1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
West Side Story in Space?, 4 May 2009
This review is from: Doctor Who: The Space Age (Paperback)
Steve Lyons' latest original BBC Doctor Who novel features The Eighth Doctor, Fitz and Compassion. One of the simpler and more accessible of the range, the story revolves around the displacement of two groups - mods and rockers - from 1960s England to a future city.
On the whole though, this is a distinctly pedestrian original Doctor Who novel. It starts off well with a decent premise but sags in the middle and becomes tedious by the end. The TARDIS crew doesn't really have all that much to do and the novel just didn't grip me in the same way as say `The Hollow Men', or `Mad Dogs and Englishmen'. I'm working my way through the series, but unless you are too then I recommend giving this a miss.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
marking time, 3 Aug 2006
This review is from: Doctor Who: The Space Age (Paperback)
A nice idea for a doctor who story - mods and rockers taken out of time and put into a strange future city - but there's not much more to it than that. The book quickly becomes a traditional who runaround story. The characters are not that appealing. The writer is good at crafting this kind of material, but this is one of his lesser efforts. It's not a bad book, it just won't stay long in the memory once you've finished it.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Space Age : Wonderful West Side Story in Doctor Who Style, 21 April 2003
This review is from: Doctor Who: The Space Age (Paperback)
At the first time, I was bit confused about what the back cover said and what I had read some few first chapters.. Just tell any would-be reader to ignore the back cover plot at the first. The major story can be surmarized into the British-Doctor Who Style "West Side Story".. I guess most of would-be readers may can predict the major plot.
However, the story itself is well written. I kept reading it to the end. Lyon created the excellent charcterizatsion of each non-regular characters of mods and rockers. The real West Side Story the movie has a real sad ending based on a Shakespean Tradgety. On the other hand, Lyon has created the story of two young lovers, Alec and Sandra as the West Side Story Lovers.. if they may have survived in the future and transported into the futuristic city which the Time-Alien, Maker had offered to them as a gift..
I do not want to disclose any storyline no more though... I believe that Lyon has represented his own psycho-social interplay of each mods and rockers.. The story is waven with their psycho-social interactions of two groups. Their 19-year war between them showed the major tradgic human drama when they kept maintaining their human aggressive patterns. I feel so sad that they have had some chances to evolve into the better. They brew them so big, and so humanly.
At the backgrond of the futuristic City, their so-human aggressive emotions and so-humane stupidity have caused ironically thier own distruction of the City which had taken a care of them very duitefully.
Three regular characters, Doctor, Fitz and Compassion, were wonderful ones. The Silent Presence of Compassion was really the impressive one through the novel.
If any reader wants to read this Lyon's West Side Story in the Doctor Who Style, I recommend this book as a great study of character social-cultural interplay and interplot of those who have failed for their better social evolution and choices.
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