The Eleventh Tiger
So it's China again for our time travellers, but in 1865. The TARDIS arrives in an old temple, but somehow everyone there already knows Ian and he is attacked and has the crap kicked out of him by an angry mob of locals. The Doctor is challenged to a deul by a young martial arts student, and an ancient otherworldy evil begins to seep into the Chinese countryside in an attempt to be reborn and invade the planet. Or something.
I didn't like this book. I've had this off-and-on like with David A.McIntee's work; sometimes he can be tremendously accurate on history and his stories just flow across the paper, and other times I wonder how I finished the book (as was the case with his first Doctor Who novel, White Darkness). For starters, rather than use the gap between The Web Planet and The Crusades, McIntee decided that this story would go best after The Romans despite that story's immediate lead into the events of the planet Vortis. Then comes the presence of Vicki; she's not used to any great length in the story, so maybe it should have been set before she was picked up on Dido and her presence removed entirely. The Doctor is protrayed well, although his karate-master skills are a bit of a laugh when he takes on the impetuous Jiang. And as for Ian and Barbara... who knew they were in love? I suppose it's something that we all should have seen coming (as we will in Face of the Enemy when they return as a married couple) but it's going to be a bit of a contrast going from this back to the TV series.
And then there's the actual enemy here. I didn't get a real sense of exactly who they were fighting. Some outer space guy in the body of a Chinese abbot, but with memories from the First Emperor of China. Wierd. I kept waiting for it to make sense, but either I was not concentrating or it was just tremendously vague when it came to the bad guy. There was a rather interesting climactic battle akin to something I saw in one of those Lara Croft movies (McIntee himself is a big video game freak by his own admission) but it did nothing to save the story, just added to the general confusion. And then they went back to the TARDIS it seems, and life returned to normal.
Bah.
NEXT EPISODE : THE CRUSADES
I didn't like this book. I've had this off-and-on like with David A.McIntee's work; sometimes he can be tremendously accurate on history and his stories just flow across the paper, and other times I wonder how I finished the book (as was the case with his first Doctor Who novel, White Darkness). For starters, rather than use the gap between The Web Planet and The Crusades, McIntee decided that this story would go best after The Romans despite that story's immediate lead into the events of the planet Vortis. Then comes the presence of Vicki; she's not used to any great length in the story, so maybe it should have been set before she was picked up on Dido and her presence removed entirely. The Doctor is protrayed well, although his karate-master skills are a bit of a laugh when he takes on the impetuous Jiang. And as for Ian and Barbara... who knew they were in love? I suppose it's something that we all should have seen coming (as we will in Face of the Enemy when they return as a married couple) but it's going to be a bit of a contrast going from this back to the TV series.
And then there's the actual enemy here. I didn't get a real sense of exactly who they were fighting. Some outer space guy in the body of a Chinese abbot, but with memories from the First Emperor of China. Wierd. I kept waiting for it to make sense, but either I was not concentrating or it was just tremendously vague when it came to the bad guy. There was a rather interesting climactic battle akin to something I saw in one of those Lara Croft movies (McIntee himself is a big video game freak by his own admission) but it did nothing to save the story, just added to the general confusion. And then they went back to the TARDIS it seems, and life returned to normal.
Bah.
NEXT EPISODE : THE CRUSADES
Labels: Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton, The 1st Doctor, Vicki
posted by Sean Hoover @ 1:27 PM
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