Wednesday 4 February 2009

DW: The Story of Martha

Wow, the BBC snuck out an anthology. During the year on Earth between The Sound of Drums and The Last of the Time Lords Martha walked the Earth, telling stories. This is The Story of Martha, and here are her stories.


The main story, by Dan Abnett, is about Martha coming to grips with having to walk the Earth, and being chased by some UCF people. It's a lot of smaller stories by itself, and (to me) seems a rather easy story to write as he's fitting in to what has already been established. And yet, he manages to make everything pear shaped at the end when in Japan... sigh... It's barely worth acknowledging.

The Weeping by David Roben is almost too simplistic, even for Doctor Who. They turn up, go to the tower, go back to the TARDIS... and that's it! This reminds me of a classic Who story, but I can't say which one without giving it all away, but it is quite obvious once you get there.

Breathing Space by Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis is even briefer than the previous one! The Doctor is boasting about solving it in half-an-hour, but that speaks more to the simplicity of the story than anything to actually be proud of.

The Frozen Wastes by Robert Shearman is... a decent story, but doesn't really go anywhere (figuratively or literally!). Not really sure what the point of it is...

Star-Crossed by Simon Jowett is... an interesting idea, but in this case it is crippled by being so short. I can see this being the most that could be developed more, and even turn up on TV (assuming they ever get away from Earth again...).

Overall... meh...


Order: The obvious place for the main story, not clear for the sub-stories.

[END]

3 comments:

Morgan Davie said...

this was the only one of the new DW books in which I was interested... and now I'm not.

although, go on, spoil Japan for me

Jamas Enright said...

For Japan, Rot13 the following text:
Wncna vf orvat eha ol nabgure frg bs nyvraf, pnyyrq gur Qenfg, jub ner qrsrngrq va guerr cntrf. Whfg qbrfa'g svg va ng nyy.

Morgan Davie said...

...huh.

Oh well.