Doctor Who: Transit

Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures #10

by Ben Aaronovitch, Peter Elson (Illustrator)

'Oh no, not again...'
          It's the ultimate in mass transit systems, a network of interstitial tunnels that bind the planets of the solar system together. Earth to Pluto in forty minutes with a supersave non-premium off-peak travelcard.
          But something is living in the network, chewing its way to the very heart of the system and leaving a trail of death and mutation behind it.
          Once again a reluctant Doctor is dragged into human history. Back down amongst the joyboys, freesurfers, chessfans, politicians and floozies, where friends are more dangerous than enemies and one man's human being is another's psychotic killing machine.

Once again the Doctor is all that stands between humanity and its own mistakes.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks, Fantasy, Cyberpunk, Science Fiction Fantasy

264 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1992

About the author

Ben Aaronovitch's career started with a bang writing for Doctor Who, subsided in the middle and then, as is traditional, a third act resurgence with the bestselling Rivers of London series.

Born and raised in London he says that he'll leave his home when they prise his city out of his cold dead fingers.

Reviews

[Jean-marcel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes, I feel a real snobbery toward "franchise fiction", particularly books based upon television series or movies. I doubt that anyone will seriously argue the general merits of such fiction with me, and claim that much of it is "real literature", but even so, every now and then I wonder if my broad dismissiveness is a little unfair. Then, I remember that I have a load of Doctor Who books, and that it's the only television show I've ever really been obsessed with, and that as a result I did all the fannish things, like collecting books and audios and other "accessory" stuff that the casual viewer wouldn't have much of an interest in. I'd like to say that this show is different from all the others, more adventurous and groundbreaking and just all-round better, but I can't; I know I'm just biased in a big way. However, here's the thing about Doctor Who (not the show, but the concept): It can do anything, anywhere, and the trick is to see how writers come up with ways to juxtapose genres that theoretically don't belong together, or to tell a story that can be just as big or small as they want it to be. You could be witnessing a historical adventure one moment; an epic space opera the next; then the tale of some desperate, insane shape-shifting alien trying to exist in 21st century England.

It has been many years since I read Transit, so while I'll talk a little about the book in question, this review is going to be a little more of a general "love letter" to the Doctor Who concept, and my experiences with the show and its literary spin-offs. I think this is in many ways an appropriate book to conduct such a monologue, because it seems to me that it marked a bit of a turning point in peoples' notions of what Doctor Who could get away with.

As some know, the original show was in production from 1963 until 1989. Twenty-six seasons is a long time for a science fiction programme to run, but it was kept alive not only because of fans, but because new blood was always being brought in: New actors (even to play the role of the title character), new writing teams, new production staff with their own, unique spin on things. The variety of feels and styles that took place across many different eras ensured that even if one didnt' care for a particular way of doing things, chances are that tuning in again a few years later would bring something different and perhaps more palletable. By 1989, though, the ratings were low, and many people high up at the BBC thought the whole thing had run out of steam. I'm not one of those people: I happen to think the final season of the original run brought in some really interesting and original concepts that were breathing new life into a show that had admittedly stagnated somewhat through the mid-80s. However, the show was canned, and as a precocious and obsessed nine-year-old at the time I was devastated, of course.

Before 1991, books published under the Doctor Who trademark were mostly all reference texts, or novelisations of TV stories. I read a lot of those novelisations as a kid; I was particularly interested in the ones based on the really old stories that barely anyone was able to see anymore, since they were completely new to me at the time. Now, novelisations are a pretty low form, it has to be said; a lot of those books were just not very good, and barely added anything to what was already seen on television. However, that didn't stop me from devouring them voraciously back then, and as not only a fan, but a blind person who had never seen what anybody or anything on his favourite show looked like, I found them to be particularly useful.

So, what happened in 1991 was that 99% of the television shows were already novelised, and there wasn't anything new being made. Some people at Virgin Publishing decided there was a market for stand-alone Doctor Who books that would continue from where the show left off, only they would be full-length novels that would deliberately, more often than not, take things in directions the BBC show would never have been able to go, either because of budgetary restrictions or, and this was a bit of a shock to people at the time, due to much more adult-oriented content. It has to be noted that the "adult-oriented content" was a little over-emphasised at the time, and really only applied to perhaps one out of five books, but it was definitely present, and it definitely ruffled a few conservative feathers.

I remember that Transit was the first in this singularly interesting run of novels to really push peoples' buttons. Loads of them hated it, for all sorts of reasons, but mostly, I think, because it forced them to look at the Doctor Who concept in a new way; because it contained unrepentent violence; a bit of sex and swearing; because it suggested that a principle character whom fans had loved since the 1970s was a bit of a womaniser and had fathered an illegitimate daughter while serving in the army in Africa.

I didn't get to read this when I was twelve, which I would guess to have been around the time the book was published. I heard about it, for sure, and some of the subsequent books that caused equal amounts of fannish love and grumbling distress. It wasn't until many years later, when I got my first scanner, that I was able to read this thing for myself and see what all the fuss was about. This particular one is Doctor Who does cyberpunk. Nowadays I can say with a fair degree of certainty that I don't like cyberpunk that much. Computers are kind of boring; I know a lot of these stories are actually supposed to be about people, but descriptions of virtual reality technology and cyborgs trying to find a foothold in the world....I don't know, it's just not the kind of thing that impresses me much. I hadn't decided this in 1999 though, when I read Transit, and I didn't know what to expect. I'd read some of the more traditional New Adventures, which came across like weightier TV stories, but this book was decidedly "non-trad".

The beginning pages had me thoroughly confused. Scenes jump around really quickly, throwing the reader from one seemingly unconnected group of characters to another. It's not Stand on Zanzibar or anything, but if you were used to stable, linear and straightforward narratives in Doctor Who, which mostly follow the point of view of the lead characters, it all seems quite bizarre. The thing about many of the less traditional New Adventures was that they often seemed like other peoples' stories with the Doctor Who matrix grafted onto them. This might appear unfortunate at first, but if you think about it, Doctor Who has always sort of been like this; it's just that it's a television show where people usually expect to see the same characters interacting with a new, basically random situation every few weeks. The pleasure is in how they cope with this new setup, or in how they (mostly The Doctor) influences events around him, hopefully to make something better in the universe. Because some people make the unconscious mistake of thinking of Doctor Who as a "superhero show", they get upset when the Doctor isn't really a hero, or doesn't appear to be in the story much, or quietly manipulates things from the sidelines. However, Andrew Cartmel, who was script editor for the final 80s seasons and who later wrote some very much non-traditional stories for the New Adventures books, was already steering the show in this direction. It's a direction that, unsurprisingly, works rather well in a literary format, too, where people are, I expect, less inclined to think of stuff in terms of heroes and action set pieces and so on.

Transit is a book that devotes pages and pages to its own characters. It's more concerned with the world around the Doctor and companion Bernice Summerfield than it is about the time and space travellers. This works because it is a really interesting, gritty and unusual future where the solar system is linked by what is essentially a network of trains that travel through some kind of interstitial tunnels in space. It's such a bizarre concept, but it's executed very well here, and since the transit system is basically at the centre of the whole story, the network almost becomes a life unto itself. It also becomes pretty damn scary when things start to go wrong and people are getting killed in transit, or mutating into bloodthirsty monsters.

Bernice is hardly in the book at all, which is a bit unfortunate, but she had just been introduced in the previous novel, and I suppose at that time the new writers really didn't know what to do with her yet. She spends the majority of the book under the thrall of the intelligence that has taken over huge swaths of the transit network, and as she was such an unknown then, you really didn't know whether she would be saved in the end or not. Instead we get a whole host of other characters portrayed in various shades of grey, with particular attention given to Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stuart, an "enhanced human" who was certainly the most "badass" female creation to have graced the Doctor Who universe up until that point. A lot of people seem to have had issues with her, but I quickly grew to appreciate her presence, and was glad she made a couple of appearances in later novels. There's a nasty woman affectionately given the moniker Ming the Merciless, some soldiers, an artificial intelligence or two, rampaging modified humans on surfboards. The book's just bubbling over with ideas, and the writing is quite good, too, though the typography could have used some editing. The approach to Doctor Who continuity is interesting, too, because while it can be viewed in some ways as a "Doctor-light" book (since he isn't necessarily at the centre of everything for most of it), there's actually quite a lot of it present, tying Aaronovitch's story in with "future Earth history" stuff brought up in the TV show as far back as the 1960s. It's handled in such a way that it doesn't come off as gratuitous, or like some guy showing off all his useless knowledge of the show. It feels very natural, basically, and it is a mark of Aaronovitch's confidence in his own writing that he's clearly and simply able to induct all this stuff into his own story as though there's just every reason for it to be there.

I suppose that if you think of Doctor Who as being a bit insubstantial and fluffy, which is the impression some seem to have (even fans sometimes), you might really hate this. It is quite dreary and dark in places, the language is colourful, some of the author's musing narration is positively misanthropic ("Life is an heredetary disease: sexually transmitted and invariably fatal."...I don't have the book with me now but I've always remembered that one), and the deaths of many characters sudden and unapologetically violent. As the show went off the air, many of us fans were growing up and not wanting to think of Doctor Who as a mere nostalgia trip. Perhaps in a way we expected the concept to grow with us, and so these books were a product of their time and place in a very important, groundbreaking way, since they did just that very thing. In many ways, I think the return to television in the 21st century has been a bit of a regression, but that's not a topic for this review. I know these books are very scarce these days, but a few of them are available online; or perhaps you can find a mate to lend you a copy!

[Grant Howard · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, that was a chore!
If I hadn't committed to reading the whole "New Adventures" series (Which I'm thoroughly enjoying on the whole) I would not have finished this book. Which is a surprise, because I enjoyed Ben Aaronovitch's episodes of the TV series and was really looking forward to this one.
The main problem with it is there's so much confusing haphazard nonsense in it. Aaronovitch clearly wanted to do some world building, but there's so many random overlapping ideas in there, what's important get's lost in the noise.
This book was controversial at the time because of the swearing and sexual content. I'd say that's not a problem. What's been great about the New Adventures is that it's the first time that Doctor Who was actually aimed exclusively at adults.
The most significant element of the story continuity-wise appears to be the introduction of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart, a descendant of The Brigadier with military enhanced physiology on the verge of unlocking the secrets of time travel.
Some people love this book, so maybe it's just a taste thing. It's very cyberpunk, which isn't really my bag.
I will be pressing on with the series though, because despite not enjoying this one. The one's I have enjoyed, particularly "Timewyrm: Exodus","Timewyrm: Genesis" and "Nightshade" have been rather wonderful.

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

OH NO, NOT AGAIN is the tag line which is just how I felt. Poorly written haphazard tosh with an ill thought out storyline. There is nothing I could find enjoyable about this when it was read a few years ago.
SPOILER ALERT.......
This book is junk.

Mr Aaronovitch please learn to write a story.

Yours sincerely
Peter


P.S. On second thought, just stop ok. Just stop and leave it to real writers please.

[Paul Flint · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cyberpunk Doctor who. Not the best book, it even includes a glossary at the end. I feel that this being Bernices first outing gave her a disservice as she was out of the picture for most of the novel. Kadiatu Lethbridge Stewart takes the helm in that respect but I found this adventure too convoluted and tiresome let's hope the next book is lighter and fun.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Transit. Still one of my favourite novels.

To praise it I must first defend it against claims – from supporters as well as detractors – that it is what I believe it is not.

It is not a cyberpunk novel. Let me count the ways.

First is the writing. It cannot be denied that Aaronovitch has read Gibson, for he writes a number of sentences that explicitly homage the chief cyberpunk. But the cyberpunks took writers like Hammett as heroes, preferring a kind of affectless, know-it-all prose. Though Aaronovitch occasionally shades into this, there is a liveliness to his writing, a sense of wonder and joy about the story. Further, Aaronovitch shows his debt to television rather than literature in his short, sharp scenes that cut between a large number of locations and play out through a large cast. These are further focussed in a way that suggests comics, particularly those of Alan Moore. Each scene is laced with smart one-liners that raise the energy level of the book, and each scene points forwards, ending with a zinger that is often a revelation and a punchline at the same time.

Probably the main similarity between Transit and a cyberpunk novel is in its use of jargons. The cyberpunks revelled in bringing words from writing-at-large into literature, and so does Aaronovitch. For me, the signal interest in cyberpunk writing is the confusion between SFnal words and merely foreign ones. The density of non-EngLit words keeps the reader off balance. Aaronovitch develops this project by expanding the range of SF, science, and culture from which he grabs words. (Is that a made-up locale on one of Saturn's moons, or a city in West Africa?) Yet rather than being too serious by half about it, he winks at the reader by providing an unheralded glossary at the end, which not only omits some words and provides redundant explanations of others, but includes items like 'secateurs'.

Second is the demographics portrayed. Cyberpunk is too often about the pointy end of being high-tech lowlife or corporate operators. For all the acclaim about lived-in futures, there's very little space for giving a sense of what it's like to live in these futures. Transit is completely different. Here we see refugees, the working poor, NGO workers, students, veterans, beat cops, builders, veterans, and public servants. We see their day jobs. We see their home lives. We see how they celebrate getting a raise. We see how they remove the bad taste work leaves in their mouth.

The portrayal of the lower class is probably what fans were mostly complaining about when they decried this as a cyberpunk novel. Doctor Who is touted as a show that can go anywhere, but it had never gone into housing estates, never gone into the lives of sex workers, and certainly never gone into a place where a violent riot can be casually fomented. This element sits in tension with Doctor Who because the Doctor cannot solve these problems or absolve the reader, but it also sits in tension with cyberpunk because these people are not the technologically elite or culturally valuable. It should be noted that this element could be excised or altered into something acceptable with minimal effort. This doesn't mean it isn't essential.

The portrayal of the middle class is also a challenge to cyberpunk, yet even more so is the diversity of people that constitutes this middle class. Cyberpunk is America and Japan. Transit is international with Africa ascendant. It has major characters who are Chinese, Ethiopian, and Brazilian. Though their identity is often more complicated than a simple answer like that. Many of them are women too. The exemplar is Kadiatu, a woman who is a genetically engineered mix of Irish and Ethiopian donors, born in Croatia, and adopted by two Temnes, one of whom is distantly related to the Scottish Brigadier. Transit takes its inspiration not just from The Seeds of Death but from all those 60s stories that prophesied future diversity. Unfortunately, the progressive New Adventures would never be this diverse again. I suspect this is because authors and audience were somewhat 'colour blind'. (The fact that, in this shifted future, the AI at Stone Mountain chooses 'Florance' as an unthreatening name might be a rueful joke about this.)

Third is computers. Because computers are central to cyberpunk, though cyberpunk's computers are often nonsense. Gibson's take on computers, when he's in fine form, certainly gets at something meaningful, while being — realistically — absurd. Aaronovitch has two modes, both quite different from the cyberpunk mode. In the first, he writes his famous logic narratives that span microseconds. Examples are the missiles in Jacksonville or the elevator in Olympus Mons. These strike me as having a good grasp of how a certain class of computer fundamentally works. The scenes are also quite dramatic without having to resort to cutesy avatars in virtual space. In the second mode, Aaronovitch writes your classic smart-arsed SF computer, e.g. Florance, the STS network, Fred. (The STS network's Yak Harris avatars are an obvious call-out to Max Headroom, but the underlying conception is more 'Dial F for Frankenstein'.)

Of course the central use for computers in cyberpunk is cyberspace. This really makes only a brief appearance, in flashback, in Transit. Notably, while the star console jockey lacks a bodily sense, she doesn't reject the flesh. Far from it, she builds a business founded on the pleasures of the flesh. This is a sensual world. Even the STS network ultimately prefers embodiment in another dimension to its software existence. And beyond the sex, perhaps this explains the number of scenes where characters appear nude. This is a book in love with bodies. (The nudity may also be a cheeky nod towards the claims that the New Adventures were doing things that couldn't be done on television.)

Fourth is the mad SF world. The one that cyberpunk abjured in favour of cyberspace, VR, implants, and arcologies. But here it all is: matter transmission, terraforming, aliens, interplanetary war, computers with attitude, guided evolution, other dimensions, time travel. It's not near-future, or even our future; it's embedded in a revised Doctor Who continuity and it's out to party. Aaronovitch pushes this further into the oneiric space of comics. What is the ontological status of the prologue? What about Kadiatu's dreams? Gibson dabbled with voodoo as a user interface, but this book has magic!

I'm sure there's more. Every time I read this novel I find something new.

This doesn't look like cyberpunk to me. My points one, two, and four could be summed up with a quote: 'Maybe time travel fucked with your mind.' I can't imagine that sentence in a cyberpunk novel.

But what about Ace? What about Benny?

This novel was written at a time of rupture. The New Adventures were sending a big message by getting rid of the Doctor's last televised companion and introducing a new, literary companion. Transit might have co-starred Ace — and either seen her leave the Doctor or leave with him. Transit might have co-starred William Blake. Continuity was in flux, as were writing deadlines. (I'd love to have a non-fiction book about the New Adventures, by Peter Darvill-Evans or Lance Parkin.) One thing seems certain. Transit couldn't have featured no companion. That Fred possesses the Doctor's companion is of central importance to the plot.

At the time, I, like a lot of readers, noted only that Benny was effectively sidelined. Of course, we understood the expediency, that there was little time for Aaronovitch to have come to grips with her. Just as we understood the little references to Ace as marks of her late removal.

Now, it's hard for me to imagine this novel taking place anywhere other than after Ace's departure. This is why the Doctor is wrong-footed by Fred. This is why he gets drunk. This is why his mind is bothered by an explosion of Aces.

And as for Bernice, she gets more fresh character detail here than in many other New Adventures combined. Her childhood memories, in particular, are a treasure.

Enough defence. But before I move to praise... Let's compare the potential companion to the companions of the post-2005 TV series.

The Doctor meets a woman. Saves her life. Discovers she has some kind of special relationship to him. You don't have to imagine how that would play out under Davies or Moffat, because we've seen it again and again. Now add the fact that the Doctor ends up in bed with this woman after getting drunk with her — imagine what Moffat would do with that. But Aaronovitch doesn't do anything like what you'd imagine Moffat would do.

Despite her heritage, despite appearing in the Doctor's story, despite being the weaker party, Kadiatu is her own person. She is interested in the Doctor, but not obsessed with him. She doesn't want to travel with him or be his lover. She wants to see the universe under her own steam. And so she does. Of course, if she had been picked as companion, this would have changed, but as we can see from the other NA companions, this still wouldn't have made her as subordinate as the post-2005 companions.

(It's also interesting to note that one of Kadiatu's many motivations is the death of her male lover, a few years before the reverse became a sexist trope in popular culture.)

On the other hand, this novel, along with the preceding one, are major interventions in our conception of the Doctor, ones that would have a strong influence on the revived TV series. The Doctor here is no longer just some guy, or even a fighter of legends, or even someone with a secret special relationship to history. The Doctor is now a major part of history, someone who can be recorded, someone who can be expected to show up when things go down, someone who can be targeted. Love and War and Transit specifically introduce the suspicion that everything would fall to pieces if the Doctor didn't turn up. This was a novelty at the time, and was a consequence of the 'logic' of such a series, but it seems like a mistake today. But again, this logic is of central importance to the plot. No special Doctor, no Transit.

So sing now the praises of this novel.

First of all, I like what I defended the novel with above. I love the dynamic writing, I love the diversity, I love the revisionist Doctor Who mythology from the Pythia to the Ice Warriors, I love Kadiatu, and I love the portrayal of the Doctor.

I like the mythology. As you might guess from some of my comments above, I don't love mythology for its own sake (though those that do will find plenty to love here). I like how the New Adventures treat the continuity of Doctor Who like another novel might treat the Bible or Greek myth. A repository of images that can be used as a substrate to support meaningful stories. So, yes, the result of the Pythia's curse is a solution to the (literary as much as visual) SF problem of why so many aliens are humans, but compare it to the restatement of the solution several months later in Lucifer Rising, which cites Sheldrake's morphic fields. That's just intellectually bankrupt masturbation. Aaronovitch's version is a poem of rage, grief, Eros and Thanatos, and change.

I've always been quite taken by Transit's notion of the Doctor warping reality around him so that either he fits the given context or the context fits him. This has its roots in television stories like City of Death and Remembrance of the Daleks, but it's never been as fully developed as here, from the Doctor generating hex code by pretending he has sixteen fingers to Benny's question as to whether the Doctor has any (physical) limits at all. It's a metatextual acknowledgement that the Doctor will be able to do whatever the plot requires, it's a way of building the tension between the hero's necessary omnipotence and necessary fallibility, it's a way of estranging our frame of reference for both the Doctor and his context, it's probably much more, but to me most importantly it's a claim that the authors of even an SF adventure series should be able to write whatever they want as long as it is lively, imaginative, stylish, and handled with a certain indeterminacy. (Contrast the source image here with Lawrence Mile's variation of the Doctor as a complex space-time event, which is textual brutalism, another step on the path from Transit to the new TV series.)

In the televised stories, the seventh Doctor developed a reputation for being a bit of a planner, but a cursory examination of his stories reveals him to be as much of a grand improviser. Transit more than any other novel runs with this aspect, having his improvisations grow to encompass the entire solar system — I love that even a near godlike hero is forced into such a position (and what it says about the nature of reality). I love even more that the Doctor cognitively models both his and the enemy's improvisations as a crazy jazz performance — and I love how, after all that, he still takes time to rehydrate and reassure a minor character.

I love how many stories there are. How many? The story of ... Gallifrey, the Thousand Day War, Francine, the Lethbridge-Stewarts, Kadiatu, Fred, the STS network, the Stop, Blondie, Ming, the Doctor and Ace, the Doctor and Benny, the Doctor ... and so on. With so many little stories, anecdotes, and references along the way.

I love the characters. The Floozies. Zak, Zamina, Roberta. Ming and her family. Francine. Benny. The Doctor. Kadiatu, always. There's just so much to them.

I love the detail. And this is what it probably all comes down to. Attention to detail. The telling detail. The extravagant detail. The irrelevant detail. The specificity and density of description. There has never been another Doctor Who as richly described as this. This is a story with texture, with smell, with taste, with gravity ... A story with food, economics, and soapies ... A novel that seeks out as many words as possible to fill its sentences, and that cares to spell them as right as it can.

I love Transit.

Perhaps the exemplary sentence: 'Kadiatu wadded up her socks and underwear into a tight ball and stuffed them into a jacket pocket.' African name, sex/nudity, attention to detail.

I love it.

[Brayden Raymond · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it was the stress of the outside world that kept me from falling in love with this one, I am not sure. It was good when I had time to sit down and enjoy it in long chunks but it just didn't pull me in and force me to read it. The world building was certainly interesting and different though and I appreciated that.

[Steven Poore · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read the Ben Aaronovitch post-Battlefield books in the wrong order, obviously - I started with The Also People because that was the first one in this (lengthy) series from Virgin Books I bought. The Also People was a rollercoaster of Banksian technology and Culture rip-offs, knitted together with impish humour and clever non-sequiturs. Transit goes way back to near the beginning of the series, having waved (temporary) farewell to Ace in Love And War, and giving Dr Bernice Summerfield what was then only her second adventure in the TARDIS, as well as introducing the recurring character of Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart.

The impish humour, fast pace and thumping action are all here in spades, Aaronovitch driving the train of the narrative at full pelt. The menace is as unearthly as possible, presented through warped flesh, chaotic actions, and a final extra-dimensional sequence that treads a clever line between genius and cop-out. But Professor Bernice Summerfield is Missing In Action - barely present at all, except as a (mostly) possessed villainous puppet. Kadiatu has to do a lot of heavy lifting.

The influences on Aaronovitch's sleeve this time seem to include a lot of cyberpunk, but also very possibly the long forgotten Fourth Doctor comic strip story The End of the Line (Steve Parkhouse/Dave Gibbons, DWM 54-55, 1981). It's excitable and enjoyable, but not quite as polished as The Also People would be.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Doctor turned to face her. 'You're expecting bad news?'
'You do have a reputation,' said Kadiatu. 'What are you here for this time?'
'Does there have to be a reason?'
'Trouble follows you around.'
'I was with King Tenkamenin at Kumi Selah, he offered me kola nuts and a place to sleep in the Royal Compound. We stayed up all night speaking of philosophy and the old gods. When I left the sun was breaking over the hills and the society women ran the initiates down to the summer stream to wash.'
He caught Kadiatu's black eyes and held them. 'Nobody died that day.'
'They died yesterday,' said Kadiatu. 'And here you are.'
'History happens,' said the Doctor. 'Even when I'm not around.'
'Only by accident,' said Kadiatu as the room filled up with the aroma of coffee.

Messy but full of intriguing ideas.

[Finn · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was just a complete waste of time.

Too many characters, with little to no character building so they all felt like flat 1-dimensional letters on a page. No world building to speak off, though I assume the whole story takes place in a network of tunnels so basically a futuristic subway system, operated by a supercomputer and invaded by a computervirus.

It basically feels like a first attempt at Doctor Who fanfiction, but certainly one that I would not reccommend to the wider world. Best be forgotten.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

Since I began stepping into the waters of Doctor Who novels, I've heard good things regarding the works of Ben Aaronovitch, whose couple of television stories for Sylvester McCoy were particularly well-received. Having by this point encountered both good and bad in the DW books, I'm now eager to discover which are the authors worth reading - and which can be safely skipped. In a surprising turn, though, this first entry from Aaronovitch is not so easily classed.

First the good: Like Andrew Cartmel's Cat's Cradle: Warhead before it, this novel was apparently quite controversial upon release for graduating Doctor Who to a more adult, morally ambiguous plane, one without easy answers and characterized by a gritty and often-stark realism. (These two novels have also been described as fairly influenced by the cyberpunk literature of the time.) Where Transit takes this realism further, though, is in the inclusion of R-rated elements like drinking, hard swearing and "onscreen" sex - though one never gets the sense that it's exploitative or meant to titillate, as with the adolescent nods in the New Adventures' debut installment, Timewyrm: Genesis. These elements here aren't included out of prurient interest, but rather because they're the concerns of real people in the real world.

Equally impressive is the fact that this stylistic maturity extends to the storytelling as well. Aaronovitch introduces a diverse cast of characters arrayed across the breadth of his tale, each of them a detailed and fully-fleshed offering capable of holding our attention. This is important, as the tale jump-cuts from one scene to the next to the next, daring us to keep up. Far from the dreary authors who feel the need to spell out every single step in thuddingly dull detail, Transit is the kind of novel that can end one chapter with our characters heading somewhere, and begin the next with news that they arrived at that location, met their contact, and have already left! (And this reported secondhand, at that.) It's a narrative style that requires a significant amount of participation and effort from the reader - no passive entertainment, this - and yet displays a confidence that its audience is up for the challenge.

Where the novel stumbles - increasingly so, as the story goes on - is in its ability to fulfill this very promise and potential. Leaving certain developments alluded to rather than spelled out is all fine and good - as long as the answers are in fact there. In several places, however, it feels as if the author simply forgot to include the resolution. (For instance: What was in Benny's book? Why was Kadiatu tracking the Doctor? What caused the transit system to evolve into a living thing in the first place?) And while the novel is impressive in its ability to push the envelope and take Doctor Who into new and exciting places, at other times it's dragged down by its continued insistence on traditional tropes - such as the requisite chase scene across the surface of Mars, something which comes across as both near-interminable and wholly unnecessary. (Part of this scene actually includes the Doctor coming to a fork, choosing one path, then discovering at a dead end that he'd taken the wrong turn and has to head back. That may be something that happens in real life, but it's narratively pointless and frustrating to read.)

In the end, Transit is a novel whose constituent parts never quite cohere, and succeeds about as much as it fails. This even extends to the secondary characters, as the successful introduction of the complex and appealing Kadiatu is evened out by the misuse of the still-new character Bernice, consigned to spent almost the entirety of this book possessed. (Fellow grammarians may also find themselves aggravated by the abundant use of the dreaded comma splice; such a thing really should have been flagged up by the editor.)

And yet, one can't deny that this novel is a wildly ambitious one. If, in the final summation, it was unable to capitalize on every one of those ambitions? Well, Transit may not end up as a novel that entirely succeeds ... but it's one whose aims I can respect.

I'll certainly be checking out more Aaronovitch after this!

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

More than any of the early New Adventures, this feels like Sylvester McCoy era Doctor Who done as a novel aimed at adults. The short scenes which start late and end boldly, the tendency to jump all over the place, a story structure based more on the accumulation of multiple plotlines as opposed to one strand of cause-and-effect, and a general disinterest in explaining itself: it's the McCoy era ported over to a book.

The use of these structures allows Aaronovitch to very effectively build out a staggeringly lived-in world populated by a wide range of distinct people. The first half of the book is defined by a gritty materialism that makes for the most fleshed out world that Doctor Who has ever managed: no other setting has felt quite so real.

The same techniques that make the first half so good threaten to derail its the second half though. The more the book goes on, the more it becomes the Doctor and a computer programme trying to second guess each other, the more it becomes chase sequence after chase sequence, and the more it starts losing its sense of the world. Without the ability to get quite as lost in the setting, you're stuck having to focus solely on the plot which, as previously said, isn't something that the book is too concerned with explaining. As such, the whole narrative threatens to lose itself.

Brilliant moments still shine through though and it comes to a head with a delightfully surreal confrontation in an universe being filtered through the Doctor's perception to appear like a computer interface. The book is awash with great ideas and the ending surprisingly brings them together well. No matter how much you almost get lost during it, come the end of the book, everything gets resolved into a satisfying narrative.

Good characters, great moments, innovative ideas and the single best world building Doctor Who had ever managed up to that point: it's sometimes a bit wobbly but for the most part this is exactly what Doctor Who done as an adult novel should be. It might not be the best of the early New Adventures, but it's the one that feels most like what these books should be.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1444240.html

There was one pedantic point that really annoyed me about this book: Arcturus is spelt incorrectly throughout, missing the first 'r'. A good defemce lawyer would plead that we are not talking about α Boötis but about some other celestial body with the similar name of 'Acturus', but I'm unconvinced.

Apart from that point, I actually rather enjoyed this book, which is a fairly huge admission for me as I am very definitely not a fan of Aaronovitch's two broadcast stories (Remembrance of the Daleks and Battlefield). I found it reminiscent of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, which was pubished two months earlier - so can hardly have been a direct influence; must have both absorbed the Zeitgeist. The Doctor and friends are caught up in a peculiar problem involving AIs and an interplanetary mass transmat system, but also involving grizzled war veterans and various other factions. There is a cracking pace to it.

Besides the mangling of Arcturus, I have one other minor gripe about the book. The previous volume in the series, Love and War, invested much time in introducing new companion Benny Summerfield; but here she (and to an extent the Doctor) blend into background scenery, with much more action going to the Brigadier's genetically engineered warrior descendent, Kadiatu Lethbridge Stewart. She turns out to be a super character in her own right, but it does give the book a mild air of being Kadiatu's adventure in which the Doctor appears trying to rescue Benny, which is not what one expects from a Who book.

Still, very enjoyable

[Drew Perron · Rating 4 out of 5]

He went the full eighties. Never go the full eighties.

Which sounds like a harsh thing to say about a book that I gave four stars to. But, first of all, it'd be 3.5 stars if it could be, and second of all...

It's a common aphorism that science fiction isn't really about the future, but about the present. Thematically, that's often true. But if you're building a future world, you should make it feel like something that could've grown out of the present day, not a complete rehash of exactly the problems that we're having Right Now but on Pluto. If the setup of the book was less superglued to the time it came out (actually the early '90s, but still), the themes of economic inequality and corporate corruption would resonate really strongly today.

And it is specifically the setup of the book, too. That's the thing, and the reason I gave it the score I did; after a certain point, the action moves almost entirely away from the cyberpunk world we start in. Indeed, the aforementioned themes become almost irrelevant; it moves further and further away from the -punk and more and more towards the cyber- as the meat of the story comes together. And the story it eventually becomes is a good one, all ruminations on humanity and the complexity of the Doctor's actions. But the impoverished state that we started in becomes a footnote, cleaned up in passing; the tone, the feel has almost entirely shifted.

If any of that sounds intriguing to you (or, for that matter, if you're interested in the Doctor Who New Adventures, which you should be), I say go for it.

[Tom Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

Transit. Some adore this one. Some hate it.

I am in the middle really. I enjoyed this book in some areas but then hated it.
The transit system is a great idea by Ben Arronvitch and this story was an original idea for Season 27 of Doctor Who I believe along with Illegal Alien, Ice Time and Night Thoughts to name a minor few.

I've always said Transit would be a good one to be adapted by Big Finish and hopefully the adaptation would isolated some of the issues the book had but sadly with the Big Finish Novel Adaptation concluded with Cold Fusion. It's sad to say it won't happen.

The book was quite tense at times and the story was dark, bleak and cyberpunk. The glossary though which gives the book its own language/jargon came across to me as exasperating. A little irritating to keep going back to the glossary to understand the cyberpunk terms the characters bring up.

Speaking of characters, the supporting characters were very unlikable and clones of each other.
The Doctor is pretty good and Benny is okay but mainly under the influence of the entity that's taken control of the transit system.

The book as well has a lot of sex and disgusting scenes described in much detail. With one scene of Benny drinking well... you know what if you've read the book.

The ending is a little all over the place and takes a real psychedelic direction if my mind serves me correctly.

Overall, hit and miss. I see a lot of talent here but the execution is the reason of why this book falls and crippling the rating from a strong 8 to a 6.

6/10

[Alexandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

More superb writing (and I don't just mean in comparison to the garbage fire that was Timewyrm: Genesis/Apocalypse). If a gritty cyberpunk space opera is your jam, this one's for you. I'm finding that this series looks good in cyberpunk.

And I do mean gritty. Transit doesn't pull its punches as the story walks us through a cross section of class polarization and the marginalities created by global capitalism. Ben Aaronovitch paints a vivid and compelling world populated with socially and culturally diverse people who remain unique and believable.

The technology feels different, "futuristic", while clearly wearing the insignia of human workmanship and hubris--it FEELS like something we might make.

The main cast contains many women who have their own desires, ambitions, and arcs independent of the doctor's, and they matter.

The language (which was very controversial when this book came out) is lightly peppered with cursing, which adds to the grit by making dialogue actually sound like people do when they talk.

And the best part: more real, beautiful, complex, compassionately sketched queers, including bisexuals. God, this book's great.

[Adam Highway · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really like Aaronovitch's writing style, his ideas for Doctor Who, his contributions to the Seventh Doctor in particular, but ... this is a slight miss, sadly. The Doctor is a little off, new companion Benny bears little relation to the character we met one novel ago (perhaps not his fault, it's likely the character sketch was ... sketchy ...) and the threat a little too nebulous. A lot of the descriptions are excellent, yet I felt unthreatened in general, and found it very, very hard to care about the characters whom we were obviously meant to find sympathetic. There was a very high body count, but they were basically red shirts ... I didn't give a shit. It's a shame, the idea is excellent (as always) and it's not a bad novel by any means, it's just nowhere near the best work.

[Justin K. Rivers · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's very adult, witty, and packed with interesting concepts. Aaronovitch is a charismatic writer. I enjoyed the more mature elements. It sometimes had the flavor of Gibson's Neuromancer. The disjointed structure was very confusing at first, but I grew used to it. The only thing that I think really made it difficult was that it didn't set up the characters very clearly, and so jumping around with them from place to place was problematic, because it took us longer to care about them.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the characters and world building excellent, but I agree with a few reviewers here, the story felt disjointed to the point of being incomprehensible. Regardless I enjoyed most of it, and found the setting very captivating, and I can't fault the epic scale the author conjured. I did find it odd that it featured mind control and entering cyberspace, straight after a story featuring mind control and entering cyberspace, not sure if that was intentional.

[Reuben Herfindahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I got this one when it came out. Back in those pre-internet days I had no idea original Doctor Who fiction existed. And coming off the Target novelizations this was a shock. Serious cyberpunk, sex and the Doctor drinking. This was not my Doctor Who. Twenty some odd years later it's a better read than it was back then. The beginning is still a bit of muddled, but it picks up steam and clarity and ends up being a fun little read and it's far easier to forgive it's excesses in retrospect.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

A pretty much unreadable travesty

[David Layton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The early brief on the Doctor Who New Adventures novels was that they were to be more "adult" than the TV series. This brief led to some controversial takes on Doctor Who, with writers sort of force-fitting Doctor Who into a cussin', sexin', fightin' kind of story, or vice versa. Eventually, the series settled into somewhat more "adult" than TV Doctor Who, but before that, we got novels like "Transit." Ben Aaronovitch, who had written two scripts for the TV series, the very good "Remembrance of the Daleks" and the very muddled "Battlefield," here goes in an entirely different direction. "Transit" is cyberpunk Doctor Who. That leads to quite a lot of cussin', a lot of sexin', and a gritty, grimy, everyone is miserable ambience that hangs on the whole thing like the anchor of a battleship. The premise, as far as I can tell, runs something like this: about two centuries in the future, humanity will have developed a kind of interplanetary metro rail system similar to the London Underground, but with the "trains" running on quantum mechanical probabilities, which means that while the passenger feels a passage of time of minutes to hours between stations, the trains get from here to there in no time at all. The whole thing is run by a complicated AI system that, unknown to any of its operators, has crossed the threshold into some form of self-awareness. The humans are staging a grand opening of the new interstellar line, but "something" comes through that nearly destroys the Pluto station, unthinkingly turns all the spectators into blue goo, and takes over Benny. This something, I think, is a computer virus generated by the complexities of the total system once they added the interstellar line. The virus not only takes over Benny, but also several other people, most notably a gang who "surf" the train tunnels, turning them into maniacal killers for some unknown purpose.

One will have noticed by now that I say things like "I think" and "unknown" in this assessment, mostly because Aaronovitch works hard to keep nearly everything in this novel murky. The atmosphere is murky, the explanations are murky, the characters are murky. The experience is like reading a novel made entirely from innuendo, except for the descriptions of violence and sex, which are as plain and brightly lit as Aaronovitch can manage.

"Transit" is very much a cyberpunk novel, which makes it more strictly science fiction than most other Doctor Who novels or most post-1980 Doctor Who TV episodes. The cyberpunk aspects come through loud and hazy. Thus, the plot rests on questions of AI self-awareness and whether such a system could be "alive," and whether humans would be able to recognize a self-aware computer intelligence if they came across one. The world that Aaronovitch imagines is an almost entirely urban future, divided into enclaves of people ground down into perpetual poverty, organized almost entirely into gangs, and constantly hustling each other just for survival. No one has a happy, meaningful life. Everyone is "tough" and speaks in various kinds of street lingo and is technologically augmented in one way or another, but rarely to their own benefit. It is a grimy, miserable, mirthless world. And everyone in it uses drugs, alcohol, or computer-technological means for temporary escape from this miserable existence. Like so many cyberpunk novels, there is a big showdown in virtual reality at the end. These endings often do not work well because the authors do not have a good sense of what this virtual world would be like and how it would work.

As many readers of this novel have noted, Benny is hardly in it, at least not as herself. I suspect that Aaronovitch originally thought of this story with Ace in mind, then was told that a new companion was in, Ace was out, and so had to simply slot Benny into the Ace position. Thus, we do not really get a good sense of the new companion. As many readers have noted, the true companion of this novel is Aaronovitch's creation, Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart. It feels that Aaronovitch really wanted her rather than Benny to be the new companion.

On the one hand, one has to admire Aaronovitch for taking Doctor Who into cyberpunk territory more firmly than in the few attempts of the Doctor 7 run on TV. On the other hand, the needless difficulties that Aaronovitch has forced the reader to go through make the novel less appealing than it could have been.

[Joe Kessler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This cyberpunk / cosmic horror mashup is big on worldbuilding texture but light on plot and character work. The worst thing about it, though, stems from its place in the Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures series, as the first installment with Professor Bernice Summerfield as the Doctor's traveling companion. Benny featured prominently in the last volume, which introduced her on planet Heaven and then culminated in her joining the TARDIS while Ace stayed behind, but we still don't really know her as an active protagonist or partner for the Seventh Doctor yet. Theoretically this novel should be all about establishing that characterization and relationship, showcasing the two of them working closely together to define the strengths and conflicts that the new heroine brings to the arrangement.

Instead, the characters are separated almost immediately, and the archaeologist is absent for the majority of the text. When she finally resurfaces, she's been possessed by the extradimensional villain, and so isn't exactly functioning as herself, anyway. In addition to shortchanging the reader's investment in the woman, this writing choice also limits the impact of the Doctor's struggle over how to defeat the sentient virus-monster without killing her, since there's no real lived-in dynamic there to imbue the dilemma with any significant stakes for him.

It's not all bad. In the professor's absence we get a de-facto assistant in Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart -- an adopted distant descendent of the Brig -- who's a capable augmented supersoldier as well as a genius. (She develops her own form of time-travel at the end of this adventure, and apparently returns in a few sequels somewhere down the line.) And the setting is pretty fun too, concerning the titular future mass transportation system that connects human civilization across our region of space but accidentally opens the door for the aforementioned incursion from beyond this reality. It's the sort of wild genre blend that Doctor Who tends to do well, populated with somewhat-interchangeable residents with colorful names like Credit Card and Dogface. I especially like the mindbending climax of the tale, whereupon our Time Lord hero ventures into the antagonist's home dimension and has to visualize the mental subroutines that he's both using and fighting against to ultimately save the day.

Overall I think this would be a stronger piece if it had happened later on in its saga, and/or if Bernice had been incorporated more fully into the story. But I suppose it's solid enough for what it is.

[Content warning for gun violence, torture, body horror, and gore.]

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[Peer Lenné · Rating 1 out of 5]

Das war wirklich ein hartes Stück Arbeit. Transit ist vielleicht nicht das schlechteste Buch, das ich jemals freiwillig bis zum Ende gelesen habe (diese Ehre gebührt immer noch Timewyrm: Revelation), aber mit Sicherheit das uninteressanteste.
Zunächst aber mal was mir gefallen hat (damit das aus dem Weg ist): Die Dialoge sind tatsächlich sehr gut geschrieben. Selbst die die einen so fast gar nicht interessieren (und das sind die meisten), sind glaubwürdig und realisisch dargestellt. Vor allem die "Stimme" des Doctors kommt gut zur Geltung.
Das war es aber schon an positiven Dingen, die man über dieses Buch sagen kann.
Der Rest ist einfach schlimm. Aaronovitch schaffte es an keiner Stelle mich für die Story zu interessieren. Das Überstrapazieren einiger prosaischer Kunstgriffe, wie den Leser am Anfang fast jeden Kapitels darüber im Dunkeln zu lassen, was die Protagonisten warum jetzt überhaupt machen, hätte vielleicht funktionieren können, wenn man sich entweder für Story oder die Charaktere interessieren würde, da aber beides ziemlich blass bleibt, liest man Seiten um Seiten, ohne überhaupt wissen zu WOLLEN, was gerade los ist. Überhaupt: Eine richtige Story gibt es so wie so nicht und die meisten Charaktere kommen über ein wandelndes Klischee gar nicht hinaus. Einzig Ming und Kadiatu haben so etwas Ähnliches wie eine Charakterisierung. Darüber hinaus präsentiert uns das Buch zum dritten Mal in Folge eine komplett unglaubwürdige Liebesgeschichte, die diesmal sogar eine explizite Sexszene beinhaltet, die eigentlich nur dafür da ist das Buch erwachsener wirken zu lassen und ansonsten rein gar keine Daseinsberechtigung hat. Benny bei ihrem ersten Auftritt als Companion fast das gesamte Buch über von einem außerirdischen Wesen besessen zu machen war wahrlich auch kein Geniestrich von Aaronovitch. Das ist nur einer der Gründe warum ich auch die meiste Zeit über nicht wirklich das Gefühl hatte einen Doctor Who Roman zu lesen, sondern einen typischen, unterdurchschnittlichen 90er-Jahre Cyberpunk-Thriller. Der Doctor und alles um ihn herum wirken einfach nur in die Story rein operiert und es gibt fast kein Element, das irgendwie ins Doctor Who Universum passt. Selbst die Ice Warrior (oder deren Erwähnung) wirkten fehl am Platz. Apropos Cyberpunk: Ich bin froh, wenn ich nie wieder im Leben ein schlechtes Cyberspace Szenario lesen muss.
Das beste am Buch war dann als es endlich vorbei war und ich die Erkenntnis erlangt habe, dass ich dieses Buch nie wieder in die Hand nehmen muss. Schlecht!

[Hidekisohma · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read a review for this book (another two star) and they said "if it wasn't in the series, i wouldn't have finished it." and i whole heartedly agree. This one just overall wasn't very good. it took me a good 3 weeks to get through this one as I didn't want to go back and pick it back up.

Short version, doc's in a cyber-punky world with a new super fast train and a program goes nuts and kills people. he's there with his new companion Bernice as well. (they get separated right away and for like the whole book)

There's several issues with this book. the biggest is that there's WAY too many points of view, too many characters, and it's complicated for no reason. This is one of those books i had to read the Tardis wiki to make sure i got everything. and this time i definitely missed a few things. Bernice was possessed for pretty much the entire novel, which is an odd choice considering we literally just picked her up in the previous book and haven't really gotten any chance to learn about her outside of her origin book.

Everything about this was seriously overtly complicated for no reason and several scenes left me scratching my head wondering why the author felt the need to jump between 10 characters and be weirdly convoluted.

I saw in some of the reviews that this book was weirdly dirty, and i agree. there was definitely talk in here that was more....adult. lots of references to sex and drugs which you obviously don't see too too much here normally in this series. It didn't really bother me but definitely felt on the "Edgy for the sake of being edgy" section.

When the doctor wasn't on screen this book really failed to keep my attention and i was not having fun for about 80% of it. all in all, it's a solid 2.5 out of 5 on the doctor who scale, but i can't in good conscience give it a 3, so it's a 2 since i can't do halves.

I actually like cyberpunk and WANTED to like this book, but it was way too complicated for its own good and for no reason. I don't now why Back in the day, Who authors felt they needed to make these books insanely complicated but it helps no one and doesn't make them seem intelligent.

Had a few okay moments, but the villain was complicated to understand yet stock (if that's even possible), and with the lack of Bernice as her own character (aka not being possessed) and the doctor making some strange...out of character choices, i didn't really enjoy this one. not the worst one i've ever read, but definitely not one of the better ones.

2.5 out of 5 rounded down to a 2.

[Ian Banks · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not brilliant but it does fit the brief of a story that is "too broad and too deep" for the television show which really annoyed all the hardcore fans who say that Doctor Who can tell every story in the world... except for the ones that they don't like.

(A digression: my biggest problem with the NA range is that the stories that fandom actively disliked were stories that weren't necessarily badly-written but didn't feel like Doctor Who to them. They wanted stories that pushed the boundaries of the show but in a way that didn't make them feel uncomfortable or that weren't actually too far from what the show had done, previously. Hence, when a novel came along that used swear words, sex scenes and genuinely tried to place Doctor Who into "adult" situations or into stories that didn't feel dated because they were trying to fit into a style of story style that was already ancient, it garnered a lot of unnecessary hostility.)

It is a few years too late to feel really fresh as a cyberpunk story, a genre that had already lost most of its momentum by the time that this novel was published. It does tell an interesting story, but one that's more concerned with ambience than with real depth. It's also a very clever-clever story that spends a lot of time generating quotable quotes than real dialogue (although some of it is genuinely brilliant, like the exchange between Kadiatu and the Doctor about Edith Piaf) and some of the wit feels more like the sort of thing that's designed to show off how clever the author is rather than his characters. Although that was a problem with so many of the New Adventures that it feels churlish to single out Mr Aaronovitch.

Not a bad novel but one that takes too long to find its feet and has a several characters who feel too similar to one another, which is a neophyte novelists fault, rather than a specific one to this novel. The setting tries a little too hard to be edgy but creates a world with a lot of history and depth. I'd probably have liked a little more backstory to our villain and a less metaphorical/ psychedelic climax but that's just me and my issues with cyberpunk rather than an actual fault.

[Seb Hasi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Transit really felt like the beginning of something new, almost like the beginning of a new season if it were still on tv. New companion, new adventures, new arcs. Apprehensive to see the departure of Ace so early into the range (only 9 books in), but already firmly a fan on Bernice Summerfield, I had no idea what I was in for going into this one. The synopsis, cover and few other details gave me the impression the story would be similar to that of Timewyrm: Warhead, which it did have few similarities to but overall not the same at all. A very techno-fear, high concept story, it was almost like the inverse of a previous novel (Cat’s Cradle: Witch Mark) with the Doctor and companion entering a fantastical realm where their minds dictate what’s going on. That being said, that whole concept doesn’t show up till near the end of the book and for the most part, it’s a sci-fi version of Kidulthood.

Gritty and adult, or at least tries to be, it explores characters and their motivations on a more multilevel plain than you usually get in Dr Who books, thanks solely to the adult themes at play. For example, Benny spends most of the book separated from the Doctor, with her own companions... two prositutes. There’s talk of drugs, drink, sex, and murder, and on the whole is handled very well. You tend to get a lot of writers who try and merge adult themes with Dr Who and end up with an effort that just looks a horny 14 year old writing fan fiction but in this case it wasn’t over the top, it just was something naturally incorporated into the story. You even have a clockwork orange-esque use of fake future slang, and a glossary for it in the back of the book which was a nice touch if a bit annoying, given you dont exactly like to have reference material when reading a dr who book.

The villain of the piece was an idea that’s been done to death, but it’s been so because it works and in that I can’t really criticise it. You have your foot-soldiers for the main baddie and those are great, mostly because of the imagery and great descriptive moments in the book that they are responsible for. The main contribution to the plot of both being the climax, a very high scales affair with lots of subplots weaving together and the Doctor getting to be Time’s Champion once again. I can’t lie.. no idea what actually happened. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention but to me it was clear how he defeated the baddies, but not remotely clear what their endgame was, or what was at stake. We had some great moments and that was enough for me, I can forgive an anomaly or two.

One of, if not the key factor of the book is Kadiatu. Or should I say... (not it’s not a spoiler, she is introduced like 15 pages in) Kadiatu Lethbridge-Stewart. A very interesting and badass character, almost similar to how the modernised the Brigadier character in Battlefield by making them a black woman, you have the Brig’s great great granddaughter and the backstory of how she came to be is pretty wild. She offers a lot to the plot, and is in her own right an excellent character who I hope returns to the VNAs at some point. She made a great companion for the Doctor and offered a lot to the story, being at certain points, the thing keeping the book interesting.

So, as a first outing for Seven and Benny I thought it was pretty good. Kicked this new era off with a bang, with enough of the old to keep it interesting, plus unlike the last two books, the Doctor isn’t a complete tosser for most of it! Definitely worth a read.

[Kelly McCubbin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A surprisingly sophisticated take on cyberpunk, this novel is endlessly clever and ambitious. Sadly, the whole thing gets let down by the author leaving you hanging out on a few too many unexplained threads. Taken the right way the novel continually tugs at the idea of what The Doctor and his companion might encompass. Often it works, making interesting cases that his companions, in this case Kadiatu, a distant but direct relative of the Brigadier, might actually be an evolutionary answer to the introduction of a disruptive force, The Doctor himself, into the human species. Perhaps they are there to protect us, from him. Or at least from his influence.
Sharp witted, playful and funny the book is perfectly happy to demand that we let go of some preconceptions and, yes, if you're concerned about sex in Doctor Who or cursing or extreme violence, there is a little of each. But the point at which the book runs into trouble is that the narrative fragment so much that, by the end, you aren't sure if you might just have missed what the book was about. It is honestly a joy for a great hunk of the story to find yourself dropped mid-scenes having to fill in bits of narrative with inference, it fits well into the novel's ideas about improvisation and you figure that anything that doesn't seem clear will be gotten round to by the end.
But a lot of it is never gotten round to. I'm still not entirely sure who the bad guy actually was, what he wanted and how he was defeated (which I am lead to believe that he was).
That said, there is a giddy recklessness to this that really works. It's no "Love and War", but neither is it a bad read.

[Matt Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This took me too long to read. I’m trying to get through one New Adventure a month and thanks February for being a right pain.

Regardless, this was a holler of a story. Super fun, big, bouncy... interesting to see what someone like Aaronovitch did for the New Adventures, especially considering just how good his two TV stories were.

Before I dove into this endeavor it struck me that this era of books was going to be fairly cyberpunky. As someone who’s not really done a lot of cyberpunk, and to be perfect frank has never found it terribly interesting, I worried this would be a problem. So far it’s right on that edge of things, not quite to where it’s annoying but definitely to the point where I’m noticing it. I don’t know exactly how many will be cyberpunky in as much as computers are this wondrous magical thing, but hopefully that number goes down from where we’re currently at (all but Terrance Dicks’s Timewyrm Exodus have centered at least in part on some sort of hack/computer space).

Still. This is super seeped into the ethos of cyberpunk in ways the others only flirt with. It’s terribly fun for what it is and honestly couldn’t begin to understand how this particular book is controversial at all. This is the sort of thing Doctor Who has to do. It tackles genres and movements. It’s not gonna be the best cyberpunk Doctor Who story (that would almost assuredly be The Deadly Assassin), but it is certainly rad and cyberpunky enough to be the most cyberpunky entry.

Doctor Who Book Ranking
1) Love and War
2) Timewyrm: Revelation
3) Timewyrm: Exodus
4) Transit
5) Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
6) Timewyrm: Apocalypse
7) Timewyrm: Genesys

[Harrison · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like the world building ideas but the prose killed this.
The author’s previous book, the novelised Remembrance of the Daleks, is absolutely brilliantly entertaining and strikes the perfect tone for McCoy dr who. But this completely misunderstands good story telling.
The usual gripes with this story make sense but the sex or drugs aren’t that big in the story at all. The story is pretty trad (imo, compared to things like Unnatural History or City of the Dead, both of which I enjoyed).
There are so many characters (I enjoyed their names, shoot me) who completely confused me. It was so unclear what roles these characters had in this world or the story.
I loved everything to do with Mars and the ancient Martian bits. The dream sequences in the Doctors mind (?) with the King of Primary Colours was really fun yet I had no idea what was happening. Other VNAs have dream sequences just as creative yet I still understand their story function. Here, I was confused.

So far with the VNAs I’m missing some good old fashioned dr who monsters and villains. I’m quite enjoying the juvenile cyberpunk world of it all, and if I wasn’t ready to embrace it I wouldn’t have started reading these books. I’m enjoying 7 but it’s clear that his character can never develop further than just ‘trickster’. He keeps ‘learning his lesson’ yet continuing to do the same things. Which makes Ace seem righteous in her bitterness and Benny seem weak. I’m hoping that perhaps he can change later down the line but I don’t know yet.

[H · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the most dull Doctor Who books I have ever read. The book loses itself too much in its worldbuilding - to Aaronovitch's credit, it certainly feels immense, but to a reader wanting to see more of the Doctor and Bernice (especially considering this is the latter's first novel as a companion, and, as many have already rightly discussed, she is largely someone else for the majority of this novel!), this novel feels lacklustre at best. The characters feel too gritty and edgy, the cyberpunk is too in-your-face to appreciate, and the enemy is perhaps too one-dimensional. However, in the author's defense, the novel deserves one star purely for the intense worlds Aaronovitch writes, but the individual properties within them do nothing but leave me cold. Fundamentally, it's not hard to see the failures of this novel, both at a glance and as part of the bigger picture. Thankfully, having read The Also People, I know Aaronovitch will improve on his execution tenfold by his next novel, which is good, as he clearly has many interesting ideas and themes to explore which he still to this day navigates aptly. Worth reading for a completionist or anyone interested in Kadiatu, but certainly not for the casual fun. Avoid if possible.