Doctor Who and the Genesis of the Daleks (1976)

Cast your eyes back to a time when the Daleks were still scary! The notorious genocidal pepperpot monsters return to bring the Doctor more grief - and this time they have their madman of a creator in tow. Guns! Mutants! Climbing rockets! A Bohemian looking hero with a long scarf! Just add a few more pithy remarks and the usual wise-ass intro is finished. But have I the right... to review Genesis of the Daleks?

What can really be said about Genesis of the Daleks at this point? It often wins fan polls as the greatest Doctor Who television story of all-time (or at least ranks somewhere in the top five) and has been discussed ad nauseum over the decades as arguably the most important Dalek story since their introduction in the 1960's. Terry Nation's story is dark, exciting, and shocking even on repeat viewings. It's filmed like a high production action movie by David Maloney on an extremely limited BBC budget. And Tom Baker, still early in his long run as the Doctor, truly settles into the role and finds an extra layer of gravitas to add to his characterization. All things considered, Genesis is one of those lightning in a bottle moments in the show's history. So when it came time to do the novelization of this story, could any of the on-screen magic truly be captured by the written word or would it simply be a pale imitation?

Intercepted from a transmat beam at the end of his last adventure, a baffled Doctor emerges onto a fog-covered battlefield and meets with a shadowy emissary of the Time Lords who tasks the Doctor with a dangerous mission of utmost importance: travel back in time to a point in Skaro's past before the Daleks become a dominant force and either subvert their development or thwart their creation entirely. Upon accepting the mission, the Doctor finds his companions Harry Sullivan and Sarah Jane Smith have been sent along with him by the Time Lords. The three friends quickly become embroiled in the seemingly never-ending conflict between the Thals and the Kaleds - and also run afoul of the unfortunate 'Mutos' - the wasteland dwellers who are descended from the first wave of unfortunate souls mutated by chemical weapons at the outset of the war. However, nothing can prepare the Doctor for his first encounter with a scarred, wheelchair-bound Kaled scientist who has invented a seemingly indestructible living tank that will surely end the war with the Thals decisively...

For this read I went with the Pinnacle Books edition. In case you're unfamiliar, in the 1970's there was an attempt to bring the Doctor Who novelizations to an American audience shortly after the television show first started making appearances on various US based TV stations. Only ten novelizations were produced before Pinnacle canned the project, but the resulting books have nonetheless lived on as fun curios for Who enthusiasts and collectors. They are almost identical to the original Target Books novelizations, barring three things: one - new cover art and a new, unique Doctor Who logo that never appeared on any other merchandise throughout the show's history, two - a text introduction from science-fiction luminary Harlon Ellison in all of the books essentially introducing what might otherwise be an unfamiliar audience to the concept of Doctor Who and what the character entails (while also gleefully offending Star Wars and Star Trek fans like only a top-tier troll could), and three - various Americanizations of words or turns of phrase throughout the texts. The word 'trousers' becoming 'pants' is often cited as one such example, but the most infamous of these text alterations are the Doctor's bag of Jelly Babies becoming 'jelly beans' because American kids wouldn't know anything about Bassetts confectionary foods. It does kind of fascinate me to think that somewhere out there is a tiny subset of older American Doctor Who fans who's first exposure to the show was actually through these books.

Regardless of which version you're reading, Terrance Dicks is at the helm for this novelization, and his writing style is simply perfect for a fast-paced and action-oriented story like Genesis. In years past I used to eschew Terrance Dicks novels because I was a youthful snob who thought Dicks' writing was too basic and simple to offer anything of substance. Now older (but probably only slightly wiser), I understand why Terrance Dicks was so prolific in his day. Dare I say, Dicks is like the Elmore Leonard of science-fiction writers: he'll never use ten words in a sentence when only three or four will do. Brevity and pace are the cornerstones of his writing style. And that's what makes his novelization of Genesis of the Daleks a joy to read. You could easily blast through it in a long afternoon if you really wanted to. Even if you're like me and you've seen the television serial dozens of times and generally know what's going to happen, you may still find yourself rapidly turning pages to get to the climax.

Like many of the Who novelizations, there are some small deviations from the televised material: some longer fight scenes, some altered lines of dialogue, a brief glimpse at rejected Dalek designs, a scene between two of the supporting characters that was never filmed, and perhaps most tantalizingly, the incident which crippled Davros (a Thal nuclear strike) is given a brief mention here. Davros is arguably the main attraction of this book. Yes, he would later become something of a butt-monkey in the series (and apparently the current skinwalker version of the show that I refuse to acknowledge as legitimate won't even use him anymore because showing a villain in a wheelchair might upset a disabled person... or something? Excuse me while my eyes roll into the back of my skull...) but in his introductory adventure Davros is one mean, deranged, and obsessed son of a bitch. I particularly love the dialogue exchanges between Davros and the Doctor where their differences as both scientists and men are brought to the fore. And the Doctor inadvertently giving Davros knowledge of future events adds a brilliant wrinkle into an already well-layered story with unbelievably high stakes.

I haven't read all of the Target novelizations yet, but of the ones I've read so far, this one rates fairly high on the list. iIf you're only ever going to dip into a few of them, I would definitely recommend Genesis of the Daleks to be in that pile.

Star Trek: Here There Be Dragons (1993)

It's the basement dwelling nerd from the 1990's ultimate fantasy - Star Trek meets Dungeons & Dragons! Gather the party - Riker the swordsman, Troi the buxom wench, Data the whip-wielding rogue, and Picard the bard. (Look at me, I made a rhyme.) Prepare thyself for the crew of the Enterprise to get medieval on your ass!

I mostly know of John Peel from his work within the Doctor Who range. He famously wrote Timewyrm: Genesys, the first novel in the Virgin New Adventures series, and was tapped to pen novelizations for some of the early Terry Nation Dalek stories such as The Chase and The Power of the Daleks in the 90's. So venturing into Here There Be Dragons I was interested to see what Peel could do for another storied sci-fi franchise.

While on a routine cataloguing expedition of a nebula, the Enterprise encounters a pleasure vessel that bizarrely opens fire on the Federation ship before self destructing. An escape pod reveals the only survivor from the cruise ship to be a long-haired rogue who got stuck with the name Castor Nayfack - presumably when the name generator website his parents were looking at crashed. Mr. Nayfack claims to be an undercover Federation intelligence agent tracking a group of big game hunters poaching large reptilian creatures said to resemble dragons from ancient Earth's mythology on a remote class M planet located inside the nebula.  Nayfack informs Picard that the planet is populated by humans apparently scooped up from 13th Century Germany ahead of the Black Death and placed on this remote world by the Preservers. Unable to resist a mystery and an apparent visit into a version of Earth's past, Picard leads an away team onto the surface to the settlement known as Diesen. Picard's team is only in Diesen for mere minutes before Nayfack gives them the slip and Graebel - the local black market man posing as an honest wine merchant - has drugged them and is preparing to sell the team into the slave trade. However, it is quickly revealed that Picard suspected treachery from Nayfack's too good to be true storytelling all along, as a second away team led by Riker materializes and begins following the tracker covertly placed on Nayfack's person by Dr. Crusher...

So it's not quite a fantasy novel as may have been initially teased by the setup, but many of the trappings of generic fantasy are there, including evil rulers, grim castles, dank dungeons, and the aforementioned 'dragons'. The dragons are revealed to be less the flying and fire-breathing variety and more like giant-sized cousins of the Komodo dragon, but they turn out to be a deadly obstacle nonetheless. As we get deeper into the novel, we discover the game hunting angle is only one aspect of criminal enterprise carried out by the gang Nayfack belongs to. This gang of ne'er-do-wells is also running a scam in the art world too - selling off goods purported to be from medieval Europe as artifacts to otherwise clueless collectors across the galaxy. For some reason, both the plot and the medieval flavoring of Here There Be Dragons reminded me of certain episodes of Stargate SG-1 where the SG-1 team would inevitably meet a human society still stuck in the distant past on a planet that looks remarkably like the forests of British Columbia.

As in many episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, there is a B-plot included here as well. Perhaps realizing a clash with a gang of thieves to be a relatively low stakes affair, the author included a subplot about the gang's leader bombarding the Enterprise with gravity bombs that threaten to tear the ship apart, which the likes of Geordi, Worf, Dr. Crusher, and Barclay have to deal with.

Yes, this is apparently a rare Trek novel featuring both semi-regulars Lieutenant Barclay and Ensign Ro as part of the main cast of characters. For the most part, Barclay is portrayed as the goofy and anxiety ridden geek from this era of TNG, but Ro on the other hand... I'm thinking John Peel must've had a thing for Ro's actress Michelle Forbes, because not only is he keen to point out how attractive other characters think she is (Riker I can see, but Picard would not give a shit), but when Picard's team is taken in by the slavers, Ro is separated from the others and sent to the evil Duke's private chambers to be kept as a sex slave. No, seriously... Ro literally mulls over her potential future as a living "sex toy" at one point. Now, this is still in a mostly PG-era of Star Trek, so nothing too terribly explicit or raunchy is allowed to happen, but Peel makes sure the reader knows Ro is stripped naked and given nothing but a too-short and too-tight dress with no shoes or underwear to parade around in for most of the rest of the story. I guess if you're looking for some good Ro fan service gooning material this book will be right up your alley.

We also learn in this novel that it's not just Sherlock Holmes that Data has an obsession with, it's also Indiana Jones, as he manages to snag one of the slavers whips and does some android ass kicking with weapon in hand. The part in the aftermath of battle where Data begins to autistically pontificate about the history of 20th Century film and Indiana Jones in particular and Picard facepalms and rudely cuts him off to save himself from a migraine is probably the most on the nose example of Peel perfectly capturing these characters in prose form.

I had a good time with Here There Be Dragons and found Peel's fast paced, no nonsense prose to work in accord with the Star Trek formula. Not only would this have made for a good standalone episode of the TV series, but it's a story that could have conceivably worked within the show's budget and special effects capabilities at the time. (The dragons would probably have to be dodgy CGI, but that was to be expected on occasion.) I give this one a Captain's commendation and recommend it be enjoyed alongside a cup of Earl Grey. Hot.

Doctor Who: Instruments of Darkness (2001)

The Doctor, Mel, and Evelyn are up against an ESP wielding spy network, Amazonian assassins, sinister albinos, death cultists, and an elusive lunch schedule in one batshit crazy turn of the millennium sci-fi cum espionage romp. Grab your multicolored coat and pour yourself a glass of carrot juice, we're going Auton hunting!

There's no other way to say this: Gary Russell's Instruments of Darkness is a bloody train wreck. A whirlwind, highly readable in most places train wreck... but a train wreck nonetheless. Where to even start with this one? I believe this novel is certainly an endurance test for avid Whovian readers. One might be tempted, as I was, to put the book down before getting through the first few pages. The opening pages are dedicated to scenes of grisly murder and several attempted rapes, which is more the kind of edgelord milieu you expect to see in Doctor Who's Virgin New Adventures series. The Doctor (ostensibly our main character, no?) also does not appear until some 30 pages deep into the story. That's when I started to realize Gary Russell is indeed enough of a madman to basically try and re-create a Doctor Who season 22 story in novel format.

If you haven't watched for a while or you're a lapsed fan, season 22 is where script editor and ingratiating gobshite Eric Saward thought it would be a great idea to take the leading man Colin Baker out of the story for the first twenty-five minutes or so of almost every serial while turning the amount of nihilistic violence in the show up to eleven while the show's producer John Nathan-Turner was probably too busy sipping martinis to notice.

That divisive style is what Gary Russell chose to partly emulate here. But our fearless author doesn't stop with his delusions of being a mad scientist there, oh no. Instruments of Darkness is actually the third in a loose trilogy of Doctor Who novels, one of which is from a completely different book series from a completely different publisher with a completely different incarnation of the Doctor! Confused yet? To be fair, thanks to the 'wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey' nature of a series like this and some quick recapping of events, it's probably okay if you come into Instruments of Darkness without reading the prior novels.

And then there's the seemingly never-ending parade of side characters in this book who are introduced on a whim and then disappear into the ether for ten or so chapters only to make a sudden return later in the narrative when convenient to the plot. Meanwhile, the side characters that actually are given a fair amount of print and character development are abruptly killed off in random acts of cruel violence that are - again - not too far removed from the Saward stewardship of Doctor Who on television.

Gary Russell clearly wants to be writing an espionage-tinged 007 continuation novel here, so much so that in an eye-rolling, groan inducing passage we learn that the Doctor is great chums with author Ian Fleming and, naturally, he introduced Fleming to an ornithologist friend of his with a familiar namesake that would go on to inspire the spy novelist. I can only assume this is a nod to the Doctor influencing H.G. Wells in the serial Timelash, but my goodness, is it really necessary to be that cute? Does the Doctor have to be responsible for every cool thing in history?

DID I ALSO MENTION that Instruments of Darkness serves as a crossover with the Doctor Who audio adventures by providing us with the prose debut of a previously audio-only companion character?

Is anybody following this?!?

So you're probably thinking this whole book sounds like a complete disaster up to this point (and you'd be mostly right), but there's something about this wonderful mess that just... works. In addition to Bond, there's a heavy X-Files flavor about the proceedings as well, and this meshes well with the Sixth Doctor's more 'action man' style. But what really takes Instruments of Darkness to the next level - and what makes this a recommended read for Whovians - is the author's insertion of Evelyn Smythe into the proceedings. Amidst all the mayhem and spider's web of plot twists is a touching and oftentimes hilarious repartee between the Doctor, Evelyn, and Mel, the latter of which cottons on fairly quickly that there is a love affair always simmering beneath the surface between the Doctor and Evelyn. She is, in many ways, the perfect companion for the brash and arrogant Sixth Doctor, because her no bullshit schoolmarm demeanor is always capable of keeping this version of the Doctor in check and she appears to finally be an intellectual equal of the Doctor. The Doctor and Evelyn quarrel throughout most of this story like an old married couple and poor Mel is usually caught in the role of referee trying to separate them. Russell's handling of this is so infuriatingly charming you can't help but root for these two to somehow break the chains of forbidden love and retire to some groovy space bungalow on a distant planet. Alas...

Recommended...?

Doctor Who: Dragonfire (1989)

The Doctor and Mel arrive in the space trading colony known as Iceworld in search of adventure. There they discover the intergalactic rogue Sabalom Glitz, a dodgy stolen treasure map, and tales of a dragon's horde hidden deep in the ice caverns below. Oh, and a precocious teenager with a fondness for explosives named Ace. The only thing standing in their way is a banished ice vampire by the name of Kane who just so happens to also desire the treasure. You'll laugh. You'll cry. You'll have a face melting good time. It's Dragonfire!

My continuing journey with Target Books' novelizations of Doctor Who stories continues with Dragonfire by Ian Briggs. I'd heard good things about this one (namely the author expanding some sections that were cut from the screenplay he wrote) and it's a television story I find to be fairly decent, but ultimately this one was as by-the-numbers and run of the mill as you can get with the old Target collection. Competently written, but extremely workmanlike throughout most of the pages.

The story is sort-of The Maltese Falcon in a bunch of caves beneath a shopping mall in space. It's also the late 80's in the midst of Thatcherism when this was written, so I'm sure there's supposed to be some standard Britbong angst over the 'evils of capitalism' or some such doggerel worked into the background of Iceworld, but it never truly feels like a fully baked idea. For the most part, Dragonfire is standard Doctor Who running through corridors kind of stuff. There is quite a... not necessarily a plot hole, but a staggering logic gap when it concerns the villain Kane and his ongoing exile on Iceworld. He apparently has great power even in his banishment, yet chooses to become what is essentially the hermetical landlord of the trading post for what seems hundreds of years. And of all the probable competent types to land in Iceworld over the many years, Kane chooses the halfwit Sabalom Glitz to try and use as a patsy to get the coveted dragon's treasure for him. There's some strange plotting and character decisions going on here, as if the story was rushed out the door to meet a deadline.

Dragonfire is also notable for being the introduction of Ace, played by Sophie Aldred in the television series. The Seventh Doctor and Ace are probably my favorite pairing on-screen, so I have no complaints about the character appearing here for the first time. Her introduction is obviously an allusion to The Wizard of Oz with how she is a seemingly normal girl whisked away from her bedroom to a strange new world. Many stories and one hell of a character arc later, we discover the reason for the time storm that brings Ace to Iceworld in the first place and how her meeting with the Doctor was fated to happen. But that turn of events is thanks to then-script editor Andrew Cartmel. It's telling that the best part of this particular novel is the Doctor's farewell scene with Mel, which was dialogue originally written by Andrew Cartmel and not Ian Briggs. Its elegance stands out noticeably amid the standard dogsbody prose:

That's right, yes, you're going. Been gone for ages. Already gone, still here, just arrived, haven't even met you yet. It all depends on who you are and how you look at it. Strange business, time.

I will concede that the expanded areas of the story by Ian Briggs are at least somewhat interesting. The notorious cliffhanger at the end of part one where the Doctor is hanging by his umbrella from the edge of an ice chasm now at least makes a modicum of sense. And there's some brief but powerful character development for a couple of redshirts in Kane's crew. You'll also never feel so sad about a child losing a teddy bear as you will in this novel.

One original idea by Ian Briggs that was dropped from the television adaption because of sensitivity issues is the idea that Ace and Glitz had a relationship of some description before the Doctor and Mel arrive. I'm guessing it was axed because Ace is supposed to be a teenager and Glitz is a hairy forty-something dude. There's just a hint of the idea still in this novelization though, as Glitz "knows the way to Ace's room". Scandalous!

Ultimately, Dragonfire is not a terrible read, but it's certainly one for the top-tier superfans of Doctor Who only.

Star Trek: Bloodthirst (1987)

Captain's Log, supplemental. A distress call from the outpost Tanis has put on hold any chance of me bedding down another alien babe. Now, the only survivor of a hot lab catastrophe is loose aboard the Enterprise, and some of the crew think the man is a... blood sucking vampire of old Earth mythology. Naturally, Mr. Spock believes this theory to be most illogical. But some of our crew are now displaying signs of... vampirism. The only cure may be to record another half dozen Priceline commercials and hope for the best. Kirk out.

I usually have mixed feelings about Star Trek trying its hand at the horror genre. None of the horror-themed episodes from the original series right up until the Star Trek series concluded with Enterprise would make a 'best-of' list for me. I concede there's more than enough room for a horror element to be explored in the Trek universe, but the way the series would usually approach it always came across as a television show trying too hard to do something it's not normally equipped for. That, and the horror episodes usually became fairly one-note in a hurry. How many dreary 'nightmare' episodes of The Next Generation did we endure through anyway? The few times horror did work in Star Trek was usually more of the psychological variety and it very often involved Chief O'Brien being made to suffer in various sadistic ways in the dreaming world to further amplify the true horror of being married to series villain Keiko O'Brien in the real world. But I digress...

Bloodthirst is a Star Trek novel set in the original series timeline that takes that spooky Spirit of Halloween set from the episode "Catspaw" and turns it up a notch. It is, more or less, a version of Dracula in space. And the entire novel builds itself up to one shining moment when our erstwhile Russian navigator Pavel Chekov gets to say the word... "wampires". No, I'm not kidding. Yes, it's as awesome as you think it is.

The author of Bloodthirst wrote a number of Trek novels between the mid 80's into the early 2000's, including several of the film novelizations. J.M. Dillard is the Star Trek pen name of one Jeanne Kalogridis, who unsurprisingly went on to write a series of vampire novels in the 90's. Bloodthirst is clearly something of a love letter to Dracula and a plethora of other vampire related fiction, although the main antagonist is not a traditional vampire. Dillard cleverly spruces the story up with a sci-fi aspect, fashioning the villain's bloodthirsty state as the result of an illegally developed bioweapon from a backwater Federation outpost. There are other villains for Kirk and the crew to contend with besides the would-be Nosferatu, including a rogue admiral and an eleventh hour visit from the Romulans.

Because there's only so much that can be done with the series regulars, Dillard introduces several of her own original characters to the crew of the Enterprise. The original characters are mostly red shirts in the security team, but surprisingly none of them feel like throwaway characters. We have Stanger, a former lieutenant demoted down to the lowest ranks because of a rather foolish decision to take the blame for a crime he didn't commit. Tomson, the stern-faced viking woman who has become the ship's chief of security. Lamia, an Andorian ensign who is one of the few blue-skinned women in proximity to Kirk that hasn't boned with him yet. And Lisa Nguyen, the sensitive one who is wrestling with the idea of leaving the Federation for life on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. There's also a kooky admiral named Waverleigh who is apparently old friends with Kirk, drinks heavily, and talks to taxidermic animals. There's one exchange this character has with Kirk where the captain concludes the conversation by saying: "Admiral, you are weird." which had me rolling because it's such a bizarre line but I can also hear Shatner delivering that line with the usual ham.

Of the regulars, while Kirk and Spock have some moments, because the story doubles as a medical mystery, Bloodthirst is undoubtedly a McCoy episode. Good ol' Bones gets plenty of screen time in this novel while he struggles to understand the bio-engineered virus and plays human chess with the vampiric virus creator Dr. Fauci Adams. Nurse Chapel is also featured prominently in the story, but I won't spoil her role for anyone interested in tracking this novel down in the future.

I had some fun with this one. The writing keeps a fairly brisk pace and there were a few genuinely squeamish moments if you're really into the horror aspects, but the novel manages to course-correct back to traditional sci-fi as the climax draws closer. Recommended.

Aegeon: Science-Fiction Illustrated #9 (2024)

Brace your sphincters for a bevy of bodacious science-fiction, it's time for this crummy review blog that no one reads to venture forth into the world of weird fiction magazines!

I admit, I'm not the best at keeping up with genre fiction periodicals. Even the classic stuff that a fan of adventure, fantasy, horror, or sci-fi should indulge in, whether it's Amazing Stories or Weird Tales, always seemed to slip past my radar in favor of larger anthologies or compilations. However, in recent years we've had an uptick in independently published short fiction magazines celebrating various facets of pulp and genre fiction and I decided it was well past time for me to check some of them out considering the absolute state of mainstream publishing at the present. The first one I gravitated to was the science-fiction magazine Aegeon, mainly because I discovered the editor on X and found his observations on the hell of modern Western civilization to be right up my alley.

So Aegeon #9 is the most recent issue of the magazine as I write this review, and it's quite a breath of fresh air and a welcome respite from mainstream sci-fi. I think the badass 'synthwave Whitesnake music video' front cover probably grabbed my attention first, but the back cover blurb imploring the reader to "put down your soy fiction and your Harry Potterized time-travel stories" was probably what made the sale for me. But does this tome back up all the shit-talking?

Well, they're not all winners. There's a couple of pieces here that are part of ongoing serials, so if you're a dork like me jumping in at issue nine and trying to read them in medias res then you might struggle to understand everything that's going on. (But that's the fault of yours truly, not those stories.) There are one or two pieces that didn't quite grab me all the way - "Fernworld" by Bruce Pendragon for instance - has a plot involving a planet full of... well... ferns and a stranded space traveler. The main character's plight is identifiable by the reader from extremely early on in the story, so much so that I was waiting for an even bigger twist or something wildly unexpected to go down on this weird plant planet... but the twist never came, resulting in what I felt was a muted and flat ending.

However, I ended up enjoying the majority of the short stories featured in this issue of Aegeon. Some of my favorites include the trippy "Mara and Dizzy" by A.J. Bell, which... I'm not sure if it was intended as an anti-drug PSA, but the characters experiencing swift consequences of taking unknown street drugs and then suffering through wild hallucinations that involve living chess pieces in the aftermath sure could pass for an anti-drug PSA. Also, there's a cat in it. Cats are cool.

I also had a lot of fun with "Polybius" by Michael Gallo (who is also credited for a chunk of the interior artwork in this issue too - more on that in a moment). The story focuses on the rather creepy urban legend of the Polybius arcade machine and features an aging Italian pinball wizard and what may or may not be a former member of the 'men in black'. The author is clearly well-versed in arcade machine lore and also has some insight into the myths surrounding Polybius, which adds a nice air of authenticity to the piece. He also manages to convincingly work a Motörhead reference into the narrative, so how could I not give the author his laurels here?

For me, the star of the show is "The Duelists" by C.P. Webster. What starts out as something of a military adventure tale with a German pilot and an American pilot vying for domination of the skies quickly turns into something otherworldly and mysterious as the two pilots whose countries are at war with one another become makeshift allies after crash landing into what appears to be an alien world. It would be a crime to reveal the lovely twist of this story here, so I can go no further with any plot synopsis. But I also liked this story for its brief character studies. One of the characters is clearly more educated than the other and the reader is left wondering if this will pay dividends for him or be his undoing as the story progresses. C.P. Webster's fiction has also been featured in the likes of The Bizarchives and Lovecraftiana, and based on the strength of "The Duelists", I'm definitely going to be seeking out more of this author's works in the future.

Beyond all of the short fiction crammed into this bad boy, there's also a whole lot of black and white artwork to pore over, some non-fiction editorials about the way of the world right now, and a hilarious 'mail bag' section at the end. There's a couple of comics and even a pair of old-school mazes to solve if that's your thing, but neither of these things were really up my alley. Still, there's something for everyone in Aegeon if you're a sci-fi fan - made even sweeter by the fact that it's free of the taint of contemporary social politics. I will very likely be perusing for back issues of this magazine in the near future. Recommended.

Prisoner of Dreams (1989)

Jo-lac is a working woman plying her trade as a small-time cargo hauler on the fringes of space. She's got herself a ship, a badass and sometimes sassy AI as her navigator, and a literal friendly mutant to act as co-pilot, bodyguard, and occasional living sex toy. After getting screwed out of a job, Jo is forced to take the shittiest contract imaginable (and the bane of all video game players) - an escort mission. The live cargo arrives in the form of Lewis, a broken man who Jo soon discovers is a sinister military experiment gone awry. Now the powers-that-be want Lewis and anyone he's come in contact with dead, sending Jo and her crew permanently on the run. It's Steve McQueen in The Getaway... in space!

I always try to do at least some level of basic research into the books I review here, but unfortunately for Prisoner of Dreams I couldn't find too much information on author Karen Ripley. Beyond the generic blurb at the back of the book which tries to present the author as a kooky animal lover writing her first novel, all I could really gather is that Ripley was a pen name for Mary Urhausen, a Wisconsin-based writer who sadly passed away in 2018. Her writing career for Ballantine/Del Rey is also fairly brief, running from only 1989 until 1994 and producing five novels in the process. There's hardly any talk of her books in sci-fi forums online today and there were scant few contemporaneous reviews of her novels that I could dig up from the early 90's either. A true enigma we have here.

It's a shame that Karen Ripley isn't more of a known commodity for sci-fi readers, because Prisoner of Dreams is a decent freshman offering if you like your space travel adventures more on the grime and rust colored side. One could argue a novel like Prisoner of Dreams was doing the 'working class stiffs in a quasi-space western setting' long before hacks like Joss Whedon popularized it with stuff like Firefly. The author is also reverent to genre luminaries such as Robert Heinlein (to the point of naming an entire planet after him in her setting) and opts for a more Battletech approach to the far future where humanity conquers space... and finds out they're really all alone in this vast universe. There's a certain kind of existential dread channeled up by the no aliens thing that I always find interesting to explore. In short, there's more than a few things for genre fans to sink their teeth into here.

That said, there were certain moments in Prisoner of Dreams where I got the sense that Ripley was a bit of a leftie, albeit mercifully a milquetoast one with nothing more offensive than some generic 60's hippie politics. A couple of instances of cringe feminist rhetoric shows up, although these are tempered by doses of realism. For instance, in the author's version of the far future, there is a genuine equality between men and women when it comes to lines of work, but it was only brought about because large swathes of the best men died fighting in a series of cataclysmic wars. This novel was written in the late 80's in a time of relative cultural decency, so the reader is spared any hint of trans agenda like a lot of modern science-fiction from the big publishing houses want to ram down your throats nowadays. The author's world is also set in something of a dystopia, with nebulous civilian and military authorities running almost everything and a caste system where the genetically defected are sterilized at a young age to ensure the gene pool becomes strong again.

The main character initially starts out as a tough, salt-of-the-earth kind of tomboy who rails against the planetary authorities trying to stifle out most of her paychecks, but towards the latter half of the novel Jo loses much of her agency and becomes a bit of a wallflower in certain scenes as the inevitable love affair with Lewis begins to play out. However, I found myself accepting of this character arc simply because it was written as a somewhat believable take on the potential chaotic reactions in the human mind while someone is in the process of falling in love. Jo even reflects on her inability to make rational decisions because of how hard she has fallen for Lewis right up until the novel's denouement, when she has enough cognizance to break free of the romantic reverie for long enough to make a smart choice.

(Silly aside: I would like to point out that the used paperback copy of Prisoner of Dreams I was reading was clearly owned by a female reader before me, because the chapter where Jo and Lewis finally get it on was visibly dog-eared with a tiny little heart drawn in with colored biro at the start of the chapter. A favorite section to revisit for the previous reader, huh?)

However, I think my absolute favorite part of the novel is the author's super hi-tech gee whiz prediction for an absolutely groundbreaking piece of future technology only possible hundreds of years from now in the far reaches of outer space is... essentially a bluetooth headset. You see, Jo is also a music lover and in troubled times during space travel when there's little else to do but wait until the ship arrives at the spaceport, Jo likes to pop in one of these newfangled earpiece/computer chips and listen to music that nobody else around her can hear! Reading it now, it's so quaint how the author goes into obsessive detail describing what was only a fantasy in the era it was written and realizing you can now go to virtually any department store and buy at least a generic set of wireless earbuds for relatively cheap. I will say that I related to Jo somewhat in that she has a lot of disdain for current music, listens to a lot of the classics, and appears to be a metalhead. Based, if true.

Despite a few mild cringes and the hints of a Hallmark romance story, I had a good time with Prisoner of Dreams and feel as if it has been unfairly consigned to the dustbin of history. If you run across a copy at your local used bookstore, give it a shot.

Doctor Who: Warriors' Gate and Beyond (2023)

The Doctor, Romana, K-9, and Adric find themselves drawn into a transcendental void alongside the crew of a slave ship and their lion-esque time sensitive slaves. There are no roads in the void, but if there were, they would all invariably point towards the mysterious arch and the hall filled with cobweb coated mirrors inside. What mysteries lie within the eponymous Warriors' Gate and can they be exploited to get this misfit band of time and space castaways out of the void and back home? Hunker down, boys - it's a Tom Baker in the maroon coat episode!

Warriors' Gate ranks fairly high on my list of all-time great Doctor Who serials. For me, it's the highlight of a criminally underrated season of the show. Say what you will about John Nathan-Turner's run as producer and his obsession with the question mark motif, the Fourth Doctor's cosmetic changes, the departure of some of the regular cast members, and the sometimes uncomfortable on-screen friction between then-lovers Tom Baker and Lalla Ward, season 18 of Doctor Who with its overriding theme of entropy carrying through all the stories like a precursor to more contemporary plot arcs in television is really what set the show up to have darker, more mature, and I daresay more adherent to the science-fiction genre based stories throughout the rest of the 1980's. Warriors' Gate - with its weird and surreal edge, trippy visuals, and hints of black comedy sprinkled throughout - has won me over every time I've watched it.

So here we have the original screenwriter (and author of the original Target novelization) Stephen Gallagher doing an updated version of his own work on Warriors' Gate. The original text from the 1982 novel is purported to be 'expanded' (although I'd have to read them back to back to tell you if that claim is true or not), but this 2023 version becomes an anthology by including two linked short stories after the conclusion of the main story. More on those short stories in a moment.

Right away, fans of the show will notice a number of alterations from the televised version of this story. Apparently, the novelization is based in part upon earlier drafts of what would become the shooting scripts, so things that were changed or abandoned entirely when it came time to film are included here in the novel, including a completely different introduction to the slaver spaceship and how it ends up trapped in the void where the majority of the story takes place. The way in which Romana is written out of the story at the conclusion is also handled differently, first with a touch of foreshadowing, and then with a more drawn-out and emotional farewell scene. I personally prefer how it was handled on-screen, which opted for a quick Douglas Adams-style goodbye, the Doctor paraphrasing Shakespeare, and then end scene. Obviously, your mileage may vary here.

Warriors' Gate and Beyond also loses a lot of the wonderfully weird stuff in its adaptation to print. Despite his best efforts, Gallagher's descriptive language simply cannot capture the strangeness of how the void looks on-screen, nor does he come close to echoing the trippy proto-MTV music video visuals of the Tharils phasing in and out of time. We also sadly lose the slightly unsettling and bizarre black and white photograph backdrops of the world beyond the mirrors. Instead of trying to rival the show in terms of flavor then, Gallagher takes the novel in a different direction, focusing more on the petty class warfare that seems to be a constant for the crew aboard the Privateer slaver ship. He also spends a fair amount of time devoted to the insipid and sometimes impotent authoritarianism of the captain Rorvik. And without spoiling anything, the crew's rather ghastly fate at the end of the novel is a lot more disturbing than what was allowed on BBC television at the time. The author certainly had an axe to grind when it came to middle-management bureaucracy.

This all still makes for an intriguing science-fiction story, but it's one more grounded in our own reality than the otherworldly nature of the television adaption.

After the main story of Warriors' Gate wraps up, we have two short stories. "The Kairos Ring" sees Romana and her Tharil companion Lazlo riding the 'time winds' in much the same way the Doctor uses his TARDIS to catapult themselves backwards and forwards through time to different battlefield eras as they combat an alien parasite collecting soldiers of living dead to create an unstoppable army. In the process of battling this enemy, Romana and Lazlo put together their own little mostly scholarly fighting force comprised of refugees of time. A lot of readers seem to enjoy this story, but it feels a bit twee for my liking, and has all the breakneck pacing of the awful post 2005 NuWho series that I have come to despise.

Meanwhile, "The Little Book of Fate" sees the Eighth Doctor bump into Lazlo and a regenerated Romana hiding in plain sight as a troupe of carnival freaks at a traveling show. I'm going to sound like a major league nerd here, but while this story doesn't specifically contradict other stories, the implication that the Doctor and Romana haven't seen each other possibly since she left in Warriors' Gate does gently ignore the Virgin-era novel Blood Harvest where the Seventh Doctor collects Romana from E-Space. Either way, I found this story as equally unnecessary as the prior short with that same bad hint of NuWho ick in the vicinity with allusions to the Time War wankery. The last thing I want is any whiff of the new series polluting classic Who, so I would say both short stories are mediocre desserts after a satisfying main course.

Mostly recommended.

Atomic Beasts and Where to Kill Them - Barbarians of the Storm - Book II (2022)

Dan and Fenrik's whacky hijinks continue as the search for a frozen scientist takes them into dangerous waters. But wait! Frank, Merith, and Killer from the previous book want their own subplot, and by God they're gonna get it! But wait! Erzulyn and a suit of sentient armor get to go on their own cosmic adventure! But wait! We also follow the exploits of villainous characters like Xulgog and the Nekroking! But wait! There's a talking sword too? Shit, I need a wiki to keep up with all these characters...

Whereas the previous adventure was heavily focused on Dan and Fenrik's journey, the second book in the 'Barbarians of the Storm' series, Atomic Beasts and Where to Kill Them, turns into the equivalent of what happens when your D&D players want to split the party and you end up with a slew of different adventure threads. Sometimes this kind of balancing act of wildly disparate plot threads can turn into a cumbersome slog, but author and noted Floridaman Rob Rimes is especially efficient in keeping the pace swift and all of the varying conflicts interesting.

And I mean, really, who the fuck doesn't want to read a sequence where a foul-mouthed koala bear goes on a Rambo-style murder spree against a bunch of slimy goblins?

However, I was somewhat surprised to find myself most drawn towards Erzulyn's plot thread and the journey through space and time she undergoes. While the author doesn't go overboard with it like a yawn-inducing doorstopper fantasy novel from the traditional publishing space, there is a significant amount of world-building added to Atomic Beasts... that was perhaps not as prevalent in the initial entry in the series. What I appreciate is that all of the additions to the setting, be they land, sea, or indeed otherworldly terrain, all feel like a natural extension of what was previously established in book one.

My review of Dan the Destructor mentioned the author's present tense writing style briefly, but I want to give you a snippet of the evocative prose you're getting when you crack open these books:

Frank, torn leather jacket flapping in the wind, cautiously walks towards the cavern, sword on his back, survival knife on his leg, sidearm on his hip, and sawed-off shotgun in his hand. The ground starts to elevate but the drake's tracks are still visible, as they lead up into the shallow cavern's mouth.

I don't often encounter this style of prose in the pulps I read, but damn, once you settle in to this series you couldn't imagine it being written any other way. Atomic Beasts... often comes across like a movie script to the most badass 1980's sci-fi/fantasy cinematic endeavor that never was. I'm sure if it was an actual film series, it would be cheaply made by Italian producers, filmed in the Spanish desert, have a cast of questionably dubbed Yugoslavian actors alongside a couple of random Americans in exile like Reb Brown and Cameron Mitchell.... and it would be fucking awesome.

I think my biggest gripe from the previous book in the series still exists here to a slightly larger extent. Atomic Beasts... feels incredibly episodic, which, yes, this goofy reviewer realizes this is part of an ongoing series and would be the author's intention. But it does mean that this individual entry has less opportunity to stand on its own with its own unique contribution to the series. The conclusion comes across like the ending to a weekly television serial with a number of characters in perilous situations. All I was really missing was the "SAME BAT TIME, SAME BAT CHANNEL!" narration. Again, this is not a major knock on the book or anything, just a caveat. While the 'Barbarians of the Storm' series definitely has pulp roots, this isn't like a Conan or... I dunno... a Mack Bolan - where one can drop in and out or read books out of order with little consequence. You buy book one, you're in this for the long haul, boyo.

Recommended.

Tarnsman of Gor (1966)

Tarl Cabot is transported from planet Earth to a world known as Gor - a savage land where savage people do savage things and drop Savage Elbows from the top rope. (Okay, I made that last part up.) Turns out Tarl's old pappy is from this land of Gor and needs his sonny boy to steal a magic stone from a rival city to help depose a tyrant who refuses to give up the throne and scepter. But first - a training montage! The best way for a warrior worth his salt to get around Gor is on giant pterodactyl-like birds called 'Tarns' - and wouldn't you know it? Our boy Tarl is a natural Tarnsman! He's the Tarnsman of Gor! Sheesh.

There must be a lot of haters and losers who don't like John Norman (aka John Lange, noted philosophy professor). I'm a complete neophyte to his writings and the 'controversy' surrounding them, but as I understand it, Norman had more than a few run-ins with the feminist crowd of yesteryear who were positively clutching their pearls in outrage that his books featured sexy Boris Vallejo cover art and writing with hints of S&M, bondage, and the enslavement of some of the female characters. What's funny is my limited research into this subject turned up waaaay more female fans of the Gor books online than dudes, which tells us that females are just as enticed or curious about BDSM culture as men can be. How many copies did that damn Fifty Shades of Grey book sell anyway?

Anyway, because of all the hoopla, I curiously went into John Norman's Tarnsman of Gor expecting something kind of racy and controversial, but what I found was just a Burroughs-esque science-fantasy story that I greatly enjoyed. Now, I understand that perhaps it's really the later novels in the Gor series that might up the ante as far as the light erotica elements and the S&M philosophizing are concerned (again, I'm only going on the word of others here), but Tarnsman of Gor on its own merits is pretty damn tame by today's standards. Yeah, there's slavery present in the world of Gor, but there are men owned as slaves too. So I'm not sure where the narrative comes from that every female in Norman's world is a beaten and battered slave other than yesteryear's cancel pigs deliberately misrepresenting Norman's material. Interestingly, much of the aforementioned discourse I've seen online slamming Norman's writing comes from the white beardy male feminist types who haunt liberal arts college cafeterias across the land, which... yeah, that actually checks out. She's still not gonna sleep with you, bro.

But let's get off the tedious culture war nonsense and actually discuss some of the content here. Tarnsman of Gor is written in a journal style from the perspective of our main character Tarl Cabot. Our hero is swept away from a camping expedition in a snowy New England clime and dropped into a world that's referred to as a 'counter-earth' because it shares orbit around the sun with Earth but its position is preposterously opposite of the Earth, thus it's always eclipsed by the sun and never seen by us silly earthlings. But just when you think it's all space travel pablum, we get shields, spears, giant bird mounts, oversized insects talking to our hero, beautiful women to be rescued, vile assassins to battle against, sword fights galore... it's basically all the elements you'd get in a pulpy Conan continuation novel from decades ago. What's not to love if you're a fan of this genre?

I also found it interesting that the way Tarnsman of Gor wraps up leaves it as something that could be read as a standalone novel. There's obviously room left for a sequel, but the author concluded the events of this novel satisfactorily enough that one could drop in, sample the flavor, and get out before the crazy kink proselytizing (allegedly) begins.

Recommended.

Time Warriors No. 1 - Fuse Point (1991)

Black Jack Hogan - no, wait, I'm goddamn serious, that's the main character's name! Yes, Black Jack Hogan is an ass kicking troubleshooter carrying out secret ops for the United States of America. You know he's a true tough guy because his base of operations is a hidden monastery in the depths of Cambodia. Anyway, Hogan kinda-sorta may have possibly gotten himself killed on his last mission, except his soul wasn't... ready to depart but somehow got entwined with the soul of Brom, a barbarian warrior from another... who may have also kinda-sorta... not died... and... look... look... all you need to know is: badass modern day mercenary teams up with badass barbarian warrior to take on evil dictator from the real world and vicious warrior queen from the fantasy world. I'm so glad we could get through my usual pithy intro section without any confusion this time.

I believe it was the ever-awesome Paperback Warrior that initially put this novel on my radar. "The Time Warriors" is a sadly short-lived series by David North and published by the now-defunct Gold Eagle (they of Deathlands, Mack Bolan, et al fame) that chronicles the adventures of the aforementioned Black Jack Hogan and Brom. This novel, Fuse Point, introduces us to the concept of two warriors who can transport themselves through time and space in order to help one another in their own individual battles against the forces of evil. Readers are also acquainted with two dictatorial villains - the hilariously named Colonel Saddam (yes, we're in the early 90's, folks) and the evil Queen Raikana - both of whom have their own sinister plans to take over their respective worlds. Naturally, the only two dudes bad enough to rescue the President stop them are Hogan and Brom.

Something I found amusing here is North introduces the main character as 'John Hogan' at the outset of the novel and informs us that the 'Black Jack' is a nickname he earned during his brief boxing career, but the author seems to forget his original first name for the character about halfway through and refers to him as 'Jack Hogan' sometimes. Or maybe the first instance of 'John Hogan' is a typo or misprint. I don't know, man. I don't make the rules for these things. I just know that in my head as I'm reading this I'm going back and forth between Terry Bollea because of the character's name and Matt Hannon from Samurai Cop because of the silly-cool cover art whenever this character speaks and I kinda like it. There are several tongue-in-cheek references to wrestling peppered throughout the book, with the author describing Black Jack as having "wrestler's arms" at one point and even an impromptu wrestling match between Black Jack and one of Brom's brethren that Black Jack only survives by the skin of his teeth. David North might have been a Hulkamaniac, brother.

If you've read these kind of men's adventure novels before, you usually know you're getting workmanlike prose, and that's what we have in Fuse Point. You're not going to find anything particularly poetic here, but I will say the author is quite adept at handling the action scenes, be it the modern gunplay of Hogan's world or the Conan-esque sword and sandal stuff in Brom's world. The level of violence is definitely in the deeper end of the rated R section and there are naturally a few buxom wenches around for the Time Warrior twins to bed down occasionally. This is 1000% dude fiction and there's nothing wrong with that.

Overall, Fuse Point is a fun diversion and I'm genuinely looking forward to continuing the adventures of Black Jack and Brom in the near future. (Or maybe in the past?) Recommended.

Doctor Who: Dancing the Code (1995)

The Doctor and Jo, along with some of the UNIT regulars, a terrorist, and an annoying journalist (is there any other kind?) are drawn into the clutches of a civil war in a north African hellhole, but this is no ordinary war, kids! Instead of standard munitions, chemical warfare, or playing Nickelback records on full-blast until their enemy's ears bleed, one side has decided to utilize GIANT ALIEN BUGS long burrowed into the planet. Is this Doctor Who meets Starship Troopers, or is this a more Lovecraftian take on 'be careful what the hell you wake up from deep slumbers'? Only YOU can decide! Reverse the polarity!

Long before the wankery and wokery of the revived skinwalker series of Doctor Who starting in 2005, there were the "wilderness years" - the now-halcyon period of time after the series had gone into semi-permanent hiatus starting in 1989. From this quasi-cancellation sprung a number of creative outlets in which to give fans new Who adventures: comics, audio dramas, direct-to-VHS atrocities, PC games, and of course, original novels. The first several years of novels were published by Virgin Books, which gave us both 'The New Adventures', which starred the then-current seventh incarnation of the Doctor, and 'The Missing Adventures', which featured stories about past Doctors wedged into any convenient gap the author could find between television episodes.

As great as it was for a young fan such as myself to receive new content based on the series while it was off-the-air, one of the recurring bugbears of the Virgin era of Who novels was their insistence on cramming in edgelord content that seemed woefully out of step with the spirit of Doctor Who. There's been many a treatise on why this happened across all corners of Who fandom over the years, so I won't tread old ground in this individual review, suffice it to say when I was a kid entering that brooding age of adolescence I found some of the edgy Doctor Who novels to be wicked fun, but as a more mature adult with a deeper appreciation and understanding of the classic series I find the novels that take forays into the grimdark to be misguided at best, tedious at worst.

But this is already a very long introduction to get us to tonight's feature presentation: Dancing the Code by Paul Leonard, one from the Missing Adventures series featuring the Third Doctor and his assistant Jo Grant. It's a novel that I want to love because it has a genuinely interesting and different take on the usual alien invasion plots that were quite commonplace during the Third Doctor's reign. The story also gives us a vastly different setting in the north African desert than we could ever hope to see in the same heavily budgeted television series as it was in the early 1970's, in addition to action set pieces that I'm sure any fan of the Third Doctor would love to see. (The Doctor piloting a jet? Sign me up.) The author also provides characters from UNIT, such as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Captain Mike Yates, some actual soldiering to do instead of relegating them to third wheel butt-monkeys as is so often the case in later-era UNIT stories.

Unfortunately, Dancing the Code is dragged down by the aforementioned creep of edginess that blighted so much of Who's Virgin years. This novel is, in a word, gory. Not that I have a problem with the bloody or grotesque crossing over into science-fiction, but it was always handled delicately in Doctor Who, primarily because it was still considered a family show. There were frightening things shown on the screen from time to time, but there was always a line and the producers, directors, and designers of classic Who never crossed it. Dancing the Code on the other hand has bucketloads of random NPC's getting brutally murdered at every turn. Paul Leonard seems to gleefully flaunt the Virgin-era trope of attempting to shock the reader by introducing a completely superfluous character to us and giving the reader just a tiny bit of insight into their life before something suddenly jumps out at them and rips them apart a page or two later, complete with the hackneyed "the last thought through his head was..." line that never seems to hit home because we simply don't care about these characters. But then there's also really gnarly and joyless things like Jo having to watch a little girl in a desert camp die after a bombing because part of a bicycle lodged through her chest, or doomed characters essentially melting into stinking goo in front of others.

Again, there's a time and place for mature, boundary pushing, revolting R-rated stuff, but I don't believe Doctor Who is the proper venue for it at all.

There was definitely some good that came out of the Virgin Missing Adventures, but Dancing the Code is one you can safely skip.

Doctor Who: The TV Movie (2021)

The Doctor is tricked by his oldest enemy - the Master - to land the TARDIS in a Canadian city San Francisco, where he is gunned down by some hoods with shitty trigger discipline. After regenerating into the guy from Withnail and I, the Doctor recruits a pretty young lady (gee, who would have guessed?) and formulates a plan to stop the Master from destroying the world. Motorcycles and Y2K hysteria abound! Would you like a jelly baby?

Because I fell off Doctor Who fandom for several years once it started to become Doctor Woke, I had no idea Target Books were publishing reprints of old Doctor Who novelizations until I recently ran across some by happenstance at a local bookstore. I picked up a few because I'm a cheap whore for nostalgia, and the first one I tore into was Gary Russell's The TV Movie - which I later discovered is an altered, souped up version of the original 1996 novelization which had the even more creative title of The Novel of the Film.

I suppose a word about the Doctor Who TV movie is in order before I proceed with talking about the novelization any further. Well... it's certainly a thing that happened. My stance on Doctor Who is that the series ended definitively in 1989 and never really returned. The original novels and later the Big Finish audio dramas kept the spirit of the series alive in an expanded universe format, but what we received in 2005 may have been called Doctor Who, but it was now loud and hyper-active and tended to eschew science-fiction in favor of emotional wankery. (And I won't even comment on the war crimes committed once Chris Chibnall got his claws into the show.) In between the actual series of Doctor Who and the pretender series we had this strange one-off television movie with all kinds of Americanized compromises on a decades old British institution. Of course it was never going to work. Even with the rose-tinted glasses on, it's still a tough watch all these years later. But there are moments of greatness. Okay, maybe that's a stretch. There are moments of potential greatness. Okay, that could be a stretch too. Well... there are moments.

This reprint has a chance to improve upon some issues contained within both the TV movie itself and the original novelization. Yep, it wasn't just the tele-movie that was a clusterfuck. The book was based upon an earlier draft of the script, which meant by the time it was released to the public there were quite a few discrepancies between the pages of the book and the events on-screen. So with the 2021 version we have a lot of lines of dialogue cleaned up to be more in line with the film and some minor continuity errors corrected. We also get a little mini-adventure with the Seventh Doctor actually collecting the Master's ashes on Skaro and comically evading a Dalek sentry while doing so. However, I think the one change most fans will be happy that this retooled version of the novelization rectified is the biggest flub from the tele-movie - you know exactly what I'm talking about, it's the stupid "half-human" line - which is now re-framed as the Doctor telling a joke. A near-perfect fix.

I actually enjoyed this book. The prose is about what you'd expect from an author highly influenced by the breezy style of Terrance Dicks and while it's nothing to really sink your teeth into, sometimes you're just looking for one of those carefree reads. I still think the plot is pretty threadbare and Grace, the Doctor's de-facto companion for this adventure, ultimately foils the villain's scheme by messing with some wires instead of the Doctor doing something clever or heroic to save the planet, but these are failings of the original script this book is based upon. There's still some moments of gravitas to savor, such as the Doctor trying to return to reality after a particularly traumatic regeneration or the horror scenes of the paramedic Bruce becoming the Master and then coldly offing his loving wife. If there's one thing I did genuinely enjoy about the TV movie, it's Eric Roberts hamming it up as the Master, so I appreciated all of his theatrical dialogue in this novel.

Star Trek Deep Space Nine: The Siege (1993)

A serial killer is loose aboard DS9 and it's not just any serial killer, it's a shapeshifter. Can Odo put a stop to the murders before the station runs out of red shirts? And will Odo be able to find out about his people from the murderous shapeshifter? (Spoiler: this is a season one story, so no!) And in what would constitute the b-plots in a regular episode of Deep Space Nine, an alien evangelist and his family show up to annoy everyone around them, O'Brien tries to learn a magic trick to impress a toddler, and a spurned former business rival of Quark's shows up with a wild scheme to buy the entire space station from the Bajorans.

Despite being a fan of Star Trek since my youth, I have never read one of the novels related to the series until now. I'm not really sure what kept me away from the books, other than perhaps intimidation at the sheer number of them in existence. Seriously, just take a gander at the list of Trek novels on Wikipedia sometime. These damn things reproduce faster than a Tribble.

However, I recently came across a listing for a whole batch of Trek books on an auction site for a steal of a price, and the majority of them were Deep Space Nine books, which made the deal even more enticing for me. Deep Space Nine, if you didn't know, is proven to be the superior version of Star Trek appreciated by real manly men who are desired by all the womenfolk and frequently bench-press like Jesse Ventura getting prepped for a role in Predator. I don't make the rules, folks! Just letting you know how it is...

So anyway, The Siege by Peter David (not to be confused with the season two episode of DS9 of the same name). What a hell of a book to begin my journey with Star Trek in prose with. I didn't do much research, but from what little I did, I gather The Siege has something of a dubious reputation in some fandom circles. Some people with more delicate sensitivities hate it. Those people would be nerds. Me, an intellectual... well, I loved it.

Let's consider for a moment all the dark and dire things in The Siege:

-Quark has a holosuite sex program featuring Jax and Kira. Finally, a Trek writer acknowledges what the majority of us would end up using the holosuite for: porn.
-Bashir has a program created in said holosuite featuring a dying child. He then tricks the mother of said child into the holosuite so she can watch the child die in order to coerce and traumatize her into accepting Bashir's treatment for her actual child's terminal illness - a treatment that goes against her and her son's religious beliefs AND ultimately causes her to lose her faith in her god AND results in her getting divorced AND sees her and her son now exiled from her own people. Our Man Bashir delivering the highly ethical Hippocratic results as always!
-Oh, and there's the killer on the loose too. We read about a series of exceedingly brutal, gruesome, and graphic murders - one of which a small child and her sexual assault survivor mother are witnesses to. Just peachy.

And... most heinous of all...

-Keiko O'Brien *shudder*

And of course, there's Odo's insane shapeshifting power levels where he's doing Mr. Fantastic-esque feats of stretching and maneuvering, including some hilarious fight scenes with his shapeshifting rival towards the end of the novel. I suspect the author actually knew better, but he tries to make excuses for Odo's over the top feats in the preface by telling us the book was written at a time early in DS9's run when only five episodes had aired. I call bullshit, because armed with only those five episodes and the series bible, the author was able to nail the tone of all the other characters, especially The Sisko™, who is afforded several moments of badassery - both with a phaser trickshot and as the 'don't fuck with me' style diplomat in the face of two hostile ships bearing down on the station. No, I think the author just had a vision in his mind of Odo being able to have his hands turn into weapons like Robert Patrick in Terminator 2 or magically shapeshift wheels from his ankles so he could skate around the villain and he wasn't backing down from that goofy vision, series continuity be damned. And I am strangely okay with it.

It may sound like I'm complaining, but I only do it in good fun. The Siege is a solid, breezy read if you can get past the occasional haymaker towards continuity. If nothing else, it got me in the mood for more literary Trek.