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Independence Day

OCTOBER 2000

I was really looking forward to this prior to release. We have Peter Darvill-Evans, spiritual father of the Virgin New Adventures and author of the marathon Deceit, together with the seventh Doctor and Ace, “some time” after the events of Survival, and presumably the Mike Tucker / Robert Perry BBC novels too. Virgin territory. A recipe for

a classic…

                  …or a recipe for disaster?

A bizarre tale of sex, slavery and twin planets, Independence Day ranks amongst the very worst of all the Doctor Who novels that I’ve read and, believe me, that’s a lot of novels. Even the purportedly fan-pleasing second Doctor sequence at the start of the book feels forced and pointless; just a flashy tag scene to lend a bit of weight to an otherwise uninspiring story.

What’s more, a two-hundred and eighty-five page novel divided into just six chapters was always going to suffer in terms of pace, but populated as it is with forgettable ciphers like Bep-Wor and Kedin, and with a plot so thin that it makes Meglos seem multifaceted and stimulating, Independence Day is an unqualified disappointment. Avoid.

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2006

E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This novel’s blurb offers little guidance as to its placement, beyond that it takes place after Survival. Authorial intent, however, places it between the New Adventures novels Nightshade and Love and War, at a point where the TARDIS was infected with Tir na n-Óg protoplasm.

We concur as Ace is portrayed as being much more mature than she was in the television series, but she is still not quite the “New Ace” of Deceit and onwards.

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