Doctor Who: The Death of Art

Doctor Who: Virgin New Adventures #54

by Simon Bucher-Jones

"He did not know if his powers could save him until the horses' hooves had crushed his ribs and his heart had stopped beating. After that, it was obvious."

1880's France: the corrupt world of the Third Republic. A clandestine brotherhood is engaged in a desperate internal power struggle; a race of beings seeks to free itself from perpetual oppression; and a rip in time threatens an entire city. The future of Europe is at stake, in a war fought with minds and bodies altered to the limits of human evolution.

Chris finds himself working undercover with a suspicious French gendarme; Roz follows a psychic artist whose talents are attracting the attention of mysterious forces; and the Doctor befriends a shape-shifting member of a terrifying family. And, at the heart of it all, a dark and disturbing injustice is being perpetrated. Only an end to the secret war, and the salvation of an entire race, can prevent Paris from being utterly destroyed.

Genres: Doctor Who, Science Fiction, Fiction

276 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Simon Bucher-Jones is a British author, poet, artist, and amateur actor, best known for his Doctor Who novels for Virgin and the BBC and as a contributor to the Faction Paradox spin-off series.

He is known for a hard SF approach. He has also written Cthulhu Mythos short stories. He also reviewed books for the Fortean Times, and for small press papers. He maintains a blog at http://www.simonbjones.blogspot.com where he is, among other projects, gradually turning all the Star Wars films into Shakespearean plays. He also markets a range of Cthulhu Mythos artwork t-shirts and mugs. He is also a major contributor of 'hidden cities' to the 'blind atlas' meme. His poetry has appeared in the Journal of the British Fantasy Society.

Reviews

[Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book made me want to do drugs. Really, I read it seven times and I still have no idea what was going on. I just really like the title, it seems like there are a lot of good titles in the New Adventures series. Also in this novel the Doctor is written for very well, at least he knows what's going on. Ace makes everything better too! Perhaps the best thing about this book is that it received such bad reviews that so few people bought them that those of us who own copies have found that they are the most valuable of any in the New Adventures Series. Isn't that spectacular!?

[Mikey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hm, not my favourite by any means. Not the worst either though. There’s so much going on but a lot of the time it really feels like not much is actually happening. The Quoth, which conceptually are pretty interesting, take up pages and pages of the word ‘patterns’ and ‘Clusters’ and ‘Blights’ and ‘War’ and it’s a bit of a slog for those segments.

The Doctor is mostly operating behind the scenes while Chris and Roz are doing a lot of the legwork, but he does eventually start to get more of a focus as the page count rolls on. Chris gets to have a go at being the Doctor (and there’s a funny bit where he’s going for Five after their recent meeting in Cold Fusion but the person he’s trying to deceive thinks he’s Six). Roz doesn’t really get anything as fun, but we occasionally get some nice insights. As it is, they’re all separated for the majority of the book which is a shame.

The other characters for the most part are... weirdly forgettable besides the crazy dramatic Montague, but even then he’s a bit stock villain. Aunt Jessica is probably one of the most interesting characters despite having very little presence for the majority of the story, but her meeting with the Doctor is one of the more interesting sequences.

But, yeah, besides that... not much to report. The story itself unfolds in a fairly disjointed way that kind of feels like it doesn’t deliver on its opening with Ace - though she has to stay away sometimes, I suppose. There’s a nice kind of tie-in to Christmas on a Rational Planet too, which sort of feels like it’s setting things up for a future encounter...

[James Hague · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gave up. I've had a long break from the VNAs and I tried to carry on half way through.
Nope couldn't get back into a book I couldn't gel with in the first place.
One of the advantages of the series can sometimes be its downfall in the fact that there's so much sub-genre in this series.
Some of the books are very typical of the time and some have so much going on like this one, I found it hard to stay on track albeit, breaking away probably didn't do me many favours
In some cases this is quite 'Doctor-lite' which isn't a bad thing if done well.
I'm a bit of a stickler for linear storytelling. This one jumped from scene to scene with what I felt was slow progress.
No disrespect to the author who is very capable, but it wasn't for me. I stuck with a few of these books that I didn't enjoy and I feel I ought not to keep doing that.
So on to the next, written by Doctors Who's prodgical son, RTD .......

[Daniel Kukwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

After all these years, I forgot just how densely packed a New Adventures novel could be...especially those with hard SF ambitions. This is definitely such a novel, and I think it's rather too packed with plot...but I admire its ambition, and I highly approve of the setting. I also feel the Doctor is a touch too generic here for my taste -- I think the 7th Doctor works best when his stories hit the right balance between magical imp & melancholy clown. All in all, more of a triumph of substance over style.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a lot of stuff I found generally interesting here, and on a craft level I thought it was very well written! At the same time, it felt like a lot of stuff was being thrown at the wall and not all of it stuck - the David/Claudette stuff felt like a lot of emphasis was placed on it only for it to be completely dropped, and Chris's plot...did not feel entirely necessary. Maybe it needed another draft or two? But it's definitely going to stick in my head more than some of the VNAs I've read.

[Kris · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a bit of an odd one. It is confusing and chock full of references that don't seem to add much...but it seems to be designed that way. With the way it is designed misunderstanding is the main view to reading it.
There is some good character stuff in it but overall my question from it is, why?

[Arthur B · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decent attempt with some really unusual ideas, tied in cleverly with the setting and era. Full review: https://fakegeekboy.wordpress.com/202...

[Herb Costello · Rating 2 out of 5]

I do not appreciate when an author takes you on a painful journey of prose, telling what may have been a good story in such a convoluted manner. He is holding the reader to ransom and only a die hard Doctor Who fan could make it to the end of this novel. The author has taken the story, chopped it into a thousand pieces and attempted to put it back together again. Make sure you have a notebook with you as you are navigating your way through this one as the plot chops and changes with almost every paragraph. Of all the NA's I have read over the years (54 in total) this easily rates as the hardest to follow. It is a little off balance and painful to read.
Vintage doctor who is well renowned for running down the same corridors a number of times at a number of different angles to appease the budget and the cumbersome cameras of the time but why carry this trend forward into a novel and torture the reader.
I made it to the end and I believe that all others and I who have done so deserve a badge, not of mathematical excellence, but of sheer persistence.
The Death of Art....

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I'm getting tired of the psychic powers story arc. Look, it's another story about psychics. And it has yet another explanation for psychics. Sigh. Here's it a race called the Quoth activating humanity's psychic potential.

This book also felt very much like a sequel to (or even a repetition of) Christmas on a Rational Planet, which really wasn't to its benefit. But once more we get a society hovering on the edge of the industrial age and weird aliens and way too many characters and very staccato sections of writing. Everything spun way too quickly and was too confusing and didn't necessarily make a lot of sense. The Shadow Directory even makes a return visit, though they get fairly minimal screen time.

The only real stand-out in the book is the characterization of Chris and Roz. They get to be detectives and police officers, which is too rare of an occurrence, and they're clearly depicted as coming from the future.

Beyond that: [i]meh[/i]. It's not going to be on my reread list. I gave it a 4.5 out of 10.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2297663.html[return][return]The Seventh Doctor, Chris and Roz end up in Paris all involved with the Dreyfus case and Ace. I'm afraid I thought this wore its historical research a bit too heavily, without compensating gains in characterisation or plot