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A review by kribu
Doctor Who - The Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter
3.0
This was... okay.
I think I expected a bit more, seeing as it's one in the range of hardbacks penned by big name authors, not the usual tie-in writers - who generally do a pretty good job, so it's not like I'm dissing them, but when you have a range of tie-ins by the usual suspects and then a range of special hardbacks written by people who don't usually write tie-ins, you expect the special books to be a bit, well, more, right?
Anyway. For a Doctor Who tie-in, this was good. Not brilliant (and there were things that bugged me a bit), but entertaining, with a good enough mixture of action and philosophy. I really liked the descriptions of Saturn's rings, and the ice moon, and the ice moon's rings, and basically everything to do with space; the parts I found lacking had to do with characters, mostly.
My biggest problem, character-wise, was the Second Doctor. He just didn't sound like Two to me at all. I tried my best to hear his dialogue in Patrick Troughton's voice, and I couldn't. Other than the physical description of his hair and clothes, there was really nothing of specifically Second Doctor about him; almost none of the quirkiness and the serious moments, although there was a clear attempt to tell us how almost scary he could be, didn't at all capture Two for me either.
Jamie, on the other hand, was great. I loved Jamie. I thought his character was captured pretty well, with that cute charm of a boy well out of his time, with no book knowledge, but intelligent, inquisitive and adaptive.
Zoe... Zoe was okay, but captured a little worse than Jamie to me, and I'm not sure I liked the whole line of thought that seemed to go "well, here we have a brilliant young astrophysicist girl who is too cold and logical, so let's stick her away somewhere babysitting a toddler so she can bond with a childlike a young woman should" (I hope that last bit wasn't meant as such, I really do, but I couldn't help but feel that was the way it came off).
The original characters were ... well, they did their job, but I can't say I really bonded with any of them (I have to say MMAC was kinda cool in a way though, and an interesting concept). And Florian Hart was a far too cliché, boring villain.
One plot-related thing I had a problem with ... This really stems, partially, from the way 1960s TV's optimism about the 21st century and its state of technology, I suppose, but while I can suspend disbelief when watching the old episodes, it's much harder to do it with books published in 2012. I mean - Zoe is from the late 21st century. Okay. Fair enough. I don't have a problem with that, or space stations in her era and what not, but I'd really rather not see a book set in - well, no year given, but before Zoe's time, and at least a couple of generations before, I'd say (30 years? 40 years?), which would set the book in around 2050-2060, at the latest.
How likely is it that we'll have Saturn colonised and mining systems in place by 2040 (seeing that one generation of young adults has already been born in the Saturn colony in the book)? I'm going to go with "not very likely", I'm afraid. So seeing late-21st-century Zoe sneer at the antiquated tech of these people on Saturn just plain didn't work for me. I'd have been much happier if the book had taken place at some point after Zoe's time - 22nd century, perhaps. A hundred years from now.
Ah well. It was fun, anyway, and I'm rather looking forward to reading something non-Who from Baxter at some point.
I think I expected a bit more, seeing as it's one in the range of hardbacks penned by big name authors, not the usual tie-in writers - who generally do a pretty good job, so it's not like I'm dissing them, but when you have a range of tie-ins by the usual suspects and then a range of special hardbacks written by people who don't usually write tie-ins, you expect the special books to be a bit, well, more, right?
Anyway. For a Doctor Who tie-in, this was good. Not brilliant (and there were things that bugged me a bit), but entertaining, with a good enough mixture of action and philosophy. I really liked the descriptions of Saturn's rings, and the ice moon, and the ice moon's rings, and basically everything to do with space; the parts I found lacking had to do with characters, mostly.
My biggest problem, character-wise, was the Second Doctor. He just didn't sound like Two to me at all. I tried my best to hear his dialogue in Patrick Troughton's voice, and I couldn't. Other than the physical description of his hair and clothes, there was really nothing of specifically Second Doctor about him; almost none of the quirkiness and the serious moments, although there was a clear attempt to tell us how almost scary he could be, didn't at all capture Two for me either.
Jamie, on the other hand, was great. I loved Jamie. I thought his character was captured pretty well, with that cute charm of a boy well out of his time, with no book knowledge, but intelligent, inquisitive and adaptive.
Zoe... Zoe was okay, but captured a little worse than Jamie to me, and I'm not sure I liked the whole line of thought that seemed to go "well, here we have a brilliant young astrophysicist girl who is too cold and logical, so let's stick her away somewhere babysitting a toddler so she can bond with a child
The original characters were ... well, they did their job, but I can't say I really bonded with any of them (I have to say MMAC was kinda cool in a way though, and an interesting concept). And Florian Hart was a far too cliché, boring villain.
One plot-related thing I had a problem with ... This really stems, partially, from the way 1960s TV's optimism about the 21st century and its state of technology, I suppose, but while I can suspend disbelief when watching the old episodes, it's much harder to do it with books published in 2012. I mean - Zoe is from the late 21st century. Okay. Fair enough. I don't have a problem with that, or space stations in her era and what not, but I'd really rather not see a book set in - well, no year given, but before Zoe's time, and at least a couple of generations before, I'd say (30 years? 40 years?), which would set the book in around 2050-2060, at the latest.
How likely is it that we'll have Saturn colonised and mining systems in place by 2040 (seeing that one generation of young adults has already been born in the Saturn colony in the book)? I'm going to go with "not very likely", I'm afraid. So seeing late-21st-century Zoe sneer at the antiquated tech of these people on Saturn just plain didn't work for me. I'd have been much happier if the book had taken place at some point after Zoe's time - 22nd century, perhaps. A hundred years from now.
Ah well. It was fun, anyway, and I'm rather looking forward to reading something non-Who from Baxter at some point.