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Eighth Doctor Adventures #9
Doctor Who: Longest Day
Its surface ravaged by colliding time-fields, the planet Hirath is a patchwork of habitable areas separated by impenetrable zones of wild temporal fluctuation.
The planet’s unique biosphere is being exploited by an uncaring company happy to rent out temporally isolated chunks of the planet to the highest bidder -- no questions asked. But the controlling computer seems to be malfunctioning, and the viability of the whole planet hangs in the balance -- along with countless thousands of lives.
Arriving at Hirath’s control base, the Doctor and Sam are soon separated and trapped on the dying planet. While Sam becomes the focus of attention in a barren penal settlement, the Doctor discovers the secret of Hirath’s unique condition - just as a race of hideous bloodthirsty alien creatures arrive in force to reclaim it.
Caught up in a desperate struggle for survival, it seems time has run out for every living creature on Hirath - not least Sam and the Doctor...
The planet’s unique biosphere is being exploited by an uncaring company happy to rent out temporally isolated chunks of the planet to the highest bidder -- no questions asked. But the controlling computer seems to be malfunctioning, and the viability of the whole planet hangs in the balance -- along with countless thousands of lives.
Arriving at Hirath’s control base, the Doctor and Sam are soon separated and trapped on the dying planet. While Sam becomes the focus of attention in a barren penal settlement, the Doctor discovers the secret of Hirath’s unique condition - just as a race of hideous bloodthirsty alien creatures arrive in force to reclaim it.
Caught up in a desperate struggle for survival, it seems time has run out for every living creature on Hirath - not least Sam and the Doctor...
276 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 32 reviews
December 6, 2018
The Doctor and Sam arrive on the strange planet of Hirath, they soon become separated as each of them must navigate the different time zones in the planets biosphere.
Unfortunately I found this one to be a bit of a chore.
There’s some good moments mainly with Sam, but the supporting characters are pretty non-descriptive.
It does set up something interesting that will take the range on an interesting direction though.
Unfortunately I found this one to be a bit of a chore.
There’s some good moments mainly with Sam, but the supporting characters are pretty non-descriptive.
It does set up something interesting that will take the range on an interesting direction though.
January 3, 2023
Not a great 8th doctor adventure but also not terrible.
Its surface ravaged by colliding time-fields, the planet Hirath is a patchwork of habitable areas separated by impenetrable zones of wild temporal fluctuation.
The planet's unique biosphere is being exploited by an uncaring company happy to rent out temporally isolated chunks of the planet to the highest bidder — no questions asked. But the controlling computer seems to be malfunctioning, and the viability of the whole planet hangs in the balance — along with countless thousands of lives.
Arriving at Hirath's control base, the Doctor and Sam are soon separated and trapped on the dying planet. While Sam becomes the focus of attention in a barren penal settlement, the Doctor discovers the secret of Hirath's unique condition — just as a race of hideous bloodthirsty alien creatures arrive in force to reclaim it.
Caught up in a desperate struggle for survival, it seems time has run out for every living creature on Hirath — not least Sam and the Doctor...
Its surface ravaged by colliding time-fields, the planet Hirath is a patchwork of habitable areas separated by impenetrable zones of wild temporal fluctuation.
The planet's unique biosphere is being exploited by an uncaring company happy to rent out temporally isolated chunks of the planet to the highest bidder — no questions asked. But the controlling computer seems to be malfunctioning, and the viability of the whole planet hangs in the balance — along with countless thousands of lives.
Arriving at Hirath's control base, the Doctor and Sam are soon separated and trapped on the dying planet. While Sam becomes the focus of attention in a barren penal settlement, the Doctor discovers the secret of Hirath's unique condition — just as a race of hideous bloodthirsty alien creatures arrive in force to reclaim it.
Caught up in a desperate struggle for survival, it seems time has run out for every living creature on Hirath — not least Sam and the Doctor...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 9, 2018
Is this truly the worst Doctor Who book I've ever read? I'm not sure, but it was bad enough that I only finished it because it was part of a series.
The big, big problem is that it has an endless array of indistiguishable characters with an endless array of indistinguishable names, and they're so flat that you don't really care about any of them. Or have any idea who they are. So page after page is just this dull repetition of names that you don't know.
And the Doctor has a purple car in his TARDIS? REALLY??
It's really a pity because there's lots of fine setup in this story, about a time-fractured planet and a lost alien base and ... the writing just drags it down.
The big, big problem is that it has an endless array of indistiguishable characters with an endless array of indistinguishable names, and they're so flat that you don't really care about any of them. Or have any idea who they are. So page after page is just this dull repetition of names that you don't know.
And the Doctor has a purple car in his TARDIS? REALLY??
It's really a pity because there's lots of fine setup in this story, about a time-fractured planet and a lost alien base and ... the writing just drags it down.
June 29, 2021
It pains me to rate a Doctor Who novel so low, especially an EDA, but man, does this novel deserve it. I dragged myself through this book ten pages at a time, and even that was painful. The only reason I finished it is because it's part of a larger arc in the EDA series, and I want to read ALL of the 73 books of the Eighth Doctor. If it had been any other book, I would have walked away after the first 15 pages. Just to give a glimpse of the absurdity- the Doctor drives a purple VW bug out of the Tardis, down the hallways of the spaceship, and he makes a reference to Tigger from Winnie the Pooh. This just scratches the surface of the awfulness.
The problem is, in theory, the story sounds interesting enough- there's a planet that has all these different time zones and time travels differently, and is at a separate part of the planet's timeline, and these are being rented out by the top dollar to people or companies looking for a place to hide something. Problem one is we are never told how this works, or shown the 'status quo' of this business. When the story opens things are already broken and gone to hell, so the reader doesn't know entirely how this system worked, how the planet is being exploited, what the different zones are, or who is renting out the sections. None of this explained.
Problem two- The Doctor and Sam are separated very early on in the story, and he is given a new, temporary companion for the rest of the story. Anstaar is capable enough, but we know she's temporary, so as a reader you don't invest much time in her.
Problem three- again with the lack of explanation- when Sam lands on the planet, she ends up with these aliens that are rebelling against some group, for some reason- which again, isn't fully explained. Tons of names are tossed out without letting the reader know which side they're on or what they are fighting for. You can't get invested in the underdog's plight if you don't know who they are, why they are fighting, or which side they are even on. I skimmed over these parts as best I could and still get the gist of what was going on- because the author sure wasn't going to tell me anything.
Problem four- a lame villain, and lame reasons for being villains. So, here's the thing. I won't deny there haven't been horrible villains with really stupid plans before on Doctor Who. Most of the time, in the novels or on the show, the reasons are simple, or they're pretty fleshed out so you get a good idea of who they are and why they're trying to take over the universe. With these... Kusks, I think they are called? They are dying out, no explanation why. They want to take over the universe, I think, to repopulate- with some device that's on the planet, but their method for that isn't explained either. At least the author gave the reader a good description of what the Kusks looked like, which I can't say the same for the other aliens on the planet who were fighting with each other. Besides double tongues, long eyelashes and flat noses, the author gives us nothing in terms of what these people look like. Again, if I can't picture it, Collier, I can't get invested.
Problem five- You can tell the author who wrote this REALLY didn't care about this story or want to do it. First of all, he wrote the book under a pseudonym, so that should give you a clue. Second of all, the book reads like a terrible first draft- like it wasn't edited, or the author wrote the first draft in a day and handed it in and said "yup, good enough. they're paying me to write an EDA, that fulfills my contract. Suck it! Now I can go back to writing about what I actually like!" People can tell when you do that.
So glad that experience is over, and I never have to read it again. Sorry, Doctor 8. You deserve so much better than this.
The problem is, in theory, the story sounds interesting enough- there's a planet that has all these different time zones and time travels differently, and is at a separate part of the planet's timeline, and these are being rented out by the top dollar to people or companies looking for a place to hide something. Problem one is we are never told how this works, or shown the 'status quo' of this business. When the story opens things are already broken and gone to hell, so the reader doesn't know entirely how this system worked, how the planet is being exploited, what the different zones are, or who is renting out the sections. None of this explained.
Problem two- The Doctor and Sam are separated very early on in the story, and he is given a new, temporary companion for the rest of the story. Anstaar is capable enough, but we know she's temporary, so as a reader you don't invest much time in her.
Problem three- again with the lack of explanation- when Sam lands on the planet, she ends up with these aliens that are rebelling against some group, for some reason- which again, isn't fully explained. Tons of names are tossed out without letting the reader know which side they're on or what they are fighting for. You can't get invested in the underdog's plight if you don't know who they are, why they are fighting, or which side they are even on. I skimmed over these parts as best I could and still get the gist of what was going on- because the author sure wasn't going to tell me anything.
Problem four- a lame villain, and lame reasons for being villains. So, here's the thing. I won't deny there haven't been horrible villains with really stupid plans before on Doctor Who. Most of the time, in the novels or on the show, the reasons are simple, or they're pretty fleshed out so you get a good idea of who they are and why they're trying to take over the universe. With these... Kusks, I think they are called? They are dying out, no explanation why. They want to take over the universe, I think, to repopulate- with some device that's on the planet, but their method for that isn't explained either. At least the author gave the reader a good description of what the Kusks looked like, which I can't say the same for the other aliens on the planet who were fighting with each other. Besides double tongues, long eyelashes and flat noses, the author gives us nothing in terms of what these people look like. Again, if I can't picture it, Collier, I can't get invested.
Problem five- You can tell the author who wrote this REALLY didn't care about this story or want to do it. First of all, he wrote the book under a pseudonym, so that should give you a clue. Second of all, the book reads like a terrible first draft- like it wasn't edited, or the author wrote the first draft in a day and handed it in and said "yup, good enough. they're paying me to write an EDA, that fulfills my contract. Suck it! Now I can go back to writing about what I actually like!" People can tell when you do that.
So glad that experience is over, and I never have to read it again. Sorry, Doctor 8. You deserve so much better than this.
December 4, 2021
So we're onto Doctor who 8th doc adventures #9.
This one was interesting as not only did i see that it's the 2nd lowest rated 8th doctor novel in the entire series, but i was warned about it several times about how bad it was.
Was it that bad? Well, i mean it WAS pretty bad. Not the worst thing i ever read, but yeah, it wasn't very good.
The story is basically about the doctor and sam getting separated on a planet where time is all over the place. and there's violent bug people that try to kill everyone. and a rebellion from the people stuck on the planet who are rebelling against the people who put them there. yeah it's a little convoluted.
There are several issues i have with this book. One of the main ones is that with the exception of a single character ( a female that hangs out with the doctor on the planet) every single character specific to this book is awful. i don't care about them, i don't like them, they're just all awful people who all die awfully. (my personal worst being the guy who pals around with Sam for most of the book is an annoying self righteous loser)
The setting of a planet where time is messed up sounds like a great idea. unfortunately this idea is CRIMINALLY underutilized and only really used in any capacity in the last 50 or so pages while the rest of the time you kind of forget it's a thing.
Sam is fine in this one, but she goes through a LOT of crap, and the doctor is all right. They're not really out of character in any way, but it only raises this story slightly.
The villains are really not scary at all. they start out with kind of an "Alien" vibe, but once they start to talk, they completely lose all sense of terror and become another "we want to take over the universe" lame monster of the week.
This is a book that overall when reading it leaves you with a sense of emptiness. It's not a fun doctor romp like Bodysnatchers or even Option Lock. It's a dark, sad, depressing story where there can really be no GOOD ending. I believe the word i like best to describe this one is "unpleasant".
Also, the twist of why the planet is all time messed up is weak and left me going "oh. well THAT'S unfulfilling".
When it all boils down to it, I have to agree with the consensus that this IS a very very weak entry into the list, along the same lines of "Genocide". The only positives being that the characters acted correctly, i liked one of the secondary characters, and the story really wasn't confusing as say "Alien Bodies" was.
If someone made me re-read one of the 10 books in the series i've read so far, it DEFINITELY wouldn't be this one.
Even 2 out of 5
This one was interesting as not only did i see that it's the 2nd lowest rated 8th doctor novel in the entire series, but i was warned about it several times about how bad it was.
Was it that bad? Well, i mean it WAS pretty bad. Not the worst thing i ever read, but yeah, it wasn't very good.
The story is basically about the doctor and sam getting separated on a planet where time is all over the place. and there's violent bug people that try to kill everyone. and a rebellion from the people stuck on the planet who are rebelling against the people who put them there. yeah it's a little convoluted.
There are several issues i have with this book. One of the main ones is that with the exception of a single character ( a female that hangs out with the doctor on the planet) every single character specific to this book is awful. i don't care about them, i don't like them, they're just all awful people who all die awfully. (my personal worst being the guy who pals around with Sam for most of the book is an annoying self righteous loser)
The setting of a planet where time is messed up sounds like a great idea. unfortunately this idea is CRIMINALLY underutilized and only really used in any capacity in the last 50 or so pages while the rest of the time you kind of forget it's a thing.
Sam is fine in this one, but she goes through a LOT of crap, and the doctor is all right. They're not really out of character in any way, but it only raises this story slightly.
The villains are really not scary at all. they start out with kind of an "Alien" vibe, but once they start to talk, they completely lose all sense of terror and become another "we want to take over the universe" lame monster of the week.
This is a book that overall when reading it leaves you with a sense of emptiness. It's not a fun doctor romp like Bodysnatchers or even Option Lock. It's a dark, sad, depressing story where there can really be no GOOD ending. I believe the word i like best to describe this one is "unpleasant".
Also, the twist of why the planet is all time messed up is weak and left me going "oh. well THAT'S unfulfilling".
When it all boils down to it, I have to agree with the consensus that this IS a very very weak entry into the list, along the same lines of "Genocide". The only positives being that the characters acted correctly, i liked one of the secondary characters, and the story really wasn't confusing as say "Alien Bodies" was.
If someone made me re-read one of the 10 books in the series i've read so far, it DEFINITELY wouldn't be this one.
Even 2 out of 5
July 11, 2025
brother the pacing of this book has made reading this feel like the longest day of my life nyuk nyuk nyuk (but seriously folks try the lobster, remember to spay and neuter your pets)
October 23, 2013
The Eighth Doctor and his companion Sam land in a control base on a moon barely orbiting Hirath, a planet ravaged by colliding time-fields. They encounter hostile forces, and Sam is sent down onto Hirath, where she ends up in a penal settlement, and becomes embroiled with a resistance group. Meanwhile, the Doctor goes down after her, and discovers the reason why Hirath is being torn apart by time, and the hideous race of creatures that want planet for themselves...
This is the first in a three book mini-arc--the first such arc in the BBC Eighth Doctor series. This was a good idea because after finishing this one, I'm looking forward to the next to see how the situation plays out.
LONGEST DAY is a good story, hampered by some not-always-so-good writing. I liked the basic premise, and the plot was well-developed. Some reviewers felt the story dragged, but I don't think so. Collier develops multiple plot strands and brings them together well, so there's plenty going on to hold the reader's interest. There were times when Collier's prose was a little too much "tell" and not enough "show." He also added what I felt to be unnecessary back story, and did so in big chunks of exposition. However, the fact that he has thought through the characters, and had back story for them, showed. Collier's new characters are all distinct, and well-conceived. Some are even quite likeable!
I was almost tempted to give this book four stars, but I think it really needed another round or two of edits to chop unnecessary words, and tighten the prose in places. That said, it's a good addition to the range. I rate it PG-15 for some occasional mild profanity, and for some pretty brutal fight scenes.
This is the first in a three book mini-arc--the first such arc in the BBC Eighth Doctor series. This was a good idea because after finishing this one, I'm looking forward to the next to see how the situation plays out.
LONGEST DAY is a good story, hampered by some not-always-so-good writing. I liked the basic premise, and the plot was well-developed. Some reviewers felt the story dragged, but I don't think so. Collier develops multiple plot strands and brings them together well, so there's plenty going on to hold the reader's interest. There were times when Collier's prose was a little too much "tell" and not enough "show." He also added what I felt to be unnecessary back story, and did so in big chunks of exposition. However, the fact that he has thought through the characters, and had back story for them, showed. Collier's new characters are all distinct, and well-conceived. Some are even quite likeable!
I was almost tempted to give this book four stars, but I think it really needed another round or two of edits to chop unnecessary words, and tighten the prose in places. That said, it's a good addition to the range. I rate it PG-15 for some occasional mild profanity, and for some pretty brutal fight scenes.
March 31, 2021
How can a Doctor Who novel with so much violence and bloodshed, with such an intricate plot and well-thought-through mythos be so excruciatingly DULL?? Honestly this book was so boring to read, another one I would fully recommend skipping on one's journey through the Eighth Doctor Adventures. It was refreshing to see some R-rated violence in a Who novel but the writing style just made the whole thing so boring to read. It's one saving grace is that Sam is written very well and very maturely here and her character arc is moved forward throughout the course of the novel. One star.
May 11, 2020
So, having read The Taint a year ago now, I have been interested in this book to see if it was just as good as that marvellous work of fiction which had introduced Fitz into the range, to only find myself extremely disappointed and quite franically bored and confused reading this.
Whilst this story beholds many fascinating ideas, it doesn't seem to know at times whether or not it wants to be a dark depressing story or a silly story, from the volkswagen beetle driving down corridors of a moonbase to giant mars bar looking creatures.
I didn't find many of the characters too likable in this either, especially not Vasid who was just utterly vile, thankfully he wasn't in the book for too long. There were a couple of good characters however being Anstarr and Tanhith who I grew to like, but all the other characters were either bland beyond relief or just vile.
The story is a bit of a slog as well, with plenty of nonsense thrown in for good measure with a subplot that was so utterly pointless that I can't remember what it was even about. There is also plenty of unnecessary gore and violence in this. However, I will say the final act in this novel being the last 40 pages were utterly heart pumpingly brilliant! In a way it makes up for the rest of the novel being so boring, with a heartbreaking ending that sets up the next arc in the range very nicely!
Overall, defintely one of the weakest entries in this range so far but with an ending that was well worth reading. 3/10
Whilst this story beholds many fascinating ideas, it doesn't seem to know at times whether or not it wants to be a dark depressing story or a silly story, from the volkswagen beetle driving down corridors of a moonbase to giant mars bar looking creatures.
I didn't find many of the characters too likable in this either, especially not Vasid who was just utterly vile, thankfully he wasn't in the book for too long. There were a couple of good characters however being Anstarr and Tanhith who I grew to like, but all the other characters were either bland beyond relief or just vile.
The story is a bit of a slog as well, with plenty of nonsense thrown in for good measure with a subplot that was so utterly pointless that I can't remember what it was even about. There is also plenty of unnecessary gore and violence in this. However, I will say the final act in this novel being the last 40 pages were utterly heart pumpingly brilliant! In a way it makes up for the rest of the novel being so boring, with a heartbreaking ending that sets up the next arc in the range very nicely!
Overall, defintely one of the weakest entries in this range so far but with an ending that was well worth reading. 3/10
November 11, 2023
it's so hard for me to even formulate thoughts about this. it was truly the longest fucking day. this book took me almost eleven months to read.
some good things: the time atrocities were creative and i like those, the aliens were a clever design and actually well handled. the setting was interesting and underexplored. i love the bleakness of it. the atmosphere. the searing sun that never sets, the prolonged performative violence, the stretch and scrape of the narrative through that fucked up planet's time sectors. sam's characterization was interesting. it's so rare we see a companion who is from the start of the adventure utterly done and utterly exhausted. the overexposure every aspect of this story adds to puts a really great spin on her whole plotline. i'm feasting on all the good sam characterisation in here. the ending is nice. i love that gutting dissatisfaction especially after so much bleak, slogging shit and i mean that entirely genuinely. it's delicious.
some bad things: the doctor's half of it was a little weak, and i felt collier had a bit of a shaky grasp on 8's voice that made some of his bits read as generic. the politics of this book are irritating, because the setup laid the basis to make a strong point. "but the radical leaders of resistance are just as bad as the oppressors" is a really tired, weak-spined story to write even if it fits your little grimdark 'no one is a good person' theme.
i liked it more than i didn't like it for sure, but it wasn't nearly one of the best i've read.
some good things: the time atrocities were creative and i like those, the aliens were a clever design and actually well handled. the setting was interesting and underexplored. i love the bleakness of it. the atmosphere. the searing sun that never sets, the prolonged performative violence, the stretch and scrape of the narrative through that fucked up planet's time sectors. sam's characterization was interesting. it's so rare we see a companion who is from the start of the adventure utterly done and utterly exhausted. the overexposure every aspect of this story adds to puts a really great spin on her whole plotline. i'm feasting on all the good sam characterisation in here. the ending is nice. i love that gutting dissatisfaction especially after so much bleak, slogging shit and i mean that entirely genuinely. it's delicious.
some bad things: the doctor's half of it was a little weak, and i felt collier had a bit of a shaky grasp on 8's voice that made some of his bits read as generic. the politics of this book are irritating, because the setup laid the basis to make a strong point. "but the radical leaders of resistance are just as bad as the oppressors" is a really tired, weak-spined story to write even if it fits your little grimdark 'no one is a good person' theme.
i liked it more than i didn't like it for sure, but it wasn't nearly one of the best i've read.
September 24, 2021
There have certainly been clunkers in the Eighth Doctor Adventures before, but Book 9, Michael Collier's Longest Day, is the first I actually dislike. No, not dislike - HATE. It blows a potentially intriguing planet that's subdivided into different temporal zones on very boring dual plots. The Doctor and Sam, once separated, have adventures that really don't have much to do with one another, though both are populated with characters that have alien-sounding names so that it takes 100 pages just to get them straight. The women, Sam included, are essentially there to be assaulted or called "bitch" (along with some nastier things). Oh, and eventually the aliens from one plot walk into the other to massacre everyone and make sure it was all very pointless. They're the bugs on the cover, a rare instance of the series actually showing you a scene from the book. The killing and the temporal effects are all in service of Collier's cod-Lovecraft or Clive Barker material, the type of body horror I always felt was the weakest trope of the preceding New Adventures. Technobabble resolution. And to add insult to injury, it can't easily be skipped, because it starts a little arc that sets up the next few books. So have I thrown the book out the window at any of the various points where the impulse took me, I would have been a little confused moving forward.
June 4, 2022
I want to like this. I love the Eighth Doctor, and the concept of this novel (a planet with lots of wild time) is interesting. It's not the best writing, but it's not unreadable. The problem I found was a combination of factors. First, it was slow reading. It was readable, but just took me a while and I wasn't able to make quick progress. The second, is that this was an Inter-library loan. So, I had a limited time to read it. I still have some time left (at time of writing this), but I found other things that are much more engaging and fun to read. So, it's not terrible, and I may come back to it, but for now I wasn't able to finish it.
December 20, 2021
I’m rating this pretty low because there were a lot of moving parts which is fine but half of them didn’t make sense. It felt like they could have left the planet and kept the ship and gotten the same effect. I didn’t like all the excuse charts and the fact that it left us on a cliffhanger is just wrong. Okay, it’s a two-part book and that’s annoying. I don’t have a whole lot of nice things to say about this book honestly it feels like a filler and it’s kinds of unnecessary
December 29, 2016
It took long to set the pace but once it did I just couldn't stop till I finished - embarrassed to say, I even missed some parts to get to the point of action because the tension, man! And those cliffhangers on every turn really didn't make my life any easier.
Was really surprised and even slightly shocked by the end of it - that was definitely NOT what I expected from the DW book, for some reason.
Was really surprised and even slightly shocked by the end of it - that was definitely NOT what I expected from the DW book, for some reason.
June 2, 2024
There’s an interesting idea at the heart of this about a planet with fractured time zones, but the story rarely capitalises on it. Instead we spend a lot of time with thoroughly unlikeable characters in a desert. It’s stodgy and tedious, but notable for ending on a cliffhanger that leads into the next few books. You might as well just look at a plot summary for that.
1.5
1.5
August 27, 2024
i was so excited for time distortion i love it when this happens but this one was Very gorey and kinda miserable AND if they'd just waited like two minutes at the end or like taken the doctor with them they wouldve lowkey avoided what i suspect may be the plot of the next three books but oh welllllllll sam jones i love you you deserve better writing and also better plot points raghhhhh
July 1, 2021
It took me forever to get through this book cause nothing happened? The doctor and sam separated early on and just both slowly did stuff with these people they met? And just it was boring. AND THEN THE ENDING IS CRAZY.
June 8, 2024
There's a reason nobody does grimdark Doctor Who and that's because it sucks
September 15, 2025
Pretty solid plot, some good world building BUT WHOSE IDEA WAS IT TO MAKE SAM BE ROMANTICALLY INTERESTED IN THE DOCTOR? Was that established in a previous book? God, I hate that
June 5, 2012
Well well well…
Another review, and this time I fear the length of time I took to finish the text may cast some shadow upon it’s quality.
Was this a well written bad book? Was it a poorly written classic?
Meaningless distinction I guess, but it certainly wanders a strange no-man’s land in between. The plot is rather thin, some uncomplainingly mysterious (but not uninteresting) phenomena such as time disturbances, and unusually aged moon-bases; which are unraveled over the course of things but elicit no great gasps of astonishment, A basic threat provided by some extra-generic aliens, and a lukewarm war between some unimpressive rebel forces and an under developed pseudo-fascist aggressor (this was basically the backstory to Firefly done a decade early and with less worldbuilding). Sam and The Doctor get separated early on, and deal with various aspects of this (she gets La Résistance, and he has to deal with time warps and bug-eyed aliens). all in all it’s pretty so so.
I could say much the same thing for the characters, not many of whom live out the tail. For the most part they are what I would like to call low key, but which I suspect I will have to admit are simply under developed. It’s not that they are implausible, or two dimensional, but it feels as though they never really grow as the story progresses, Felbaac especially seems to keep the same set of reactions to increasingly extreme circumstances, such as credulity is beginning to strain long before the crescendo of his story. Ah Felbaac, and his rebels, they seem to represent a distilled form of all that moral ambiguity I has said was missing from the Eco-terrorists way back in Kursaal. I respect the story for that, for it’s ambiguities and moral greys; the way in which nobody seems to win in the end, and there are really no heroes. But that said it’s pretty bleak, and leaves you uninvested once you realise that you’re not really going to be rooting for the outer-worlders, except in a broad sense. Equally the Kusks (our monster of the week) are given some sympathetic backstory regarding their beautiful motherland, caught in the crossfire of a great war, but… it’s not very convincing, one gets the feeling it was thrown in to keep them from being pantomime villains (an effect which is pretty much undermined by their over written complaints about humanoid scum, and willfully grotesque aesthetic.)
That said the story had three things going for it:
Primarily, at least for me, it was fairly well written. I didn’t at any point get put off by the quality or style of prose, which isn’t to say that there weren’t weak lines (as i mentioned the Kusk-perspective writing was clumsy at best, and the time anomaly jargon only got worse and worse), but over all it managed a steady pace or reasonable reading.
In addition to this there were the occasional moments of charm; the eye-lash dancing, The Doctor discovering the forest, George, Nashaad’s metal legs. These really are little things, nothing too special at all, but enough to make me smile, and if a book makes me smile I’ll keep reading it.
And last, but not least, Sam & The Doctor watch (~Trumpets~):
I’m pretty impressed with this one actually, Sam gets a isolated pretty early on, and put through the inevitable endless series of perils, but generally speaking she keeps fighting, keeps trying to do good in spite of the absence of a clear moral path. She gives in to defeatism only occasionally, and mostly retains a lot of, if not autonomy, then at least spirit. As for The Doctor, again he’s not ill-written or misused here; the same half weary, half gleeful, boyish Time Lordyness is present. nothing groundbreaking, but a steady continuation. It ought be noted i’m feeling rather charitable towards Sam of late. Also an honorable mention must go to Anstaar, who serves as companion for the most part of the story. She’s sufficient, likable at times, mostly it’s all a bit much for her; which is believable, but not especially useful.
In summary I don’t regret reading this one, although I was tempted to give in more than once. It mostly felt like it was underachieving, not trying it’s best, but perhaps it’s a matter of taste, and the bleak worldview and style will appeal to those less optimistic, or flamboyant.
June 17, 2013
I was sort of hesitant to give this book 1 star because, frankly, it's no Alien Bodies. But Alien Bodies really did deserve negative stars, and I can't in good conscience give this book two stars. It simply doesn't deserve them.
Longest Day is an appropriate title, because the book keeps going on and on and just never bloody ends. Given that I read the Wheel of Time series many times over [the shortest novel of which is physically many times as long as this book; a single *chapter* in the final Wheel of Time novel is longer than this thing], I'm clearly not talking about its page count. No, it just plods on with the most dull and uninteresting characters I've yet seen added to the Doctor Who universe. Thank goodness most of them died -- or at least, I think they did. It was hard to pay enough attention to notice.
The Alien of the Month here is brand new, invented by Michael Collier for this story. The problem is, they make no sense. They went from the equivalent of contemporary Earth-level technology to experimenting on time travel *in one generation* *after going nearly extinct thanks to someone else's war*. Time travel in Doctor Who is so ubiquitous that I think people forget how rare it actually *is* in-universe. Very few races, comparatively speaking, are "Time Aware"; and before the soft reboot of the series in 2005, the Time Lords are very keen to keep it this way. The idea that the Kusk were ready to dabble in time travel is preposterous, all the more so since the Kusk Leader starts wondering if his race will be able to survive the loss of soldiers *in the single digits*. The idea that the Kusk were allowed to go forward with this experiment when its results would have wiped out half of their galaxy is frankly insane. The Time Lords actively monitor for that sort of thing, and it's been established long since that the Time Lord ideal of non-intervention is basically a joke. It was such a bald-faced lie that one of the television series authors had to invent the Celestial Intervention Agency specifically to explain why the Time Lords were sending the Doctor on so many missions where he blatantly intervened in events. If there was any real oversight for the series [in the same vein as Russel T Davies or Steven Moffat for the current series], they should have shot this book proposal down immediately for being impossible.
So. Alien of the Month is a failure, how about our protagonists? Well, Sam is largely unrecognizable. I can't point to any one thing that Sam does wrong per se, but her whole character feels largely off. But the Doctor is where I have real problems. He just never really seems concerned about Sam. Generally speaking, the Doctor is willing to work with everyone until they start fucking with A) large masses of people or B) his companions. And yet he's quite jovially willing to work with the guy who -- for all he knows -- just killed Sam. {Spoiler alert: he didn't kill Sam, but the Doctor literally doesn't know this when he acts all buddy-buddy with the guy.} I really feel like Michael Collier never sat down with anyone else to get a feel for the Eighth Doctor, more or less going off on his own tangent.
All-in-all, I would have been very happy if I had never read this book.
Longest Day is an appropriate title, because the book keeps going on and on and just never bloody ends. Given that I read the Wheel of Time series many times over [the shortest novel of which is physically many times as long as this book; a single *chapter* in the final Wheel of Time novel is longer than this thing], I'm clearly not talking about its page count. No, it just plods on with the most dull and uninteresting characters I've yet seen added to the Doctor Who universe. Thank goodness most of them died -- or at least, I think they did. It was hard to pay enough attention to notice.
The Alien of the Month here is brand new, invented by Michael Collier for this story. The problem is, they make no sense. They went from the equivalent of contemporary Earth-level technology to experimenting on time travel *in one generation* *after going nearly extinct thanks to someone else's war*. Time travel in Doctor Who is so ubiquitous that I think people forget how rare it actually *is* in-universe. Very few races, comparatively speaking, are "Time Aware"; and before the soft reboot of the series in 2005, the Time Lords are very keen to keep it this way. The idea that the Kusk were ready to dabble in time travel is preposterous, all the more so since the Kusk Leader starts wondering if his race will be able to survive the loss of soldiers *in the single digits*. The idea that the Kusk were allowed to go forward with this experiment when its results would have wiped out half of their galaxy is frankly insane. The Time Lords actively monitor for that sort of thing, and it's been established long since that the Time Lord ideal of non-intervention is basically a joke. It was such a bald-faced lie that one of the television series authors had to invent the Celestial Intervention Agency specifically to explain why the Time Lords were sending the Doctor on so many missions where he blatantly intervened in events. If there was any real oversight for the series [in the same vein as Russel T Davies or Steven Moffat for the current series], they should have shot this book proposal down immediately for being impossible.
So. Alien of the Month is a failure, how about our protagonists? Well, Sam is largely unrecognizable. I can't point to any one thing that Sam does wrong per se, but her whole character feels largely off. But the Doctor is where I have real problems. He just never really seems concerned about Sam. Generally speaking, the Doctor is willing to work with everyone until they start fucking with A) large masses of people or B) his companions. And yet he's quite jovially willing to work with the guy who -- for all he knows -- just killed Sam. {Spoiler alert: he didn't kill Sam, but the Doctor literally doesn't know this when he acts all buddy-buddy with the guy.} I really feel like Michael Collier never sat down with anyone else to get a feel for the Eighth Doctor, more or less going off on his own tangent.
All-in-all, I would have been very happy if I had never read this book.
September 3, 2013
"-How are we going to find anyone on a base this size?
-Well... we go yodelling through the corridors until someone tells us to be quiet?"
Longest Day, qu'ils disent. Ah oui ça en effet pour être long il était très long.
Alors déjà d'emblée j'ai un souci: j'ai jamais vraiment réussi à assimiler le fonctionnement d'Hirath et de ses différentes zones temporelles, je n'ai jamais vraiment bien saisi les effets de ces collisions temporelles sur la planète, sur ceux qui s'y trouvent. Je ne comprend pas à quoi sert-ou doit faire semblant de servir-ou aurait dû servir mais finalement non - la base sur la lune, je sais pas d'où sont sortis les Kurk et j'ai genre rien suivi à leur histoire...
En gros, j'ai rien compris. En partie parce que ma logique a résolument tourné le dos à certains concepts proposés, en partie parce que vu que je m'ennuyais beaucoup, je n'enregistrais pas la moitié de ce que je lisais.
D'autant qu'on me double le problème en racontant plusieurs histoires en même temps - histoires qui finissent par se recouper mais genre trèès trèèès loin vers la fin du livre et que du coup en attendant, il arrive régulièrement qu'on reste à peine plus d'un paragraphe avec un groupe de clampins inconnus avant de sauter sur d'autres clampins inconnus. Comment voulez-vous qu'on arrive à se sentir impliqués dans leurs petites vies, à ces gens. En bout de course, je n'ai réussi à m'attacher qu'à Nashaad, le fou bionique.
-Where did you land?
-On my dignity.
-Oh, good, Much Better than landing on your backside.
On a quand même 2-3 petites choses sympa. L'épilogue est cool. On a des moments très drôle (la beetle, entre autres, grand moment). Et l'avantage du 8e Docteur c'est qu'on peut faire des blagues douteuses qui ne passeraient pas avec d'autres Docteurs ("pourquoi, t'as cru que c'était quoi cette bosse dans mon pantalon?" xD) . D'ailleurs ça continue d'être la fête des hormones dès qu'il est dans les parages. Je vais finir par être jalouse Laughing .
L'autre bonne nouvelle, c'est qu'apparemment on va être débarassé de Sam pendant au moins une partie du prochain bouquin. Champagne!
"Have you seen a young girl called Sam Jones around here anywhere? You can't miss her. She's English and noisy."
-Well... we go yodelling through the corridors until someone tells us to be quiet?"
Longest Day, qu'ils disent. Ah oui ça en effet pour être long il était très long.
Alors déjà d'emblée j'ai un souci: j'ai jamais vraiment réussi à assimiler le fonctionnement d'Hirath et de ses différentes zones temporelles, je n'ai jamais vraiment bien saisi les effets de ces collisions temporelles sur la planète, sur ceux qui s'y trouvent. Je ne comprend pas à quoi sert-ou doit faire semblant de servir-ou aurait dû servir mais finalement non - la base sur la lune, je sais pas d'où sont sortis les Kurk et j'ai genre rien suivi à leur histoire...
En gros, j'ai rien compris. En partie parce que ma logique a résolument tourné le dos à certains concepts proposés, en partie parce que vu que je m'ennuyais beaucoup, je n'enregistrais pas la moitié de ce que je lisais.
D'autant qu'on me double le problème en racontant plusieurs histoires en même temps - histoires qui finissent par se recouper mais genre trèès trèèès loin vers la fin du livre et que du coup en attendant, il arrive régulièrement qu'on reste à peine plus d'un paragraphe avec un groupe de clampins inconnus avant de sauter sur d'autres clampins inconnus. Comment voulez-vous qu'on arrive à se sentir impliqués dans leurs petites vies, à ces gens. En bout de course, je n'ai réussi à m'attacher qu'à Nashaad, le fou bionique.
-Where did you land?
-On my dignity.
-Oh, good, Much Better than landing on your backside.
On a quand même 2-3 petites choses sympa. L'épilogue est cool. On a des moments très drôle (la beetle, entre autres, grand moment). Et l'avantage du 8e Docteur c'est qu'on peut faire des blagues douteuses qui ne passeraient pas avec d'autres Docteurs ("pourquoi, t'as cru que c'était quoi cette bosse dans mon pantalon?" xD) . D'ailleurs ça continue d'être la fête des hormones dès qu'il est dans les parages. Je vais finir par être jalouse Laughing .
L'autre bonne nouvelle, c'est qu'apparemment on va être débarassé de Sam pendant au moins une partie du prochain bouquin. Champagne!
"Have you seen a young girl called Sam Jones around here anywhere? You can't miss her. She's English and noisy."
August 7, 2010
http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1493869.html
Basically a fairly standard adventure of the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones arriving in the middle of a conflict on an alien planet; time eddies and nasty villains complicate the situation (though some of the characters seem to have remarkable powers of surviving major injuries). Remarkable for insisting, more than I remember previous volumes doing, on Sam's falling in love with the oblivious Doctor, which is of course now standard fare for New Who but was a new departure back them. And of course it turns out that this is a set-up for the ending when she and the Doctor are parted by circumstance, with several volumes to go before they are reunited.
Basically a fairly standard adventure of the Eighth Doctor and Sam Jones arriving in the middle of a conflict on an alien planet; time eddies and nasty villains complicate the situation (though some of the characters seem to have remarkable powers of surviving major injuries). Remarkable for insisting, more than I remember previous volumes doing, on Sam's falling in love with the oblivious Doctor, which is of course now standard fare for New Who but was a new departure back them. And of course it turns out that this is a set-up for the ending when she and the Doctor are parted by circumstance, with several volumes to go before they are reunited.
August 11, 2009
'Have you ever had a nightmare, one that just goes on, and on, and on?'
A small crew manning a remote station, with too much time on their hands, succumb to paranoia and petty hatreds, as an unidentified starship closes in. It's a nice opening but quickly dissolves into confusion. I found my feelings becoming synchronous with the Doctor's temporary companion Anstaar, as our eyes kept glazing over with the constant techno-babble flooding from the Doctor's lips. I really didn't know what was going on most of the time beyond the fact that there were lots of terrorists, prisoners and giant Mars Bars with party-balloon head running about. It makes The Time Monster seem like an episode of Terry and June.
A small crew manning a remote station, with too much time on their hands, succumb to paranoia and petty hatreds, as an unidentified starship closes in. It's a nice opening but quickly dissolves into confusion. I found my feelings becoming synchronous with the Doctor's temporary companion Anstaar, as our eyes kept glazing over with the constant techno-babble flooding from the Doctor's lips. I really didn't know what was going on most of the time beyond the fact that there were lots of terrorists, prisoners and giant Mars Bars with party-balloon head running about. It makes The Time Monster seem like an episode of Terry and June.
November 16, 2011
Kind of slow going, the early BBC licensed Doctor Who novels all seem to start rather slow and build. Maybe it's because they hadn't decided to do linear storylines as of yet. Once they started building on the mythology and stopped trying to simply make individual episodes the entire run became amazing. Since I've decided to stop reading them out of order and simply go in order I've found it to be somewhat daunting as the books now take a couple weeks to plod through because the early just aren't that good.
July 21, 2013
The Doctor and Sam arrive on a moon station. The station controls a planet that is divided by time barriers. The orginal builders are coming back and things are going to get interesting. It took me a while to get into this book, probably the first 60 pages. The story is clever, though I do keep seeing overgrown mandrels as the bad guys. A good read.
May 1, 2025
Anything interesting about the nature of the setting is severely undercut by a cast of somewhat dull and thinly drawn characters, with some pushing the boundaries of taste. A disappointing start to the series.
November 17, 2007
After 'Kursaal' and 'Option Lock', this was a shift back to the brilliance of 'Alien Bodies'. An excellent, compelling read (for 8th Doctor fans :). Unusually violent, but worthy nonetheless.
February 26, 2010
Scary, moody and cloying. As I remember it.
December 31, 2011
A captivating story with interesting new characters and some fun twists. The ending definitely was worth it.
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