At the time of writing this review, it is only a couple of months since the passing of David A. McIntee. He is an author for whom I have very mixed opinions. Some of his novels have been absolute favourites of the various Doctor Who ranges. Sanctuary, a pure historical Virgin New Adventure with Bernice and the 7th Doctor, is utterly brilliant and one of the highlights of the Virgin era. Face of the Enemy is a Past Doctor Adventure which doesn’t feature the Doctor but instead takes the Master as its central character and brings in Ian and Barbara in a wonderful evocation of the UNIT era, but with a twist. But The Wages of Sin was a pretty boring historical featuring Rasputin and I remember finding First Frontier, Lords of the Storm and The Dark Path as tricky to get through despite interesting concepts.

Sadly – and with the author’s recent passing making me feel awful for writing this – Mission: Impractical falls into the latter camp. Despite a synopsis which appealed hugely, it ended up as possibly my least favourite book by McIntee. It’s quite an achievement to write a novel that is quite this dull when it features the Sixth Doctor, Frobisher, Glitz and Dibber, Ogrons and a couple of McIntee’s own creations, the Tzun and the Veltrochni, all involved in a space heist, but boring it is. I kept hoping, with every chapter, that the story would pick up, that the characters would grab me, that things would happen to propel me forwards but it simply never happened. The entire book was an absolute slog.

The main problem with the book is the number of characters who are involved in the most basic of plots. There are so many characters I found myself constantly forgetting who was who, what their motivations were and who they were allied with. The Doctor and Frobisher end up roped into a plan to retrieve a Veltrochni relic and return it to the Veltrochni. So far so simple. The space Vegas setting is potentially interesting and if the story limited itself to the Doctor and Frobisher teaming up with Glitz and Dibber I think it would have been far more effective. But for some reason, McIntee decides it needs to go all Ocean’s 11 with a whole bunch of extra characters with various skillsets: ex-felons who add literally nothing to the story other than unnecessary confusion.

Okay, so that I could probably cope with if the antagonists were more limited. Ah… so there are two assassins after the Doctor and Frobisher – a Tzun and a Veltrochni for, reasons. They’re in the employ of someone – a mystery throughout the book which ends up being revealed as a guy called Zimmerman (which I’ve just found out via TARDIS wiki was apparently the Valeyard – I completely missed that!! Not a good sign). But there’s also a Veltrochni ship pootling around space with things happening to it and a corrupt cop manipulating events for his own ends. And a couple of other criminals involved in the various schemes such as drug running (vraxoin of course, because you can never have too many gratutious continuity references) AND the Ogrons are involved for some reason. Oh and then some mercenaries turn up including a Drahvin and a Taran android!

Because the plot is basically ‘get the relic and return it to the Veltrochni’, the sheer ridiculous number of characters and factions overcomplicates the book and makes for a confusing yet boring read.

I was hugely disappointed with this book. On the surface it looked like something I would thoroughly enjoy but it just never clicked. Worst of all, Glitz and Dibber are completely wasted. Because the focus is drawn by too many superfluous characters, nothing is done with either. And when Dibber dies, well that was the final straw. There’s no emotional impact because he had done so little during the story and it just seemed like a shock death for the sake of a shock death (and to answer the question no-one ever asked – why isn’t Dibber in Dragonfire).

I sorry to say this is possibly one of my least favourite Doctor Who books ever, simply for how much it disappointed me.