but there’s a great deal of pleasure to be had in the scenes where the Doctor pretends to play along with the game.
Fitz and Anji are also very well catered for – both decide to go off on adventures of their own, and are both understandably dismayed at being brought back into the fold when their bold steps take them in unexpected directions and bring them to the attention of several very unsavoury characters. Richards conveys their friendship and respect for each other rather better than most authors. It’s also pleasing to see how much both have learned from their time with the Doctor, as well as slightly jarring to imagine these books without them – a possibility which rears its head frequently in this book’s 280-odd pages.
The book’s structure is ingenious – it’s rare for the ordering of a book to match the promises implicit in the title so well, and the impression of counting down to a catastrophe really adds to the atmosphere. It’s clear that something momentous is about to happen, even if it’s not clear what that catastrophe is, and for once the Doctor and the ever-present Sabbath’s differing views on how to solve the crisis actually add to the whole.
It’s not always a good idea for editors to write for the series they’re responsible for. Objectivity isn’t always the easiest thing to achieve, and there’s a danger they may be accused of expecting authors to do as they say, not as they do. Not in this case. It was absolutely right for Richards to take on the writing chores for this game-changing novel himself. He not only sets the tone for a new direction, but demonstrates, in his mastery of style, form and content, *how* a Doctor Who book should be done.
In any other era, format or publisher, I think this would be lauded as a classic. Perhaps it’s that few people can really bring themselves to love BBC Books as a range. Perhaps it’s that the context of this one means it’s hard to separate it from the tone and direction of these that followed. But this is a strong, confident, genuinely gripping read which, dare I say it, is as close to faultless as it can get.
July 28, 2021
This book is rather interesting, with all of the Quantum theories plays a role in this book especially with Schrodinger's cat with Fitz and how it can affect the Universe.
This is the start of this Arc of Alternate Universe, where the walls of reality are falling apart.
Time Zero also has this uniqueness of how the structure or the storytelling, with the Chapters being like a countdown, with the events unfolding, which does make the reading quite easier to get through.
This is the start of this Arc of Alternate Universe, where the walls of reality are falling apart.
Time Zero also has this uniqueness of how the structure or the storytelling, with the Chapters being like a countdown, with the events unfolding, which does make the reading quite easier to get through.
February 8, 2013
Justin Richards is one of those old hands at doing the "Doctor Who" novel thing so seeing his name on the cover does inspire some confidence that we're not in for a hack job. But while this doesn't scale the heights that the previous few Eighth Doctor novels have, it does come fairly close, starting with the eerie cover of the TARDIS encased in ice.
The trick, I think sometimes, is adhering to a more "novel-like" structure instead of trying to mimic the television show. Richards does the novel as a countdown type of chapter structure, which does lend itself to a kind of tension as you're forced to wonder what exactly it is that we're counting down to. He also goes with the time tested notion of taking vastly different threads, letting them spin out and then drawing them all together so that you can see they were connected all along. And given that he's writing a series involving time travel, he doesn't make the mistake of having one section set in say, LA, while the other is set in Maine. It's probably still a contrast of sorts, but I expect a little more imagination.
Instead, quite a few signs point us toward this being one of the "big" pivotal novels, starting with the opening scene of Fitz leaving the TARDIS to go on an expedition to Siberia in the latter part of the 19th century. Anji also goes away, finally calling the Doctor out on being able to get her back home all this time and going back to her old life in finance, only minus her boyfriend and her fabulous room in a time traveling mystery box. With the Doctor left to his own devices, he's goes forth to solve mysteries on his own, although it doesn't take him long to realize things are amiss, starting with the present-day discovery of Fitz's journal from the expedition, one he never came back from. One that seems to end with him being attacked by dinosaurs. Meanwhile, Anji, in a "every time I think I'm out . . ." moment, gets sucked into events when a mysterious personage takes her away from her job and into a lab facility, where people seem to be trying to create black holes. Or so they say. And so it seems. But the people with guns don't believe them.
All the constant cutting back and forth wouldn't make a lick of difference if the individual parts weren't at least somewhat enticing, otherwise we'd be flipping pages waiting for the payoff. But Richards balances things nicely, spending time with each of our plot threads and in that fashion giving Fitz and Anji quite a bit to do for once. As we dash back and forth from Anji's new old life to Fitz's expedition gradually arguing its way to doom, the Doctor and his personality wind up being the glue that holds all these misadventures together, as it should be. And Richards writes a good Doctor, the serious until he's being silly until he's being deadly serious again persona that the writers have been honing is well-polished here and while the Doctor is never completely on the backfoot, he's a comforting stability in the center of the madness. We never get the sense that he's not totally in control (not until the very end) but sometimes just watching him in action can be fun.
As for the threats themselves, its a slight mixed bag. I give Richards a lot of credit for not delving once more into the well of generic alien threats, and while "black hole man" does contain that essential bit of strangeness I've come to expect, it seems to lack a bit of sparkle, or even a basic bit of explanation. We do get a lot of talk about quantum physics, not enough to scare any but the most allergic but on the plus side it seems to be as relevant as it can be to a show where the rules of science are sometimes gleefully rewritten. The presence of Colonel Hartford lacks the impact it should have, mostly because he goes around threatening and shooting people, which is shocking in how far he takes it but at the same time it makes him look absurd. It hardly works the first few times he tries it, yet he keeps going back to that method even as he runs out of bodies and it keeps yielding ever more diminishing results. More problematic is our old friend Sabbath, who spends most of the story in disguise and when he does reveal himself mostly spends the rest of his time getting snippy with the Doctor. While his previous appearances have been mysterious, he's never seemed as . . . ordinary as he does here, especially compared to his last encounter with the Doctor where he seemed almost larger than life. Somehow here commented that he seemed more like the Master and that's exactly the vibe I get, going through the motions for a weird rivalry instead of being truly dangerous. This is the man who took one of the Doctor's hearts?
Still, the ending sets up what could be an interesting arc for Our Heroes and it does the story some credit that we do get an actual story and not a two hundred seventy page setup for the cliffhanger. The resulting tale goes down extremely easily and even if its not as mad or epic as it seems to want to be, it shows the gears still operating smoothly for this team and gives us somewhere interesting to go. I may quibble about some aspects of the journey, but I'll go along for the ride.
The trick, I think sometimes, is adhering to a more "novel-like" structure instead of trying to mimic the television show. Richards does the novel as a countdown type of chapter structure, which does lend itself to a kind of tension as you're forced to wonder what exactly it is that we're counting down to. He also goes with the time tested notion of taking vastly different threads, letting them spin out and then drawing them all together so that you can see they were connected all along. And given that he's writing a series involving time travel, he doesn't make the mistake of having one section set in say, LA, while the other is set in Maine. It's probably still a contrast of sorts, but I expect a little more imagination.
Instead, quite a few signs point us toward this being one of the "big" pivotal novels, starting with the opening scene of Fitz leaving the TARDIS to go on an expedition to Siberia in the latter part of the 19th century. Anji also goes away, finally calling the Doctor out on being able to get her back home all this time and going back to her old life in finance, only minus her boyfriend and her fabulous room in a time traveling mystery box. With the Doctor left to his own devices, he's goes forth to solve mysteries on his own, although it doesn't take him long to realize things are amiss, starting with the present-day discovery of Fitz's journal from the expedition, one he never came back from. One that seems to end with him being attacked by dinosaurs. Meanwhile, Anji, in a "every time I think I'm out . . ." moment, gets sucked into events when a mysterious personage takes her away from her job and into a lab facility, where people seem to be trying to create black holes. Or so they say. And so it seems. But the people with guns don't believe them.
All the constant cutting back and forth wouldn't make a lick of difference if the individual parts weren't at least somewhat enticing, otherwise we'd be flipping pages waiting for the payoff. But Richards balances things nicely, spending time with each of our plot threads and in that fashion giving Fitz and Anji quite a bit to do for once. As we dash back and forth from Anji's new old life to Fitz's expedition gradually arguing its way to doom, the Doctor and his personality wind up being the glue that holds all these misadventures together, as it should be. And Richards writes a good Doctor, the serious until he's being silly until he's being deadly serious again persona that the writers have been honing is well-polished here and while the Doctor is never completely on the backfoot, he's a comforting stability in the center of the madness. We never get the sense that he's not totally in control (not until the very end) but sometimes just watching him in action can be fun.
As for the threats themselves, its a slight mixed bag. I give Richards a lot of credit for not delving once more into the well of generic alien threats, and while "black hole man" does contain that essential bit of strangeness I've come to expect, it seems to lack a bit of sparkle, or even a basic bit of explanation. We do get a lot of talk about quantum physics, not enough to scare any but the most allergic but on the plus side it seems to be as relevant as it can be to a show where the rules of science are sometimes gleefully rewritten. The presence of Colonel Hartford lacks the impact it should have, mostly because he goes around threatening and shooting people, which is shocking in how far he takes it but at the same time it makes him look absurd. It hardly works the first few times he tries it, yet he keeps going back to that method even as he runs out of bodies and it keeps yielding ever more diminishing results. More problematic is our old friend Sabbath, who spends most of the story in disguise and when he does reveal himself mostly spends the rest of his time getting snippy with the Doctor. While his previous appearances have been mysterious, he's never seemed as . . . ordinary as he does here, especially compared to his last encounter with the Doctor where he seemed almost larger than life. Somehow here commented that he seemed more like the Master and that's exactly the vibe I get, going through the motions for a weird rivalry instead of being truly dangerous. This is the man who took one of the Doctor's hearts?
Still, the ending sets up what could be an interesting arc for Our Heroes and it does the story some credit that we do get an actual story and not a two hundred seventy page setup for the cliffhanger. The resulting tale goes down extremely easily and even if its not as mad or epic as it seems to want to be, it shows the gears still operating smoothly for this team and gives us somewhere interesting to go. I may quibble about some aspects of the journey, but I'll go along for the ride.
November 4, 2008
`It doesn't take the creation of a whole new universe just to kill a cat.'
OK, I really enjoyed this! I have a massive soft-spot for anything to do with quantum physics and any book in which Fitz features large is going to please me. His sudden transformation into Schrödinger's cat was especially enjoyable.
Fitz gets the best of it in this book, the meatiest, most entertaining plot line and a rare chance for his character to shine. The Doctor, by contrast, doesn't really appear as anything like as important to the tale as he should. At times, his sudden appearances felt more like a series of cameos - wonderful cameos, with the quirky, jumpy brilliance and energy of the movie-Doctor coming across especially strongly. I loved him in this story; I'd have liked to have seen more of him.
Each character lives their part in separate time zones that mesh wonderfully well. It's a complicated story but Justin Richards keeps it well in hand, ties up all loose ends and even manages to throw in some apt references to previous EDAs.
The weakest moments have to be the sudden appearance of Sabbath, which felt entirely irrelevant and tacked-on, and the final chapters, with precipitous descent into unlikely science and babbling which dragged the formerly frenetic pace and made for a disappointing conclusion.
But the weaknesses are hugely outweighed by the strengths. Time Zero is, at its heart, a corker of an old fashioned adventure, very well told. The (dubious) science is tricky but it rarely gets in the way of the story (as so often happens in the EDAs). Always enthralling, even in its duller moments, my interest in what was coming next never flagged for a moment - and I couldn't say that for most books in this range. Definitely on my EDA A. list and highly recommended as a first time read for anyone new to the Eighth Doctor.
OK, I really enjoyed this! I have a massive soft-spot for anything to do with quantum physics and any book in which Fitz features large is going to please me. His sudden transformation into Schrödinger's cat was especially enjoyable.
Fitz gets the best of it in this book, the meatiest, most entertaining plot line and a rare chance for his character to shine. The Doctor, by contrast, doesn't really appear as anything like as important to the tale as he should. At times, his sudden appearances felt more like a series of cameos - wonderful cameos, with the quirky, jumpy brilliance and energy of the movie-Doctor coming across especially strongly. I loved him in this story; I'd have liked to have seen more of him.
Each character lives their part in separate time zones that mesh wonderfully well. It's a complicated story but Justin Richards keeps it well in hand, ties up all loose ends and even manages to throw in some apt references to previous EDAs.
The weakest moments have to be the sudden appearance of Sabbath, which felt entirely irrelevant and tacked-on, and the final chapters, with precipitous descent into unlikely science and babbling which dragged the formerly frenetic pace and made for a disappointing conclusion.
But the weaknesses are hugely outweighed by the strengths. Time Zero is, at its heart, a corker of an old fashioned adventure, very well told. The (dubious) science is tricky but it rarely gets in the way of the story (as so often happens in the EDAs). Always enthralling, even in its duller moments, my interest in what was coming next never flagged for a moment - and I couldn't say that for most books in this range. Definitely on my EDA A. list and highly recommended as a first time read for anyone new to the Eighth Doctor.
June 18, 2013
I feel like my brain just melted and escaped out my ears. Okay, not really, but my head hurts a bit.
I loved the paradoxes and the confusion for the most part, but there comes a time when exposition becomes TOO MUCH INFORMATION, and in the end I couldn't keep track of everything that was going on. I might make an attempt at re-reading it, but I'm not sure there is any sense there for me to make sense of. This book was very difficult to get through thanks to the overwhelming tide of information.
It still surprises me how much I've come to love Fitz. Even Anji is tolerable now. The Doctor's character was spot-on, and still following the plot arc nicely (though I wouldn't mind if someone could explain the heart(s) situation to me). Sabbath lacked his usual villainous charm. He was a sad husk of the terrifying character from Doctor Who: Camera Obscura.
The reference to Doctor Who: The Ancestor Cell made me chuckle, and the one from Doctor Who: The Burning had me yelling "WHAT?!" repeatedly at the top of my lungs.
If you love Fitz and the Doctor, read it.
I loved the paradoxes and the confusion for the most part, but there comes a time when exposition becomes TOO MUCH INFORMATION, and in the end I couldn't keep track of everything that was going on. I might make an attempt at re-reading it, but I'm not sure there is any sense there for me to make sense of. This book was very difficult to get through thanks to the overwhelming tide of information.
It still surprises me how much I've come to love Fitz. Even Anji is tolerable now. The Doctor's character was spot-on, and still following the plot arc nicely (though I wouldn't mind if someone could explain the heart(s) situation to me). Sabbath lacked his usual villainous charm. He was a sad husk of the terrifying character from Doctor Who: Camera Obscura.
The reference to Doctor Who: The Ancestor Cell made me chuckle, and the one from Doctor Who: The Burning had me yelling "WHAT?!" repeatedly at the top of my lungs.
If you love Fitz and the Doctor, read it.
December 14, 2025
https://fromtheheartofeurope.eu/time-zero-by-justin-richards/
The Doctor and faithful companions Fitz and Anji head off in three different directions for what seem at first to be three different adventures, Fitz in 1893 and the others in 2002, but it becomes clear that their stories are intertwined. Some great circumstantial detail, with the image of the TARDIS in a glacier particularly memorable, and we also pick up a good deal about what makes the companions tick. I was a bit confused by the end, though, as it is a while since I read this series and I had forgotten the exact significance of recurring characters Sabbath and Trix. Little mercy is shown to new readers here. But Justin Richards is usually a reliably entertaining writer, and here he was also the overall editor of the series: he gave himself the task of twisting it in a slightly different direction, and succeeded.
The Doctor and faithful companions Fitz and Anji head off in three different directions for what seem at first to be three different adventures, Fitz in 1893 and the others in 2002, but it becomes clear that their stories are intertwined. Some great circumstantial detail, with the image of the TARDIS in a glacier particularly memorable, and we also pick up a good deal about what makes the companions tick. I was a bit confused by the end, though, as it is a while since I read this series and I had forgotten the exact significance of recurring characters Sabbath and Trix. Little mercy is shown to new readers here. But Justin Richards is usually a reliably entertaining writer, and here he was also the overall editor of the series: he gave himself the task of twisting it in a slightly different direction, and succeeded.
October 4, 2020
Absolutely bloody phenomenal. I read it in two sittings, and my jaw was on the floor for the entire second half of the book. Mind-blowing plotline, amazing characterization, astounding (and mostly real!!!!) scientific concepts at play, and a writing style that flows so smoothly, all of which make the book absolutely unputdownable. I didn’t think there would be an EDA that I would like more than Unnatural History (I live near San Francisco, you get the picture) but I really do think Time Zero is my new favorite.
Exquisite. 15/10.
Exquisite. 15/10.
April 22, 2019
This is a great fun Doctor Who novel, great sweeping story with lots of time elements weaved in. Really enjoyed re reading this novel
March 3, 2010
This is where the alternative universe strand really kicks off! Can't help but love it.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews