Blue Box

An alien device has fallen to Earth and been split into several pieces, scattered across the planet and in the hands of collectors of the rare and unusual. To avoid a possible invasion, the Doctor has tracked down all but one piece, and it rests in the hands of an ambitious and clever woman known throughout the world of computer hackers as someone you just do not screw with; to cross her is to cut your own throat. A game of hide and seek through the phone lines and credit card history ensues as the Doctor, Peri and their friends try to outwit thier adversary and stop an invasion before it begins.

For anyone who was using the internet before it was even known as such, this book is going to be a heck of a flashback to dialling up and logging on, and old operating systems and protocols. I am not one of those people, but I saw Whiz Kids and War Games (the Matthew Broderick movie) and some people I knew in high school were using the Glitterboard BBS so I have a slight grasp of what this is all about. Kate Orman and Jon Blum, however, know all the ins and outs of this sort of deal (or they're HUGE geeks... and writing Doctor Who novels tends to support the latter) and they go to insane lengths to illustrate it. The big question I am left asking, though, is this: why? This is the Doctor we're talking about. He cheerfully disarms all the traps that Sarah Swan lays for him and anyone else attempting to attack her relam of cyberspace, and throws her into an enraged tailspin every time he does it. He's obviously better at this than she is, but for some reason he goes all covert ops this time around, dressing in a black suit and opreating independently from Peri for a while, leaving her to feel abandoned and start to question whether she wants to stay with him anymore.

Depiste not understanding all the technical side of the story I still found it to be remarkably tense, as if I were reading a murder mystery. I still kept wondering why the Doctor just didn't use the TARDIS more rather than have to cleverly circumvent internet security and cameras. The threat that the alien technology respresents is something that could ultimately harm the TARDIS systems, mind you, but it would be easier than the circus of renting cars and ditching them at airports and using a million credit cards along the way. I also found myself not liking Swan very much for her cold superiority. The other supporting characters all do well, and the bond between Bob Salmon (he apparantly met the Doctor in a previous incarnation - the fourth from what I can gather) gets a little under Peri's skin, especially given how she has been sidelined at the outset.

This is not the first book written by Orman and Blum, and like my thoughts on David A. McIntee I find their work either as a team or individually to be hit and miss with me; I feel at times that they don't always get the Doctor right, depending on the incarnation they are writing for. Orman started off writing for the seventh Doctor with The Left Handed Hummingbird and in subsequent novels I found some of his darker, shadier aspects materializing in the other Doctors; in this instance it's how the sixth Doctor turns Peri into an agent for his goals and sticks to the shadows for a bit. Not an entirely bad technique, but sometimes just not quite ... right.... for lack of a better word.

So before I plunge on with the next book, I'm going to go somewhere different; still in the Doctor Who universe but a part without the Doctor, but still a part where his presence can be felt.

NEXT EPISODE : I, DAVROS - INNOCENCE