This review contains plot spoilers

Arguably, the greatest blessing of Torchwood is in danger of becoming a curse. I’m referring to Children of Earth – five episodes that pushed the TV show into a brave new world, and won it newfound international critical acclaim. And where Miracle Day seemed overly keen to repeat the CoE trick, this novel very much follows the same template yet again. It could almost be entitled Women of Earth; this time it’s women at locations around the globe who are affected by a mysterious madness which may have an alien origin. Like CoE, there’s an epic feel, and a historical precursor involving none other than Captain Jack Harkness. And like Miracle Day, the remnants of team Torchwood have a unique inside-track on exactly what’s happening. In line with its TV predecessors, there’s also a significant issue raised by fantastical events: patriarchal society’s reaction to an outbreak of ‘mad’ women. Captain Jack gets a lecture on the reactionary nature of presumed female “hysteria” (p.149), and mental health services are rapidly overwhelmed.

There must surely be a limit to the number of times that a CoE-style storyline can plausibly be mounted, and Exodus Code flirts with reaching this limit. No sooner has planet Earth put the Miracle behind it – seemingly carrying on without any real, lasting changes – then there’s another worldwide threat to contend with. What seemed format-breaking, edgy and energizing in the case of CoE now threatens to ossify constrictively into Torchwood’s latter-day format.

Exodus Code works best when it dares to innovate rather than when it’s slavishly aligned with recent TV incarnations. The introduction of “a Hub” (p.293) radically unlike the old Cardiff base is a clever, much-needed move, and has the potential to generate many more future stories. New team members are a little under-written, however, and few characters really come to life beyond the established gang of Gwen, Captain Jack, Rhys and Andy Davidson (all of whom are notably well captured). By contrast, Torchwood’s new fellow travellers seem more like a collection of gimmicks rather than rounded, fleshed-out people, although this may be a result of the breathless thriller genre that Exodus Code belongs to. For example, government adviser Alan Pride sounds like a fascinating figure, but we are only really told this via various info-dumps, rather than being shown Pride in action.

As might be expected from writers John and Carole E. Barrowman, there are some lovely nods to Torchwood continuity, whether it’s a mention of “Suzie”, discussion of morphic resonance, or the specific Torchwood kit that Gwen makes use of. And Rex Matheson even makes an appearance, ultimately amounting to little more than a guest cameo. Exodus Code ties back to Miracle Day in multiple, deft ways, though it’s hard to avoid inferring that The Powers That Be have placed Rex’s unusual status firmly off-limits. The same problem has dogged post-Miracle Day audios, leaving the odd feeling that these tales aren’t quite allowed to whole-heartedly continue Torchwood’s adventures.

Of course, a big part of this novel’s selling point lies with its authors. Captain Jack is especially well served throughout, returning to his omnisexual, zesty self after the detours of Miracle Day. There’s a real love and respect for Torchwood on show, as well as a beautifully unexpected nod to Sarah Jane Smith. Jack is pretty much rendered as Exodus Code’s central figure; Gwen doesn’t directly feature until roughly a quarter of the way into things.

The non-linear storytelling works effectively, even if events of the finale do become a little compressed and complicated. For instance, a clunky explanation on page 328 indicates that the scenario could probably have been more smoothly conveyed, though Gwen’s humorous response deflects any excess melodrama. And there are some compelling ideas woven around the title’s “code”, with the Barrowmans working unusual medical conditions, enigmatic designs, genetics, computer code and even artificial intelligence into the rich brew of thriller elements.

This page-turner revitalizes Torchwood by suggesting a possible way forward for the show, and by introducing a host of new characters who could be further developed in future. It’s just a shame that the consequences of Miracle Day seem so muted, particularly in terms of Rex’s character. John and Carole Barrowman are clearly gifted storytellers (both on this evidence and that of their earlier novel, Hollow Earth). I, for one, would welcome another Torchwood tale from the pair, perhaps something finally marking an exodus from the CoE code, and its gradually diminishing returns.

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK preview of the episode.

It's impossible, when discussing a series placed in as many currents of criticism as Doctor Who, to isolate one's own impressions of an episode from the expectations and apprehensions which have been entangled in the threads of the internet. An episode written by Chris Chibnall raises particular concerns. Over the past few years, Chris Chibnall has come under attack for sexism (Torchwood's Cyberwoman especially), lack of moral compass (Malokeh's experimentation on sentient beings in Cold Blood, and the apparent endorsement of the Ood's slavery in Pond Life), inconsistent characterisation (Malokeh again, but also several Torchwood character arcs) and absence of a distinctive authorial voice. In such a context, Steven Moffat's recent praise for Chibnall's writing talent echoes Tony Blair's plea to a sceptical Labour Party that it must learn to love Peter Mandelson. For the leadership, Chibnall's involvement seems essential, but for many of the faithful his work undermines the foundations of Doctor Who.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, then, has considerable obstacles to overcome in the face of the entrenched attitudes of Chibnall's critics. Some overlook the essentially collaborative nature of television production and blame Chibnall for aspects over which he had no control, such as costume (controversial in both Cyberwoman and The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood). It's perhaps relevant that the amendments to the title sequence for this series include reverting to the 'Written by…' credit abandoned during The Gunfighters, an important qualification to the claims of the scriptwriter to the whole. For others, Chibnall is to blame for saddling productions with undeliverable concepts.

The title is the most stratospheric of high concepts. It obviously parodies Hollywood gimmickfest Snakes on a Plane (of which I know little), thereby courting one set of pop cultural expectations. These are met by the impressively cinematic variations in scale Saul Metzstein and his team realise, from the intimacy of the Ponds' front room, the claustrophobia of the spacecraft cockpits, to the warm firelight of a Welsh Africa and the sweep over a Southerndown Beach. The latter was a somewhat murky grey, but perhaps engine rooms are; and it matched the pterodactyls.

The other obvious appeal made by Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is to the perennial childhood obsession with dinosaurs. Furthermore, it's to a long-established representational tradition of the dinosaur. The dinosaurs in this episode are not the feathered proto-birds of some recent research, but the giant lizards of the One Million B.C. tradition and (to someone of Chibnall's generation) The Doctor Who Dinosaur Book. They are large, threatening, relentless and predatory, with the exception of the golf-ball obsessed triceratops.

 

 

Dinosaur-related children's products seem largely to have been marketed at boys. In contrast to Asylum of the Daleks and the promise implicit in the series since Rose, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship seeks very much to be an adventure story for boys of all ages. For no clear reason except to parody A Good Man Goes to War, the Doctor assembles a 'gang', and here revels in being its leader. Rupert Graves's Riddell is full of barely controlled childlike appetites too; his facial expressions on telling the Doctor about the two disappointed dancers he was able to 'manage' by himself, and on anticipating the 'problem' he will investigate with the Doctor, are those of playground avarice rather than full-blooded lust. He's a character who points towards the debt dinosaur fiction owes to late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century fiction, such as Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World; the casting of the latterday Lestrade is itself a metatextual reference.

The inclusion of Nefertiti brings with it vague associations with H. Rider Haggard's She, another tale of a lost civilization, and points to the allusions Doctor Who's Silurian and Sea Devil stories make to the entire Lost World genre, as brought out in The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood and reiterated here with the appearance on a screen of Richard Hope as Bleytal. The portrayal of Nefertiti's sexuality is troubling, though; she is introduced as more intoxicated by the Doctor's scent and general physicality than by the prospect of travelling with him. Matt Smith's Doctor has from his beginning drawn from a post-war tradition of British comedy performance and here he is a Kenneth Williams appalled by the attentions of Hattie Jacques in full matron garb. There is an unsophisticated smuttiness to the innuendo throughout the story which makes this viewer wince.

Nefertiti's more fruitful role in the story is to unsettle Amy and act as a harbinger of change. The Doctor might deny that Neffie and Riddell are the 'new us', but he has already been seen enjoying familiarising Neffie with the ways of the companion. It is Neffie who falls into the get captured/rescue pattern, though this is one twenty-first century Doctor Who has striven to avoid, or at least not to depict so obviously. Brian fulfils a similar function: the Doctor's response to his coming on board is to angrily reject the idea that he is a taxi service, but Chris Chibnall will have recalled the similar expostulation of the fourth Doctor close to the end of his tenure, suddenly surrounded by unexpected new companions. When the Doctor promises Amy that he will be around forever, the audience knows that forever, in their terms, only lasts three weeks. Those who remember The Sarah Jane Adventures's Death of the Doctor might also remember that the Doctor ultimately moves on from his human companions, whether he likes it or not.

One of the better character points in the episode is Rory's adoption of Doctor-like traits. He has pockets full of nursing supplies picked up on his travels, and tells untruths to make the difficult palatable to his companion - in this case, his father. There is perhaps a comment embedded about the Doctor's pose as the perpetual child: Rory can't afford that role and instead deploys quasi-Doctorish technology and wisdom, but for Brian he always will be someone for whom he needs to take responsibility. It is Brian who is the centre of the most evocative shot in the episode, his legs dangling from the sill of the TARDIS door over Earth, as through him the experienced TARDIS travellers have their senses of wonder reinforced or restored.

Dinosaurs on a Spaceship reaches higher than it can manage, perhaps a dangerous thing for someone in mid-life who has only been out twice in eleven months to do, and as a result its joints lock. There are moments where the audience needs to care about Neffie and Riddell, but we have barely been introduced to them, and furthermore the episode does not seem to know the difference between suggesting character in broad strokes, and etching out stereotypes. As with The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood, there is a curious submerged political agenda, here seeing Riddell and Neffie acting out fragments of a dialogue about colonialism, somehow triangulated with the activities of Solomon, but it's all too abbreviated to articulate itself successfully. The conclusion to the main plot appears to make the Doctor Solomon's murderer, and this is disquieting.

There could have been much more to like here, but Dinosaurs on a Spaceship is a confection which does not quite appeal to this normally sweet tooth. The Mitchell and Webb robots lack humour or the pathos which could have made them sympathetic or even entertaining; the importation of established comic personas was perhaps a mistake. The music recognised that this story was a chase narrative, with its similarity at times to Tom and Jerry; there was an emphasis on spectacle and running away from things not seen since the less-than-successful Aliens of London/World War Three. 'Siluria' as a concept is rather trite, with implications which could undermine Malcolm Hulke's concept for what we are stuck with calling homo reptilia. The script is at its most successful with its portrayal of the regulars and the hapless parent. Rory's 'I'm thirty-one!' reminded us just how much time has passed for the Ponds since the Doctor first became a tangible continuing presence in their lives. As his Torchwood work showed, Chibnall is probably at his best with more contained narratives. Nevertheless, he seems to have met Steven Moffat's brief, and it may well be that the problems this episode has are those of compressed storytelling in the age of the international audience, rather than those attached to a specific writer.

 

 

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK preview of the episode.

Like a lot of fans, when I heard the title of this episode, I said "really? Dinosaurs... on a spaceship? What is it actually called?" but no that was the title, so amid many raised eyebrows this episode bursts forth, and how, within minutes you've been whipped through multiple timezones and settings at such a dizzying pace that you feel slightly overwhelmed, but that's Doctor Who these days, keep up or turn over and watch The X Factor instead.

This may read as a criticism but it is not, with an episode this bonkers you need an appropriately bonkers start to hurl you straight in, the madness reflects the chaos that is The Doctor and the whirlwind that is his existence, but anyway on with the episode as The Doctor assembles a motley crew of an Egyptian queen, a big game hunter and the Ponds plus Dad to save a ship full of dinosaurs from being blown up by the Indian Space Agency. This is most definitely a story aimed at the family audience rather than "The Fans" but is that really a bad thing? It's hard to be cross with an episode that is just this much fun, the humour doesn't always hit, some of the 'Carry On' style jokes will have you groaning but the more subtle joking raised a laugh from me, in particular the lovely touches of the ship being powered by waves from an internal beach and the tantrum throwing useless robots, beautifully voiced by comedy duo Robert Webb and David Mitchell.

 

 

The tone is also helped along by the guest stars playing it absolutely straight, it would have been easy for them to mug at the camera, falling about and overacting but they're extremely believable, I particularly enjoyed Amy taking on the role of The Doctor with two 'companions' in Nefertiti and Riddell. Our regulars are on excellent form as always with Arthur Darvill really getting his teeth into the comedy aspects, Matt Smith is great, his face is mesmerizing to watch but also subtle, check out his little smirk when he goes unidentified by Solomon's scanner, however the stand out performance in the episode is that of Mark Williams as Rory's Dad Brian, I think we may have found a new Wilfred Mott in him, a man obsessed with golf who carries a trowel with him at all times who in the end of the episode just wants to sit quietly with a sandwich and a cup of tea and gaze down at the Earth, wonderful.

My fears that this episode was just using the Dinosaurs was just a gimmick were quickly allayed by the clever touch of having the ship be a Silurian ark invaded by a sneering villain in the shape of David Bradley's Solomon and here in lies some of the problem with this episode, while it's a ton of fun while our heroes are running about the ship, riding on very nicely realised dinosaurs once it gets down the core the episode becomes less interesting, Solomon is a pretty generic baddie, all full of threats and concern only for profit and the ending is a little pat with The Doctor casually blowing up his ship. Chris Chibnall has had a somewhat checkered history with Doctor Who, writing the good but not great "42" and the underwhelming "The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood", not to mention being largely responsible for the atrocious Torchwood series one. That being said I believe that this is his best work so far, a good, solid episode that's lots of fun but with some nice, deeper moments being mixed in, the little exchange between Amy and The Doctor sends hair standing up on your arms and gives us some heavy foreshadowing of what is to come and I'm ever so grateful he resisted the temptation of having someone say "I've had it with these *expletive deleted* dinosaurs on this *expletive deleted* spaceship!"

This is a story which is most reminiscent of episodes like "The Unicorn and The Wasp" and "The Lodger", an entertaining romp perhaps let down slightly by not having much of a plot to pin it all on to, that being said I enjoyed watching it tremendously and as a slice of Saturday night entertainment it can't be beat, I'm very much looking forward to watching it over again to pick up the little bits of dialogue I missed. In a series where Moffat promised us a blockbuster every week this episode certainly delivers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This review contains plot spoilers and is based on the UK preview of the episode.

Has the internet melted yet? Because Asylum of the Daleks may well be the greatest piece of Moffatesque misdirection that Doctor Who has ever enjoyed. “Every Dalek ever!” screamed the advance publicity, promising scale and spectacle and scope. And sure enough, we got all that. But the hype was just a smoke screen set up to protect the real heart of this episode, and its audacious, incredible use of one unexpected character. Rarely has a series opener been as memorable and as history-defining as this, at least in terms of Doctor Who’s overarching mythos. We’ll not see Asylum’s like again: this is a one-shot trick, introducing an important human character only to then mount a stunning, gobsmacking reveal. Almost an inversion of Rob Shearman’s Dalek in places, this time the difference between human and monster is explored from the other side. “Remember me,” the Doctor is told, and I’ve no doubt he will, along with millions of fans.

Asylum of the Daleks is testament to the production team’s impressive ambition, and Moffat’s desire to find new things to do with the Daleks. There’s plenty of life left in the old icons yet, whether it’s the fact they now have a Prime Minister and a Parliament (were all the different Daleks referred to as a ‘Coalition’ in any earlier drafts, I wonder?), as well as an innovative and brilliantly visual way of commandeering puppet humans. The zombie sequence is surprisingly nasty for contemporary Who, veering sharply into horror territory despite its lack of blood and gore.

Along with ringing the changes, Moffat’s script appears to blatantly ignore plot points from ‘Victory of the Daleks’. Though he’d already expounded the view that the Dalek Paradigm were an “officer class” (something that hardly makes much sense of red “drones”), for series seven the showrunner goes right ahead and reinstates popular Davies-era bronze models. In DWM 451, Moffat argues that this “isn’t a continuity error”, and of course he’s right. It’s no error. It’s a deliberate, conscious continuity blanking or resetting after ‘Victory’; a discontinuity aimed at recharging and revitalizing the pepperpot psychopaths. Sometimes ignoring Who’s continuity can enable a brilliant story possibility, or facilitate startling TV spectacle, and Asylum surely provides ammunition for that viewpoint.

After last year, I wasn’t at all surprised that Nick Hurran was allocated to a number of Moffat scripts. I can imagine Moffat watching a cut of The Girl Who Waited and muttering to himself “I’m having some of that!” (although my imagination is fairly warped, I’ll concede). And Hurran plus Daleks doesn’t disappoint; a number of sequences are incredibly tense. In directorial terms, everything just works, as the episode rockets along towards its devastating conclusion with plenty of visual panache.

There’s also some crafty word play – another hallmark of a gold-standard Moffat screenplay. Childhood jokes or mispronounciations of eggs-term-in-ate won't ever be seen in quite the same light after this. And there’s a characteristic mash-up of prior Moffat motifs (he really does seem to love writing a strange, transformative kind of quasi-fan fiction based on appropriating his own previous scripts). On this occasion, it’s back to ‘The Empty Child’/’The Doctor Dances’ for a nano-cloud, Skarosian remix of the nanogenes, mixed with an aspect of 'Let's Kill Hitler'. But on the all-round strength of this showing, if Moffat's ‘new’ ideas amount to shiny rearrangements of old ideas, then so be it.

Weak spots? I’m not sure there are very many, although with so much to cram in, Amy and Rory’s storyline seems curiously rushed, condensed to its essential plot beats. And Moffat’s “feisty” female characters all seem to speak in the same quickfire, gimmicky manner which grates ever so slightly to my ears. Whatever faults one might have attributed to Russell T. Davies’s series openers, he always sketched out convincing characters incredibly well. Even minor figures could take on a dense weight of realism. By contrast, many of Moffat’s characters carry an air of stylized unreality, something which I’d say has been true of Amy Pond in the past, and seems true yet again of the major new character here, thanks partly to things like the “chinboy” and “beaky” shtick.

Akin to ‘The Impossible Astronaut’ last year, this episode helps set up a host of questions, as well as cleverly integrating the “Doctor Who?” business into its events. Forget series five’s partial misfire, because Steven Moffat already has. This episode is the real 'Victory', thanks both to its Dalek depictions and its unprecedented contributions to Who's history. Did you think you’d ever see an introduction quite like this? Unexpected, unpredictable, and utterly, utterly brilliant. You can tick “Daleks” off the list; when is Steven Moffat going to write a proper, full-on Cyberman story?

For a show that revels in them, it is perhaps surprising that there haven't been as many books dedicated about the monsters of Doctor Who as one might expect. In the past, 'oldies' amongst us can look fondly upon our battered copies of the 1970s The Doctor Who Monster Book from Uncle Terrance, or more recently with 2005's Monsters and Villains by Justin Richards, but with several more years of 'monstrous' adventures to explore here we are presenting with a new tome from Graham Sleight.

However, those looking for a nice "A-Z" type book are likely to be disappointed, as the aim of this book is somewhat different, as the back cover explains:
Such a description immediately conjures up an image of in-depth analyses of monsters and their environment, and how contemporary socio-political influences affected the way in which they were realised - fortunately, we don't have to worry about the redundancy of auxiliary performance codes, however, as Sleight presents his arguments in clear, concise prose, and in a reader-friendly manner.

The Book

On opening the book, the first thing you notice is what appears to be a very strange ordering of monsters within the Contents. The Autons ... check ... The Weeping Angels ... check ... Kroll ... erm, okay ... The Primords ... pardon ... The Borad ... WTF? There is method in Sleight's madness, of course, as his intention is to show how the different monsters relate to one another. Thus, Kroll in couched within terms of its being a force of nature like the Angels; after the Primords, the Borad is compared with Stahlman from their story in a "Faustian overreacher" role. The next chapter deals with the Axons and a theme of beauty and ugliness formulated from Timelash. And so on. Building an ongoing narrative between chapters is a great idea, but is hard to maintain, becoming absent in a number of chapters later in the book.

All the big-bads are there of course, with the two major monsters split into 'eras' (four for the Daleks and three for the Cybermen). The coverage does seem a little 'random' at times (eg. the Mandrells), but as Sleight points out, the book can't be completely comprehensive and everybody has their favourites that might not be covered (what, no Zygons?!!). However, there is a handy Glossary at the back that does provide a brief A-Z of monsters in the show.





I also found that the story synopses tended to be quite lengthy; whilst I can appreciate that some readers may not be familiar with the stories in question, such information is readily available elsewhere so a simple summary would suffice and we can get into the monster nitty-gritty. There was also a tendency to slip into 'series politics' which obscured the monstrous discussion that I actually expected. This reached its nadir in "The Cybermen II", which concerned itself more with why the Cybermen stories epitomised what was wrong with eighties rather than the creatures themselves - indeed, with Attack of the Cybermen I thought the depictions of how the Cyber-conversion process depersonalised humanity and the mental affects of partial conversion had on the Telos workforce would be more worthy of exploration than the interminable debate over who actually wrote the story!




However, in many ways I found the book a little too light for my tastes, and for me it was hard to judge who was the intended audience for the book. It clearly isn't for children or the casual reader, but neither is it for those fans who love to delve into heady intellectual debate or critique. Instead, the chapters tended to paint broad strokes over the various monsters covered, and I often wondered what point was being made.










All the standard themes are covered, so oil-drilling in the North Sea is debated for Inferno, the European Union and Miner's Strikes in for Peladon, etc.

Marshmen - not Solonians?

Conclusion:

The book sets out to look into the meaning of the monstrous, and certainly covers a variety of the creatures that populate the series




and falls firmly into same style of related non-fiction from IB Tauris (like Booy's Love and Monsters published earlier this year).

This review contains plot spoilers

As you might expect from SF luminary Stephen Baxter, one of the great strengths of this novel is its vivid creation of worlds and environments. The Wheel – a mining operation out at Saturn – and its frontier society are sharply delineated. Saturn’s rings also become a key part of the narrative, and Baxter has fun extrapolating from technologies such as “matter printing” and waste recyling. Overall, there’s a sense of vastness to this Doctor Who story, and not just because it deals with our solar system, but also thanks to the way it covers an epic sweep of time, going all the way back to the ‘Silurian’ era of Earth’s history. Appropriate Who technologies are also drawn upon, as Baxter deftly works in some crucial T-Mat action. The Doctor’s previous adventures are seen to have unintended consequences and unexpected outcomes over time, bringing them into the panoramic vista of Stephen Baxter’s work. Even UNIT get a few important mentions.

But perhaps this publication will always be remembered as a double event: firstly, it’s the return of ‘Past Doctor Adventures’ given that it features the second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe, and secondly it’s another novel that, like The Coming of the Terraphiles, brings a “name” SF author to the franchise. And whilst it certainly carries those historical lures for the reader, reducing The Wheel of Ice to milestones or markers does the book a bit of a disservice. Baxter’s affection for the show’s lead characters shines through, and he cleverly makes use of Zoe’s eidetic memory, for example, as well as finding a crafty way of making the artificial intelligence/service robot MMAC relevant to Jamie’s sense of identity. Furthermore, Zoe’s experiences from ‘The Wheel in Space’ and ‘The Mind Robber’ are variously tapped into, and Baxter exploits the gaps in her life experience when she’s confronted with a set of tasks that logic and scientific training can’t quite prepare her for. Both McCrimmon and Heriot are very well served throughout, without their subplots feeling too forced or too overly designed for them.

Baxter intersperses his linear adventure with “Interludes” which focus on different characters’ points of view and fill in moments of back story. For me, these were some of the most intriguing sequences of the novel, allowing Baxter to flashback through history (and weave in some great continuity references to Tom Baker and Peter Davison TV stories). One interlude offers a wonderful few pages tackling the emergence of consciousness itself: there’s no shortage of ambition to these set pieces, and their literary tangents greatly enrich the whole.

If Jamie and Zoe get plenty to do, then what of the second Doctor himself? On the whole, Troughton’s incarnation breezes playfully through situations, although sometimes he displays an angst which seems more in keeping with the parameters of ‘new Who’. He almost seems affronted to have encountered a mind bigger than his own, and the story’s eventual resolution calls for greater commitment than even a Time Lord can offer. Baxter preserves the Doctor’s essential mystery, but shows how his perspective on events differs crucially from all those around him, particularly when it comes to trying to communicate with alien artefacts or races.

In fact, communication emerges as a major theme. The Doctor is keen to speak to the strange blue beings who threaten the Wheel’s human colonists, and the entity known in Gallifreyan libraries as ‘Arkive’ is also seeking to communicate with others from its past. And even MMAC, the ‘cute robot’ character, unexpectedly discovers the value of communication. For all its ‘harder-than-usual’ SF stylings, epic scale, and scientific learning, The Wheel of Ice turns out to be about the emotional importance of being in touch. It may seem a rather cerebral read at times, but the head and the heart are both firmly and poetically in play here.

The book’s cover announces: “Resilience. Remembrance. Resolution. Whatever the cost.” Yet curiously the three words ritualistically recounted by the protagonist facing the Doctor are given as “Resilience. Remembrance. Restoration” as soon as one actually starts reading. In fact, these are the opening three words of the Prologue on page seven, and so can hardly be taken to constitute huge spoilers. Quite why “Restoration” has been substituted for “Resolution” remains unclear, especially as the latter doesn’t seem any more threatening or dramatic as a piece of book jacket self-promotion.

Given Baxter’s final flourish – a tribute to the always ongoing narratives of Doctor Who – I hope we hear more from him and this TARDIS crew. In short, this is a beautiful, artful novel that knowingly throws its characters into a range of scenarios which 1960s' television drama could never have brought to the screen. I found myself thinking more than a few times, “Jamie just did what?” Transcending TV budgets and special effects, The Wheel of Ice generates a true sense of wonder at the marvels of the universe, and the treasures of the Whoniverse.