≫ PDF Free Doctor Who Spiral Scratch Gary Russell 9780563486268 Books

Doctor Who Spiral Scratch Gary Russell 9780563486268 Books

Download As PDF : Doctor Who Spiral Scratch Gary Russell 9780563486268 Books

Doctor Who Spiral Scratch Gary Russell 9780563486268 Books

This book not only gives us the story (finally, thanks to Mr. Russell) of how the Sixth Doctor regenerated into the Seventh, but crafts some nice "alternate" universe continuity into the Sixth Doctor's all too brief era. This encompasses the Sixth Doctor's television and audio adventures (via Big Finish, also highly recommended), and weaves a classic story dealing with of course, time travel, and also a truly "heroic" Sixth Doctor bow. The character of Mel (all three of her!) also gets proper treatment here, which is long overdue. Literary Who at its best!


Tags : Doctor Who: Spiral Scratch [Gary Russell] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. When the Doctor and Mel receive a message about the Lamprey, the Doctor is confused. He's never heard of such a thing. Mel on the other hand has,Gary Russell,Doctor Who: Spiral Scratch,Random House UK,0563486260,Science Fiction,COMICS & GRAPHIC NOVELS Science Fiction,Comics & Graphic Novels,Fiction,Fiction Science Fiction General,GRAPHIC NOVELS,General,Great BritainBritish Isles

Doctor Who Spiral Scratch Gary Russell 9780563486268 Books Reviews

As the cliché says, this is a story that needed to be told. I do admit that I liked the Missing Adventures of the 6th Doc, but I always felt they had something lacking. Maybe it was the NA/MAs desire to show an evolution into the Valeyard by the 6th Doctor, thus the birth of the 7th Doctor being "Time's Champion." That's not to say I didn't like those novels, I really did, but sometimes I felt they were giving Colin's Doctor a bad name...so to speak. I guess that I am one of the few people out there who really did like Colin's tenure as the Doctor and wished that there had been more. Still I was glad for the 6th Doc's MAs and I have been having a blast with the BBC's line of Past Doctor's 6th Doc adventures. Thus, getting to this review, I am well pleased with this "final book" for the 6th Doctor. The story is slow at first because you really do not understand what is going on, but, as time moves on, you get deeper into the horrors and mystery of a dying multiverse. Why is it dying? What are the effects of the dying universes? You'll have to find out for yourself. Still. This adventure kind of reminds me of the hard to find So Vile A Sin. At least the ending with all the different 6th Docs and Mels coming together to fight the bad guys. GR is able to catch the quirkiness, the violence, the haughtiness, and the grace of Colin's Doctor. The story is intriguing and well worth an almost epic pitch to it...I wonder how a Big Finish would work this one. That would be interesting. Still, if you desire a closure for the 6th Doctor this is as good as any. I am sure you'll like it.
One of my least favorite categories of Past Doctor Adventures are the ones that solely exist to explain some niggling point of continuity that was either glossed over or never dealt with at the time because nobody really cared. Most of the time this comes down to writing an entire novel based around a bit of minutiae that probably keeps none but the hardcore up at night, forcing us to wallow in a story that wraps itself like a pretzel around old continuity simply so that someone can sleep better at night now that we know how Important Person got from Point A to Point B, or how he came to wear different clothes. It's not that I mind these things being explained, per se, after about seven years writing about these books it's not impossible that I should count myself among said "hardcore", I just wish someone could fold it into a scene or two, and not base the entire book around it.

That said, this novel takes care of a rather glaring gap in the life of the Doctor so I can't say it's not addressing some needless detail. But I can't say that I'm overjoyed it exists either. Anyone who has been following the life of the Doctor at all generally knows that the transition from one Doctor to another is typically a Big Deal and marked by some sort of epic event or sacrifice. But when you rank memorable regenerations, the Sixth Doctor's winds up being last by some degree (and that's a list that includes the Seventh Doctor's rather startling inability to realize he's about to walk into a hail of bullets) as the televised evidence suggests that he simply fell down and hit his head on the TARDIS console. Sadly, it's an example of real life BBC politics creeping into the show . . . after a rather tumultuous tenure that had the BBC ticked off at him for reasons that had little to do with him, Colin Baker had been fired from the show (though, given his reaction to the script each week was probably "Are they serious?" I can't imagine he felt too badly about it) and although given a chance to come back and film a proper regeneration scene, his answer was probably understandably filled with expletives. So be it. Thus Sylvester McCoy in a wig stood in and instead of seeing his epic last moments, we see why the TARDIS should have been fitted with those foam pieces they put on sharp corners so that babies don't crack their heads open.

The Virgin Missing Adventures didn't get show his final moments but gave us a decent explanation why he regenerated for such a lame reason, i.e. the Seventh Doctor, fearing that the Sixth Doctor might turn into the evil Valeyard, triggered his own regeneration to solve that problem, and because he had stuff to do and time was a-wastin'. It completely fit with the more manipulative personality and big-picture oriented Seventh Doctor, as well as gave him a complex darking shading and the Sixth Doctor slightly more of an edge in the process, albeit not a harder head.

Gary Russell, and presumably the BBC, either didn't like or forgot about that explanation and so decided to write him a proper regeneration story. I will say, it's not an awful idea to do a "final" Sixth Doctor story, if nothing else then to give some closure to the character so his tenure could be bookended properly. But either this isn't the story to do it or Russell isn't the writer to bring it about. The Doctor and Mel, through a process that seems to take quite a while, have come to realize that parallel universes are crossing over and that an entity outside of time has crept in and is trying to devour everything in sight, leaving it to our faithful Time Lord and his favorite red-headed friend, as well as the Doctors of a dozen other timelines, to try and fix things.

There's promise to quite a bit of this, actually. The concept of alternate universe Doctors isn't something we see too often (the most notable was the "Merlin" future Doctor of "Battlefield") and some of the ideas he comes up with (a world where the Roman Empire never fell, another where Silurians and people interbred) would have merited a more in-depth look on their own. In fact the whole concept of the Doctor sacrificing himself not just to save his timeline, but all his timelines for all time, is the sort of thing that regeneration stories are made for. With time altering itself and falling apart around him, he could make that last-ditch effort we knew he was capable of. But for the most part it involves the various Doctors crossing over with Mel and each other in some time-twistiness, while the actual villain bwah-ha-has all over the place and acts all villainy. But we'll get to that.

The prose hamstrings this book more than I thought possible. At first I thought it was just me but for the most part the prose is a blunt instrument making every passage far more tedious than it has to be. When it's not being tonally off and needlessly casual (what a fun romp saving time is! ha ha!), the dialogue between Mel and the Sixth Doctor veers from pompous to asinine, sometimes in the course of a single paragraph. Russell takes the worst aspects of each character (the Sixth Doctor's boorishness, Mel's inherent Melness) and supercharges them so that most of their conversations, especially early on before the plot kicks in, just grate. I understand he didn't have much to work with and Mel is probably second only to Adric in terms of people acting like a ball and chain on the plot. But other writers have made Mel work. It's possible, I've seen it happen. It can be done. But not here.

If the Doctor was given a foe worth sparring against, one formidable enough to make his regeneration a forgone conclusion, this certainly could have come off better. But the time monster is called a Lamprey and not only looks like one, looks like one in such a way that you can imagine the actor putting on the rubber costume or the hand puppet experiencing the magic of CSO. Given an unlimited budget of imagination and the opportunity to create something truly strange and dangerous, Russell instead gives us something that would fit in perfectly during the 80s era of the show. And that's not exactly a compliment. This is later compounded by Lampreys disguising themselves as people with the last name of Lamprey, so that the Doctor must interact with epic menaces named Monica and Bernard Lamprey. Whatever tension could be in the book is sucked right out as he tangles with a peril that should be beyond our understanding but cackles and struts just like any other grade C "Doctor Who" villain. One who needs to steal people from time so she can keep sucking time out of the universe. But why is she only stealing certain random human beings who serve no purpose to the plot except to be kidnapped and pad things out some more.

Once you realize that the whole point of the story is to get us to that opening scene of "Time and the Rani", it all seems very much by numbers. Given the chance to go out on a swaggering burst of righteous pomposity, we simply get a fight that leaves him weakened enough to regenerate. There's some pathos in the final scenes and I do wish that Colin Baker had been given a chance to act his heart out in them, but with the whole novel enslaved to its own needs, there seems to be no need to push things the extra kilometer and make it a truly memorable experience. Instead, he's done in by a time sucking spineless space beast named Monica, and still winds up face-planting on the TARDIS floor when it's over. If there's anything that better symbolizes the distance between the promise and the results of the Colin Baker era, then I haven't seen it yet.
(Spoilers ahead!) This was a great read, and a very fitting, heroic end to the Sixth Doctor's story. I for one would love to see this turned into a Big Finish audio adaptation, so Colin Baker would have the honor of sending Six out in style. If you're not satisfied with the idea of a Time Lord going out by banging his head on the TARDIS console, definitely give this book a try. You won't be disappointed!
This book not only gives us the story (finally, thanks to Mr. Russell) of how the Sixth Doctor regenerated into the Seventh, but crafts some nice "alternate" universe continuity into the Sixth Doctor's all too brief era. This encompasses the Sixth Doctor's television and audio adventures (via Big Finish, also highly recommended), and weaves a classic story dealing with of course, time travel, and also a truly "heroic" Sixth Doctor bow. The character of Mel (all three of her!) also gets proper treatment here, which is long overdue. Literary Who at its best!