Doctor Who Audiobook Review: Planet of the Ood, The Time Monster, Attack of the Cybermen

Planet of the Ood by Keith Temple

As the modern Doctor Who Target novels continue, I find myself becoming more fascinated by why some stories are getting the novel treatment and others aren’t. I assume part of it is the time and willingness of the original episode writers to adapt their story for the printed page. So, while part of me wants to see RTD and Steven Moffat adapt some of their event scripts for the printed page, part of me is just happy to get new Target books to enjoy on audio.

Such is the case with Planet of the Ood, a story I immensely enjoyed when it was first broadcast but (like much of modern Who) I haven’t revisited since.

Introduced two seasons before, the Ood are given a bit more depth and backstory than we initially saw in “The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit.” Keith Temple’s script delves a bit more into the servitors of humanity, revealing the dark secrets and implications of their service to humanity. The story strengthens the Ood and takes the time to make observations.

As an audiobook, the story works well enough. Temple gives us character background and depth the supporting cast on-screen and a few little side narratives to underscore the central drama and conflict of the story. It’s not quite on par with the later Target novels under the seventh Doctor, but it does feel like the kind of solid world-building that Terrance Dicks and Malcolm Hulke did in the early days of the Target range.

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 The Time Monster  by Terrance Dicks

One good thing about The Time Monster is it establishes that the Master coming up with half-baked plans isn’t necessarily something isolated to the Anthony Ainley version of the character.

This one regularly rounds out the bottom of many classic Who fan polls for the third Doctor’s era — and with good reason. And yet, for all its faults and foibles, there is actually a good story in here trying to get out.

It’s a shame it never quite does.

In many ways, it feels like Barry Letts and Robert Sloman wanted to emulate the success of The Daemons a season before. So, why not hit some of the high points of that one again? The Master is on hand with a plot to take over the world/universe and there’s the deconstruction of human mythology — in this case, it’s Greek mythology and the story of Atlantis and the Minotaur.

Honestly, it wouldn’t shock me to someday learn that the script was also some kind of bet among friends to see how many times they could slip a certain word onscreen and the BBC censors wouldn’t or couldn’t object. (The acronym for the device used to push matter through time and summon Kronos).

There’s even a bit of travel in the TARDIS for Jo, the potential for a time ram and more scenery-chewing than you can shake a stick at.

So, how does that all add up when it comes to the novel?

Unfortunately, not very well. I recall picking this Target novel up and then it languishing on my shelf. I’d try to read it only to feel completely disconnected from the story and ignore it for long periods. The same thing proves true of the audiobook, despite Jon Culshaw’s attempts to liven it up with his performance and imitation of the various characters. I kept chugging for isolated scenes like “the daisiest daisy” and UNIT troops meeting up with various armies ripped through time to take them on. But, it felt like this one took a lot longer for me to get through the running time (literally and figuratively as I listened to this while running).

I can’t help but wonder if Uncle Terrance wasn’t a huge fan of this one either, given that this comes from the later Target period when he could have had more time to fill in details and deepen the characters — something he does neither of here.

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Attack of the Cybermen by Eric Saward

I still have a lot of muddled feelings when it comes to Attack of the Cybermen. Part of me just can’t shake the feeling of being incredibly late to the party I felt when I first watched this one on KTEH all those years ago. I was relatively new to fandom, knew little to nothing about the history of the Cybermen, and was treated to four (US syndication) episodes that reminded me of this over and over again.

Attack works better when you realize what is being referenced in the story — whether it’s callbacks to the destruction of Mondas from the Cybermen’s original appearance to the Cyberemen lurking in the sewers from their last 60’s appearance. A lot of it ends up feeling like Eric Saward saying to audiences, “Ha, ha, I get to watch the lost episodes and you don’t.”

This is honestly a story where Doctor Who feels like its doing a lot of navel gazing and throwing in continuity for continuity’s sake.

And despite delays in seeing this one hit the printed page, the novelization of it doesn’t exactly help much. Saward spends a good bit of time creating character backstories for Charlie and various other players — but as with his recent Dalek adaptations, this just underscores the incredibly high body count of his stories. Saward seemed to take the wrong lessons from Robert Holmes returning to the series during Saward’s tenure as script editor. Holmes found a gruesome threat in the everyday or the seemingly safe. Saward just seems to find the grim and gruesome.

What Saward does well is keeping the plotlines on Earth and Telos fairly well separated. It’s only once events finish on Earth and we’re headed to Telos that he introduces those threads. But other than that, it’s a fairly standard adaptation of his/Paula Moore’s script for the printed page. And while Saward is willing to fill in some of the Cybermen’s history (we get another allusion to their role in Adric’s death), he doesn’t fill in enough to fully eliminate the feeling that if you haven’t seen the 60’s cyber stories (which few of us had at the time), you were missing a vital element of this one.

Disappointing them and still disappointing.

The same can’t be said for David Banks’ performance of this story. Banks did a solid job last year and his work here is nice, even if the audiobook doesn’t always add the Cybermen filters to various Cybermen.

Review: The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

A couple of years ago, I decided I’d read all the nominees for the Hugo Award from that year and see which novel I’d choose. This tradition continued for several years for me, with mixed results. After a while, it felt like certain novels were picked less for their merits and more based on who the author was. Get nominated once and it felt like you had name recognition to carry you for a couple of years, no matter whether your book was worthy of the award or not.

So, my annual project to read all the nominated best novels fell by the wayside. Until last year, when the short list came out, I decided to give it a try again (it helped that I’d already finished one of the novels from the year). Based on the list, I hoped to visit a few old friends again and maybe discover a new author or two that I could do a deep-dive into their works.

I’d read Scalzi’s entry and my local library had a copy of Mary Robinette Kowal’s The Spare Man easily accessible, so I started there. The idea of a Thin Man type of mystery set in outer space intrigued me and I found myself eager to dive in.

That enthusiasm lasted about fifty pages.

I am probably spoiled by how much I enjoyed Issac Asimov’s Robot novels and how well they straddled the line between mystery and science-fiction. But with The Spare Man, I found myself not engaged by the story, the mystery, or the continued setting. I couldn’t shake the feeling I get when I read a lot of Dean Koontz’s works — that feeling that I’ve read this before, even though I know it’s a new (to me) book.

It feels like this one was written on autopilot. There’s never any real hook for me and I never became invested in the central mystery enough or the main characters to feel invested enough to want to race to the finish. I finished more out of a sense of — well, I’ve come this far, might as well see where it all goes.

A disappointing entry from a usually reliable author.

Review: Starter Villain by John Scalzi

The moment Starter Villain introduced talking dolphins who swear like most thirteen-year-old boys who have discovered the f-word, it had me.

But given that leading up to that we’d had a funeral in which everyone showed up to make sure the deceased really was deceased (including stabbing the body) and cats who can communicate by typing out their thoughts, I guess you could pretty much say I was into John Scalzi’s novel early. It helps that his latest novel taps into the same absurdist fun as his Hugo-winning Red Shirts did.

After being laid off from his journalistic job, Charlie struggles to make ends meet as a substitute teacher while living in his deceased father’s home. After he’s turned down for a loan to purchase his local bar and run it, Charlie finds himself at loose ends, until he gets news that is rich uncle has passed away and wants Charlie to take over his business. What Charlie doesn’t know is that business is the villain business and Charlie’s uncle was a major player.

Oh yeah, and there are sentient cats who can communicate via keyboard and he’s got to negotiate a labor dispute with the dolphins who, again, like to swear a lot.

I found myself laughing out loud at multiple points during Starter Villian. And yet in the laughter, Scalzi takes time to make a few interesting points and observations about the world and the people we’re putting in charge of things, the state of technology, and multiple other issues I won’t necessarily delve too far into here. But what Scalzi does so well is entertain first and foremost — the scene where various wannabe villains present their evil plots and are either rewarded with the thumbs up or sent flying via a giant spring into the sea is just one example of this in a book packed full of them.

And in a world where it feels like far too many genre entries are going for a multi-book saga, it’s nice that Starter Villain can be enjoyed on its own. I wouldn’t necessarily mind spending more time with the various players in this story (again, the dolphins) but the novel wisely ties up everything by the time the final page is turned.

One of the more satisfying novels I’ve read lately and highly recommended.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received a digital ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Collected Comic Review: The Amazing Spider-Man, Volume 2: The New Sinister

Celebrating 900 issues and sixty years of my favorite comic book character, this collection of three issues (two stories) from Amazing Spider-Man leaves me feeling confused and like something is missing.

The first issue is an overly long story in which something has kidnapped the Sinister Six and made one huge being with all their powers to take on Spider-Man. All this starts around Pete’s birthday and it feels like it should be more fun than it is. By what felt like the millionth page, I was just ready for things to end so I could move on.

Next is a story in which the Vulture’s granddaughter finds out he’s a bad guy and wants to cut ties with him. Instead of seeing this as a wake-up call, the Vulture blames Spider-Man and heads out on a vendetta to end his life. Meanwhile, Peter is interviewing to work at Oscorp and Norman Osborne, who may or may not have a few Spider-suit modifications and gadgets for him. Worlds collide. The cliffhanger with the Vulture smashing Spidey’s web shooters and then dropping him from way up in the sky would be better if we hadn’t seen this done to Spidey before. And while it’s fun to watch Vulture lose his cool, I can’t help but come away from this story feeling like I’m missing a lot of backstory.

I want to enjoy the comic book adventures of my favorite hero, but I begin to wonder if these comics are really written for me anymore