Paul Leonard (1) (1961–)

I'm enjoying this series more than I expected based on contemporary feedback. (It's fun that this series is old enough - 25 years - to carry a weight of history and be dated, sometimes, yet young enough that some contemporary reviews exist on the internet.) It's fascinating to track the changes taking place in fandom during that time and the attempts to broaden out the series, and especially the characters, now freed of the weight of decade-old figures.

Unsurprisingly, some fans at the time (a certain subset) didn't much appreciate this Doctor and certainly didn't appreciate his companion, Sam. I think in both cases they're wrong - or at least looking at the issue from a rather different perspective to me. Sylvester McCoy's Doctor is one of my favourites but it's refreshing to have this figure who is less sure of himself, more openly emotive, and almost on par with his companion in terms of their relationship. And the decision to tell much of the story from Sam's point-of-view prefigures what the television series would do a decade later; she's flawed, still figuring herself out, and not always able to trust the Doctor, and it makes this a jolly good read.

It's not a great book, to be clear. Like many of them it feels like an attempt to turn a TV script into a novel, although that's less overt than in some recent stories. And I'm not sure how I feel about a certain character's actions in the final act. But overall, a good addition to the drama.… (mais)

An Eighth Doctor and Sam story. Sam has gotten separated from the Doctor and is rescued by a miner who is part of the Dreamstone mining operation. She soon removes herself from the miners and becomes part of a protest movement which claims the company is causing irreparable damage to the ecosystem. Meanwhile, an artist who creates dreams with the stones has discovers that the stones form part of a sentience which the human miners are killing.
This story is obviously part of a serial and although it can stand alone it is annoying to read the parts which are related to the previous story.
re-read 10/18/2023… (mais)

This is part of the "trapped on Earth" story arc that began with The Ancestor Cell and The Burning, which I read over fifteen years ago; an amnesiac Doctor is left on Earth in 1890 to make a rendezvous with his companion Fitz in 2001, giving him and the TARDIS over a century to recuperate. This story details what the Doctor was up to during World War II, as he becomes involved in the activities of a group of aliens trapped in Nazi Germany.

I remember finding what I read of the post-Burning novels a mixed bag: while the novels did have the freedom to be more inventive and weird in the new post-Time Lord universe, it wasn't really clear to me what purpose the Doctor's amnesia was meant to serve. He seemed to always know how to do things anyway, and always remembered what was necessary for the plot. The Turing Test, however, makes great use of this premise, possibly the greatest of any EDA I've read. This Doctor is among humans, but knows he is not of them-- yet does not know who he actually is. So while a "normal" Doctor might thwart some aliens, this Doctor genuinely does not know what his "side" is. This approach is amplified by having the story narrated from the outside in the first person; the narrators here know less of the Doctor than we do, so we can read between the lines, but in some ways, we know as little as they do of this new Doctor. When telling the story from, say, a companion role, I think it's impossible to really render the Doctor as unknowable, but Leonard does an excellent job here of using his narrators to create distance and danger. Overall, this is an effective and gripping story of WWII intrigue and violence. I don't think it's the best Doctor Who novel but it is in the top tier.… (mais)