The last 8th Doctor novel I read prior to this one was The Shadows of Avalon and I did not enjoy it. With a little trepidation, I approached the next in the sequence, The Fall of Yquatine, wondering how the revelation of Compassion’s transformation into a TARDIS would be developed.

Fortunately, Nick Walters doesn’t do too bad a job. The Fall of Yquatine is a pretty straightforward story. The Doctor, Fitz and Compassion arrive on a planet which is quickly subjected to a horrific attack from space which wipes out the entire world. The Doctor, Fitz and Compassion manage to escape but Fitz is thrown back in time to before the attack, Compassion is trapped in the vortex and the Doctor is with the survivors of the disaster trying to prevent the rest of the local star system falling victim to the same rain of death that fell on Yquatine.

Each character’s thread is well written. Fitz, in particular, gets a lot of good stuff as he struggles to survive knowing what is coming on the planet but unable to do anything to prevent or change it. Fitz being Fitz, he gets involved with a woman which, naturally, goes completely pear-shaped for him.

The Doctor is perfect 8th Doctor – desperately trying to find a peaceful solution to a horrific situation and battling against the petty rivalries and foibles of humans, humanoids, reptilians and spinning, floating crystals.

Compassion, never the easiest companion to like, takes a distinctly dark turn. The Doctor, keen to avoid the Time Lords tracking Compassion down, fits her with a black market randomiser. It causes her immense pain and she is thrown into the vortex. It takes her years to track down Fitz, and even then she attempts to kill him. Eventually reconciling with the Doctor and Fitz, Compassion is actually the solution to the tensions within the star system. However, this does see her use her chameleon circuit to impersonate various other characters. It’s a logical way of using a human TARDIS, but it does raise the question as to if this is a bit of a cop-out. Will this get over-used in future novels? I hope not. It also echoes a previous companion of the Doctor who could impersonate other humans….let’s hope Compassion doesn’t become another Kamelion (because hiding her away inside herself could cause some weird dimensional issues).

The guest characters are a clearly drawn and an interesting bunch – President Vargeld and his girlfriend Arielle in particular. I’m not completely sold on the reptilian Anthuark, the principal villains of the piece at first suspected of raining death on Yquatine until it is found to be an intelligent weapon gone haywire – the Omnethoth. The Anthuark are a bit cliched and reminded me of previous alien races such as the Chelonians, the Ice Warriors and numerous other reptilian humanoids. The Omnethoth – a black cloud of acid – is, ironically, more interesting. I’m a bit of a sucker for disaster movies and the destruction delivered on Yquatine by the Omnethoth is horrific. Unfortunately, it’s also a bit short. I know that sounds a bit morbid, but the scenes of destruction are often my favourite bit of a disaster movie. The Fall of Yquatine is a disaster movie filtered through Doctor Who, but the actual disaster bit is over and done with very quickly, pretty early on in the novel, and the rest spends possibly a bit too long getting to the resolution.

If anything, The Fall of Yquatine is possible a bit too straightforward. Despite Fitz’s throwback in time it is still quite a linear story. There aren’t a huge number of surprises in the plot but it was a pleasant read, even if, at times, it started to feel a little like it was treading water. It changes locations enough to keep it interesting, though, and the characters are engaging enough to make you care. The three regulars are well depicted and all in all, this is a solid novel and certainly one of Walters’ strongest efforts.

This is... a book. That I read, I'm pretty sure. I can't tell you much more, though. This book is just a huge coincidence after another moving a boring plot along somehow, with bad side characters, and weak characterization for the Doctor and Fitz.

The Doctor decides they need to fit Compassion with a randomizer to help them give the Time Lords the slip. Compassion says she doesn't want to. He thinks it's for her own good, and gets one anyway. Instead of doing the normal thing and trying to convince her, he just plugs the thing in her, and it all goes to sh*t. It hurts her a lot, and it won't come out, and she is, of course, absolutely furious at the Doctor. He tries to use his big puppy eyes and apologize, and he is genuine, but goddammit what possessed him to do it in the first place? Then the planet they're in is attacked, the Doctor escapes to an orbiting station and Compassion takes Fitz and goes back in time a month, and dumps him there.

I miss Fitz. Remember Fitz? Last time he was really done well was in 'Frontier Worlds'. He was fine in 'Parallel 59', pretty much invisible in 'Shadows of Avalon', and here there's this guy saying he's Fitz, but I'm no buying it. He's more sad here than pathetic and silly, and that's not right vibe. Fine, I'm being dramatic, he's okay. But not nearly as funny and entertaining as I know he can be. Meets the most beautiful woman on the planet, falls for her, then spends a month in jail (congrats on your first imprisonment, Fitz!) waiting for apocalypse day. It's implied it's an open causal loop flavored time travel mechanic we're using this time around: Fitz tries to avoid a paradox, but in the end he and Compassion are responsible for getting Arielle infected, and for activating that machine thing she built. But then again, it is also said multiple times that had it not been Arielle, it would have been someone else. So maybe they did change something. So this whole planet being wiped out was either our TARDIS dream team's fault, or it was random. It being random would make more sense for the 'the universal process is indifferent to the individual', 'there's no predestination' theme, I think. Anyway.

Let's talk about Arielle, the most beautiful woman in the Galaxy or whatever (in my mind she was played by Gisele Bundchen). The whole backstory about her good looks goes nowhere, by the way. I think it's just there so the author can say how effortless and unassuming she is, and how that makes her ever prettier or some other nonsense. The interesting bit is that she's running away from her horrible boyfriend who happens to be the President. She then happens to run into Fitz, who happens to have found a truly miraculous job as bartender. Fitz sees hot lady and becomes almost instantly enthralled. He says he isn't, and I don't know why he's lying; he spares one thought for Filippa ('Parallel 59'), but that's it. He's known Arielle for a day is once again considering leaving the Doctor to stay with her. This is getting old already. I don't mind him fancying people, I like that, actually. But can we drop this 'oooh is he going to stay behind this time with the lady?'. At least space these instances more than 2 books apart. Poor Arielle gets possessed and dies horribly so President Vargeld and Fitz can be sad about it.

Vargeld (by the way he's described as looking like the Doctor, I guess Nick Walters is casting one of the McGann brothers to play him) is a dick. From his POV, he's a great boyfriend that made only one small mistake: hitting Arielle when she said she didn't want to marry him. That's a huge mistake, btw, Vargeld. From what Arielle tells Fitz, however, he was dismissive, jealous and patronizing all the time, and was in love with her looks, not with her. His 'boohoo I can't live without her' shtick, therefore, is grating and made me detest him probably more than the author intended.

The Doctor is way too patient with Vargeld, and with the whole senate for that matter. After his big decision in the last book to keep interfering and doing what he does best, he was almost passive here. Offers his advice, but doesn't push it, which was mind boggling since he had a very simple solution to the Omnethoth (ridiculous name) that he could have implemented if he'd just broken into a room or two. I love you, Doc, but this was the time to be sneaky and fix things, not make grand speeches to people who are way too hurt and way too close to an all-out war for a few pretty words to have an effect. By the way, was it just me who thought maybe this 'Omnethoth' was a Time Lord weapon? I'm basing this on the Doctor being able to 'reprogram its DNA' super easily, and how he says '[the Omnethoth], ahem, thought I was a master'. Why the 'ahem'? Probably completely irrelevant anyway.

Compassion's attempts to master the randomiser are interesting. She's besides herself with fury at the thing, nearly murders Fitz, really does murder a guy she thought could get it off her. We don't spend much time with her, but we see that, in contrast to Fitz, who decides not to try to interfere lest he causes the destruction of Yquatine, Compassion is all for changing things. Her little appearance in the Anthaurk world, however, was just kind of silly. She stands up and goes 'how about no war!'. Nice that she's using the chameleon circuit, though, that was a nice little set up for her using it in the end to masquerade as Vargeld. After that, Compassion spends a looong time in the vortex trying to get back to Fitz and the Doctor. She finds Fitz and basically stops the war by herself like a boss, while the Doctor is off screen (dead, they believe) reconfiguring the Omnethoth. Interesting that she was 100% sure the Doctor was dead. Why was she not detecting him? Their connection is telepathic; surely if he was working on the Omnethoth he was conscious? The Doctor does say he thinks their connection is weak and they might be incompatible, as Time Lords and TARDISes go. Maybe that's part of it.

The dynamic of the team at the end is: Fitz is extremely upset at Compassion for the aforementioned attempted murder and for dumping him on a doomed planet, Compassion is extremely upset at the Doctor for putting the randomiser in her without consent, and the Doctor is just very sorry and glad they are all alive. Fitz forgives her, she forgives the Doctor, and they go their merry randomised way.

One complaint I have at the moment: I really miss Fitz being in the same story as the Doctor. They've spent most books since 'The Taking of Planet 5' separated for most of the plot, the last two thinking the other was dead. Compassion as well, but the Doctor and Fitz are more fun together, and I'd like some humor, please; Fitz hasn't been properly funny since 'Frontier Worlds'. I want something like 'Demontage' again.

One line I must point out:

"You can't blame the President, Doctor. How would you feel if your home planet was destroyed?"

Yeaaah, I wonder!!!

The Doctor nearly dies when he traps the Omnethoth in his lungs, I think, although he says it was fine... Well, I think it counts.

I've just realised: should I be counting 'The Blue Angel' as memory loss? I'll half count it.

Memory Loss:1.5 (in 'The Eight Doctors', maybe 'The Blue Angel')
Serious Injuries/Near Death Experience:13 (gets vampired 'Vampire Science', nearly drowns in the Thames in 'The Bodysnatchers', bomb+fingers broken in 'Kursaal', electrocuted in 'Longest Day', gets shot + severe blood loss in 'Legacy of the Daleks', nearly squashed by giant hydra in 'The Scarlet Empress', leg broken + slapped around by giant tentacled monster in 'The Face-Eater', stabbed 3 times in 'Unnatural History', electrocuted in 'Autumn Mist', broken arm + more in 'Interference' 1&2, broken wrist + near death in vacuum of space + more in 'The Taking of Planet 5', falls from a cliff + shot in 'Frontier Worlds', gas alien attack here)
Torture:6 (in 'Genocide', 'Seeing I', 'Unnatural History', 'Interference' 1&2, 'The Taking of Planet 5', 'Parallel 59')