As a big fan of S21 of Classic Who the premise of this novel intrigued me. S21 has a much darker feel than the rest of Five's era. It puts the kindest and most vulnerable Doctor into increasingly dark situations where he finds being trying to be a good person more and more impossible. I think it's an approach that brings the most interesting stuff out of the character as well as the best performances from Davison and just in general across the show. From how people described this novel it seemed like it would adapt the same sort of "there should have been another way" attitude from that season and indeed it does (that line even gets used).

At the risk of the stating the obvious this book is *dark*. Just on pure tone probably one of the darkest DWU stories ever. Not one character who isn't a member of the TARDIS team makes it out of here alive, including characters who the book makes great pains to flesh out. This book is just really good at slowly building tension. It's mostly a small cast of characters in small, claustrophobic areas with that feeling of claustrophobia and tension being brilliantly and methodically built up throughout. But what takes this book up from just being a cool and creepy gothic horror story is the superb characterisation. With the side characters being killed off in order of importance it did make some feel quite disposable, but nevertheless this book had some great characters with the most notable examples being Stoker and Bunny (the death of the latter was heart wrenching, as a lot of time was dedicated to how much he just wanted to get back to his daughter). Tegan and Nyssa were also excellent, both getting active things to do in the story and acting exactly how I would expect their characters to under the circumstances. But my favourite thing about this book is how the Doctor is written. The wonderfully youthful and energetic energy Davison brought to the role comes across brilliantly here but he also has darker moments. Five is pushed to the absolute limit here and as such is forced into doing some less than ideal things. The dark is shown to be messing with his mind throughout the book but it's left ambiguous (I believe intentionally) how much the Doctor's actions are his mind being perverted vs the actions he takes in desperation. He manipulates and uses people to his advantage ala 7 but it never crosses over the boundary into outright cruelty. E.g the scene where he bribes Oldeman with Neurolectrin before revealing that he had already given it to him before he woke up. Five is still reassuring to people and you always get the sense of his actions being out of a want to help as many people as possible, even if that doesn't always mean doing the nicest things short term. That is something that the Fifth Doctor excels in and something that can be very difficult to write.

This book is not perfect however; the ending feels very rushed. The Dark has a haunting and powerful presence throughout and this is somewhat lost when it takes physical form at the end. While the way the image of a dark and twisted version of the Doctor is described is very haunting, it also serves to demystify The Dark and like it just gets defeated by being shot. The thing that caused so much misery and was so powerful is done away pretty easily when it takes physical form. Why did it even do that? Seemed much more powerful as just "ooh big scary shadows". While the story doesn't quite stick the landing though it is still excellent and one of the prime examples I would point to of how to write for the Fifth Doctor. I definitely recommend it to all but especially fans of Five. 9/10 / 4½ stars.

                                                                                                                                              Introduction

I'm unsure how controversial this review will be, but looking at the other reviews for this book, which range from 4-5 stars, this is likely to stand out as a less-than-positive take on the novel.

Fear of the Dark is by Trevor Baxendale. An author I really don't like as a person. And it doesn't help that I haven't really enjoyed any of his contributions to Doctor Who that I have previously read.

But I did have fairly high hopes for this book as it was the Fifth Doctor book chosen to be reprinted for BBC Books' 50th Anniversary Collection. I should have known I was going to be disappointed, as this was the same run of reprints that selected Only Human as one of the 'best' Ninth Doctor novels. (Another well-regarded book that I really didn't enjoy, also written by a disgusting person)

Tone and Monsters

I think the reason many people like this book is because it's 'dark', 'brutal', 'edgy', and 'terrifying'.

Now, I'm not averse to dark stories (Extremis is one of my absolute favourite episodes, and that's horrifyingly bleak), and this story is literally all about the Dark.

The Dark itself, a strange creature seemingly made of shadows, is a good enough concept, but I just felt like it was underused, and wasn't even very interesting.

The odd Bloodhunter creature provides a lot of the story's gore. And I really didn't like the gore.

I'm not against gruesome moments in Who but this novel just goes too far. As in, it just keeps trying to shock the reader, but each death is so similar that it just gets boring. It just felt a bit unnecessary.

Characters

Oh god.

The side characters in Fear of the Dark are awful. I couldn't stand them! But more on them later.

The TARDIS team of Five, Tegan, and Nyssa isn't one I'm overly familiar with, but I have had a good bit of experience with them, and I've liked what I've seen of them.

But in this book, I only liked one character. The Doctor was irritating, and Tegan was just there yelling. Nyssa was the sole reason I was reading this book, as she was the singular likeable character in a 288 page novel.

Of course, Baxendale doesn't want me to have nice things, so he decides to just relegate Nyssa to more of a plot device than an actual character.

And now we come to the side cast. They are probably the worst thing about this book for me.

We have Jyl Stoker, a character that I wanted to punch; Vega Jaal, who was actually kind of interesting, but killed off far too early; Bunny Cheung, someone who only exists to elicit some sadness in the reader; Lawrence and Cadwell, who are two different characters, but I kept getting confused as to who was who, so similar and unlikeable are these characters; and Ravus Oldeman, who is indeed an old man.

All of these side characters die. And not once did I care for them.

Prose and Dialogue

There was some nice prose in the book but it was overshadowed by some terrible dialogue, spoken by terrible characters.

Conclusion

As you have probably gathered, I hate this book.

I try my best to be positive about all things Doctor Who, but I'd be lying if I said I at least had an enjoyable time reading this novel.

Reading Fear of the Dark actually made me feel like I was in the novel; I was experiencing a disaster.

Hmmm. I’m not 100% sure what I think about this book. It was an interesting story but possibly not something I feel fits into the era it is written for (Season 20). Admittedly, the novels should be able to push the boundaries of what TV Who did, otherwise what would be the point, but this one was maybe just a bit too ‘dark’ for my taste.

It starts off very much like Earthshock with the Doctor, Nyssa and Tegan being caught up in what seems to be an archaeological dig. It soon transpires that there is more to it than that and soon the TARDIS crew find themselves terrorised by ‘the Dark’: a manifestation of evil from the dawn of time… I usually have issues with these all powerful dawn of time beings but the Dark is actually quite effective. It’s a more full on version of the Vashta Nerada and actually feels insidious and quite scary as the story progresses.

The archaeologists turn out to be miners, claiming rights to the moon they are on before the official authorities get their hands on a lucrative mineral find. With deaths occurring they are forced to send out a mayday which brings a ship to the moon, whose crew have designs of their own on the dark forces at work.

What then follows is a little too much toing and froing from a mysterious laboratory, a dark cavern and the ship. There is a spectacular crash involving the ship which involves scenes worthy of a blockbuster disaster movie, but ultimately it seems to take a very long time to build up to the inevitable confrontation with ‘the Dark’. When this finally occurs it is satisfying enough but it was such a long time coming that I found I had lost interest by then. Indeed, the last few chapters of the book were read over quite a few weeks simply because, of an evening I tended to decide to read other things rather than finish off the book.

The regulars are written well. Tegan is her usual spiky self and there is decent attempt to make her seem more believable by having her romance one of the miners a little and later be able to empathise with Stoker, the miner’s leader when her old flame (the ship’s captain) returns and is ultimately killed. Nyssa fairs a little less well with the author opting for the ‘Nyssa-possessed’ angle often taken with her character (both in the books and the audios). She becomes a little angsty in parts but she does show some bravado in various confrontations. The Doctor, too, becomes a little too angsty and low but, for the vulnerable Fifth Doctor, this is a believable extrapolation and although it could be argued it goes a little far (the Doctor almost seems to have given up all hope in the final couple of chapters).

The guest characters are all fairly stock – the build like brick s**t house but actually warm and cuddly one; the tough as nails woman leader; the no nonsense Captain; the shady and weasily looking second in command; the generic cockerney miners…no one makes a massive impact.

The locations of the story, though, failed to inspire me. Dark caves with the occasional visit to the spaceship are the only settings and my visual imagery was limited by this. As a consequence, my overall impression of the book was one of dreariness and depression – probably the point, but it didn’t make for a particularly uplifting read. Doctor Who, for me, is escapism, and stories which get too introspective or visit very ‘dark’ places (both literally and figuratively) entertain me less than the general output of Who fiction.

I don’t have much more to say about this as I don’t think I enjoyed it enough or hated it enough to find many things to say either positive or negative.

This book is absolutely phenomenal, and pushes the Fifth Doctor and his companions down to the absolute limit. It has a terrifying villain, and it keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. I've not read many Doctor Who books, but this is the best one I've read so far.

Five really gets put through the wringer in this one. This is, as the title implies, a dark one; gory, depressing, and filled with despair. There are some real gut-punch deaths here, and the TARDIS team are pushed to their absolute limits; the most unbelievable part of this book is that Tegan didn't quit on the spot. Highly recommended for anyone with a taste for suffering.