I don't know how closely novelizers have to hew to the story they're retelling, so maybe having lousy source material is part of the problem here but I really didn't enjoy this story or the way it was written. It's difficult to describe exactly what I didn't like; the writing simply didn't feel very interesting. There's a flow and a consistent humor to many of the other Doctor Who books I've read that is simply lacking here.

I actually picked up this novel because I had just finished Alien Bodies and wanted to get into the 8th Doctor more. I figured I'd start with the novelization of the tv movie because it had been such a long time since I'd seen it. I figured this would be a sort of refresher before starting in on the Eighth Doctor Adventures. As soon as I finished this book, I picked up Vampire Science, and the difference was night and day. I am much more gripped by the opening pages of VS than I was by anything in the novelization.

I think the tone is weird in the novelization. It doesn't really succeed at giving us the absurd, humorous but dark, vibe of the best Doctor Who. Sometimes it feels childish, sometimes it veers into the grim, seemingly on accident. When the goo that is the Master slithers down a human's throat to possess the body, we see it from the goo's perspective, and it describes the man "gagging and dying." That's really grim, but it's just cut into a story that otherwise feel childish. The characters don't feel very deep and therefore they feel a little stupid. Am I supposed to root for Chang Lee? For Grace Holloway? There's a way of telling this story where I do, I'm sure, but this wasn't it.

Toward the end, the action picks up a little and it gets a little better but that was really only worth half a star in my estimation.

Beginning of the best doctor

This Book is the best thing I've ever read

Unlike the movie you don't need to read it once a month