"Doctor Who", World game (Doctor Who (BBC Paperback)) [Paperback]

Make no mistake: this is the official canonization of "Doctor Who" Season 6(B). The (B), in case you were wondering, stands for (B)een There, Done That. Hmm, this should be a nice, simple explanation, and then once I've explained all that, I can get on with reviewing "World Game".

This is one of those rare original "Doctor Who" novels that exists almost solely to satisfy a fandom theory about a TV episode from 20 years ago. See, it helps to remember that Terrance Dicks started working on "Doctor Who" in 1968, and Robert Holmes joined up shortly after that. That's your cast of characters. Now, in 1969, Dicks helped invent the Time Lords, the Doctor's own people; he co-wrote the seminal (and fabulous) episode "The War Games", in which the Doctor is captured by the Time Lords, put on trial for interference in the affairs of others, forced to change his appearance, and exiled to Earth. That was the closing story to Season 6. Or, as we know it now, Season 6(a).

All right, not done yet. Flash forward to to Season 22 and Robert Holmes' "The Two Doctors", where an older version of the Second Doctor is seen acting as an agent of the Time Lord. "Officially, I'm here quite unofficially!", he tells a bemused scientist. So that led to the fandom theory of Season 6(B), published in book form in a mid-1990s oddity called "The Discontinuity Guide" which sought to tie most of "Doctor Who" into a snarkily unified continuity. The theory was that the Second Doctor, at the end of "The War Games", didn't get exiled right away -- he was allowed to keep his own body for a bit longer and have another series of adventures as a Time Lord agent, presumably for the CIA (Celestial Intervention Agency), a sort of Time Lord, um, CIA, invented by Holmes back in the '70s.

OK, so that's the two-paragraph explanation. We'll add to that a Past Doctor Adventure called "Players", written by Dicks several years ago, in which the Second Doctor gets caught up in the life of Winston Churchill, also acting for the Time Lords while tangling with an odd bunch of celestial beings playing games with the course of human history, without the Doctor's own moral compass.

That sets up "World Game". As Dicks has shown a fondness for returning to his own creations again and again during the 15 years he's been writing DW novels, this book also features the return of the Vampires ("State of Decay", 1980; "The Eight Doctors", 1997) and the Raston Warrior Robot ("The Five Doctors", 1983; "The Eight Doctors") -- not doing anything original, but just to re-enact old scenes, ending exactly the way that you remember from the earlier stories.

The rest of "World Game" is an enjoyable romp, this time with the Second Doctor squaring off against the Players, and taking place during the Napoleonic Wars -- instead of Churchill, we get Napoleon, Talleyrand, Nelson and Wellington. Dicks loves his history, and he loves to write the Doctor talking about history, and that's most of the book.

Unusual for a recent Dicks book, there are some surprises that you wouldn't expect -- the late death of a major character comes as a surprise. Dicks writes in his usual direct style, with plenty of in-jokes and a lot of intrigue. The humor is broad and self-indulgent; coming in the year that the Russell T. Davies "Doctor Who" revival burned its way across TV screens, Dicks' writing style is perhaps far too much of a throwback to appeal to anything beyond the very limited reading audience for these books. Dicks isn't being so much an ambassador for "Who" as an old-time storyteller plowing on regardless of the audience. That said, Dicks does toss in a reference to -- a prop from -- the new series, so at least he is still keeping up.

Not recommended for beginners, but a nice throwback for those of us who still enjoy the old days. Less self indulgent than "The Eight Doctors" and the annoying "Warmonger", this may indeed be Dicks' best book since "Players".

Good 'ol Terrance Dicks. We've all read way too much of his Target stuff, but he's always a fun read. Continuity ladded, and as all his books are, he always managed to tie to either the War Games or State of Decay. In this case, the book follows directly after the War Games and then ties into the Two Doctors (happily tieing off any continuity glitches that the latter introduced).

So the idea is that the ending of the War Games was a forgery, the Doctor is actually sentanced to death, but due to the intervention of the Celestial Intervention Agency (CIA), the Doctor is given an assignment that they don't want to dirty their hands with. The Doctor is paired up with another Time Lord (Serina) and sent back to see who is muddling with Earth history. He first travels back to 1915 to make sure history is back on it's right course, it's not. Although we learn nothing of what he does to fix it. Dicks merly inserts a comment to please read Players to see what happens. Then it's off to revolutionary era France and adventures with Napoleon, the Duke of Wellington and Admiral Nelson. The "Players" are manipulating history just for fun. They try in turns to kill all of the above, with the Doctor and Serna twarting every attempt. In the end, it all gets wrapped up nicely and the Doctor is on his way again, this time with Jamie (with suitably altered memories) leading right into the Two Doctors.

Yeah, it's an awful lot of fanwank, but Dicks know and loves Doctor Who's rich

I can't quite recommend Terrance Dicks' Doctor Who novel World Game, but neither can I suggest avoiding the book. This is, after all, the long-awaited novel explaining Season 6B, so there's the natural fanwank element as a draw.

There are books that have intricate plots and uninspired writing, and books that have lazy plots and masterful writing. World Game is definitely in the former grouping. There's a great plot at work, but Terrance Dicks writes in such a dull, methodical manner that his prose sabotages at points the story he tells.

The Doctor sounds like Troughton most of the time. New companion Serena I pictured as being a bit like Cate Blanchett, though a decade younger. The Duke of Wellington, though, I don't picture as Stephen Fry. (When reading the Sharpe novels, I picture the Iron Duke as Fry, even though I know that in the Sharpe films David Troughton essayed the role.)

It's not quite a pure historical, but it's about as close as "The Marian Conspiracy" is.

There's a plot element, about two-thirds of the way through the book, that I didn't care for at all, because it's such a cheat when dealing with a time travelling protagonist. It's also something I just don't see the Doctor doing--jump forward in time far enough to see what happened, so he can go back in time and fix it. No, no, no! Yes, the Doctor does something similar in "Pyramids of Mars," but his reason there was to convince someone to help him by showing him the stakes. If that were the Doctor's purpose this time, fine, but instead it's portrayed as the Doctor just being lazy.

Overall, it's a goofy novel. It's not particularly serious, it's a bit episodic, and it's very readable, if a bit simply written. I'd call it average.