Scan barcode
raemelle's review
3.0
This one dragged. Listened to the audiobook, so I’m not sure if that made it better or worse. But it just took a long time to get through, and was hard to focus on.
ssindc's review
3.0
Although it's pretty clear I wasn't the target audience for this, I found it entertaining and, once things started to fall apart, the momentum carried everything nicely along to an entertaining and relatively gratifying conclusion.
I've got to assume this was written for generations of Doctor Who fans, whose devotion to the BBC series spans various iterations of "The Doctor," who are referred to in sequence (such as "The Second Doctor," and so on).... The early shows never attracted my interest, and even my son's fascination with some of the recent iterations couldn't drag me back in.... When I visited Cardiff (in Wales), I was amused to learn that Doctor Who is filmed there, and there's (of course) some exploitation of this with a tourist venue (The Doctor Who Experience), which, alas, I did not visit. Yet, when the immensely talented (and broadly eclectic) Neil Gaiman dropped a guest-authored (and sufficiently engaging) Doctor Who tale into his recently published short-story anthology, it piqued my curiosity - so I pulled this book (which I bought for my son when it came out) off the shelf, willing to try another guest author's version of The Doctor's travels. None of which is relevant to most readers, of course. (Or, in other words ... but I digress....)
So, yes, hat's off to Baxter, to the extent this was easy to read, fun to think about, and sufficiently entertaining to not make me regret picking it up. There's a lot going on in a relatively small volume - The Doctor and his (to many, I'm sure) familiar companions, aliens, AI's (artificial intelligences), dysfunctional families, kids being kids, corporate evil, bleeding heart idealistic liberals, space and time travel, action, and even a healthy does of mayhem.... But, no, it won't drive me back to cable or Netflix to start watching the series. As The Doctor might say, it's not my cup of tea....
I've got to assume this was written for generations of Doctor Who fans, whose devotion to the BBC series spans various iterations of "The Doctor," who are referred to in sequence (such as "The Second Doctor," and so on).... The early shows never attracted my interest, and even my son's fascination with some of the recent iterations couldn't drag me back in.... When I visited Cardiff (in Wales), I was amused to learn that Doctor Who is filmed there, and there's (of course) some exploitation of this with a tourist venue (The Doctor Who Experience), which, alas, I did not visit. Yet, when the immensely talented (and broadly eclectic) Neil Gaiman dropped a guest-authored (and sufficiently engaging) Doctor Who tale into his recently published short-story anthology, it piqued my curiosity - so I pulled this book (which I bought for my son when it came out) off the shelf, willing to try another guest author's version of The Doctor's travels. None of which is relevant to most readers, of course. (Or, in other words ... but I digress....)
So, yes, hat's off to Baxter, to the extent this was easy to read, fun to think about, and sufficiently entertaining to not make me regret picking it up. There's a lot going on in a relatively small volume - The Doctor and his (to many, I'm sure) familiar companions, aliens, AI's (artificial intelligences), dysfunctional families, kids being kids, corporate evil, bleeding heart idealistic liberals, space and time travel, action, and even a healthy does of mayhem.... But, no, it won't drive me back to cable or Netflix to start watching the series. As The Doctor might say, it's not my cup of tea....
reereadingbooks's review
3.0
Interesting Doctor Who story overall, but it unfortunately captured the consistency of classic who in that it started slowing down in the middle and that continued until the last tenth of the book when it picked up again. The author captured the Doctor, Jamie, and Zoe well. The audiobook narrator did a good job of channeling the guys, but his impersonation of Zoe felt a little off. Overall a fun Doctor Who story.
More...