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hidekisohma's review
1.0
First and foremost, i have to say that i LOVE the first doctor. Hartnell is my favorite out of all the doctors. Not only that but i love asian culture. this book should have been RIGHT up my alley. That's why it pains me to say that this book was absolutely awful.
I honestly don't even know where to begin with this, but i'll try.
So first of all, the book was boring. it was very VERY boring. I really didn't feel like there were any stakes at all. I'm not even certain WHY the doctor and crew stayed there and hung out with the people in this story.
Normally there's a reason why the crew can't just peace out in the tardis when things go bad, but there's a good chunk of book when ian's healed from beating and up and barbara/vicki are captured and they just don't leave. they just stick around for reasons that are not understood to me. i may have missed something but my brain zoned out too much.
Honestly, i do not think i have ever zoned out more in a who novel in my life. I had so much trouble focusing on this book i actually had to stop and try harder to keep the focus.
The story i THINK is that these evil aliens wanted to use these chinese people by taking over their bodies with downloaded memories of older chinese people and hide in their bodies as well and then take over the world with clay soldiers brought to life? the climax was VERY confusing and made little to no sense.
Usually when a who novel is bad, i can at least say, well, at least the characters acted as they should. However, this was only true for the doctor. Barbara and Ian were SO out of character, SO awful, that i refuse to believe they're the same characters.
Normally, when dealing with these two, there's an underlying sense of romance. an unspoken connection between the two of them that they care a lot about each other. BUT, if something happened to either of them, they would move on. There have been several books and episodes where they think the other is dead, grieve, and then move on. However, in THIS book, you wouldn't know that as the two of them act as if without them they couldn't possibly go on. Ian gets beat up and Barbara is at a loss of what to do, and when Barbara is captured and the bad guy's like "yeah, kill this guy and we'll free barbara" (who ian thinks is a version of himself from the future) he's like "yeah, okay" and shoots him. luckily the doc replaced gun with blanks beforehand, but without the doc's intervention, he would have effectively murdered himself. (We then learn that Ian was wrong about that and he wasn't actually him, but his great grandfather. So yes, this author had Ian effectively almost murder his great grandfather because someone kidnapped barbara)
These two are NOT Ian and Barbara. I don't know WHO David thought he was writing for, but it feels more like Bella and Edward than Ian and Barbara. and it was awful.
Oh yeah, wasn't Vicki in the book? Pff. you'd never know it as she doesn't even really DO anything. until she's captured her role in the book is to talk to a guy a few times. Very exciting. then she's captured, escapes, and then does more nothing. i can't tell whether david didn't like vicki or just had no idea what to do with her. if that was the case, just have the book with just ian and barbara WITHOUT vicki. (and don't say that you can't have a book with just ian and barbara timeline wise because "Venusian Lullaby" did it)
Speaking of characters, you want to hear confusing? One of the characters in the book is named "Major Chesterton" and considering that the doc always calls ian "chesterton" the book gets really REALLY confusing when you're trying to figure out whose scene you're on. oh. and the author tacks on that major chesterton has partial amnesia from a brain injury so the audience can go "oooohhhh IS that really ian in the future?" but then some random guy's like "no, his name is bill" and that wraps up that mystery like 250 pages in.
every other character blends together for me and i have no idea who people are. they kill a guy named Jiang and i'm like "oh no.....not THAT guy." they try to introduce so many characters and they all do basically nothing.
The villains were confusing, non-descript and lame and they were some kind of...energy people? it's really hard to determine exactly what they were because my brain had already melted by this point in the book as i was just trying to get to the end.
Speaking of the end, if you were hoping for a satisfying climax or epilogue, too bad. you get neither. the doc doesn't save the day as it's some guys named Logan and Fei-hung who really do it. also there's really no epilogue. like at all. the book kind of just ends with Fake Ian and Fake Barbara being out of character.
At least with other bad hartnell books, i at least understood the plot. While i strongly dislike the salem book, at LEAST all the characters were involved, they all had their things to do, and they were all in character. Yeah it was mean spirited and depressing, but it MADE SENSE. This... i don't even know what to say about this other than it was (except for doc) out of character, boring, and non-sensical. The stakes felt almost non-existant and i honestly don't even know really what happened at the end.
This actually IS the worst who book i have read. and that's EXTREMELY disappointing. the only saving grace was the 1st doctor was in character and a bit of his dialogue was okay. The rest was boring, terrible, out of character, and it talked down to you.
1.5 out of 5 rounded down to a 1.
I honestly don't even know where to begin with this, but i'll try.
So first of all, the book was boring. it was very VERY boring. I really didn't feel like there were any stakes at all. I'm not even certain WHY the doctor and crew stayed there and hung out with the people in this story.
Normally there's a reason why the crew can't just peace out in the tardis when things go bad, but there's a good chunk of book when ian's healed from beating and up and barbara/vicki are captured and they just don't leave. they just stick around for reasons that are not understood to me. i may have missed something but my brain zoned out too much.
Honestly, i do not think i have ever zoned out more in a who novel in my life. I had so much trouble focusing on this book i actually had to stop and try harder to keep the focus.
The story i THINK is that these evil aliens wanted to use these chinese people by taking over their bodies with downloaded memories of older chinese people and hide in their bodies as well and then take over the world with clay soldiers brought to life? the climax was VERY confusing and made little to no sense.
Usually when a who novel is bad, i can at least say, well, at least the characters acted as they should. However, this was only true for the doctor. Barbara and Ian were SO out of character, SO awful, that i refuse to believe they're the same characters.
Normally, when dealing with these two, there's an underlying sense of romance. an unspoken connection between the two of them that they care a lot about each other. BUT, if something happened to either of them, they would move on. There have been several books and episodes where they think the other is dead, grieve, and then move on. However, in THIS book, you wouldn't know that as the two of them act as if without them they couldn't possibly go on. Ian gets beat up and Barbara is at a loss of what to do, and when Barbara is captured and the bad guy's like "yeah, kill this guy and we'll free barbara" (who ian thinks is a version of himself from the future) he's like "yeah, okay" and shoots him. luckily the doc replaced gun with blanks beforehand, but without the doc's intervention, he would have effectively murdered himself. (We then learn that Ian was wrong about that and he wasn't actually him, but his great grandfather. So yes, this author had Ian effectively almost murder his great grandfather because someone kidnapped barbara)
These two are NOT Ian and Barbara. I don't know WHO David thought he was writing for, but it feels more like Bella and Edward than Ian and Barbara. and it was awful.
Oh yeah, wasn't Vicki in the book? Pff. you'd never know it as she doesn't even really DO anything. until she's captured her role in the book is to talk to a guy a few times. Very exciting. then she's captured, escapes, and then does more nothing. i can't tell whether david didn't like vicki or just had no idea what to do with her. if that was the case, just have the book with just ian and barbara WITHOUT vicki. (and don't say that you can't have a book with just ian and barbara timeline wise because "Venusian Lullaby" did it)
Speaking of characters, you want to hear confusing? One of the characters in the book is named "Major Chesterton" and considering that the doc always calls ian "chesterton" the book gets really REALLY confusing when you're trying to figure out whose scene you're on. oh. and the author tacks on that major chesterton has partial amnesia from a brain injury so the audience can go "oooohhhh IS that really ian in the future?" but then some random guy's like "no, his name is bill" and that wraps up that mystery like 250 pages in.
every other character blends together for me and i have no idea who people are. they kill a guy named Jiang and i'm like "oh no.....not THAT guy." they try to introduce so many characters and they all do basically nothing.
The villains were confusing, non-descript and lame and they were some kind of...energy people? it's really hard to determine exactly what they were because my brain had already melted by this point in the book as i was just trying to get to the end.
Speaking of the end, if you were hoping for a satisfying climax or epilogue, too bad. you get neither. the doc doesn't save the day as it's some guys named Logan and Fei-hung who really do it. also there's really no epilogue. like at all. the book kind of just ends with Fake Ian and Fake Barbara being out of character.
At least with other bad hartnell books, i at least understood the plot. While i strongly dislike the salem book, at LEAST all the characters were involved, they all had their things to do, and they were all in character. Yeah it was mean spirited and depressing, but it MADE SENSE. This... i don't even know what to say about this other than it was (except for doc) out of character, boring, and non-sensical. The stakes felt almost non-existant and i honestly don't even know really what happened at the end.
This actually IS the worst who book i have read. and that's EXTREMELY disappointing. the only saving grace was the 1st doctor was in character and a bit of his dialogue was okay. The rest was boring, terrible, out of character, and it talked down to you.
1.5 out of 5 rounded down to a 1.
jarichan's review
3.0
Ich mag den ersten Doktor sehr gerne - er hat so etwas Klassisches an sich. Also habe ich mich auch mal an Büchern mit ihm gewagt und hatte dabei ebenfalls meinen Spass.
McIntee schafft es, den ersten Doktor auch auf Papier aufleben zu lassen. Jedes Mal, wenn er sprach, hörte und sah ich William Hartnell vor mir. Vor allem die Sprechweise des Doctor hat der Autor herrlich gut getroffen.
Aber auch die Geschichte an und für sich ist sehr "doctor who"-ig. Von A bis Z so aufgebaut, wie die typischen Folgen auch heute noch funktionieren. Man merkt also, dass McIntee Erfahrung mit dieser Serie hat und sein Können richtig einsetzt.
Somit eine Freude für jeden Fan der Serie.
McIntee schafft es, den ersten Doktor auch auf Papier aufleben zu lassen. Jedes Mal, wenn er sprach, hörte und sah ich William Hartnell vor mir. Vor allem die Sprechweise des Doctor hat der Autor herrlich gut getroffen.
Aber auch die Geschichte an und für sich ist sehr "doctor who"-ig. Von A bis Z so aufgebaut, wie die typischen Folgen auch heute noch funktionieren. Man merkt also, dass McIntee Erfahrung mit dieser Serie hat und sein Können richtig einsetzt.
Somit eine Freude für jeden Fan der Serie.
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