Recommended Prerequisites

PROSE: Timewyrm: Exodus

TV: Logopolis

Timewyrm: Apocalypse

I may be coming in with a hot take here, but I honestly think this is the best book of the tetrology so far. Granted, it's not hard to beat the low bar of Genesys, but while Exodus was a step up, I think Apocalypse is leagues above.

One thing that this book does that many may dislike but I think works in it's favour - the Timewyrm is barely in it! I am an avid Timewyrm HATER I think the Timewyrm is such a boring villain, and I wish they were a one-time villain as opposed to being the antagonists of the first four books. While they are clearly the antagonist here, I actually forgot we were in this arc at times, and it made me enjoy the book so much more.

That being said, this book is still certainly lacking. While it felt more consistent than Exodus, the pacing was not great, we had large chunks of nothingness while people just sort of walked around. Something that has been happening all too often in the VNAs so far.

We also had a lot of characters. It took me a while to remember who was Miril and who was Huldah. Revna and Reptu, etc. I was more or less on top of it by the end but it took me some time. I'm not sure if this was a problem with my ebook, but it kept changing Mirils name to Mint. Not sure why.

Lastly, I thought the ending was a bit underwhelming. We had a reveal that the person the Timewyrm was possessing was somebody the Second Doctor met, and I assumed they were in an episode of the show, turns out they were only in this book, with their debut being in Chapter 2 for a couple paragraphs. Not the dramatic reveal that it felt like the book was trying to do. We also had Raphael, great character who I thought was perhaps going to be a companion, or maybe a recurring character. He kind of just... Turns into a God then blips himself out of existence. That all happened in two chapters.

Overall, a fun and interesting story, and the highlight of the VNAs so far. Unfortunately bogged down by a number of issues that make it still far from perfect.

Top Quote

"Come with us," they cried. "There lies death for you!" "Accept the Panjistri; join the Brotherhood!"

Ace picked up a handful of stones which she threw at them. "Bog off, wimps!"

meril and raphael my beloved

Not recommended.

This one takes a little while to get going; it has some very cool ideas at play, but most of these are presented in the context of a fairly clichéd narrative in the vein of The Krotons, Full Circle, State of Decay, Paradise Towers, and many other TV stories of that mould, and while something like Paradise Towers knows what its strengths are and plays fully to them in a pretty focused 4-part serial, Timewyrm Apocalypse fills out its lengthy pagecount with flavour and detail of story beats and world details we've seen play out many times before, leaving most of the interesting stuff for the very beginning and very end; in this regard, one recalls Full Circle, one of the blander season 18 serials, bogged down by its familiar concepts. And yet, another thing Apocalypse has in common with Full Circle is the fact it is a perfectly okay story, so even though I couldn't recommend seeking this one out, it has its place as a piece of the early evolution of the VNAs.

It's inoffensive. And perhaps that's its greatest weakness.

Essential background: None
Extensive background: The Power of the Daleks (season 4), the War Games (season 6), Logopolis (season 18), Timewyrm: Exodus (VNA #2)

In my reviews, particularly of the Virgin New Adventures, I prefer to use a 4-tier system of grading:
Essential reading - If you want to read all the best VNAs, get all the most memorable story arc beats, and generally enjoy the VNAs without having to trudge through the mediocre/bad books, or perhaps even if you just want to pick up a good Doctor Who book with no intention of reading the entire series, look for this rating.
Worthwhile for extensive reading - Not outstanding, but I won't outright tell you to skip it if you want a sense of the VNAs overall. If you're determind to only read the best, skip these, but for a read-through of the series, I wouldn't skip them. They're the worthwhile, good-but-not-amazing books. You'll get a stronger sense of character arcs, story arc beats, and the growth of the VNAs as a range if you read these, but it will also take you a lot longer.
Not recommended - Not very good. If you really want to maximise your experience of the VNAs, you could read this, but it's definitely not advised.
Avoid at all costs - An irredeemable lump of human fecal matter. Do not waste your time with this insult to the franchise.

In addition, I list Recommended background that you may find necessary for understanding the story in full, as well as Extensive background for some additional details you may find interesting.

Yikes, this was a bit of a mess. These New Adventures have been off to a very rocky start for me and Apocalypse has hardly reversed that trend.

At a base level, this story is interesting. In the far, far future, near the end of the universe, the Doctor and Ace encounter the world of Kirith, full of genetically engineered people as part of an experiment by a sinister group of telekinetics called the Panjistri. I really liked some of the ideas Nigel Robinson explored here but things really faltered on the execution. It's a shame, too, because there is an interesting story to be told here about power dynamics, politics, and the science fiction setting felt right up the ally of Doctor Who.

What we get however, is a dry, uneventful story. It takes forever for anything to happen, lots of pages are wasted just going from one location to the next, and the prose itself doesn't feel that descriptive or well put together to me. I saved an excerpt I feel nicely gets into some of the weakness in the writing I'm talking about here:

"He backed away in disgust and looked about wild-eyed for something with which to defend himself. Never once taking his eyes off them, he crouched down, and picked up a large rock."

These are two consecutive sentences! So is the Doctor looking around for a rock, or staring at the monsters? It's simple but indicative of the rather constant clumsiness that plagues the book. A major character like Miril dies and barely gets referenced again other than a sad look from the Doctor when he learns about it. The whole thing leads up to a God Machine thing being built and then it just absorbs another major character and blips itself out of existence. That second character, Raphael, has some good character work too, only for it to kind of go nowhere because of the weird God Machine thing. Plot lines go nowhere while twists are revealed clumsily and without sufficient fanfare to give these moments weight, so it comes accross as a very light and unsubstantial read overall.

All that is building up on the Timewyrm's involvement here, but once again, just like in Timewyrm: Exodus, that doesn't really even feel like it was necessary. This whole story could have not involved the Timewyrm and very little would have changed. There are some mysteries going on with the Second Doctor and his preceding regeneration that would need to be cut, but that mystery is utterly pointless anyways.

To put it all quite simply, I cannot recommend this book, and so far the entire Timewyrm saga seems skippable to me. The most entertaining part so far was reading the second printing afterword Virign put in, and seeing how they basically had to reconcile with the series' controveries that had accrued by then. Also, this is a small part, but the cover felt quite weak - barely conveying the story nicely. It is easy to see what people objected to in these early days of Doctor Who novels continuing the story so haphazardly. I am currently reading Revelation and it is fun so far, so I don't know if that will change anything once I've finished that, but until then, I definitely think these books are worth avoiding.

Virgin New Adventures: Timewyrm Arc

#003. Apocalypse ~ 5/10

◆ An Introduction

When I first attempted to make my way through this range, before giving up after completing the fifteenth novel, I found that it was a range of peaks and troughs. You had some utterly dreadful adventures, like our trip to Mesopotamia and whatever the hell ‘The Pit’ was supposed to be. On the other hand, you also had some incredibly well-written and detailed adventures like ‘Nightshade’.

We’re about to encounter a novel which falls into neither of those categories – one which fails to do anything particularly original, yet manages to be just written competently enough that I can’t call it dreadful. Yes, we are moving onto a pretty bland affair.

◆ Publisher’s Summary

The end of the universe. The end of everything.

The TARDIS has tracked the Timewyrm to the edge of the Universe and the end of time — to the lush planet Kirith, a paradise inhabited by a physically perfect race.

Ace is not impressed. Kirith has all the appeal of a wet weekend in Margate, and its inhabitants look like third-rate Aussie soap stars.

The Doctor is troubled, too: If the Timewyrm is here, why can't he find her? Why have the elite Panjistri lied consistently to the Kirithons they govern? And is it possible that the catastrophe that he feels impending is the result of his own past actions?

◆ The Seventh Doctor

‘Apocalypse’ is certainly not without its issues, but Nigel Robinson does a fairly decent job at characterising our regulars. Nothing particularly deep or exciting, but the Doctor was solidly written here.

The Doctor, now in his seventh incarnation, prided himself on his level-headedness and command of the Tardis, so different from that of his previous selves. He doesn’t like perfection because it dulls the spirit and numbs the mind. If everything is perfect then there is no need to progress. He believes that everyone needs the right to be unhappy with their lot from time to time.

◆ Ace

‘Apocalypse’ features some pretty good characterisation for our companion too, though it definitely feels like Nigel Robinson was more concerned with fleshing out the girl from Perivale than he was the midget manipulator.

Ace isn’t what you would call impressed by the planet Kirith, comparing it to a wet Wednesday in Margate! Much as she trusted and respected her mentor, there were times when his insistence that she find out things for herself reminded her a little too much of school. In her admittedly limited experience, she had found most alien races to have an innate distrust of strangers coupled with an annoying wish to make her and the Doctor’s life as uncomfortable as possible.

◆ Story Recap

Prior to the destruction of their homeworld, caused by devastating solar flares, eighty-four of the Panjistri were selected to embark on a mission to prevent the end of the universe. They collected samples from every surviving species and cultivated them to create a race that was perfection incarnate, allowing them to colonise the long-dead world of Kirith.

Several thousand years have passed, and the Kirithons are positively thriving – a race of supermodels who want for nothing, who have their every need met by the Panjistri. It is a great honour for any of the Kirithons to be summoned to Kandasi Island, the residence of their great benefactors, but those who leave never return… and are soon forgotten by their friends and family, as though they’d never even existed.

There is trouble in paradise, and this race of supermodels are supposedly key to stopping the complete collapse of the universe… but the Doctor and Ace suspect something far more sinister is afoot, and that the Timewyrm can’t be far away from it all.

◆ This Book Has The Same Artistic Value as Television Static

‘Apocalypse’ completely failed to engage me throughout most of its chapters, which is the biggest red flag a novel could possibly throw up. I was practically falling asleep trying to write this review, because the story itself has such little substance that I can basically sum it up in a sentence – the Panjistri have essentially been selecting the wisest and most talented Kirithons to distil their essences into one omnipotent and omniscient being, hoping that it can somehow prevent the end of the universe once it is completed.

There is just nothing memorable about this adventure, whether it be the bare-bones story or the completely one-dimensional characters. It also happens to be the shortest novel in the ‘Virgin New Adventures’, which you could argue means there simply isn’t enough time to give all the inhabitants of Kirith a personality. Nigel Robinson tries to make you care about one character in particular, a bloke named Raphael, but I only finished the novel yesterday and I couldn’t tell you a single thing about him!

◆ Conclusion

“The end of the universe. The end of everything.”

The Doctor and Ace find themselves in a society consisting of beings genetically engineered to be perfect, all so a more advanced race can distil their essences into an all-powerful God Machine that will somehow prevent the heat death of the universe. The Timewyrm is also here, but she feels like a complete afterthought.

‘Apocalypse’ very nearly sent me to sleep, because there is so little substance to the whole adventure. It saddens me because I know that Nigel Robinson is capable of creating some incredibly interesting stories (see my review of ‘The Emperor of Eternity’). You could genuinely skip this novel and head straight into the concluding chapter of this mini-series, and it would make absolutely zero difference. I’m so incredibly bored now that I’m off for a nap. Au revoir!