DW: Beautiful Chaos

I'm not sure why we are getting these cod-Missing Adventures, as opposed to just some Donna books, but this DoctorDonna story is framed by Wilf and Sylvia getting on with life afterwards. Still, the rest of the book is Beautiful Chaos by Gary Russell.

It's obvious by page 43 exactly who is behind it all (at least, obvious for any DW fan), so I'm going to reveal that the menace is… the Mandragora! This is intended as a sequel to Mask of (there is a reference to Mark of), but is mixed up with System Shock/Millennium Shock with the computer aspect. Plot-wise, there is a lot of build-up, although the climax is over amazingly quickly. Not that impressive, really.

But if there is one thing Gary does, it's characters. Lots and lots of characters. And this is no exception. For a long time we got another slew of characters almost every other page, and although most of them died off quickly, it was hard to know in this onslaught if each new batch were a group we were supposed to care about or not.

Donna is also well characterised, but more by going "Oi!" every other line than more substantial depictions. Similarly the Doctor is oft going "Aw." which gets rather annoying to read after a while. Some of their performances shouldn’t be captured on the page. Wilf is... better played by Bernard Cribbens than written about. And... there are other characters around, as well.

A decent book, but the ending is mixed as Gary wants a more intimate scene than 'I pushes some buttons and saves the world', but just undercuts the power of the bad guy. A sour note to end on.

Order: Technically after Journey's End, but the story proper is between Forest of the Dead and Turn Left.

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