Book Review: Made of Steel

Made of Steel is the second Doctor Who Quick Read (after I am a Dalek) but unlike that (and another Quick Read Hell Island), this one is even quicker, marking in at 99 pages!

It's obvious Uncle Terry is writing quickly and with severe amounts of padding, even with only 99 pages to fill. But anything more I'll say will be below, and readable only by highlighting the text.

There are two obvious influences on this book, namely Doomsday and the first episode of series three. The cover reveals there are Cybermen in this book, and this story is very much a sequel to that story, with lots of references to the Void and the Cybermen originally coming from an alternative dimension (so, there aren't any more Cybermen in this dimension then?). This story does follow up on a natural point of: what of the Cybermen made on Earth after they arrived? Presumedly, RTD intends the books and the television series to be compatible, but contradicting the events here would be one of the first things one would expect if RTD intends to bring the Cybermen back.

The other main influence is the first episode, and indeed I don't need to watch it now as Terry has given away all the main plot points anyway. Clearly, he has either seen it or read a copy of the script, so can get the main points across for his own story, but the lack of references to anything else makes me think he hasn't read anything else. Yeah, I knew this was a possibility when I got this book, but wanted to encounter Martha before her onscreen appearance.

Which brings us to new companion Martha, and her first public adventure outing. However, to be honest, we get more information about her from the promo picture on the photoshopped cover than Terry reveals inside. Oh, she has some mates at the hospital where the Doctor met her, and a family, but that's about it. No dropped hints about any medals she might have gotten at school, or revelations that her father was killed outside a church (although she did have a cousin that worked in Torchwood Tower when the Cybermen first arrived). We have a very basic picture of a companion, one that could have easily been searched&replaced with almost any other companion really.

Much like the Doctor. There are a few Tenth Doctor "isms", but for some reason the Second Doctor came to mind more readily. Just how quickly was this written? Did Terry just quickly adapt another story? Was there an outline to a story that RTD maybe supplied that Terry filled out? (But not all that much, this is a quick read.) And just how much padding with irrelevant conversation do we need to fill the page count out with?

I am a Dalek was a great example of packing a full-on story into a minimal page count. Terry shows us that in the hands of a talented author, I am a Dalek is indeed a great book.

Very much a Quick Read, but not really worth the effort.