This one really doesn't shine, does it? And I'm a Dalek enjoyer, so that's saying something. Sarah's first Dalek encounter too, and it was disappointing. It was a bit hard to get through since the plot was so slow. The build up with Galloway being sketchy doesn't really go anywhere, which was strange. Fantastic make up on the Exxilons, though, and some funny Dalek dying scenes. The "mental challenges" of the city were hilarious (ep. 3 ending on a dramatic zoom of the patterned floor killed me); gotta hand to Pertwee for acting it out with such seriousness. I would have loved seeing the Daleks solve that hopscotch challenge (that city was breaking many accessibility laws!), but yes, shooting it was more in character.

Well.

It's done.

Okay. This book is not great, but it's not bad. It tries its best to pick up all the threads that have been going on since Alien Bodies and knot them together into a coherent solution, and, you know, it does that, I guess. It's not satisfying, but it does the job. Bear in mind the date I'm writing this review in. It's the 12th of June, 2025, not even two weeks after 'The Reality War', which was, in my opinion, an infinitely worse finale than The Ancestor Cell could ever hope to be, so I'm not being harsh here.

This is what happens, basically: the Doctor was infected by the Paradox virus in 'Interference', when they changed Three's regeneration to happen on Dust rather than on Earth after 'Planet of the Spiders'. As far as the Faction was aware, that meant that the Eighth Doctor, after having the virus in him for so long, was now pretty much ready for harvest (him losing his shadow was a sign of that), ready to be turned into a Faction agent. According to this book, this means turning Evil TM and Loving Paradoxes. Alright. The thing is, though: he wasn't infected, or at least, he was only 'probably' infected. The TARDIS (the true MVP of the story) was holding the two timelines, the original (where he regenerates on Earth after Metebelis III) and the new, infected timeline. She was stopping the infected timeline from overwriting the original, basically. How exactly? No idea, but she's the best and I believe her power to do so. She exploded though, remember, in the beginning of 'Shadows of Avalon'. That was also partially because of the strain of holding these two realities. But she... uh... was actually holding on even then, in the time vortex... Man, I'm not sure, this part really didn't make much sense. ANYWAY! Remember the universe in a bottle? The Time Lords, not the Doctor, were the ones who stole it from Foreman's World, and to keep it safe they chucked it in the time vortex. They kinda forgot to close the cap, tough, so the universe leaked all over the time vortex (how will we ever the these stains out...). Absorbing some of that somehow turned the TARDIS into the Edifice thingy that appeared on Gallifrey and was causing massive disruptions to causality (basically meaning that the timelines it was trying to hold back from overwriting the correct, untainted one were 'leaking'). These waves were, in turn, drawing the Enemy to Gallifrey for what would be first attack of the war Romana has been preparing them to fight. We get a god awful explanation for the nature of the Enemy that I'm electing to mostly ignore. The Faction want to use this first attack, as Gallifrey is weak, to insert themselves as rulers of Gallifrey, as they believe they'd do a much better job at winning the war and ruling over time in general. When did they become terrorists rather than being a weird little cult? I don't know!

Nothing about this story makes you really cover your mouth and go 'ohhh damn that's clever!' apart from, maybe, the beginning of the temporal attack when the number of walls in the Panopticon and the number of Gallifreys kept decreasing, with only Fitz noticing. The big reveal of Grandfather Paradox, sadly, went in the most obvious way possible: yes, he is an evil future Eighth Doctor, big yawn (although Paul McGann would play him amazingly...). It works, though, boring as it is. And I understood it as that only being true in the infected timeline, so there's that. A bit silly that this much older, much more malicious Doctor can't stop our Doctor, and even sillier that Eight 'wins' because Grandfather just can't physically hold him back from pulling the Kill Them All lever with just one arm. That's what it comes down to, in the end. The Doctor has 3 choices: leave Gallifrey in the hands of the Faction and to deal with the war (everyone suffers forever and dies), try to reason with Grandfather and beg for mercy (would never work, right back to suffering forever and dying), and explode the Edifice, taking Gallifrey, the Faction armada (they have an armada!?), and Kasterborous with it. His only real choice is to destroy Gallifrey, and destroy it he does, fully intending to die along with everyone. He is, however, the narrative's favourite and can never die, in the worst way possible for him.

It's a mess, but I do like that the War is kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy: if Romana hadn't been obsessed with preparing for it, she wouldn't have gone after Compassion, then the TARDIS probably wouldn't have been destroyed (and/or they wouldn't have lost the bottle universe), and the Edifice wouldn't have been created to attract the Enemy in the first place. Romana, in general, thinks she's a girlboss president, but is actually a girlfailure president; Gallifrey is in shambles. She's not 100% to blame, though, because the worst of it is due to Peter Anghelides and Stephen Cole just not being very good at writing Time Lords. Really. None of these Time Lord characters felt like Time Lords at all, not even in the simplest things. Why were they sweating, why were they feeling cold, why were they flirting and doing things to 'get girls' and having moms and dads, why were they being strange about looking older/younger than they actually were? It was baffling, really. They don't fare much better as characters, either. From the High Council to the young students, none of these characters were interesting in any way. The book tries a bit harder with Mali, but it doesn't land, and we only really care about Romana because we know her from before. The Faction Paradox people are the same, as it's hard to care about such cartoonishly evil people like Mother Tarra. The exception is Father Kreiner, who we are already invested in.

There's a lot of talk about responsibility and guilt being thrown around, most of it at the Doctor, and I honestly don't think it's warranted. Timon flat out says he started the war by bringing the Enemy to them, as the Edifice came about because his TARDIS was trying to protect him. Okay, but... He didn't know any of that. Faction Paradox went after him and infected him, that's not his fault. The TARDIS protected him, that's also not really his fault, or her fault... If we're throwing blame around, it seems that losing the damn bottle universe was one of the main catalysts for everything, and that had nothing to do with the Doctor. But yes, I do see that he would feel guilty for being used like this, and would feel responsible nonetheless. Things that really are his fault were Compassion turning into a TARDIS (even though the possibility of something like that happening never crossed his mind, so it's a bit unfair), and Fitz becoming Father Kreiner (definitely unfair, but understandable that Kreiner feels betrayed). The Faction keep rubbing his nose in his past mistakes (funny that leaving Susan is placed on the same level as not rescuing Fitz, when the two situations were absolutely nothing alike) and reminding him of moments when just one small paradox would have made everything better until he's reduced to tears; it's 'let's make the Doctor depressed!' hours.

One of the things that do hit in this book are the bits with Father Kreiner, who is such a tragic character. It's heart-wrenching to see the little bits of young Fitz underneath it all. He wants to kill the Doctor for leaving him (it kills me that he's too far gone to see that it was never his intention to leave him, that he never even knew Fitz was in danger...), but one very sincere heartfelt 'I'm so sorry' from the Doctor brings him back. He really wants to trust the Doctor and to forgive him, ouch my heart. And, hello, him stroking the Doctor's face when he asks if he's faking being a Faction agent? Some complex feelings we have there, uh? The whole thing made me so sad. I mean, it's pretty obvious he'd die, but man... He just wanted to be Fitz again... he had forgiven the Doctor... 'Promise? I promise'. Grandfather Paradox, when I catch you!!!

If I had any doubt that our Fitz, the remembered Fitz, really had all the essence of the original, the fact that both he and Father Kreiner say 'he's still the Doctor, no matter what they/we do to him' would do it for me. Fitz doesn't get to do all that much in this book except meet his terrifying alternate self, go through the horrors and spend some time with the worst version of Romana.

Compassion is done diiiirty here. This is her final adventure, and this is what she gets? She barely in it, and spends most of the time being used as an Uber to bring these boring Time Lords to the Edifice and back. Then, for absolutely no reason I can discern, she kind of falls for this random Time Lord guy Nivet. Why??? She had never shown any interest in anyone before! Hell, she doesn't even like Fitz and the Doctor that much! No idea why they did this. In any case, yes, Compassion saves Fitz and this guy from Gallifrey and saves the Doctor from the Edifice. I don't think he'd thank her for it. From what I understood, she is the one who wipes his memory. She then puts him on Earth, late 19th century ('If I had to be trapped in one time and place', as he said in 'Banquo Legacy'), to... heal? To wait? Meanwhile, the TARDIS itself is going to be reforming from her also very bad experiences. Compassion leaves Fitz somewhen around the late 90s, with instructions to find the Doctor in 2001. An interesting bit: Fitz thinks the Doctor destroyed the planet because he was being controlled by the Faction, but that's not what happened. I wonder if that misunderstanding goes anywhere. Anyway. I really don't understand why his two friends would decide to leave the Doctor, an alien very prone to getting in trouble and to getting hurt, completely alone in another planet with 0 memories, right after the hugest traumatic experience possible... Well, let's see where this goes.

TLDR; the War arc goes out with a middling 'pop' rather than a bang, Compassion is gone, Fitz is gone (but coming back), and the Doctor was pretty much abandoned on Earth, TARDIS-less and worse, completely amnesiac, after destroying Gallifrey: the Eighth Doctor's greatest tricks.

One thing that made me laugh was this exchange:

'It's hopeless, Doctor', the Grandfather said. 'I have only to wait and you will be mine'

The Doctor looked up at him, wiped a streak of blood from his mouth. 'You're right. It is hopeless. You're really not my type'

Thank you, Doctor, for the little gay joke just a couple of pages before you kill everyone <3

We're so back! I'll preface this one by saying I love this type of old-timey mystery novel with first person POV; Dracula is one of my favorite books. If you like that, this book works. If you don't, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry.

There's three mysteries interlocked in this story. One is the fake suicide of Dr. Seavers and the subsequent murder of Richard Harries. This part is a classic whodunnit. Then there's the scifi part with the zombie Harries and the other murders. And then there's the Doctor Who part with Simpson, the Time Lord agent in disguise, and the Artron energy drain that is killing Compassion (and the Doctor, but much more slowly) and that would stop any Time Lord around from regenerating. I'm not gonna lie, the mystery solving part of the novel was not as well done as it could have been, and the scifi was not super tight (the murder in the past was a source of Artron energy? How? Why?) but it was fun to read anyways. One complaint I have is that Hopkinson's and Stratford's voices, as it were, were not distinguishable enough; sometimes I had to stop and check whose POV I was in. Nothing major, but it could have been done better.

Seeing the TARDIS team from an outsider POV was a delight for me. Fitz in particular was a highlight. We usually see him from the author's POV, but we've got his first person POV in 'Frontier Worlds' and 'Parallel 59', and now we've got an outsider view of him. It's fascinating. He comes across as much braver than he thinks he is, as both Hopkinson and Stratford note that he's very quick to react when people are in danger. Compassion is sadly mostly absent again, kind of possessing Susan Seymour only at some points. It would have been nice to see how these people would have reacted to her lovely personality. The Doctor spends half the book missing, but evokes the expected confusion, suspicion and admiration from the people in the house, as he should.

Fitz is firmly in the role of #1 Main Companion, which includes being very worried about the Doctor when he goes missing, hackling the policeman Stratford about it. His breakdown when they find the Doctor 'dead' was a very good scene, it made me honestly clutch my heart. I think this is the first time Fitz truly believed the Doctor was dead. He has been told the Doctor was probably dead before, but this is his first time seeing it. Probably not the last. Poor man nearly throws himself down the hill right after the 'body' to try to save him. I love how their relationship is developing, and how much we can tell they care for each other. Sam leaving and Compassion's coldness really were the perfect catalysts to bring the Doctor and Fitz close together. I wonder if maybe the TARDIS reconstructed Fitz with some slight alterations to make him a better fit for the Doctor, or if this was all a natural development. Hmmmm.

The big consequence of this story is that, thank to stupid, stupid Susan Seymour, the Time Lords have a fix on them now. The next book, 'The Ancestor Cell', is probably about that. Knowing a bit about what is soon to happen, the Doctor's line about how the late 19th century was where he'd choose to live if he had to is a very unsubtle bit of foreshadowing.

Apart from pretending to be dead, the Doctor comes out of this one pretty much unharmed. Well, he does get slapped around and choked by a zombie, but it's not that serious. No list of pain this time.

TL;DR: Solid book that fans of mystery novels will like, and non-fans will probably hate. Don't you love how Doctor Who can play around with so many genres, though? The Time Lords are on our heels now, and things are coming to a head...

After the thoroughly enjoyable 'Coldheart', this was a massive let down. The premise of this book is not bad, a benevolent but misguided alien making a 'perfect future' for humans who helped them. The execution is also not bad, exactly, but it lacks heart. The characters just don't feel alive, and if your characters don't feel alive, I can't really care much about what they're going through. It's not that they are not well constructed, but they way they're written made me feel like I was being told what they were feeling rather than experiencing it with them, if that makes sense. I can't quite put my finger on it, but that was my impression.

The whole rockers vs mods thing was very silly, and boy am I lucky to have a particular interest in the 60s, because without that background this entire premise would make no sense at all. The characters (and damned if can remember a single name) are split into these two factions, fighting a ridiculous fight in this obvious fake city. The scifi part of the story is also made uninteresting by the fact that what's happening is painfully obvious. At no point we wonder if this is really the Earth, or anything of the sort; we know the mods' technician is a captured Maker, because that's the only possible answer. There's no mystery. The whole drama between whats-their-names rocker leader and wife and the mod leader was so circular it made me dizzy. They keep having the exact same conversation every 20 pages. The reveal about her being his mom? I don't care! Could not care less, actually!

It does not help that the TARDIS team is completely split up for most of the book. Compassion is quite literally parked for the whole first half of the book, and does nothing of consequence at all. This was very disappointing after her growth in the past few books. Fitz fares only a little better, because at least he's more entertaining, but even his usually charming presence felt flat. The same can be said for the Doctor, who was doing his best, but wasn't shinning as brightly as I know he can.

Very little to say about this one. Mostly forgettable, with no big consequences to the ongoing story arc that I can see. Fitz is still worried about the Doctor's increasing carelessness with his own safety, the Maker says that the Doctor's future is uncertain until the paradox in his past is resolved, referencing the Faction Paradox virus from 'Interference', but that's it. Boring, boring.

If 'Coldheart' has one fan, I am that fan. If it has no fans, I am dead. This book is solid. Good adventure, great use of the characters, interesting conflicts for everyone involved, and a good amount of humor. Crazy that after 'The Fall of Yquatine' I was saying that I wanted another 'Demontage'-like book, where the TARDIS team is mostly together, in a bread and butter DW adventure, and 'Coldheart' was right there waiting for me with open arms, saying 'I got you'. Trevor Baxendale also wrote 'Janus Conjunction', which I also quite enjoyed, but 'Coldheart' was even better; he does seem to have a thing for sand and for slime, huh?

The first 20 pages or so of this book are a complete delight. Full on, non-stop TARDIS team banter; I think we haven't had so much interaction between the three of them since 'Frontier Worlds'. The Doctor and Fitz ganging up with jokes so bad Compassion wanted to kill them. The Doctor and Compassion ganging up and making smart deductions about their surroundings, Fitz wanting to kill them for showing off. The Doctor falling down a hole, Fitz falling in after him (like in 'Dominion'!) with the great exchange of 'Thought I'd just drop in'/'I knew you'd say that'. Just great stuff, I had to stop myself from highlighting everything. The rest of the book continues on this tone, with the Doctor and Fitz wistfully dreaming of tea, Fitz's 'I've never thought of you as a woman' to Compassion, Compassion wondering if the Doctor is just 'some kind of Gallifreyan freak', and so many more.

Compassion's feelings about not being human anymore are explored more here. She goes on a very interesting tangent after she tries and fails to save a guy's life: she wouldn't have tried, wouldn't have cared, before the transformation. I like that she's confused, and that she's not sure how much of what she thinks and feels is really her and how much is the TARDIS's (and the Doctor's) influence. She thinks about how she can see the same thing in Fitz; how traveling with the Doctor is making him more empathetic, more willing to Do The Right Thing, even at some personal cost. In a strange scifi way, the TARDIS is both Fitz's and Compassion's mother, at this point. She made them: Fitz by restoring him from the Remote, and Compassion by turning her into a TARDIS as well. And then, in an even stranger sense, the Doctor is their father, via his telepathic connection to the TARDIS. Craaaazy to think about this. On top of that, Compassion's feelings about her new found imperviousness and immortality were very interesting to read. Is not being able to die the same as being dead already? This ends up bringing her closer to the Doctor in the sense that he, too, is almost immortal and almost indestructible; the keyword, as Compassion herself notes, is 'almost'. Fitz notices that the Doctor seems to be getting a bit too careless of late, putting himself in unnecessary danger. He considers that maybe he's doing all that to avoid thinking about what has happened: his TARDIS is dead, Compassion was turned into one against her will, and they're in grave danger as runaways from Gallifrey. Not to mention the War, and how he must feel about having to go against Romana, who was his friend. Damn.

I can't remember if the Doctor was ever in this many fistfights before; this book has a lot of action. In true Eighth Doctor fashion, he gets horribly shot in the arm with a crossbow and generally banged about throughout the story. He's written wonderfully. He hypnotizes one man to get information (which is rude, but l always enjoy it when he has to use underhanded tactics for the greater good), and hypnotizes Fitz out of a hangover. He tries to talk rather than fight at every point, but fights when he has to, and tries to save as many people as possible. He's not too soft, though: Tor Grymna uses up all his chances to stop being a dick, and gets eaten by a slug? "Bon appetit", and he's right to say it. Plus, he has several very funny lines, and several very inspiring and deep lines. What more could you want from the Doctor?

One thing I thought the book did really well was to have the Doctor deal mostly with the huge secret alien threat that will destroy the planet while Fitz was dealing with the societal part of things, especially concerning the slimers, Ckeho (whose name I shall never forget, since it is repeated about 5 million times) and Florence. The Doctor, of course, understands the motivations behind the slimers' attacks on the ice mine. He doesn't want to fight them, but he has to stop them from potentially killing the whole city and releasing the ancient giant monster slug in the underground. Fitz is having a less violent time, but is appalled at the treatment the slimers and Florence get. He was a wonderful line where he tells one of the Eskoni that he thinks he's a 'fascist pig and your opinions suck'. The unfairness of it all really gets to him, as they're saving all these people, but their society frankly sucks, even if some individuals are apparently good. The Doctor's answer is that now these people will get another chance to be better, with their help. He'll do the 'easy thing' and fight the monster, and Fitz will make them see the errors of their ways. The Doctor even asks if Fitz wants to stay and keep helping these people to build a better society, but at this point we all know he's not leaving; the camel people can deal with their own problems.

They come out of this story as a better team then they are at the beginning, which is, if nothing else, a great merit of this book. Compassion in particular goes through a little journey of accepting that they're in it together. Well, not accepting, exactly. She chooses that, chooses to keep them with her, to keep traveling as they do, meaning that they will always try to help the people they encounter. Whether her compassion (ha!) is born from herself of from the transformation, who cares? It's there now, she feels it now, and she needs the Doctor and Fitz with her if she wants to help people as she travels. As for Fitz, he's saying things like 'He's the Doctor. And believe me, he's the best', and worrying about him constantly. If it was ever in question since 'Interference' (remembering how Fitz was questioning of his role as companion in 'Frontier Worlds'), he is now really cemented as the Doctor's best friend, ride-or-die companion.

I could frankly keep going. There's a lot to enjoy here. Good book!

Eight goes through it once more! I'm 98% sure that being hit by that amount of water falling from such a height would have vaporized a person before drowning would even become a problem, but I'm glad Baxendale didn't realise that.

Memory Loss:1.5 (in 'The Eight Doctors', maybe 'The Blue Angel')
Serious Injuries/Near Death Experience:14 (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 in 'The Fall of Yquatine', beat up + shot with a crossbow + hit by tonnes of ice cold water here)
Torture:6 (in 'Genocide', 'Seeing I', 'Unnatural History', 'Interference' 1&2, 'The Taking of Planet 5', 'Parallel 59')

I wasn't going to write a review because a lot of people already said most of what I think, and more eloquently than I ever could. However, I want to point out that one of the things that really annoyed me was how this was a bad episode of TV. I love Doctor Who, even when the plot is not all that; hell, I adore the Movie, which we know is not really good. The Reality War failed in three very, very important things an episode of a show, let alone a season finale, could not have failed at:

1) It was impossible for the audience to know where the plot was going, because the goal posts kept moving and completely new things kept being introduced at breakneck speed. The Deus Ex Machina of Anita's literal magic door key is an insane offender. How could we know Poppy was 'impossible', why does the Rani need Omega specifically? Because the surviving Time Lords are sterile now, we're informed in an exposition dump. Why is Omega a giant mummy? Because he became his own legend in the Underverse, we're informed in an exposition dump. What are the bone things? They are Underverse creatures, we're informed in an exposition dump. How will we protect Poppy from the wish being undone? Susan Triad will build a Zero Room in... what, 15 minutes? It was all insanely clunky. The vindicator is a laser gun because sure, why not. The Doctor has to die because, you see, he needs to shoot regeneration energy into the vortex. HOW were we supposed to put the pieces together and follow the story if we didn't know basically ANY of the rules? If your audience can't even begin to grasp at what the rules of your story are, the solutions are not going to be satisfying. They need to be laid down, but not in a verbose, technobabbly exposition the second before it becomes plot relevant!

2) Not a single character arc is realized. Belinda has her whole life rewritten, is now not even the same person as the Belinda we met in 'The Robot Revolution'. Ruby also has no arc; she was there for the story and did things (which more than I can say for Belinda), but she did not grow or learn anything. What she got was trust issues and PTSD. The UNIT gang are there, sure. Shirley was saying she was gonna bring down god last episode, but she just ends up being one of the 23489 characters in the UNIT tower. Same with Mel. Kate was given what has to be one of the cheesiest, most forced lines I've ever heard, and then spends the rest of her time spinning the tower around. Anita suddenly had a crush on the Doctor all along, is now pregnant, holds a door open to [checks exposition notes] real time to keep flowing. Rose Noble is there for 0.3 seconds. Everyone keeps hugging and telling each other 'you're the best!' and these characters just do not feel like real people. The Rani gets eaten alive by Omega. There is no character arc for anyone. The closest we get is with the Doctor himself, who had a bit of theme of looking for family going on in this incarnation.

3) It doesn't know who its audience is. There's things here for kids, there's things for regular scifi fans, and there are things for superfans. The problem these aspects are not playing together to make this an episode many different people can enjoy: they are playing against each other. The kiddy bits feel more embarrassing than fun, the fanservice to Classic Who is confusing, makes the plot needlessly contrived, and the scifi has wand-wavy, arbitrary rules. The pacing is also all over the place, with some fast action suddenly followed by strange, long scenes of 10+ characters standing around listening to long winded explanations.

I'm gonna stop now. It's been almost a day I just keep getting more and more frustrated with this episode. What a damn shame.

------

ETA: I don't wanna be all downer here! Here's some assorted things I liked: Anita's 'I'm just the hotel manager' jokes; Kate's disgusted 'I'm wearing tweed'; Ruby fighting to get people to believe her about Poppy; all the set designs and special effects (yes, even mummy Omega); Ncuti's lovely, tender acting in the quiet scene where Belinda is 'reminding' him of things she 'told' him (gods, I wish we had more time with him). And Billie? I'm optimistic :)

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')

Inside of this book there are two books: one is about the dream kingdom of Avalon and their war, the other is about Compassion being turned into a TARDIS. Book one? I could not care less. Book two? Hell yeah.

Picking up right where 'Parallel 59' left off, we learn the Doctor and Fitz stayed on Skale for a while, helping with the rebuilding of the planet after the massacre. Compassion was acting so cold and being so unhelpful in general that the Doctor shipped her to Earth because she was annoying him, which is objectively very funny. He gave her a little list of things to do while she was there, which included 'make friends', 'kiss someone properly', and 'fall in love'. That's his way of begging her on his hands and knees to please form some sort of bond with people. Doesn't work. Anyway, back on Skale, there's a second where we (and the Doctor (and Fitz himself)) are quite sure Fitz is going to stay behind with Filippa. The time to say goodbye comes and Filippa just asks him to visit sometime and kisses him goodbye. He's relived, but it is sort of implied he is planning on coming back to her eventually. I frankly doubt we'll ever see that place or that woman again. I'm just glad he's not pulling another 'Revolution Man' on us, and so is the Doctor, who was probably internally panicking over the prospect of traveling alone with Compassion (like he does in 'The Blue Angel'). The Doctor and Fitz head back to Earth to pick up Compassion, and the TARDIS explodes immediately upon landing, stranding them + the Brigadier, who was around, in Avalon.

We are finally told why the TARDIS kept going to strange, time-space distortions on Earth (in 'Unnatural History', 'Dominion', etc.). As the Doctor theorizes, 'All those strange realities were her trying to escape her fate, trying to convince herself that [...] she wasn't going to die when she hit the gap between worlds.' And why did she follow the dimensional disturbance in Drebnar ('Frontier Worlds') and the Mechta shared dream ('Parallel 59')? She knew what was coming, and was sort of preparing herself to 'face her death'. Now, I know the TARDIS is not really gone for good, because there are 1231920 other stories set after this where she's alive and well, but the Doctor cannot sense her at all, and we have no reason to believe she's not dead. Sad!!!

The Brigadier is here and he's very sad as well. Sadder, even. His second wife Doris (not Kate's mother, by the way) died tragically recently, and the Brig, repressed man that he is, has not allowed himself to properly grieve and recover from it. He is so deep in it that he's suicidal. I didn't read the VNAs or saw much of him outside Classic Who, so seeing him like this was not a fun time. Kind of similar to seeing an older, jaded Jo Grant in 'Genocide'. Paul Cornell, the author, does his best in exploring the Brigadier's pain throughout the book, and although gloomy, this was one of the best parts of it. The Doctor and the Brigadier butt heads as never before, as the Brigadier kiiiinda starts a war with the fairy Silurians of Avalon, the Fair Folk. All their scenes together are quite good, as the Doctor is desperately trying to de-escalate the situation, while the Brigadier stoically insists there is no other solution.

The Doctor, in a sense, is in a similar position of despair as the Brigadier. The war breaks out, and he's stuck in Avalon, fighting with the Brigadier, and not knowing where Compassion and Fitz are, or if they're even alive. We know he gets antsy without the TARDIS, and he still has a lot on his mind from his recent encounters with Faction Paradox. He doesn't know what they did, but he knows they did something to him ('Interference'). 'While Faction Paradox existed, there was no reason for him to do anything', as they can change history around him and undermine all his efforts. The Doctor's feeling 'sick at heart, incapable', but he says he 'won't be distant from [himself]', and that he's going to find out whatever is hiding in Avalon, whatever must be found to stop the war, and save everyone. He makes a point in this story to interfere anyway and not let the possibility of Faction Paradox or whoever else changing history stop him from doing what he thinks must be done. By the end of the story, he's come to terms with it. As he puts it, 'Just because nothing is written in stone doesn't mean I can stop kicking over the statues!' So he will keep doing his bit, as always, no matter what.

I must say I do not vibe with mystical-fairy-Arthurian flavored fantasy in my Doctor Who. Avalon and its politics are incredibly simplistic, and I honestly could not get attached to any of the side characters in this book. Not Queen Mab, not her adviser, whatever his name was, not anyone. Yes, this book has the Doctor riding a dragon against fighter planes, and yet I was yawning. Mab's little insta-crush on the Brigadier was also quite strange. I'm glad he begins to heal by the end of this story, when he realizes things are only really worth something because they eventually end. He stays behind in Avalon; I hope he has a good holiday.

The big thing that happens in this book is Compassion turning into a TARDIS. Which is insane, by the way, but does make sense with everything that has happened recently. The TARDIS saying she could be so much more in 'Frontier Worlds', the scanner blowing up in 'Parallel 59', the war TARDISes and Marie recognizing her in 'The Taking of Planet 5'. Basically, it's the Doctor's fault. I don't think there was any way he could have possibly predicted this fantastic development, so I can't really blame him. They say it all started in the Obverse ('The Blue Angel'). The Remote absorb information, so filtering signals to Compassion's receiver through the TARDIS programmed her with 'everything about the TARDIS'. Now, this could all be fine (more or less), as Compassion is pretty okay with being a type 102 TARDIS once the change happens. The problem is that Romana III, President of Gallifrey, wants to breed her like a dog to make 103s (like Marie) for the war against the Enemy. Romana!!! Our friend Romana! I'm scandalized. She sent two agents to Avalon to make sure the change happened according to history and to bring Compassion back to Gallifrey, even if they had to off the Doctor to do it. I cannot express how much I hated Cavis and Gandar, the Time Lord interventionists. They were like a Gallifreyan Team Rocket, but more evil and extremely unfunny. They shall not be missed. The Doctor is obviously livid (due to plot reasons, he's yelling at her while soaking wet and shirtless, which made for a funnier scene than intended), so he does the good old trick of stealing a TARDIS and running away with his companions; it just so happens that one of said companions is a TARDIS. So now we're on the run from the Time Lords, and isn't it sad to have to think of Romana as an enemy...

Final thoughts: amazing developments for the story, massive change in the status-quo, but otherwise not the a very compelling story, and I frankly don't care for Avalon at all. The character bits with the Brig and the Doctor were quite good, but we got very little of Compassion, who is basically another person by the end of this book, and Fitz does and says next to nothing throughout.

There was one haunting line in this book that I have to point out. The Doctor is putting his life on the line to prove a point to the Brigadier, he's about to be shot down and thinks

Maybe next time he'll be someone who could control his destiny, and not have to make this gestures.

Knowing how Eight dies and who he becomes, this is heartbreaking.

Not a fantastic book, but there's a lot of interesting ideas, and it's very competently written. Way too many side characters, though, and some of the scifi elements weren't very clear. Basically, the TARDIS lands on a strange ship that immediately forces the team to scram into two separate pods: the Doctor and Compassion in one, Fitz in another. The Doctor and Compassion are shot out into space back to the planet the ship was orbiting, Skale, while Fitz remains there. So the Doctor and Compassion end up arrested as spies and saboteurs and maybe aliens while Fitz gets trapped into a dream, communist land, Mechta.

The whole thing with Mechta was pretty interesting. We, the readers, can figure out pretty quickly that Fitz is not in a real place, since the time he perceives doesn't match with the time in Skale, and everyone at Facility One is being very cagey about telling the Doctor where Mechta is. I think this is how it works: Parallel 59 (basically a country in Skale) developed this project where these ships called Bastions were sent into space, forming a mesh around the planet. The idea is that the mesh would protect them from their alien neighbors in Haltiel (who they've never interacted with) and also place all space travel under 59's control. These Bastions need a human brain to be controlled. Not people, mind, but live human brains. Skale's tech is based on these bio-interfaces. 'Flesh-tech', the Doctor calls it. It's not nice at all for the brain involved. These Bastions are full of 59's 'undesirables', criminals and marginalized people, being kept there basically as spare batteries. Once you're used up, your pod is sent away into space. Or, alternatively, down to the planet as a bomb. While you're in the Bastion, you enter this gestalt shared dream place, Mechta, where things are honestly pretty good, a real communist utopia. That's where Fitz is, living life as normal, not knowing where the Doctor and Compassion are, but kind of waiting for them to show up and get him.

Fitz's side story is... fine. He, of course, starts an affair with a married woman as soon as he gets there, then dumps her when he meets Fillipa, this book's designated Mandatory Love Interest for Fitz. He behaves like a complete dick and ends up lying and  cheating on her. I love Fitz, but this was not a good look. We know he's attracted to everyone and falls in love 5 times a day, but c'mon. There was no real reason for him to cheat on Fillipa apart from Denna being gorgeous. It didn't even make that much sense, given how things ended up with Alura in 'Frontier Worlds': I'd expected him to be more careful with these girls' feelings from then on. He does regret his mistakes and constantly puts himself down for them, does the 'I'm such an idiot loser' bit, so it's not like his behavior isn't questioned or addressed. It very much is, and he does seem to learn from it, but I'm just not sure how necessary it was. Otherwise, his part of the plot was pretty slow, almost boring.

The Doctor is in his natural habitat, i.e., a prison cell surrounded by people that want to torture him for both information and for medical proposes. Compassion escapes with some revolutionaries when she gets a chance, but he stays put since he is in the correct place to find out what the hell is going on and how to get Fitz (who he's very concerned for) and the TARDIS back. He does his bit of being non-threatening and very, very intelligent, offers his to help the people at the Facility to fix their mesh thingy to get the info he needs. There's a lovely scene where he's taken to the Facility's meeting and just keeps on being cute, clever, and exasperating in equal measures. Yve, one of the billions of side characters, thinks 'this performing little puppy could bite if provoked'. Yep, that's my guy! Biiiig fan of his fake heart attack as well. This man has 0 respect for his own body, he'll do anything to himself if it moves his plan along. Cute how worried he was for Fitz; he's still guilty about what happened in 'Interference' (not that it was in any his fault...) and has some left over anxiety from the Lost Sam arc. Separation anxiety, I guess? He's okay with Fitz being away so long as he knows exactly where he is and how to get to him, like in 'Frontier Worlds', but not knowing gets him antsy. Speaking of the Doctor's mental illnesses, this book is one example of how his claustrophobia only shows up when the writers deign to remember he has it, and its only as strong as they want it to be. He was only mildly panicky in the escape pod at the beginning of the book, is mostly unconcerned with being in a prison cell for most of the book, and is not particularly affected by the tiny pod he and Compassion are crammed into to go back to the Bastion. I get that they don't want him to be incapacitated, sure, but I'd appreciate some consistency, or some mention of how he's dealing with it.

Meanwhile Compassion's with the rebels, who want to shoot the whole mesh down. They know they can't possibly save those millions of people used to power it, so that's the next best thing. Compassion is not as great as she was in 'Frontier Worlds', but she's still pretty good here. She convinces the rebels the TARDIS can be used to save those people, if they can get the Doctor. She notices she's actually acting as the Doctor's spy, gathering information from the rebels in the hopes it'll be useful to him. She puts that down to the Doctor's and the TARDIS's influence, saying 'she'd obviously been picking up TARDIS vibes for too long -- it was trying to make her into an 'old girl' too'. She also notes that she doesn't really think of the Doctor as a friend, more like 'a function of the universe she could respond to'. She once again says that she feels like she's changing, and it's starting to scare her. She's been having headaches. When the people at the Facility tried to scan her, the machine blew up sky high, but the same machine had no problem scanning the Doctor, 'complex space time event' that he is. She has a freak out after that as well, seems very scared for no discernible reason. The Doctor was confused, and so was I. Compassion was absolutely instrumental at the end. For all that the Doctor doesn't want her to go around receiving transmissions from just about anything, they would all have died if she hadn't been able to interface with the Bastion's systems.

The ending was really not what I had expected. I definitely didn't think there'd be an attack by Haltiel. It shook things up in an interesting way, 100% stopping any plans they had to save the people in the Bastions using the TARDIS. They take control of the mesh and just start bombing the planet. Skale fires back, once they're convinced there's actual aliens attacking, but Haltiel trounces the place and go back home happy. Basically, lots of people die. Lots and lots and lots. Full on disaster.

The main moral question they raise in this story was whether rescuing the people in Mechta was the correct thing to do. Compassion doesn't think so: Mechta is a good place, where they have good lives. Why force them to come back to the planet that cares so little for them they were being used as human batteries? The Doctor disagrees: there's people on Skale that still care for them, and they have the right to live a real life, however difficult real life is. Well, in the end, no one gets to choose anything, as Haltiel takes the choice from them. In the end, Compassion and the Doctor manage to save 7 people, including Fitz, and that's it. Fillipa is one of the survivors, to Fitz's immense relief. They book ends as the Doctor is taking the TARDIS back to Skale, so it's a bit of cliffhanger, I guess, to what Fitz is gonna do next. Not that I had any doubt he's staying.

Some more torture for our dear Doctor. Very mild, by his standards, but torture nonetheless. There's a few scrapes as well, but nothing major

Memory Loss:1 (in 'The Eight Doctors')
Serious Injuries/Near Death Experience:12 (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')
Torture:6 (in 'Genocide', 'Seeing I', 'Unnatural History', 'Interference' 1&2, 'The Taking of Planet 5', 'Parallel 59')

I quite liked this. Better than Peter Anghelides​' previous EDA, 'Kursaal', in that it wonderfully characterizes Fitz and Compassion as well as the Doctor. The plot itself is nothing novel: evil CEO abusing the environment and alien species for the most basic of evil CEO goals, eternal life and wealth. A classic, really. But hey, it works, even if the resolution was a piece of extremely unrealistic business deal.

The merit of this book is in the characters and in the prose style. It's very dynamic, funny, and vivid. Maybe too vivid, even. Fitz gets to be the narrator for his and Compassion's underground agents subplot working at Frontier Worlds Corporation, and boy does he know how to tell a tale. His descriptions of Ellis, his horrible, disgusting boss and of Sempiter's transformation were so detailed I found myself getting kinda nauseated, and I'm a person that had meals watching 'Hannibal'. If you need any more reasons to like Fitz as a character, him choosing to give himself and Compassion the aliases Frank and Nancy Sinatra certainly count; that reveal got a very honest snort out of me.

As he said he would at the end of last book, the Doctor found a way to give Fitz and Compassion a 'mission' that would force them to cooperate with each other. He really wants Compassion to become a more compassionate (ha!) person, show more emotion, become more human, and believes pairing her up with the painfully human Fitz is the perfect way to go about it. Plus, he's using the TARDIS to filter the signals that Compassion gets to her receiver to protect her from malicious influences, and encourages her to forgo the receiver whenever possible. She clearly doesn't want to, but goes along. It's manipulative, and he's not subtle at all about it. As usual with the Doctor, his hearts are in the right place. On the one hand, yes, she can be heavily influenced by outside forces to behave in certain ways. He wants her to find herself, to find who she is after lifetimes of being bombarded by signals. On the other hand, that's her culture. She's human, but she's Remote. Does he have the right to keep her from the signals? But then again, she chose to travel with him, and he does have to make sure she can be trusted. After all, she can be a liability in their adventures if he can't trust her to be on his side. Complicated stuff, interesting stuff.

Compassion's characterization here is phenomenal. We get why she's traveling with them. She wants to see more of the Universe and to learn, to get more 'facts and opinions', as she puts it. She clearly enjoys (as much as she can enjoy anything) these adventures, and is taking her part in the Doctor's plan very seriously. Its heavily implied that being connected to Frontier Worlds' computers literally nourishes her, and it's clearly the moments when she feels best. Her little Oscar worthy acting moments were a great addition, as they really drive home that Compassion is cold not because she doesn't know how feelings and relationships work, but because she really doesn't give a f**k. Does she even care for Fitz and the Doctor as friends? Not really! As people? Who knows! It's interesting then that she's very loyal to them. She follows the Doctor's plan to the letter even when she's angry at him, and protects Fitz both physically and emotionally during their trek in the forest.

We finally get to spend some relatively quiet time with Fitz after the whole ordeal that was 'Interference'. In short, the Fitz we have now is a 'remembered' version of the original Fitz, rebuilt from Kode by the Doctor and the TARDIS. He tries his best to move on from it. He's here now, and it's not like he can change what's happened anyway. His mother's dead and he has nothing waiting for him in the 60's except maybe the police. At best he has Sam in the 90's. But is that even true? Can he say 'his' mother's dead, when he's basically just a collection of the original Fitz's memories in a completely remade body? He says even his dreams are different, too ordered. We find out here that so is his (and Compassion's, who is also a remembered version of the once human Laura Tobin) DNA. It's human DNA alright, but it's too 'clean', manufactured. Completely cutoff from everything he knew and was, the TARDIS and the Doctor are really all he has. However, he kind of resents, or fears the TARDIS a bit. She brought him back, but what if she changed him? As for the Doctor, well, Fitz has come to care for him and really trust him. There's a nice scene at the start of the book after the Doctor falls from a goddamned cliff (more on that later) where Fitz really just wants to hug him to comfort him, but can't bring himself to do it. Later, he confides to Compassion that he thinks the Doctor only 'tolerates' his presence, that he never chose him as companion. Bullshit. For one, the Doctor invited him to come with him and Sam at the end of 'The Taint'. Maybe out of pity, maybe as someone to be a friend for Sam, but invite him he did. And just very recently he brought Fitz back from the dead. He didn't exactly coerce Kode into going back to being Fitz, but he did strongly encourage it. Side note, there's a parallel here between Kode and Dark-haired Sam from 'Unnatural History': she did not want to, but had to turn back into blonde Sam, while Kode very much wants to be Fitz again. Anyway, Fitz basically feels like he cares for and needs the Doctor more than the Doctor does him.

Another huge thing he has going on here is his relationship with Alura. We know she's gonna die from the second we meet her, fridged as only a 90's love interest can. While Compassion was locked in their mission, Fitz couldn't help but form connections. They were left there by the Doctor for months, after all. Fitz is very aware that once the Doctor comes back he's going with him. He's just having fun with these people on Drebnar; once he's gone, he won't think of them again. 'Frank Sinatra' is just a character he's playing. But poor Alura doesn't know it's all a game. He gets her killed by involving her in his adventure, which he should know by now can get very dangerous very fast. Later, when her killer comes after him, Fitz is put in a classic 'villain is nearly falling to their death, you can save them by grabbing their hand' situation. He makes the executive decision to let go. We can spin it as self-defense, since the guy was trying to kill Fitz and Compassion, and probably would have killed Fitz if he had helped him, but well. Fitz is not happy about it, but doesn't regret it either.

Compassion and Fitz are a great duo. Her no-nonsense attitude is a great contrast to Fitz's, as their polar opposite personalities and strengths make their interactions very interesting to follow. There are several very good scenes with the two of them. Compassion kills Ellis to save Fitz's life, and gives him a very good pep talk about how the Doctor both likes and needs him, since Fitz can see the big picture and the human side of things better than she and the Doctor can. She later reveals in an ice cold tone she said those things because it's 'what he needed to hear'; more of her great acting in display. She doubles down by warning him that the Doctor is not perfect, that Fitz dotes on him too much, and that he should be aware that they're both likes pets to the Time Lord. 'He's got you to sit up and beg, like a well-trained dog. Well, he won't change me.' was a fantastic line. She's very much aware that the Doctor is teaching her morality, and she is aware that she's changing, but as she puts it, she doesn't 'have to let [Fitz] and the Doctor decide what that change is'. Fitz is incredibly frustrated at her, but one thing he does get out of the whole ordeal is that he's glad he's a dumb, normal human with dumb normal feelings, not someone cold like Compassion, even if that means he will get hurt by things like Alura's death in the future.

So, did the Doctor's social experiment work? Hm. Both Compassion and Fitz kill someone in this story; neither breath a word of it to the Doctor. Or maybe Fitz does when he's telling him what happened? Either way, the Doctor doesn't comment on it. The TARDIS gets to tell the Doctor (in a very nice dream sequence) what she thinks of his companions: 'The boy hates you for knowing how much he cares. The girl hates you for wanting her to care. They could both be so much more...' I don't know what that means, but it sounds prophetic.

A few more thoughts on the Doctor: I really like his characterization. Anghelides' also did a great job with him in 'Kursaal', and I'm glad he got it right again. In true Eighth Doctor fashion, he gets horribly hurt within the first 20 pages of this story by falling down a cliff and then getting shot. A silly thing that I adored was this bit, when he's hacking into Dewfurth's account.

'Welcome, Mr. Dewfurth', said the display panel.

'Thank you', the Doctor said to the text on the screen, giving it a halfbow. 'I'm very pleased to be here, you stupid insecure system'

He escapes the torture routine (in the 'medical' flavor rather than the 'information' flavor this time) by very unexpectedly headbutting Sempiter in the freaking face. Him being livid at Fitz and Compassion for burning down the Darkling crop made for a pretty entertaining scene, starting with this great opening line: 'As plans to hamper the program goes, I'd give it less than one out of ten. In fact, I wouldn't even use vulgar fractions, and believe me I'm in the mood for saying something extremely vulgar at the moment'. Lol.

If I must complain, I'd say Sempiter could have been a better villain. He wasn't really menacing enough, especially after the Doctor escapes from him so easily. The resolution of having the rival corporation, Reddenblak, buy out Frontier Worlds was, as I said, a bit too simple. I'm no businessman, but the Doctor is impersonating Dewfurth with just an ID card and selling his shares of the company to Reddenblak seemed extremely unrealistic. I like how Fitz questions whether Reddenblak is going to be any better than Frontier Worlds was, and I like that the Doctor's answer is just that it was what he could do at the moment to save that planet. What happens now is out of the hands of the people of Drebnar.

The list of pain, as usual, with probably the record for how fast the Doctor gets hurt:

Memory Loss:1 (in 'The Eight Doctors')
Serious Injuries/Near Death Experience:12 (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 here)
Torture:5 (in 'Genocide', 'Seeing I', 'Unnatural History', 'Interference' 1&2, 'The Taking of Planet 5')