Joe Kessler's Reviews > Doctor Who: Timewyrm - Apocalypse

This volume doesn't quite deserve its reputation as a series low point -- it's far better than Lungbarrow, for instance -- but it's an early indication of the limitations of the concept here. Classic Doctor Who wasn't exactly a consistently excellent TV show, and this novel turns in a solid rendition of one of its standard forgettable plots. The Doctor stumbles across an alien underclass being exploited by their mysterious masters -- stop me if you've heard this premise before!

The story's main fault is that it's just sort of dull throughout, but it ends somewhat strangely too, with some mysticism and the larger Timewyrm arc getting shoehorned in at the last minute. There's also an attempt to link these events with the Fourth Doctor serial Logopolis and a few cameo flashbacks to the Second Doctor's era, none of which makes much of an impression either. Still, the characterizations of Ace and the Seventh Doctor (impetuous and manipulative, respectively) are both pretty decent, and the whole thing isn't bad per se, merely unremarkable and not particularly apocalyptic. I give it two-and-a-half stars, rounded up.

[Content warning for gun violence, cannibalism, and gore.]

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