Hidekisohma's Reviews > Doctor Who: Seeing I

I don't think it's a stretch to say that out of the 12 eighth doctor books i have read, this is the worst one. Alien Bodies may have been confusing, Longest day may have been depressing and sad, but Seeing I is depressing AND confusing. It's like a buy one get one free. Only instead of getting two boxes of cereal, you get rotten oranges that smell when you finally peel them.

The first glaring problem with this book is that it focuses WAY too much on Sam and her weird friends going through life and doing life things on a generic planet. I honestly don't care about her makeshift housing she made out in the desert. I don't CARE about who she's "Snogging" as the book would put it. If i wanted that, i'd read a romance novel where on the cover Fabio is kissing a middle aged housewife.

For a series called "Doctor Who" the doctor does a whole lotta nothing for about 150 pages. He does stuff in the beginning, and then he's in prison for 100+ pages not being able to get out for three years. This made me both laugh and question life as I read this. Really? The doctor. the guy who's beaten the Daleks dozens of times, the devastator of cyberman, champion of the ice warriors, gets stuck in a prison for THREE YEARS by a random ass company? Not the master, not a rival time lord, a random ass company. I really don't have words for that. It would have made MUCH more sense to have put him in a coma in a way he COULDN'T try to escape.

I feel like the people who wrote this novel don't understand how the doctor works and the fact that they said he was in a prison for THREE YEARS without being able to escape is insulting to every doctor who fan.

As this was written by two authors, and having read Vampire Science, I feel like there was a swap. Like one author wrote Vampire and the other helped, and then in this book, the second took the lead with the first helping. The tone and actions of the doctor were so contrary to normal, i hardly believe it's the same guy.

A lot of people give this book a good score because it's "A good character study of Sam" and it's "her development book". which honestly is crap. A GOOD author would be able to weave in character development without pulling the main character out the story and literally locking him away out of commission. As it is, her "Development" was negligible. She still has a crush on the doctor, she's still a crazy level environmentalist, and she's still traveling around with the doctor. The only "development" she has had was that the number next to the age on her ID went from 17 to 21. As one of the last lines of the book is Sam basically saying "i've grown up" proves how she hasn't. anyone who with a straight face says that "They're grown up now" is not grown up.
This time leap was done for a single purpose. To age up Sam slightly so that if the authors decided they ever wanted sam and the doctor to "snog" it wouldn't be creepy. and there's much better ways to age up a character then putting the doctor on ice for 3 years.

Sam's friends are annoying and forgettable. In fact, they're so forgettable that she only says goodbye to really one of them. They seem to not like the doctor, they question everything Sam wants to do, and about 2/3 of the way through the book, they kind of just disappear, never to be seen again. Good riddance actually. There's actually a character who's a terrible person for the whole climax of the story and yet she survives and Sam forgives her. and i was like "um. no. no. i don't WANT you to forgive her. I actually WANTED her to die." and if your message is wanting the audience to want her to forgive her, you did a terrible job.

I wracked my brain trying to think of things i liked about this book and I could only think of 2 things. I like the doctor trying to hack into the system in the beginning scenes, and i like the one part where the doctor gives Sam the teddy bear he'd been holding into for 3 years. that scene kind of touched my heart a little. After thinking for like 10 minutes, that's about really the only things i can say i liked about it. There was nothing else i enjoyed about this book.

The doctor NEVER seemed to be in control at all which is ENTIRELY out of character. Nearly every time (except in certain situations) i think "ah, well the doc has some trick up his sleeve" NOPE! not in this case. he didn't have ANY tricks and was useless for a large portion of it leaving it up to Sam to have to do nearly everything. I don't attribute this the doctor being bad, i just attribute this one off to poor writing.

The actual villains themselves are lame. they're not interesting, they're not scary, they're just kind of...there. the ending was more than a little confusing both grammatically and in practice. when you call your villain "I" that makes things a little confusing to read. Also their plan and their defeat left me with MANY questions. the first 200 pages, while not good at least made sense. pages 210-260 were a gloopy jumbled incoherent mess filled with nonsense and boredom.

All in all, i wish to give this book a 1.5 so badly, but i STILL can't give books 1/2 stars, and throughout this entire review, i still hadn't decided on giving it a 1 or a 2.

I don't like giving 1's. i really don't. if you look through my history, i rarely give them. to me, a bad book is a 2. A 2 is like, the book had SOME redeeming features, but it was bad, or a 2 is, i can see why OTHER people would like it but i just didn't. To me, a 1 is there are NO redeeming features. like the book was just terrible, no one should read it for any reason and it should burn in a fire.

When it all boils down to it when i can describe the entire plot as

"The doctor and sam spend 3 years apart and they reunite. the end."

and NOTHING else is missed. like literally if you didn't read this book and you JUST read that sentence and you missing NOTHING else, it just...it makes me realize it's not a 2. Imperial moon, for all its faults, still had a story. things HAPPENED. it wasn't 280 pages of NOTHING. I don't want to do this, but maybe, if people looking at reviews see this 1 and read my review and it stops ONE person from reading this book and wasting the $40 it costs now as it's OOP and harder to find, then it'll be worth it. I'm sorry i have to do this. i really am.

1.5 out of 5, rounded down to a 1.