A review by art_cart_ron
Doctor Who: The Highlanders by Gerry Davis
4.0
A steady, interesting, tense read. Somehow, it manages to have a more dangerous tone than Doctor Who with a sci-fi basis. Everywhere you look, the threat of being shot, hanged, drowned, bayoneted, stabbed, or quartered. It's also refreshing to have a Doctor Who book with the English as the irrational heartless bloodthirsty monsters (seriously, a completely fair description for this and other periods of history). The images in my mind during this read were far more vivid than I imagine the film version was - but I will probably never know for sure, it being one of the many missing stories of the time.
Polly, for the second story in a row, is based on sexuality and attraction being a motivating factor. I can't entirely discredit this as invalid in the series - it's not like social norms are somehow exempt from historical depiction, but the *way* it tends to go with Polly is a little cringe-worthy, and something I don't look forward to my daughters to reading. In the end, it saved everyone's lives... so, urgh, even more complicated.
Happy to have Jamie's introduction settled. He'll have a lot of character growth to go through to become the staid second Doctor companion he's remembered as. I'm hoping that the inclusion is treated honestly, and that he and Ben end up fighting. That Ben groaning at the suggestion of Jamie's inclusion (based largely on his being a source of competition over Polly... yes, this is a soap opera at heart) was a good character moment.
It was also nice to have the strong suggestion that the second Doctor, Ben, and Polly did quite a bit of traveling between Power of the Daleks and Highlanders - - I'm not used to that treatment of time in the early stories. Maybe I'd overlooked it before. Maybe it was added by Gerry Davis. Whatever the case - Enjoyable read!
Polly, for the second story in a row, is based on sexuality and attraction being a motivating factor. I can't entirely discredit this as invalid in the series - it's not like social norms are somehow exempt from historical depiction, but the *way* it tends to go with Polly is a little cringe-worthy, and something I don't look forward to my daughters to reading. In the end, it saved everyone's lives... so, urgh, even more complicated.
Happy to have Jamie's introduction settled. He'll have a lot of character growth to go through to become the staid second Doctor companion he's remembered as. I'm hoping that the inclusion is treated honestly, and that he and Ben end up fighting. That Ben groaning at the suggestion of Jamie's inclusion (based largely on his being a source of competition over Polly... yes, this is a soap opera at heart) was a good character moment.
It was also nice to have the strong suggestion that the second Doctor, Ben, and Polly did quite a bit of traveling between Power of the Daleks and Highlanders - - I'm not used to that treatment of time in the early stories. Maybe I'd overlooked it before. Maybe it was added by Gerry Davis. Whatever the case - Enjoyable read!