The past few months have been filled with stuff like real life and other issues, so yours truly (that would be Sean), hasn't been the most loyal blogger on the planet for the last few episodes. But never fear, dear readers, I'm here to update you on the last three months, plus a preview of what's coming later this month.
In December we read Simon Guerrier's BBC Past Doctor novel The Time Travellers, featuring the First Doctor, Susan, Barbara, and Ian. This was the penultimate BBC Past Doctor book (the final being Atom Bomb Blues, although I'm told it depends on whom you ask). From the back cover:
'Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension, to be exiles?'
24 June, 2006. The TARDIS has landed in London. Ian and Barbara are almost back home. But this isn't the city they knew. This London is a ruin, torn apart by war. A war that the British are losing.
With his friends mistaken for vagrants and sentenced to death, the Doctor is press-ganged into helping perfect a weapon that might just turn the tables in the war. The British Army has discovered time travel. And the consequences are already devastating.
What has happened to the world that Ian and Barbara once knew? How much of the experiment do the Doctor and Susan really understand?
And, despite all the Doctor has said to the contrary, is it actually possible to change history?
For the New Year, we turned our sights back to the Virgin Missing Adventures. January featured a discussion of The Ghosts of N-Space by Barry Letts, best known for being the series show runner during the Pertwee era. This selection (as the cover blatantly suggests) features the Third Doctor, Sarah Jane, and the Brigadier. From the back cover:
'When the barrier gives way this planet will be flooded by all the evil in N-Space. And, at the moment, I have no idea how to stop it.'
Sarah Jane Smith, on holiday with her chum Jeremy and a bad case of writer's block, is amazed to find the Brigadier in the same part of Italy. He is there to help a distant relative whose tiny island home has been threatened by American mobster Max Vilmio.
When the ghosts that haunt the island's crumbling castle are joined by less benign spectres, the Brigadier summons the Doctor -- who discovers that the whole of mankind is threatened by the plans of the ruthless Vilmio and his mysterious, hooded henchman.
Moving right along, in February we attended Gallifrey One in Los Angeles. According to tradition, we were joined by a third reviewer, namely Michele of The Doctor Who Podcast. The three of us huddled around a microphone in a quiet hotel room and reviewed White Darkness, the first novel by David A. McIntee. From the back cover:
'We believe that death should always be a part of life.'
The Doctor's last three visits to the scattered human colonies of the third millennium have not been entirely successful. And now that Ace has rejoined him and Bernice, life on board the TARDIS is getting pretty stressful. The Doctor yearns for a simpler time and place: Earth, the tropics, the early twentieth century.
The TARDIS lands in Haiti in the early years of the First World War. And the Doctor, Bernice and Ace land in a murderous plot involving voodoo, violent death, Zombies and German spies. And perhaps something else -- something far, far worse.
But what of the present? As of this writing, we are mere days away from March's release, Paul Magrs' The Scarlet Empress, a BBC Eighth Doctor Adventure that marks the first appearance of Iris Wildthyme. From the back cover:
Arriving on the almost impossibly ancient planet of Hyspero, a world where magic and danger walk hand in hand, the Doctor and Sam are caught up in a bizarre struggle for survival.
Hyspero has been ruled for thousands of years by the Scarlet Empresses, creatures of dangerous powers -- powers that a member of the Doctor's own race is keen to possess herself: the eccentric time traveller and philanderer known as Iris Wildthyme.
As the real reasons for Iris's obsession become clear, the Doctor and Sam must embark on a perilous journey across deserts, mountains, forests and oceans. Both friends and foes are found among spirits, djinns, alligator men and golden bears -- but in a land where the magical is possible, is anything really as it seems?
Grab a copy of our latest selection, mix yourself a gin and tonic, and sit back and relax!
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