Review: The Doctor and Ace, pursued by an unknown intelligence which seems to
know the Time Lord's every move, have arrived in 1960s London, but it's far
different from the London in Ace's history books. This Britain has been a
U.S. protectorate since the end of World War II, but that hardly halts the
spread of post-war violence. The legend of Jack the Ripper has exploded
into a full-fledged cult, with murderous gangs wandering the city - and
London's police have orders to shoot to kill after curfew. A narrow escape
for the Doctor and Ace leads to a chance encounter with two haggard teachers
- Ian Chesterson and Barbara Wright, two of the
Doctor's original companions ...neither of whom ever remembers having
traveled with the Time Lord.
Someone or something is changing the course of history, and as the Doctor
and Ace try to unravel the mystery, Ace discovers - almost fatally - that
the Doctor himself is somehow being influenced, taken over by a bloodthirsty
persona not unlike Jack the Ripper himself.
Not really one of the best BBC Past Doctors books, Matrix leads me to
believe that, with the abundance of New Adventures that Virgin published
featuring the seventh Doctor, the BBC books should perhaps give that
particular incarnation a rest for a while.
Tucker and Perry move the plot forward very slowly. While the alternate
timeline characterizations of Ian and Barbara are interesting, the book
occasionally comes to a complete halt as the authors describe the squalor of
alternate-universe London. Nice, descriptive stuff, but almost too flowery,
and it seems like it could have been better integrated into the story
itself.
The villain of this story hearkens back to the sixth Doctor's era, though
this particular foe was much better utilized in the Missing Adventures novel
Millennial Rites. And, to be quite blunt, the someone-is-changing-history
device has become overused in the Doctor Who novels, and it has been done
much more skillfully in other novels than in this one.
DOCTOR WHO and all related characters and placenames
are the property of the British Broadcasting Corporation. This document is not
intended to infringe upon the BBC's copyright in any way. The author(s)
make no attempt - in using the names described herein - to supercede the
copyrights of the copyright holders, nor are these files officially sanctioned,
licensed, or endorsed by the shows' creators or producers.
