DW: Wheel of Ice

For some reason BBC decided to allow a story for a previous Doctor to get released, and so we get The Wheel of Ice by Stephen Baxter, starring the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe.

Out around Saturn is a new mining colony, and they encounter strange Blue Dolls due to something buried in a moon... something that may be the reason for them to be at Saturn, and possibly for the human race to exist...

In many ways, this is standard fare. Human base, things attacking it, the Doctor getting mixed up in trying to solve some underlying mystery... and if you don't spot the connections, don't worry, because Stephen Baxter drops numerous references to previous adventures where they say 'this is like that time when...'. In some ways, you would expect people to remember what they have been through... but in other ways, it does seem gratuitous as it never really happened on the telly.

The worst aspect of this book is the main bad guy lady, Florian Hart. She is so two dimensional, she is one dimensional. The Doctor tries to give some lines to pretend she has more than one dimension, but she behaves in such a predictable heavy handed way, she's there to be the bad guy and give the book a protagonist  especially at the end, that there is nothing that can be done (certainly Stephen Baxter didn't try to) to save her character. And the whole sub plot with Jamie is entirely irrelevant and seems to be there just to give an excuse for action scenes.

Not a wonderful book, but not terrible either. But on the eh side of blah.

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