Doctor Who: Escape Velocity (Mass Market Paperback)

From The Burning to Father Time, it has been fantastic to see a series of gripping novels, that have been well written, a joy to read and remembered fondly. Sadly, Escape Velocity does not do justice to its predecessing stories of The Doctor's century of helplessness.

The idea of having our favourite Time Lord stranded on Earth, given his near-immortality potential and WALKING through history for a change, was truly brilliant. I take my hat off to the person who thought of that one.

Escape Velocity however does not put the cherry on the cake, as I hoped.

Colin Brake's obsession with Brussels eclipses the actual storyline, the Kulan seem a rather flat, destructive race and their 'cop-out' end was not at all scintilating. Also the characters depicted were, agreeably, stereotypical of his script-writing background and the death tool was a little overused.

Is it me, or is the character of Control becoming boring now ?

The novel has its saving graces, I admit. The Doctor's final discovery of his true TARDIS is magical, along with his reunion with Fitz. The character of Anji Kapoor seems promising too and I must admit I have this image in my head of her looking like Nisha Batra from Brookside!

At least we know now that The Doctor is back on track, even if his memory is still not what it used to be and the end of the book leaves nostalgic thoughts with us all, I am sure.

Still, this is the book that puts things to rights, ends the earthbound arc and reunites Doctor and TARDIS. For that, I can't fault it too much. What's more, Anji Kapoor has been treated to the best introduction any companion has enjoyed in a long time, even though it sometimes seems like Brake is stopping just short of summing up her entire personality in a series of bulleted points. In many ways, this is Anji's book, and faced with a Doctor we no longer quite know, not to mention a Fitz with troubling memory problems, it's reassuring to be able to head into a new "season" of books secure in the knowledge that we're familiar with at least one character.

One last thing: does anyone proofread or edit at BBC Books anymore? The BBC DW line has long been a source of comical typos, but Escape Velocity is a treasure trove of comma splices, peppered with misused apostrophes for good notice. Scary. If you read this, Justin Richards, I'll be happy to do a spot of gratis proofreading if your resources are stretched a bit too thinly...

Oh, and new companion Anji Kapoor is already starting to annoy me. Hopefully the Doctor will lose her on a starship heading for a collision course with prehistoric Earth *real* soon.