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John Chronakis's Reviews > Doctor Who: The Time Travellers
Doctor Who: The Time Travellers
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Yes, it explores the territory of time travel and causality, which is a subject which otherwise goes largely unmentioned in a series of adventures across time and space. Yes, it is very deftly pigeonholed before Susan's departure from the TARDIS crew, giving us some insight into the Doctor's decision. Yes, it offers some sorely-missing plausibility to the scenario of Daleks invade the Earth of their past. It even foreshadows some of the stories yet to come.
How does it manage to be such a tedious novel, then?
Normally I'm a sucker for science fiction stories relying heavily on time travel. I'm longing for a Doctor Who story along the lines of Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity. The medium is right there in all its pioneering, boxy blue glory. I'm having great expectations from this premise. In this case, I was disappointed.
The story takes place in a (relatively) future London, ravaged by a war that shouldn't exist. Ian and Barbara suffer the most from this setting, as the timeline is close enough to their own to make their hopes and memories come back to haunt them. And it features the military ineptly meddling with time travel, which horrifies our two resident Time Lords, the Doctor and Susan. All in all, the premise serves to elicit extreme responses from the TARDIS crew, which is one of the nice elements of the book. Ian and Barbara finally talk their feelings out somewhat; the Doctor explains the responsibility of minimizing the footprint that the TARDIS crew leaves on timelines; and Susan seesaws between juvenile wanderlust and no-nonsense scientific responsibility. Dialogue among the main characters is, I believe, the strongest point of ths book.
The quality of the rest of the scenes is more nebulous. Only a few of the secondary characters escape two-dimensionality and, even for them, it's difficult to care after their continuity is messed up among the multiple timelines. As has been already commented upon by more competent reviewers, the "good part" of the story starts about two thirds into the book. But it's a mostly self-contained mini-quest, in a mostly separate timeline in a parallel universe. It's difficult to care for the first portion of the story if even the author is keen to sweep that reality under the carpet and shunt the TARDIS along the multiverse.
All things considered, I think that it was a noble effort, held back by a disjoined story layout. But the Doctor Who premise easily invites this kind of adventures, so hopefully there will be more where that came from!
How does it manage to be such a tedious novel, then?
Normally I'm a sucker for science fiction stories relying heavily on time travel. I'm longing for a Doctor Who story along the lines of Isaac Asimov's The End of Eternity. The medium is right there in all its pioneering, boxy blue glory. I'm having great expectations from this premise. In this case, I was disappointed.
The story takes place in a (relatively) future London, ravaged by a war that shouldn't exist. Ian and Barbara suffer the most from this setting, as the timeline is close enough to their own to make their hopes and memories come back to haunt them. And it features the military ineptly meddling with time travel, which horrifies our two resident Time Lords, the Doctor and Susan. All in all, the premise serves to elicit extreme responses from the TARDIS crew, which is one of the nice elements of the book. Ian and Barbara finally talk their feelings out somewhat; the Doctor explains the responsibility of minimizing the footprint that the TARDIS crew leaves on timelines; and Susan seesaws between juvenile wanderlust and no-nonsense scientific responsibility. Dialogue among the main characters is, I believe, the strongest point of ths book.
The quality of the rest of the scenes is more nebulous. Only a few of the secondary characters escape two-dimensionality and, even for them, it's difficult to care after their continuity is messed up among the multiple timelines. As has been already commented upon by more competent reviewers, the "good part" of the story starts about two thirds into the book. But it's a mostly self-contained mini-quest, in a mostly separate timeline in a parallel universe. It's difficult to care for the first portion of the story if even the author is keen to sweep that reality under the carpet and shunt the TARDIS along the multiverse.
All things considered, I think that it was a noble effort, held back by a disjoined story layout. But the Doctor Who premise easily invites this kind of adventures, so hopefully there will be more where that came from!
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