- Paperback: 256 pages
- Publisher: Dr Who; Television tie-in edition edition (21 Nov 1996)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0426204883
- ISBN-13: 978-0426204886
- Product Dimensions: 18 x 10.9 x 2.3 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 780,407 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Plotters (Doctor Who Missing Adventures) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Synopsis
London, November 1605. The Tardis materializ es at a crucial moment in British history. While Ian and Bar bara set off for the Globe Theatre, Vicki accompanies the do ctor on a mysterious mission to the court of King James. '
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Having read most of the Virgin Missing Adventures novels that were published during the mid-late 90s, I have to say that this is easily one of my favourites. Writers attempting to capture the spirit of the (almost) original TARDIS crew - The First Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Vicky - often fail to pick out the contrary characteristics of William Hartnell's Time Lord, but Roberts has them down to a tee. Not only this but he has produced a cracking historical 'Who' that the likes of David Whittaker, Dennis Spooner and John Lucarotti would have been proud of.
Revolving around the events leading up to the infamous 1605 Gunpowder Plot, the descriptions of Jacobean life and in particular the randy King James' attempts to seduce Vicky (disguised as a boy named 'Victor') are both realistic (in the first case) and hilarious in the second.
Revolving around the events leading up to the infamous 1605 Gunpowder Plot, the descriptions of Jacobean life and in particular the randy King James' attempts to seduce Vicky (disguised as a boy named 'Victor') are both realistic (in the first case) and hilarious in the second.
Format:Paperback
"The Plotters" is probably best described as being the literary counterpart of "The Romans," in that it is fundamentally an old-school first Doctor historical, yet with a decidedly comedic twist. Disappointingly though, whereas "The Romans" entertained me far more than it irritated me, Gareth Roberts' novel leans more towards the latter.
Plotwise (if you'll pardon the pun... Though I suppose that if the author can do it ad infinitum in the text, I should cash in at least once), "The Plotters" is a straightforward "we'd better be careful not to alter history" sort of adventure. The Doctor and his companions arrive in the London of 1605 and soon find themselves caught up in the momentous events going on around them. Ian and Barbara get mixed up with Guy Fawkes and his gang of plotters, while the Doctor and Vicki infiltrate King James's court under the aegis of being pilgrims from York Minster.
Now whilst his plot may be formulaic in the extreme, Roberts does shake things up a little bit by putting the Doctor and his companions in situations that we would never have seen them in on television. Dressing Vicki up as a boy may be par for the course, having her chased round a castle by King who wants to sodomise her / him is pushing the envelope even farther than David Whitaker did with this subtext-laden "Crusade." But as much as this amuses, it just doesn't feel right in the middle of a William Hartnell historical. Dennis Spooner just about got away with it with Nero and Babs in "The Romans," but only just, and only when his words were buoyed by two priceless performances.
However, one area where "The Plotters" does excel is in its atmosphere. Bizarre "Benny Hill" skits aside, the author really nails the Season 2 feel. Although I don't always get on well with his novels, those that I've enjoyed the most have been those such as "The English Way of Death" where he evokes the spirit of the television series almost faultlessly. And here Roberts' first Doctor is every bit as evocative as his fourth - he even has Hartnell fluff his lines in print! Ian and Barbara are each recreated impeccably too, with the author even taking the time to sew the seeds of their future romance. It's a nice touch, I feel, especially given the propinquity of their mutual departure in "The Chase."
With a bit of bowdlerisation, "The Plotters" might have made a half decent four-parter back in the day. I certainly think that I'd have warmed to the story more were it a televised serial; dutifully forcing my way through almost three hundred pages of droll but dreary prose kind of took a lot of the fun out of it for me. And fun, at the end of the day, is supposedly what "The Plotters" is all about.
Originally published on "The History of the Doctor," 2006. Reproduced with kind permission.
Plotwise (if you'll pardon the pun... Though I suppose that if the author can do it ad infinitum in the text, I should cash in at least once), "The Plotters" is a straightforward "we'd better be careful not to alter history" sort of adventure. The Doctor and his companions arrive in the London of 1605 and soon find themselves caught up in the momentous events going on around them. Ian and Barbara get mixed up with Guy Fawkes and his gang of plotters, while the Doctor and Vicki infiltrate King James's court under the aegis of being pilgrims from York Minster.
Now whilst his plot may be formulaic in the extreme, Roberts does shake things up a little bit by putting the Doctor and his companions in situations that we would never have seen them in on television. Dressing Vicki up as a boy may be par for the course, having her chased round a castle by King who wants to sodomise her / him is pushing the envelope even farther than David Whitaker did with this subtext-laden "Crusade." But as much as this amuses, it just doesn't feel right in the middle of a William Hartnell historical. Dennis Spooner just about got away with it with Nero and Babs in "The Romans," but only just, and only when his words were buoyed by two priceless performances.
However, one area where "The Plotters" does excel is in its atmosphere. Bizarre "Benny Hill" skits aside, the author really nails the Season 2 feel. Although I don't always get on well with his novels, those that I've enjoyed the most have been those such as "The English Way of Death" where he evokes the spirit of the television series almost faultlessly. And here Roberts' first Doctor is every bit as evocative as his fourth - he even has Hartnell fluff his lines in print! Ian and Barbara are each recreated impeccably too, with the author even taking the time to sew the seeds of their future romance. It's a nice touch, I feel, especially given the propinquity of their mutual departure in "The Chase."
With a bit of bowdlerisation, "The Plotters" might have made a half decent four-parter back in the day. I certainly think that I'd have warmed to the story more were it a televised serial; dutifully forcing my way through almost three hundred pages of droll but dreary prose kind of took a lot of the fun out of it for me. And fun, at the end of the day, is supposedly what "The Plotters" is all about.
Originally published on "The History of the Doctor," 2006. Reproduced with kind permission.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
9 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
This could be straight out of the Hartnell Era
17 Nov 1999
Format:Paperback
This book is very well written. Gareth Roberts manages to capture the spirit of the early Hartnell era, with his Doctor being a cross between the crotchety scientist, and the dotty old grand-father. Most of the jokes in it are clean, and it's a really good, well written book
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
It'll take you back, in more ways than one
25 Sep 2006
Format:Paperback
Anyone who ever watched the original series knows that early on, the intent wasn't to bring space and time faring SF action to the viewers every week, but to educate kids who might be watching the show. Thus, the plan was to have the TARDIS visit different time periods every week and thus teach children about said time periods. This idea lasted all of two stories, as the Daleks showed up and proved to be so darn popular that the concept of historical tales every week went totally out the window. They weren't totally abandoned and were fairly prominent during the Hartnell era (the last "true" one was Troughton's second story, "The Highlanders"), taking the team to Marco Polo, the Aztecs, the Crusades, the Romans and so on. Thus, this novel attempts to bring those days back for three hundred pages by having Ian, Barbara and Vicki land in merry olde England just before a certain fifth of November. As was typical, they get separated and just as quickly, they get caught up in the events of the day. Roberts is fairly good at this type of thing and writes a witty, fast paced novel filled with a lot of sneaking around and people scheming against other people, keeping the plot tangled enough so that it's one step ahead of you but not so opaque that you have no idea who is who or what the heck is going on. He captures the local (both temporally and geographically) flavor well and while I'm sure it wasn't exhaustively researched (he basically admits as much in the forward) it's close enough to count for me and it's no worse than the original series was. The cast interacts with a variety of real and fictional personages of the time and everything is fairly true to the spirit of the series. Even the joke of King James thinking Vicki is a young boy and wanting to spend some extra . . . time with her is reasonably tastefully done and mostly played for laughs, even if the implications are a tad disturbing. I'm not as familiar with this crew so I don't know how well they're portrayed, Ian and Barbara strike me as true, although Barbara does overplay the "oh Ian you're so strong and heroic" card a bit too much, but then Ian's job was to be the resolute action hero type. I've never seen a single episode with Vicki in it, and she seems a bit useless here, mostly following someone else's lead or crying a lot but from what I've heard that was basically her role in the series as well, being so young and fragile and helpless everyone had to work double time to protect her. The Doctor is played well in Hartnell's fashion, the bumbling old man act, the transitions from irate and egotistical to a pleasant grandfatherly type, the way he could command any situation by sheer force of will, it's all here. Fans of the early seasons can't really go wrong here, as it's a well written and deftly plotted homage to that era, functioning as a story that would have fit quite well into that season, but at the same time not looking dated to our modern eyes.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Doctor Who meets 'Carry on Plotting', and it's very funny
26 Aug 1998
Format:Paperback
Hartnell stories always seem to bring out the best in writers; this snaps at the heels of 'Venusian Lullaby' for best of the 'Missing Adventures' range, but despite the setting, this is no doom-laden historical.
This is 'Carry on Plotting', a fabulously camp, innuendo-laden piece of nonsense with a surprisingly sound historical base.
Bizarre plot similarities to 'The Massacre of St Bartholemew's Eve' or 'The Crusade' aside, the book's only fault is that it finally gives the series' most uninspiring companion, Vicki, a 'cliffhanger' episode ending. No! Nobody cares!
Read it to find out more about Guy Fawkes. No, never mind that, just have a good laugh and a good plot. There's even an olde London-style James Bond villain's base!
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
