Post by 🐍 cahusserole 🐍 on Apr 1, 2014 23:31:29 GMT -5
Doctor: Eighth
Companion: none
Previous novel: Longest Day
I would like to share with you some all-caps reactions I had while reading this one.
OH GEE I WONDER WHO THAT COULD BE. IS HIS FIRST NAME “MA”?*
WHAT THE HELL THAT SOUNDS LIKE DELGADO THAT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN.
OH MY GOD IT IS DELGADO.
I believe this means that the Eighth has met more incarnations of the Master than any other Doctor. Eric Roberts in the TV movie, Geoffrey Beevers in The Light at the End, Alex Macqueen in Dark Eyes 2, and now Delgado here. The Seventh Doctor has met three—Ainley, Beevers, and Macqueen. Unless you want to count Goosnake!Master. No, wait. I'm wrong. They're tied, aren't they? Beevers is supposed to be—well, I'll get to that in a bit.
So yeah! Legacy of the Daleks. I had fun with this one. No Sam, a one-off character named Donna who I decided to imagine as Donna Noble the whole time, the Doctor's granddaughter Susan, her human husband David, and the Master. And the Doctor gets a kitty at the end of the book!
This book has definitively answered my question about "Did Big Finish read these as research?" That answer is NO. Susan's life is vastly different from the audios. Susan still looks like a teenager, while David has aged 30 years. This sort of works with Big Finish, as the Doctor spent 300 years chilling with some squid and didn't change in appearance. It's unclear how Susan's appearance has changed in An Earthly Child and the end of the Lucie Miller series; she sounds older, but I don't think they mention how she looks. It sort of works with the TV show, as Eleven only looked old after he spent ages and ages in Christmas. The big one is that Susan and David can't have children in the book, whereas in the BFAs, there's Alex, who is half Gallifreyan and half Terran (ostensibly, as he lacks a lot of Time Lordy aspects to his physiology). And there's another bit which will come later.
It doesn't really matter unless you're, like, trying to do something utterly ridiculous like reconcile everything into one handy timeline for your fanfiction. Or something.
So! The Doctor is looking for Sam and not getting anywhere with his search. He receives a telepathic message from Susan and stops back at Earth to help her and, why not, see if anyone there's got Sam, even though that seems ridiculously implausible considering she went off alone in a not-time-travel-capable spacecraft she didn't know how to pilot.
England has been divided into fiefdoms (another BFA made in their version of post-The Dalek Invasion of Earth Earth), and the lands of Lord Haldoran and Lord London are our settings. The aforementioned Donna is the daughter of Lord London and the ex-wife of Lord Haldoran. He divorced her because she was barren. Also he liked to torture her because it was required for us to think he was REALLY SUPER EVIL. There's a power struggle over, well, actual power supplies, and the Master has set it all up because he's bored and needs something to do while he charges up this Dalek matter transmuter/mega-weapon thingy.
This Master should assume that this Doctor would be directly post-Pertwee, going by their normal time rules, since it's the Doctor who fucked that up this time. That being said, why wouldn't he conclude that OH YEAH I SHOT HIM IN THE HEAD he caused the regeneration?
The Master's a bit weird in his characterization here. On one page, he laments the fact that the Doctor won't acknowledge his greatness and how he MUST have that before he destroys him, and then on the next page he's like, "Fuck it, I'll just shoot him, whatever." He gets one bullet into the Doctor, injuring but not killing him, and the rest of them go into David, making a heroic sacrifice for no apparent reason, since one would hope that over 30 years of marriage Susan has told him about regeneration. He dies without making much of an impact.
Anyway, the big thing about this novel is that it fills the gap in the Master's life between Frontier in Space and The Deadly Assassin. The Master, having captured Susan (not knowing who she is) and retrieved the matter transmuter, lands on Tersurus. Susan uses his TARDIS's telepathic circuits and attacks him, because her raw psychic ability is greater than his supremely power and carefully trained mind (well, we can fanwank it to say he didn't realize she was a Time Lord and therefore had his defenses down). She shoots him with his own Tissue Compression Eliminator while he's holding the transmuter, and...
So this also confirms that Pratt/Beevers IS Delgado, so I'm wrong about the number of Masters Eight has met. He and Seven are tied.
Susan steals the Master's TARDIS and runs away to her own adventures (obviously another change from BFA), now that she has nothing tying her to Earth after witnessing the death of her husband. And, as previously stated, the Doctor gets a kitten. Unfortunately he doesn't decide that the kitten will be his sole new companion, and continues his search for Sam.
* I was thinking "Maestro," obviously, but apparently "Estro" is Esperanto for master.
Companion: none
Previous novel: Longest Day
I would like to share with you some all-caps reactions I had while reading this one.
Page 7:
Estro leaned forward, gazing into the scientist’s eyes. His own had a curious effect on the man. He seemed to lose coherent thought.
Estro leaned forward, gazing into the scientist’s eyes. His own had a curious effect on the man. He seemed to lose coherent thought.
Page 92:
The Master stepped forward, and Donna saw him clearly for the first time. He was dressed almost entirely in black, some odd sort of jacket that fastened right to his neck. He wore gloves, a slightly greying beard, and a rather unpleasant smile.
The Master stepped forward, and Donna saw him clearly for the first time. He was dressed almost entirely in black, some odd sort of jacket that fastened right to his neck. He wore gloves, a slightly greying beard, and a rather unpleasant smile.
While the Master was occupied, the Doctor leaned forward to whisper quietly to Donna. “I seem to have done something naughty. My people usually have a law that we must meet each other in a linear progression along our relative time-streams. But I’ve slipped back in regards to the Master—I’ve met him in two and a half bodies since this one."
I believe this means that the Eighth has met more incarnations of the Master than any other Doctor. Eric Roberts in the TV movie, Geoffrey Beevers in The Light at the End, Alex Macqueen in Dark Eyes 2, and now Delgado here. The Seventh Doctor has met three—Ainley, Beevers, and Macqueen. Unless you want to count Goosnake!Master. No, wait. I'm wrong. They're tied, aren't they? Beevers is supposed to be—well, I'll get to that in a bit.
So yeah! Legacy of the Daleks. I had fun with this one. No Sam, a one-off character named Donna who I decided to imagine as Donna Noble the whole time, the Doctor's granddaughter Susan, her human husband David, and the Master. And the Doctor gets a kitty at the end of the book!
This book has definitively answered my question about "Did Big Finish read these as research?" That answer is NO. Susan's life is vastly different from the audios. Susan still looks like a teenager, while David has aged 30 years. This sort of works with Big Finish, as the Doctor spent 300 years chilling with some squid and didn't change in appearance. It's unclear how Susan's appearance has changed in An Earthly Child and the end of the Lucie Miller series; she sounds older, but I don't think they mention how she looks. It sort of works with the TV show, as Eleven only looked old after he spent ages and ages in Christmas. The big one is that Susan and David can't have children in the book, whereas in the BFAs, there's Alex, who is half Gallifreyan and half Terran (ostensibly, as he lacks a lot of Time Lordy aspects to his physiology). And there's another bit which will come later.
It doesn't really matter unless you're, like, trying to do something utterly ridiculous like reconcile everything into one handy timeline for your fanfiction. Or something.
So! The Doctor is looking for Sam and not getting anywhere with his search. He receives a telepathic message from Susan and stops back at Earth to help her and, why not, see if anyone there's got Sam, even though that seems ridiculously implausible considering she went off alone in a not-time-travel-capable spacecraft she didn't know how to pilot.
England has been divided into fiefdoms (another BFA made in their version of post-The Dalek Invasion of Earth Earth), and the lands of Lord Haldoran and Lord London are our settings. The aforementioned Donna is the daughter of Lord London and the ex-wife of Lord Haldoran. He divorced her because she was barren. Also he liked to torture her because it was required for us to think he was REALLY SUPER EVIL. There's a power struggle over, well, actual power supplies, and the Master has set it all up because he's bored and needs something to do while he charges up this Dalek matter transmuter/mega-weapon thingy.
The Doctor…and with a new face. He'd used up another of his lives, obviously. Probably through some foolish good deed or other.
The Master's a bit weird in his characterization here. On one page, he laments the fact that the Doctor won't acknowledge his greatness and how he MUST have that before he destroys him, and then on the next page he's like, "Fuck it, I'll just shoot him, whatever." He gets one bullet into the Doctor, injuring but not killing him, and the rest of them go into David, making a heroic sacrifice for no apparent reason, since one would hope that over 30 years of marriage Susan has told him about regeneration. He dies without making much of an impact.
Anyway, the big thing about this novel is that it fills the gap in the Master's life between Frontier in Space and The Deadly Assassin. The Master, having captured Susan (not knowing who she is) and retrieved the matter transmuter, lands on Tersurus. Susan uses his TARDIS's telepathic circuits and attacks him, because her raw psychic ability is greater than his supremely power and carefully trained mind (well, we can fanwank it to say he didn't realize she was a Time Lord and therefore had his defenses down). She shoots him with his own Tissue Compression Eliminator while he's holding the transmuter, and...
The energies of the TCE ravaged through the transmuter, and on into the Master's body. There was no respite for him now, no way to regenerate from such a death.
[...]
There was some sort of living creature there, but horrendously mutilated. The skin was burnt and blackened, parts of the skeleton exposed. The face was blistered and warped, the eyes large and studying him unblinkingly.
[...]
There was some sort of living creature there, but horrendously mutilated. The skin was burnt and blackened, parts of the skeleton exposed. The face was blistered and warped, the eyes large and studying him unblinkingly.
Susan steals the Master's TARDIS and runs away to her own adventures (obviously another change from BFA), now that she has nothing tying her to Earth after witnessing the death of her husband. And, as previously stated, the Doctor gets a kitten. Unfortunately he doesn't decide that the kitten will be his sole new companion, and continues his search for Sam.
* I was thinking "Maestro," obviously, but apparently "Estro" is Esperanto for master.
