The Worst Doctor Who Novels? [VNA vs EDA Review]
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- Опубликовано: 6 сен 2024
- #DoctorWho #Master #books #review #7thDoctor #8thDoctor #wilderness #TerrenceDicks #80s #90s
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Poparena's video (Pls check out if you want a more in-depth breakdown of Timewyrm Genesys): • VNA #01 - "Timewyrm: G...
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The thing that really drives me wild about The Doctor being all "It was a different time" around Gilgamesh, is just how comically wrong he is. I cannot emphasise enough that sleeping around and generally taking advantage of his subjects is the INCITING INCIDENT OF THE ENTIRE EPIC OF GILGAMESH!
That is the point of the Doctor.
He always says that kind of thing about events or figures like that.
What? The subjects are annoyed at his sleeping around and power abuse, but it's only in the sense of "can our King please grow up" and is *clearly* commonplace as far as young rulers of that time go, they expect it and take it as a give for a ruler of that age and just desperately want him to grow out of that phase. It's depicted as "wrong" as being annoying and deeply immature, but not *morally* heinous.
Three trying to steal Eight's TARDIS is the most intensely in-character thing I've ever heard. Shame about the rest of the book.
Nice! I think I might as well list off what I think are the best books from the earlier ranges:
New Adventures - The Also People, Just War, Human Nature, Original Sin, Lungbarrow
Missing Adventures - The English Way of Death, Millennial Rites, Cold Fusion, The Well-Mannered War, The Scales of Injustice
Eighth Doctor Adventures - Alien Bodies, Camera Obscura, The City of the Dead, The Year of Intelligent Tigers, Interference
Past Doctor Adventures - Festival of Death, Verdigris, The Face of the Enemy, Wolfsbane, Fear Itself
Fantastic video! Perfectly covers how these books fail so bad! Though, to be fair… I do actually prefer Flavia to Romana being the president. To me, Romana becoming president is her bad ending. Same with the Doctor refusing to be lord president, Romana’s whole arc was learning she didn’t need Galifrey and she could do a whole lot more good outside of those systems. So to have her go back, and ultimately fail miserably to make Galifrey better feels like a big betrayal of her as a character. Though I admit BBC book’s early attempts to ignore the VNAS were the wrong move.
I need to revisit Romana's tv stories but I might agree with you there. She expresses that she doesn't go back to Gallifrey in Full Circle and in Warriors Gate she escapes that fate- weird that she ends up on Gallifrey after all that.
I obviously don't have the full context but yeah, it does like look there was some initial bad blood over the EDAs replacing and ignoring the VNAs early on.
I wasn't expecting to learn that the Virgin New Adventures started as "Ace starring in Disco Elysium, But Bad", but I... I get that they were probably trying to make it a fresh start but blimey did they seemingly drop the ball there.
Also starting to see why Sam was not someone I (and some of the early EDA writers)nclicked with upon reading The Eight Doctors, which... I think I did as a child? But I remember absolutely nothing of it now.
Yeah I've seen the suggestion that the Ace memory wipe was an excuse to have them explain Doctor Who to any new comments. But the continuity references and how long it takes (why didn't they start in the console room with 7 right there?!) makes it a lost cause.
I read some stuff later on with Sam that I really liked but yeah, bizarre introduction and barely a raport with the Dr atm
Words cannot express the sadness I feel for the fact that the two best series in Doctor Who as a franchise start like THIS
Just your reminder that John Peel hates Steven Moffat's DotD novelization for some reason. His Goodreads reviews are wiiiiiilllllld.
Oh fun. Reviewing just Dr Who books or does he slam other stuff too?
@@thevacuumofcomments2946 Other stuff as well. He just _really_ hates James Goss and Steven Moffat.
I think your criticism on timewyrm genesis is rather shallow to be honest, as most reviews of it are, just talking about specific lines on the book, basically making a storm in a glass of water.
You also don't explain why the mind wipe at the start is a bad thing, I see it as a great thing in hindsight, mainly because it makes it way easier to fit the big finish stuff between survival and this book.
Do I think the book is good, not really, I think its an OK book, but I think it's a good historical story, might not bee 100% accurate on the whole rape thing, but otherwise its pretty good
I mean, is it not kinda evident that reading "I can't remember this but I can remember this" over and over for a whole chapter is incredibly tedious? Like at least Dicks only established this once for 8
I pointed out some things I liked, but when a book screws up that badly on its introduction, makes THIS kind of blunder with matters like Rape, has an annoying villain, issues with pacing, and our main characters are unpleasant and lack the depth of their TV counterparts...I kinda think all that's a deal breaker, you know.
I enjoyed it
John peel put some weird stuff in his Dalek Masterplan story as well, possibly sexual, speaking of which there's a bunch of that in VNA and even the EDAs it gets weird and creepy
4:57 why on earth is that a scene, why would I want to experience this
The Eight Doctors is a hilarious parody of Terrence Dicks stories, what do you mean it's not good? Wait, it is supposed to be parody right?? At least it was fun to read in one sitting, Genesys is just rough.
Honestly Genesys I found fascinatingly bad which kept me going. Whereas Eight Doctors summarising Dr Who plots was somehow more of a slog- even if Dicks has better prose- "is this what listening to me is like for my friends??"
In John Peel's defense, I hear that series editor Peter Darvill-Evans was actually responsible for most of the content of Timewyrm: Genesys. My personal headcanon to explain the Doctor's behavior on this book is that the amniesiac Ace prematurely snapping him out of his meditation to delete the more useless information in his mind lead to him temporarily losing his moral compass for the duration of this book.
I'll have to do more research into the editing side of the VNAs. A lot of spelling errors in Genesys, led me to think that they just weren't ready for the first novel. I'll have to compare it with Exodus next month
@@thevacuumofcomments2946 There really is no comparison, Exodus is the best book of the series. Revelation is decent but very weird and Apocalypse is mediocre but its plot is remarkably similar to that of the JRPG Xenogears which came out seven years later. The two were so similar, in fact, that I after recently finishing the book I made a lenghty post about it on the Xenogears subreddit where I highlight similarities between the two. If you'd like to check it out after finishing that book, you should be able to find it by Googling "Timewyrm: Apocalypse Xenogears."
@@thevacuumofcomments2946 I forget who it was, might have been Loz, but someone mentioned that when it was the BBC doing copyediting for the EDAs they had super strict standards on grammar which led to situations where they correct "escaped the gravity well" to "escaped well the gravity".
So basically he got factory Reset to his initial caven someone's skull with a Rock mode
Yeah, not the strongest of starts, but trust me there are some real gems later in these series
Heard some really good stuff! Really anticipating Timewyrm Revelation, Alien Bodies, Love and War, Unnatural History & Interference in particular
@@thevacuumofcomments2946 oh yeah, anything by Paul Cornell, Kate Orman or Lawrence Miles is gold. I adored Love and War, and the EDA Faction Paradox stuff really is amazing. Just... y'know, avoid John Peel.
@@unlimitedricepudding42 I really like Paul I've only seen family a blood and that I've said I don't re-watch not because I think it's bad or anything it's just because it terrified me and it still does to this day but I like him because he called himself a fanfic writer and that's the kind of self honesty I like in a person
@Sic Semper Tyrannis Ooh that's another one!
Love these videos really good quality VNA/EDA reviews!!
Good review. I gave up on the NA after 3 books.
The novels do improve later on, but Virgin and the BBC's desperation to establish a fan base resulted in the books being all over the place. Thats probably why the PDA and VMA ranges are rated higher, because they aren't trying to create a new fanbase.
No we didn't.
I was referring to the VNAs and EDAs as a whole... Probably should have been more clear
There’s no such thing as fanwank, it’s called continuity
Nobody said these were good...
Also we need to talk about that sponsorship plug...
Ah, I saw a couple of people saying they liked 8 Doctors, I could be referring to specifically them
Fuckin hell, glad I skipped The Eight Doctors. Bewildering stuff.
I can remember general knowledge…
Don't do this to me... The trauma...
As someone currently reviewing all the EDAs on r/gallifrey I can confirm that so far, they are Not Good. Safe to say that Fitz cannot come soon enough.
The Eight Doctors is possibly the worst Doctor Who story ever, at least on a technical level.
Ah, that's a shame, where are you up to?
@@thevacuumofcomments2946 currently reading Placebo Effect. I remember finishing Seeing I and just realising that even though I had read 12 books, I was only about 11% of the way there.
@@jedisalsohere Ah... Damn. Yeah I might just be doing the essential stuff for both ranges and it's still probably gonna take me 4 years. I started reading Seeing I and liked what was there so far
@@thevacuumofcomments2946 if you want to know my recommendations so far, I'd say Vampire Science, Alien Bodies, Seeing I and... actually, no, that's about it. I guess The Bodysnatchers was pretty good.
@@jedisalsohere /Glances at where Placebo Effect is in the list/
Yeah, _Vampire Science,_ _Alien Bodies,_ and _Seeing I_ is the standard wisdom. _Scarlett Empress_ is soon though! And then soonish _Unnatural History_ and, uh.... _Interference._
The novelisations of episodes is something I’m hoping to get into, but I must avoid those wilderness books 😂
I am genuinely unable to make it through Timewyrm:genesis. It is god awful. A few good ideas, but Doctor Who has done those ideas so much better elsewhere.
Hmm. I can remember
Mind wipes are such a lazy, overuse plot device. *cough*Chibnall*cough*
Two worst Dr Who books I've ever read.
1 Body Snatchers. Appalling plot, badly overwritten. Over a page and a half just to describe the TARDIS materialising. The Doctor discovers the entrance to the Zygons ship three times and then accidentally kills all but two of them. Endless attempts to describe the workings of character's minds. Several huge Skaresans entering the TARDIS through it's little door.
2 Fury from the deep by Victor Pemberton. A lesson in bad writing. So bad it's hilarious. Honestly, read it again.
The New Adventures novels are all pieces of pretentious fan wank.
The BBC novels are the same except they veer off into the most bizarre extremes of fan wank, like the stuff at the very back of those Amsterdam sex shops that you wish you'd never even looked at it.
I've heard some of the new series novels are good, war doctor engines of war was great
Overall though I prefer big finish for expanded media due to some of the nonsense in VNAs and EDAs
With the comics I'm a bit iffy on there is some I enjoy and some I don't really like at all
Fury from the Deep is a great story but it doesn't translate well into books, same goes for The Slide and Aliens in the Mind, two other superb Pemberton stories.