Doctor Who: The Dimension Riders

Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures #20

by Daniel Blythe

'Someone here has been playing with time, Ace. Like playing with fire, only worse - you get burnt before you’ve lit the match.'
          Abandoning a holiday in Oxford, the Doctor travels to Space Station Q4, where something is seriously wrong. Ghostly soldiers from the future watch from the shadows among the dead. Soon, the Doctor is trapped in the past, Ace is fighting for her life, and Bernice is uncovering deceit among the college cloisters.
          What is the connection with a beautiful assassin in a black sports car? How can the Doctor’s time machine be in Oxford when it is on board the space station? And what secrets are held by the library of the invaded TARDIS?
          The Doctor quickly discovers he is facing another time-shattering enigma: a creature which he thought he had destroyed, and which it seems he is powerless to stop.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 18, 1993

About the author

Daniel Blythe was born in Maidstone and educated at Maidstone Grammar School and St John’s College, Oxford. He is the author of three Doctor Who novels including Autonomy, as well as the novels The Cut, Losing Faith and This Is The Day. He has also written the non-fiction books The Encyclopaedia Of Classic 80s Pop, I Hate Christmas: A Manifesto for the Modern-Day Scrooge, Dadlands: The Alternative Handbook For New Fathers, the irreverent politics primer X Marks The Box and the collectors' guide Collecting Gadgets and Games from the 1950s-90s. In 2012, Chicken House published his book for younger readers, Shadow Runners. His Emerald Greene books for younger readers are also out now. Daniel now lives in Yorkshire, on the edge of the Peak District, with his wife and two children.

Reviews

[Mary JL · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the second book in a 5 book story arc. After the events in Blood Heat, The Doctor is visiting Oxford in 1993. Or is he? He suspects that who or what ever force manipulated his Tardis into the alternate timeline is still affecting them. Some force is trying to manipulate the Tardis through different time lines for some unknown reason.

We leave Benny Summerfield in 1993 Oxford--and Ace and the Doctor end up in the 24th century on a space station.

Some good parts here and there but overall for some reason this did not grab my attention like most WHO novels do. The New Adventures series--written by many different authors--has hit or miss. worth reading once as part of the 5 story arc---but not one of the stronger books in this series.

Note: Only the fact of someone manipulating time is connected with the first book, so this could still read read as a stand alone---there is not direct story connection between Blood Heat and Dimension Riders.

[Adam James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm noticing some trends in these New Adventures books.

First of all, white male British authors in the 90's inexplicably do not know how to write about other races of people.

a) Not everyone reads books and assumes the characters are white.
b) When a character isn't white, you don't need to explain how beautiful their non-white skin is. Does the Doctor have the milky white skin reminiscent of the rarest of wild unicorns?
c) Writing, "So where are we heading?" asked the young black girl as she hurried out into the corridor behind them (Steve Lyons from Conundrum page 223...seriously, that's how he chose to write that sentence) isn't just lazy...it's straight up racist. Not KKK racist - like run-of-the-mill-white-guys-don't-understand-other-people kind of racist. You know, like regular racist.

Bernice and Ace don't spend a lot of time together...so...did the editor of this series decide that we need even more narrative threads in these adventures with even more random ass characters to halfheartedly explain?

The Doctor knows everything all the time so giving him any chapters before the 200 page mark would be unnecessary and self-indulgent and fun and a good idea and the reason why most people buy these books...

I still don't know what Bernice looks like. She's tall. And wears burgundy pants. Thanks, all of the authors who've written her. I'm going to assume she's an Eskimo with four arms and three butts. Scratch that...if Benny weren't white the author would have written something like, "The gang and Benny the Eskimo, headed down the corridor..."

Here's a fun game - try to keep track of all the typos that nobody noticed/cared to revise and edit. I'm sure Darvill-Evans (the editor) was too busy celebrating Black History or Diwali or a quinceanera to notice them.

Anyway, Dimension Riders is pretty okay.

[James Barnard · Rating 4 out of 5]

My instinct was to give this four stars rather than three. I'm not quite sure why it hit the mark with me - it's not exactly earth-shattering - but there's something about it that works well.

I think the problem people had with it is its placing in the New Adventures range. This, after all, was the book Virgin Publishing chose to bring out in the month of the show's 30th anniversary, yet there's nothing particularly celebratory about it. Here we have a similar situation to the TV show five years previously, where 'Silver Nemesis' was chosen as the 25th anniversary story even though the preceeding 'Rememberance of the Daleks' is clearly a far more fitting choice. Yes, 'Blood Heat' was somewhat more deserving of the position, but this is a rather more soothing read. That's if you think the phrase 'soothing' applies to a story which sees people ageing to death, of course.

I don't know. I think I'm allowing my heart to rule my head on this one. This isn't one I'd heartily recommend, nor is it a guilty pleasure as such. I just think it stands up well to repeated reading, and once a sniffiness about its placing becomes irrelevant, it's worth coming back to. After all, it's fairly short, very readable, and at times thought-provoking.

It's also a welcome break from the soul-searching and companion-battering of the novels that preceeded and followed it!

[Drew Perron · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is near the bottom of the scale in most people's rankings of the New Adventures, and I can't figure out why. It's a perfectly functional Doctor Who adventure, not great, but quite good.

The books biggest flaws are that it's too invested in making its bad guys scary, showing you that they're super menacing even when it's gratuitous - which is something that's true for basically every New Adventure between Love and War and No Future - and not being especially thematically coherent. But it has a wealth of virtues, including a really good handle on the voices of the characters (post-Deceit Ace is rarely written this well), a bunch of fun homages to the Fourth Doctor era (including plot elements that make it into a sequel to the never-finished episode Shada), a big run-around in a surrealist version of the TARDIS near the end, and good internal characterization moments for everybody. An enjoyable time for all.

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over 20 years have passed since I first read this book...and I enjoy it today as much as my 19 year old self enjoyed it then. Yes, it tries to impress as a first Who novel...yes, it's fanwanky...yes, it's trying to be hard-edged and serious...yes, it's very cool spacey future sci-fi...and yes, I love it to bits. It's a very 1980s "Doctor Who" story, told in a very 1990s "New Adventure" way...and it still moves like lightning. His recent novel "Autonomy" might be the more polished novel, but "The Dimension Riders" is Daniel Blythe's epic in the raw. I enjoy it immensely.

[KP · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just don't really know what I just read? Stuff happened? maybe? I liked it at times, other times I was lost? But I did read it in two days? But can I really tell you what happened? maybe?

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a struggle for me and I think I started this in the wrong order. It was the cover that caught my attention.
So the doctor abandons a holiday in oxford and travels to a space station Q4 if I remember, something goes seriously wrong with ghost soldiers from the future and the doctor ends up trapped in the past.
Ace is doing her thing fighting for her life and I have no idea who Bernice is but she's uncovering deceit in a college.
The tardis is in oxford but also the space station.
This book confused me more than enjoyable

[James Bowman · Rating 2 out of 5]

An unsatisfying Seventh Doctor adventure. Which is a shame, since there are some potentially interesting ideas in here, but the author fails to make them engaging or otherwise involve you in the plot or characters. After the halfway point I was rushing through the text just to get it over with. (C+)

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

I guess that ripping off bits of Shada was considered less egregious when there weren’t seventeen different versions of it. And if the New Adventures series never does another wacky psychedelic TARDIS interior/telepathic dreamscape sequence, it’ll be too soon.

[James Lark]

An Oxbridge college hiding a renegade Time Lord. An invisible time ship and a TARDIS disguised as a study. A space station in the distant future attacked by unearthly, glowing soldiers, intent on finding the person who will bind the whole lot together. Gallifreyan folklore and time paradoxes, comedy college porters and policemen.

It sounds like perfect Doctor Who, an interweaving of British eccentricity and high concept sci-fi on an epic scale; but then Shada was released on VHS in 1992 and everybody realised that the parts possibly didn’t add up to all that much - at least, the parts they managed to film.

Of course, there have been exhaustive attempts to recreate the story since then in various media - in print, on audio, using animation - and the first of them, it turns out, is this: The Dimension Riders. Daniel Blythe swaps out a fictional Cambridge college for a fictional Oxford college, Tom Baker’s ebullient season 17 Doctor for Sylvester McCoy’s scheming New Adventures incarnation, but essentially all the elements are there. He even puts his villain in a wide-brimmed floppy hat.

To be fair to Blythe, he’s not coy about hiding his source of inspiration, peppering the story with references to The Worshipful and Ancient Law Of Gallifrey et al, in a way that rather fails to explain the backstory but probably made fans happy at the time. Even so, it's a bold move to make such an explicit connection just a year after Shada's first official release, given that people were bound to draw comparisons and find this iteration rather less involving and considerably less witty. The Oxford scenes are kind of fun and have some of the charm that the New Adventures range has mostly lacked at this point, but they obviously can’t compete with Douglas Adams dialogue so it all feels like a lacklustre retread of the same idea (one gets the impression that this is written by an Oxford graduate eager to write his university into the canon). As for the stuff in space, it’s populated by macho cliches with near-identical names and near-identical angst, barking orders and threats at each other before turning out to be rough diamonds willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and therefore utterly unmemorable (after a while I gave up trying to keep track of which one lost his brother in some kind of accident or which one was in charge or which ones were girls and which were boys). There’s a lot of building tension and waiting around in prison cells, followed by plenty of shooty bangy stuff with whizzy monsters, and honestly I can’t say whether it’s genuinely difficult to follow or I had just zoned out by that point.

On the plus side, by splitting the Doctor, Bernice and Ace across three different times and locations, the story does afford them each a role that plays to their strengths - Bernice enjoying collegiate hospitality, the Doctor being chatty and clever, Ace running around being macho - and there is something about the construction of the narrative, which doesn’t draw these threads together until the conclusion, that is actually as forward-looking as it is beholden to the past. It’s the sort of trick Steven Moffat repeatedly played, pulling together apparently disparate plot threads with a clever twist; unfortunately the twist, such as it is, can been seen a mile off, and any opportunity for a clever climax is sacrificed for a leap into surrealism and a tired retreat of the ending to The Curse of Fenric. Once again, Blythe makes the reference explicit, but that’s not enough to excuse it when, fundamentally, it doesn’t make sense to end the story with a chess game and Ace having trust issues.

I’m a huge fan of the Cartmel era, I love his giving the Doctor control of the stories again and I think season 26 gives Ace one of the most interesting emotional journeys any character has experience in Doctor Who (including later eras in which ‘emotional journeys’ were much more the series’ bread and butter). But it didn’t half become a millstone around the neck of this range: it’s absurd to think that anyone would be fooled into thinking the Doctor wasn't in control all along, and yet apparently Ace is still being surprised by it, full of teenage rage when he appears to hand the TARDIS over to his enemy, even though she is now in her twenties, has spent years battling Daleks, can hold her own amongst the aforementioned macho grunts and has watched the Doctor save the day again and again. If she finds trust so difficult after all that, why on earth is she travelling with him?! For that matter, why on earth does he still tolerate her presence when she is clearly such a liability? It was a Doctor Who Magazine review of the Big Finish audio Colditz that compared Ace to Twin Peaks’ Nadine Hurley, a grown woman who thinks she is a teenager, the only embarrassing difference being that Ace wasn’t supposed to be played for laughs. On the basis of this material, we shouldn’t be laying any of the blame on Sophie Aldred - grown-woman-playing-a-teenager-Ace is every bit as embarrassing in print as in performance.

There are plenty more meaningful looks and unresolved tensions between the Doctor and his companions to suggest that we’re going on a journey with this tedious atmosphere of mistrust, further highlighting the chasm between the Doctor Who the story tries to evoke and the point this series has reached; somewhere along the line, the seventh Doctor’s tendency towards manipulation has been subsumed in a growing suggestion that he is neither trustworthy nor likeable. Bernice and Ace both depart in the TARDIS apparently unwillingly, compelled by some sadomasochistic urge to go through another angsty crisis of trust when more people die. Had everyone involved forgotten that these adventures are, on some level, meant to be fun?

Whatever the logic driving the overriding tone, it made me want to go scurrying to any of the other versions of Shada. Even the VHS one.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1744191...

A Seventh Doctor novel in the New Adventures series, featuring a renegade Time Lord disguised as the head of an Oxford college and equipped with a killer android who he is using to execute the sinister plans of his horrible ally. Not quite as good as that description sounds; there are some very graphic battle sequences in the future space station to which the 1993 Oxford setting has a mysterious link, and some nice nods to Gallifreyan continuity, but it's a bit like trying to rewrite Shada as a slightly more coherent and violent novel. Decent enough but not top of the range.

[April Mccaffrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not sure how to rate this one. It was okay? Didn’t hate it, didn’t love it.

It was slow to start with as it usually is with most vnas but then I started reading my PDF format of the book on my computer and kept swapping between that and the physical copy and it made things easier to read.

I didn’t understand the purpose for the villains the Garvond or why the doctor helped to create them. Epsilon Delta was fun to read in some aspects but again felt like Daniel was trying to hard for them to be the master.

Once i got going, i ended up finishing it quickly. This isn’t essential on the list of reads.

Poor writing and at times Ace and The doctor felt out of character.

[Colin Hoad · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another NA to file under "ok, but nothing special," alas. It's not that it's bad per se, just that there's little to make it stand out. The plot is a bit tortuous and feels more like a short story than a novel. Once you strip out the cardboard cut-out cast of minor characters, it amounts to "evil Gallifreyan entity tries to use the TARDIS to manipulate time by creating a paradox; the Doctor stops it." There's not much more to it other than a fair amount of gallivanting around 1990s Oxford (which really doesn't add anything to the story beyond a bit of window dressing) and the standard issue Doctor-Ace-Benny angst that became a hallmark for the NA series. The random Timelord "Epsilon Delta" is a smug cipher with a femme-bot android, both of whom ultimately just get killed off without contributing anything to the storyline. As for the entire crew of the Icarus / Space Station Q4, it was a struggle to tell who was who half the time, as they had almost nothing to distinguish them beyond a quick paragraph of harrowing backstory involving a relative dying in tragic circumstances.

The characterisation of the Doctor is very Curse of Fenric here, but without any of the humanising aspects McCoy brought to the onscreen persona. It's all high-minded chess games and never telling anyone what's going on, including the reader. In the end he saves the day without any real indication that it could have gone any other way.

The epilogue is lazily tacked on to try and make this story fit into a wider arc begun in the previous novel, but realistically, it's a standalone tale. Very much back in Cat's Cradle territory here, as far as any real narrative connective tissue is concerned.

All of that said, it's not too badly written and there are one or two interesting ideas, such as the Time Soldiers and the paradox of the space station. For all that they don't do much for the story, the Oxford scenes are also a fun ride and give the book a little bit of "local" flavour. If you're reading the NA series back to back, as I am, then it's worth your time; if you only want the highlights, you could probably skip it and not lose any sleep over it.

[David Layton · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Dimension Riders tells a tale often told in Doctor Who and does not really add much to it. The premise is that some ancient evil wants to take control of the universe and wants to use the TARDIS to do so. Said ancient evil, here The Garvond, yes another "The" ancient evil, has no particular motivation or rationale for taking over the universe; it just wants to because it is evil. So, take a mixture of Shada (actually mentioned in this novel), Earthshock, The Invisible Enemy, and a couple more, swap some names and locations, and you get this novel. The writing is also quite amateurish at times. Mostly, this is a matter of stating the very obvious as if it is the most important thing in the universe. Here is a typical example: "A ghost reaching for help. Help that was not there." This sort of telegraphing and clunky prose runs throughout the book. Another detraction for me is that once again we get a TARDIS crew in disarray. No one trusts anyone. Everyone is mad at each other. Why Ace and Bernice remain if they do not like traveling in the TARDIS baffles me. Bernice in this novel even leaves it up to a coin toss to determine whether she stays.

The good parts of the novel are these. Blythe uses solid characterization. Each character is distinct, and, apart from The Garvond, well motivated. He keeps the pace going, neither too fast nor too slow. Various parts tie together. It is a decent enough read, good for passing a few hours.

[Peer Lenné · Rating 1 out of 5]

Das Buch wirkt insgesamt überdehnt und enthält mindestens zwei überflüssige Erzählperspektiven. Die Nebenfiguren sind so oberflächlich dargestellt, dass sie kaum voneinander zu unterscheiden sind. Es versucht, komplexer zu wirken, als es eigentlich ist, und jeder Satz scheint mindestens ein überflüssiges Wort zu enthalten. Es ist unklar, ob das Lektorat hier geschlafen hat oder einfach aufgegeben hat.


Dass Ace dem Doctor misstraut, und mal wieder überlegt, ihn zu verlassen, wird zunehmend langweilig.


Das Finale wirkt wie aus dem Nichts gegriffen und nach dem unnötig langen Aufbau enttäuschend und unbefriedigend. Die schlechte Logik als Paradox abzutun und so zu erklären, ist schlichtweg Faulheit.


Leider fällt mir auch nach eingehender Überlegung nichts Positives ein, das ich über dieses Buch sagen könnte. Selbst die vielen kleinen Anspielungen auf ältere Doctor Who Episoden können es nicht retten.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

There were definitely a few bits that felt awkward (including a contrived reference to Ian - I'm all for references to past companions and it is sort of justified in universe but the place it's slotted in feels slightly forced) and I didn't think any of the villains were that strong. One of them has the excuse of being an embodiment of evil but the President just felt a bit like a generic renegade Time Lord. That being said, I did largely enjoy it and I'm really interested to see where the 'Ace learns to trust the Doctor again' arc is going.

[Christopher M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun 'Who' entry with a pleasingly time-twisted plot that sees the main characters jumping around in time experiencing future and present events in the wrong order. The scenes set in Oxford are a little too reminiscent of Shada, which is referenced, and there are once again too many interchangeable Star Trek/space marine type characters, but the main narrative cracks on forward through a series of twists and turns.

[John Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Doctor and Ace leave a relaxing morning in 1990s Oxford to investigate why the tardis computer is claiming to have just been at some space station in the 2300s, while Benny stays to investigate some strange goings on around town. It turns out the two mysteries are connected, obviously. Confusing at times and feels like the retreading of familiar ground, but overall enjoyable.

[Kris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some nice character moments raise it up but it is the disappointingly simplistic in the plot. It seems to take more from Timewyrm than the more inventive takes in the rest of the the alternative history arc.

[Arthur B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining enough but a little lightweight by the standards of the series, and with a story which doesn't quite stick the landing. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...

[City Mist · Rating 3 out of 5]

Daniel Blythe excels in setup, introducing heavy cosmic horror imagery to the Doctor Who universe. However, like so many New Adventures authors, he fails to tie his more enigmatic ideas together during the third act.

[Jamie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think it was definitely one of the better books in this New Adventures series

[Arcturus · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars, I really enjoyed this. Fun timey-wimey concept, some intriguing villains, well rounded cast, and continuing an interesting arc set up in the last book, excited to see where it goes!

[Pascal Ross · Rating 2 out of 5]

Is the doctor always a bit of a dick? nothing particularly interesting in this book but not the worst

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally posted here at Anime Radius.

If there’s one thing the Virgin New Adventures are famous for, it’s taking a Doctor seen as semi-manipulative and forboding in season twenty-six and turning him into a shrewish full-blown manipulative champion of time in the books. Okay, that and Ace seems to be getting laid in every book, thus making the published by Virgin Books thing a kind of hilarious irony. Anyway, the entire dark persona of the Seventh Doctor is pulling all the stops in The Dimension Riders and that’s a good thing, because this story has enough twists and turns that it’s nice to take comfort in the simple fact that sooner or later the Doctor’s gonna drop a bomb that A) changes the whole playing field and B) makes Ace question her once-unflagging loyalty to him. Yes, in these books, Ace is no longer the forever faithful companion once tested by evil from the dawn of time (hell, in the audios, she calls herself ‘McShane’ just to make a point). Which is actually good, because it would have been boring the other way around – and some story elements would have fallen flat.

Readers follow the plot through three relatively related narratives – Benny in Oxford, Ace aboard the Icarus, and the Doctor stuck in the Q4’s past. All of them are investigating the same mystery, although it doesn’t become obvious until a little past halfway through the book, in which the true villain of Benny’s section reveals himself and the identity of the Doctor and Ace’s mysterious enemy is also revealed. Most books usually struggle holding steady three points of view concurrently; it can be a pain to keep all three flowing at the same pace while still advancing the plot in all three. They do eventually meet up near the end, but it does not slow down there – it actually picks up speed toward a mind-bending finale and ends with one character making a very important decision (and no, it’s not Ace, she’ already left the TARDIS twice by this point so there’s no real drama in that path anymore).

The plot itself is pretty topsy-turvy, but in a fascinating way – and the best part? It’s partially non-linear. Doctor’s in the past of the future, and Benny is in the immediate future’s past, and Ace is in the future – but it’s more like the present story-wise. If you’re confused, don’t worry, The Dimension Riders will have you completely bewildered by the time it’s finished (and if you can guess the Seventh Doctor serial I mangled that quote for, gold star of mathematical excellence for you!). It’s not that it’s a complicated story itself, but the way it’s told – in chunks and starts and almost never in order – gives it airs of complexity. Then there is the twist when the identity of which exactly has been crawling through the fabric of time is, and how it came into being, and from then on its a race through an infinite set of rooms and through the minds of everyone involved, with imagery that is evocative of each character and is like a drug trip with how many things are jumbled about on the path to set reality straight. I’d explain it more, but that’s a huge spoiler, so I’ll leave it to you to find out yourself.

Note: if this is your first foray into the New Adventures series featuring Seven, Ace, and new companion Bernice Summerfield (well, she was new in the nineties!), you will find something very surprising in these books: actual continuity. Like, things actually transfer from novel to novel – which means that in order to understand why Benny does half the things she does or why the Doctor’s TARDIS . . . isn’t his TARDIS, you’ll have to actually read some of the books that came before it. Yes, Virginia, a Who series that actually manages to keep track of its own canon does exist. It therefore makes itself less appealing to newbies than the actual TV show, in which most episodes can be jumped into head-first with only a scant knowledge of the Whoniverse. However, there aren’t so much canon trip-ups in The Dimension Riders, so for the most part as long as you know the basics of the current Team TARDIS, it should all flow relatively easy as you read it.

For a New Adventures, it’s a pretty solid read. You’ve got your proto-Oncoming Storm Doctor, the disobedient and doubtful Ace, and the inquisitive archeologist Benny. There’s a mystery afoot involving death and mucking about with time, and as usual the Doctor knows more than anyone else involved. There’s a lot of tension and intrigue and action mixed in with some dark humor and universal oddities. It’s not exactly a banner example of the NA line, but it succeeds as what it sets out to be with much aplomb: a murder mystery meant to shake up the usual order right before the real storm hits in the form of The Left-Handed Hummingbird. So grab a copy from your local second-hand store, make a cuppa and set out some almond slices next to your favorite comfortable chair. It’s definitely worth the fuss.

[Scurra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Again, the good stuff is almost exactly cancelled out by the bad stuff.
The two stories (in Oxford and on station Q24) are both rather good, but they each suffer from being forced together in one narrative, even if the counterpoints are needed for the story to work.

The central idea - that changing a significant event in a "stable" era will cause a major temporal paradox - is nicely explored, with the contrast between the actions of the "President" in assassinating a political figure who is doing it for selfish reasons, and the actions of the Doctor in trying to save the station, but they both contribute to the plans of the villain.

I rather liked the slight twist in the story towards the end, although it robs us of a very interesting character with a good backstory who could have been used again.

I must admit that I didn't feel that it belonged to the same sort of story arc as Blood Heat though - a short prologue and epilogue do not really justify it.

[Numa Parrott · Rating 1 out of 5]

It seemed like an intense plot with scary aliens, so why was it awful? The writing quality probably had something to do with that. It was horribly written. The concept was interesting, but that's where the fun ended. I could barely get through more than 3 pages at a time because it kept putting me to sleep.

The local characters were all completely boring. The baddie could have been scary but I fail to grasp how his super evil plan to make a spaceship travel through time and DESTROY THE UNIVERSE was actually supposed to work. Ace's internal dialogue is more of the usual "I hate the Doctor but he's also my hero so let's blow stuff up." Boring. Benny has decided she hates the doctor as well and she's not even being original about it. Dull.

For some reason the Doctor created a huge paradox and was totally cool with that. No wonder the Faction had their eye on him.

Would not recommend. Do not read.

[Michel Siskoid Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's a strong, literate affair building on the mystery of just who, or what, has been meddling with history, with good turns for all the regulars. I do wish the books could handle all three of them together in one location (they seem to always split them up), but this one at least uses that to neat paradoxical effect. On a purely personal note, before a description of him cropped up, I cast Timothy Dalton as the Time Lord called the President (as influenced by my recent viewing of Hot Fuzz), and now I've found out that Dalton will be playing a Time Lord Chancellor in the next Doctor Who, The Waters of Mars (in flashback?). What have my antennae been tuned to?

[Travis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another one of those Seventh Doctor books where a bunch of good ideas are jammed together to make a fairly weak book.

A major plot point seems to be connected to a past 'New Adventure' that I have yet to read, so I constantly felt I was missing something. The character of 'The President' was interesting, but very little was done with him.

The story stretching between the college and the space ship was a nicely done, but otherwise not one of the better Who books.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story over all. Not one of the best, and nothing spectacular, but overall it was a decent story with nothing really lacking.