I'm gonna go ahead and say it: Option Lock is mid. There are definitely worse entries in this series, but this book struggles with many of the same issues.

The most notable one for me is the lack of focus on the Doctor and Sam. There are many moments in this book where I felt like the author wanted to be writing literally anything but a Doctor Who novel, which is a shame, because their stronger moments are what save this book from a lower rating and weeks of frustrated reading for me. While Pickering was an interesting and well-rounded character, and Sargent had his moments, I felt that most of the side characters were fairly one-note - not to mention that there are far too many of them.

Another recurring issue in this series that this novel struggled with is the pacing. This book spends so much time describing the minutea of the American political and defense system, the way every little thing about launching missiles works. It strikes me as a very odd choice to feature and name a president of the United States in a British sci-fi novel. It's possible that I just don't enjoy war stories (which I don't), but the way tense and initially fast-paced moments ground to a halt to explain things really grated on me.

Then there are other, more minor things. Aside from Vampire Science and maybe Genocide, this series has a bad track record with its treatment of women, and this book is no different. It also relies on the secret society controlling the world, a pretty well know anti-Semitic trope, made worse by the imagery of the Khameirians. It just left a veneer of bad taste over the entire book that I couldn't quite ignore.

That's not to say it's all bad; I already mentioned that I liked Pickering, and his and Sam's relationship is really wonderful. There's also more of Sam and the Doctor interacting the way I like, and the Doctor's terrible driving is a highlight. The concept of the Khameirians is interesting, if a little underdeveloped.

Then there's the stuff that's neither here nor there. The writing is pretty solid; some of the descriptions are vivid, but some are a little sparse and left me confused. Other than the military stuff and the first quarter of the book, the pacing actually wasn't too bad. The epilogue is good, though I know it's unlikely to matter.

At the end of the day, I think this book just isn't really for me. I understand why it's generally considered one of the better books in this series.

This isn't the worst Dalek story put there, but considering the general quality of Dalek stories that doesn't say much. I think there were some interesting concepts (such as the library and water-based lifeforms) and some fun moments (like the character who never got to speak and Ace getting to blow things up, as usual) but it's a pretty middling story for the most part.

What really dragged it down for me was the sound design. While the voice acting for the Daleks is quite good, their voices are extremely grating in this story. On top of that, there's this terrible high-pitched whine in every scene in their statis chamber that gave me quite a headache. The beeps and chirps used for almost every machine in this audio were also very annoying. It made it very difficult to get through.

I like this serial. It benefits from being on the shorter side. The story is concise but interesting. The twist reveal is  set up nicely and done very well.

I immediately like Vicki, and not just because she looks like my favourite cousin. This is a great introductory episode for a new companion. I love how she immediately trusts the Doctor, how much she cares for the local wildlife, and her willingness to forgive Barbara despite killing her pet.

Unlike most classic stories yet to come, this serial doesn't immediately forget about Susan. The Doctor is clearly still feeling her loss. I appreciate that.

I understand why this episode is so well-liked. There are a lot of little moments to love, realistic and interesting side characters, and, of course, the first companion send-off.

I do think, however, that it's a little over-long. There's a lot that could have been cut from the middle episodes without harming the plot at all. I probably would have liked this a lot more if it was an episode or two shorter. It made the first watch boring, and the second watch nearly impossible to get through.

Still, among the mundanity, there's a lot to like. The scene where Barbara runs over a bunch of daleks is seared in my mind as a highlight. The two women who turned in Barbara and Jenny to the Daleks in exchange for food is a poignant moment. Every scene with Susan and David that leads to her eventually staying with him is surprisingly well done and engaging. While I do think it wasn't a great way to remove her character from the show, I think it could have been handled a lot worse.

It's amazing how dull a three-parter can be. It's not bad, necessarily, but there's just so little going on. It doesn't help that out main characters have basically no effect on the real plot of the story, which is happening almost entirely out of their view with characters we don't know.

The concept of the characters being shrunk is interesting, the sets and props are impressive, and the lesson of the serial is a good one, so it's not all bad. Still, not one I see myself interested in revisiting anytime soon.

This is what I really wanted from this series: a solid 7/10 story. It has a plot and active characters, which is more than I can say for some of the other books so far. Also, werewolves! What more could you ask for?

Sure, it's not the be-all end-all of books, it's not the best thing every written, it's got issues and plot holes and characters that get cut out of the story unceremoniously, but it's fun. It's simple. After the boring drag of War of the Daleks and the frustrating slog that was Alien Bodies, I desperately needed something that was just light and fun, and this delivered in full.

All the characters in this book have agency, something that is conspicuously lacking in most other novels in this series so far. Sam, especially, finally gets to come into her own. It's amazing that we're seven books in and I still barely feel like I know her, but I feel like I know her a bit better now.

There are a lot of little details that I feel elevate the story if you're paying attention, such as the moon motifs and the Jax causing infected people's eyes to turn green (I really liked the line describing Gray's eyes to be "just as grey as the rest of him", which is probably the only reason I even noticed they had changed colour).

This book does something similar to The Bodysnatchers, where around halfway through the novel you feel like it's starting to wrap up. But unlike The Bodysnatchers, Kursaal actually has more of a story to tell, with things that were set up in the first part. It feels like it could have been a sequel rather than the same book, and I do think that isn't ideal, but it fills the necessary 280 page count without dragging, which is all I could ask for.

I really don't understand why this book is so widely hated. I enjoyed it.

This story is definitely on the lower end of the series, and my least favourite of the pure historicals so far. It just wasn't very interesting.

The first Doctor is at his best here, bickering with his companions, getting into trouble, dressing up and causing mischief. But the other characters have very little to do for most of the story, especially Susan. The side cast are mostly bland and one-note, and it doesn't help that I couldn't tell most of them apart.

Doctor Who really is at its best with four-parters. The story has enough time to breathe without becoming boring or slow. The Aztecs shows this well.

The sets and costumes are gorgeous, and there was clearly great care taken to make things accurate to life and history. The various headwear are especially impressive.

I like how enthusiastic Barbara is to be there, getting to flaunt even more of her knowledge as a history teach after Marco Polo, though it does veer into "white saviour" territory at times. I appreciate that it's balanced by the Doctor's insistence that nothing be changed and that the Aztecs are entitled to their way of life.

The various subplots are very fun. I wasn't super enthused about the Doctor's romantic interest at first, but the relationship grew on me over time. They are very sweet together. I like Ian showing up the strongest warrior with cunning. Susan gets sidelined a little, but what moments she has are good.

I think some aspects of the story could have been handled better, and I really doubt a story like this would have been attempted in today's political climate, but what we have is still really good and I'm happy it exists.

It's fine. The pacing is a little slow but there are plenty of good moments and I enjoy Suzan finally getting her time to shine. The slow pace helped with the build-up of mystery in the first episode and didn't detract too much from the political plots, though it might have if I wasn't using this opportunity to make progress on my current crochet project.

There are some parts of the story that fall apart under scrutiny (such as the Sensorites being unable to recognise each other without their roles being communicated) but most of the plot is fairly solid, something that often feels like a rarity in Doctor Who.

I can't say I don't understand why people talk about and recommend this book so much. It's got really cool concepts and is the originator of things such as Faction Paradox, type 103 TARDISes, and what I believe eventually becomes The War in Heaven. It's got weird science and body horror and a funeral for everyone's favourite astronaut, Laika. What's not to love?

Quite a lot, as it turns out. Honestly, I was really looking forward to this book, especially after how bored I was reading the last one, but I found myself getting increasingly frustrated the further I went on, to the point where I just couldn't force myself to pick up this book for a week. I had to push myself to finish it at all.

It's nothing wrong with the writing, necessarily. The style is good. It's moreso the plot. The vast majority of this book is filled with people standing around in an enclosed space, talking and arguing about things that really don't matter and I just can't care about. All of that is interspersed with flashbacks, some of which don't even feature our main cast, giving tiny tidbits of information that may or may not be relevant to the story. It's atmospheric, sure, but a story can't run entirely on atmosphere.

All this isn't even mentioning that there are far too many characters. The UNISYC people didn't even need to be there, they served no purpose for the story. With so many characters and moving parts, I didn't feel like we got to know any of them, let alone knew them enough to like them or care about them. Once E-Kobalt shows up there's two or three chapters where large swaths of dialogue are extremely difficult to parse due to the way they're formatted. When I'm already so frustrated with the pace of the book and how long it spends on people talking at each other without saying much, it's extremely grating.

There were only two properly engaging parts of this book, in my opinion. The first is the prologue, with Laika's funeral, which didn't suffer from getting bogged down in the slow pace of the rest of the story, as the story hadn't properly started yet. It's a beautiful moment that gave me high hopes for the rest of the book.

The second part I liked was the scenes in the vault with Sam and Adrianne. The horror was really well described, vivid and gripping. Unfortunately, it was continuously broken up by scenes I didn't care about with a much slower pace.

For all the cool concepts introduced in this book, I didn't feel that any of them were properly utilised. Maria, the first type 103 TARDIS we see, is out of commission for most of the book so she doesn't function like a character the way she was clearly designed to. Faction Paradox is a lot cooler on paper than the superstitious cult they are here, and the excessive, egregious, incorrect, and frankly, racist use of the term "voodoo" didn't make me like them any better.

The mysteries of who the Shift and Trask work for, as well as what's in the casket, were pretty underwhelming and predictable. We never found out who Qixotl was or how he and the Doctor know each other. The mystery of Sam's inconsistent biodata is only one I just can't find it in me to care about. I didn't feel that it was really focused on the way something like that should be, and from what I know of tie-in novels I don't trust that it's a thread that will ever be picked up again. I'll be happy to be proven wrong, though.

I guess, at the end of the day, a lot of this book felt really unnecessary. The worldbuilding overtook the plot, but while it had the potential to be really cool and interesting worldbuilding, a lot of it really fell flat because of it. For large swaths of the novel I felt like I was reading a textbook interspersed with poetry. If I wanted to read that, I'd continue my reread of Celtic Mythology: Welsh and Manx.

Now it's time to start Kursaal and hope I'm one of the few who like it.