The War Games
Timewyrm: Exodus
Blood Harvest
Endgame
Players
|
The War Games Timewyrm: Exodus Blood Harvest Endgame |
BBC Books Players |
|
| Author | Terrance Dicks |  |
| ISBN# | 0 563 55573 4 | |
| Published | 1999 | |
| Continuity | Between Mark of the Rani
and The Two Doctors |
| Synopsis: The Doctor and Peri find themselves encountering Winston Churchill and a mysterious group of plotting aliens... over and over again |
A Review by Finn Clark 16/6/99
I like Terrance Dicks. No, really. I thought Catastrophea was brilliant and I'm even prepared to defend The Eight Doctors, but boy, is Uncle Terry pushing it this time. He's always been self-referential, but here it's almost self-parody. Let's begin at the beginning.
Page two. "A little digging with my Gallifreyan army knife".
Need I go on? This is Scooby Who, as played by Adam West. "Pass the shark-repellent bat-spray, Robin!" said Batman in the sixties movie. How we laughed! Little did we know...
This book is unbelievably shallow. You all knew that anyway, but I just thought it needed saying. It makes Biggles look like Tolstoy. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as can be testified by anyone who greedily devoured blood-and-thunder pulp war stories as a child, but there isn't much to engage the higher brain functions. After a brief blip at the start of the Virgin era, Terrance is back to writing Target novelisations. Judged on these criteria, how does this one measure up?
Sections of the book are set in war-time, which has the effect of grounding Terrance slightly. He's still writing Boy's Own adventure, but he's aware that war and death are serious subjects. This gives a more realistic edge, as do the historical characters we meet. The research is solid and the period detail is convincing. However to be honest, I'm not sure this works. Since not even Terrance takes himself seriously these days, I gib at being asked to do so. I like my Dicks silly and fluffy, but if you found Catastrophea terminally mindless then you'll prefer this.
Basically it's fanwank, with the one qualification that using Winston Churchill is the masturbation of a historian, not a Who fan. Let's see. Players is...
But what about the characterisation? Actually, it's rather patchy. Even Winston Churchill feels pretty wooden until a good way into the book, though that's not entirely surprising given the Indiana Jones escapades he's given to do. He's okay in the later sections, but no more. Where's the famously acidic Churchillian wit? That I could live with, but what really surprised me was the rather poor rendition of the Doctor.
The sixth and second Doctors are perhaps the most colourful of them all, yet here Terrance often writes them as generic Terry-Docs that unsurprisingly bear a strong resemblance to Pertwee. I had real problems imagining Troughton or Colin Baker swanning around in evening dress. The Doctor of Players is an incorrigible name-dropper, financially secure and at ease with cuddling up to the establishment. He has a sprinkling of appropriate mannerisms, but it's nowhere near as convincing as Terrance's sixth Doctor as seen in The Eight Doctors.
In the end, Players is an inconsequential runaround made up of
caricatures and stock situations. It's Terrance's grittiest work since
the middle bit of Shakedown, though that isn't saying
much. It's blatantly sequel-hunting. I expect most people will greatly
prefer it to The Eight Doctors and Catastrophea, but speaking for myself I didn't find it
quite as entertaining.
Supplement, 30/1/02:
I recently read Players for the second time. Back in 1999 it
was the latest Terrance novel after Catastrophea
(which I'd adored), but two years later I was reading it as the start of a
trilogy with Timewyrm: Exodus and The Shadow in the Glass. So what did I think?
Bascially... hey, that was fun! Players is amiable Boy's Own
fluff, a kiddie's cliffhanger serial. See Doctor Who in an Exciting
Adventure with the Players! It's a bit silly and rather episodic
plotwise, though the running character of Churchill holds it together and
stops it feeling like the novella collection it might otherwise have
resembled.
Uncle Terry's characterisation of the third Doctor is excellent...
wossat? That's supposedly Pat Troughton and Colin Baker? I suppose
Terrance captures some surface mannerisms, but at root these are Doctors
who namedrop, dress up to the nines and are surprisingly quick to
associate with the authorities.
It's fun. It occupies a few pleasant hours... uh, actually maybe not.
Terrance's prose flies by. Make that about ninety minutes.
Players will never win the Nobel Prize for Literature, but it's
enjoyable - and seeing it as part one of a larger story really enhanced my
enjoyment of it. Fanwank becomes clever foreshadowing. Rereading
Players was for me an educational experience.
Light and fluffy. Obviously by Robert Smith?
18/6/99
I like Players. That's about it, really. I don't adore it like
Catastrophea or hate it like The
Eight Doctors. It's a fun tale, well told.
My main problem is the characterisation. I think I can see what he was
trying to do with the sixth Doctor, but I don't think it really worked.
Only occasionally does the character shine; the rest of the time, he seems
to be the embodiment of Uncle Terry's generic Doctor idea. Which is odd,
considering the sixth is the least Doctorish of them all. I think that's
the main reason it feels a bit off.
I think the problem is, and always has been, that Terrance is an
actor's writer. He can write a generic character with enough clues in it
that any reasonable actor can bring that character to life. He can also
take the acting of someone and trasncribe it so perfectly that the
character really works in a novelisation. In original fiction, I think
he's a little lost with this technique: if Players were really a
Season 22 story, it'd top every fan poll.
Peri is okay, if nothing special, although I have to object to yet
another suggestion of companion-rape that we get here. It was bad enough
in Catastrophea; twice in a row is just overdoing it.
There are ways to make your book appear a little more adult, but I don't
think this is it.
The second Doctor doesn't seem to be quite right either, but he's
always been tricky in novel form. However, there's enough going on with
the trial and post-trial sequences that I can forgive the somewhat odd
characterisation. Others have complained that we get yet another sequel
to The War Games. I'm a bit more forgiving. It's definitely a nexus point
in the Doctor's life, both fictionally and for the series, so it's not
that surprising that we keep harking back to it. I think it also makes
sense that the first thing the Doctor would do after the trial is follow
up on the most recent events he's experienced. What better way to find
out if he can trust the Time Lords than to check to see if they've kept
their end of the bargain?
The slight discontinuity with the Two Doctors (Peri not recognising
the second Doctor) jars a little - but only a little. I really like the
use of the scanner to watch a previous Past Doctor Adventure. The use of
this technique alone is a wonderful way to set the scene for the second
Doctor's era, harking back to the end of The Wheel in
Space.
The star of this book, however, is Winston Churchill. He manages to
work quite well, mainly due to Terrance's obvious affection for the
character. This backfires slightly in that the author can't help himself
when trying to reintroduce a mysterious character, later to be revealed as
Churchill - it doesn't even work the first time, but this doesn't stop him
from trying to reuse the same trick over and over, bless him. That's the
modus operandi of Terrance Dicks in a nutshell, for me.
I am impressed that all the snippets of Churchill's life that we saw
concentrated on his less-famous exploits as a reporter and his gradual
rise to power. I felt sure we'd get to see him as the great wartime leader
everyone knows him to be... but Terrance knows that we don't need to. I
really liked this.
I thought the Players themselves worked well enough in their own way.
They got the action moving and managed to keep things going without being
overused. I'm also glad that different Doctors ran into them over the
years - the sixth Doctor meeting them and Churchill twice is believable,
three times would have ruined it. Having the sixth Doctor suddenly make
the connection is a great way to prepare for the second Doctor's segment.
There's also something deliciously amusing about the Doctor claiming to be
his own son.
Oh, and the tie-in to Timewyrm: Exodus really
worked for me. This book is more than just a missing adventure slotted
into a nonexistent slot. It's a celebration of the history of Doctor
Who, stretching back to season six and forward to the New Adventures.
You can tell that Terrance Dicks adores every single piece of it. I think
a lot of fans could do worse than follow his lead. It's been a long time
since I've seen a love for the series shine through so clearly as it does
here. This book is about history and how great the past is, especially as
a form of entertainment. It's not about continuity or cutting-edge science
fiction... but Doctor Who was never about that in the first place
and Terrance knows full well how irrelevent these things are in the long
run.
I've said a lot more about this book than I thought I could. I think
it's great and I really enjoyed it. It's not the deepest book ever
written, but the fluffiness isn't entirely meaningless either. You
probably won't miss much if you skip this... except a rollicking little
story that's fun for a few hours, reminding you just how much fun
Doctor Who can - and should - be, in a delightfully childlike way.
And there's absolutely no shame in that at all.
A Review by Graeme Burk
24/8/99
Terrance Dicks returns to Timewyrm: Exodus
territory and I couldn't be happier. This is, simply put, Terrance's best
Doctor Who novel. It's a novelisation of the Colin Baker TV story
that should have happened. The plot is throughly engaging-- the Players
themselves are a great idea which I hope to see again-- and the history
lessons oh-so-painlessly delivered. The supporting cast is hugely
entertaining: Dekker is very agreeable when you don't have to put up with
first-person narrative like in Blood Harvest, and
Winston Churchill is great. The interlude with the Season 6B Doctor
through the War Games is, surprisingly, not a pale
rip-off (a la Eight Doctors or Blood Harvest) but in fact a fully formed and
entertaining story in its own right.
Best of all, the Sixth Doctor and Peri are given their best-ever
portrayal in print. (I would loved to have seen the TV Peri deliver some
of the dialogue Terrance gave her-- especially the interrogation scene!)
Sure, it's 100% pulp fiction, and sure most of the ideas were much better
handled in Timothy Findley's novel Famous Last Words. But this book
gave me an ear-to-ear grin the entire time I read it, and reminded me how
fun Doctor Who can be-- and how great a writer Terrance Dicks can
be when he gets off his ass and works at entertaining people rather than
shilling nolstalgia. 9.5/10...aw, hell...10/10 just because
of the endorphins it generated...
All that Matters is the Game by Richard
Wallace 17/12/99
I don't know why, but I always seem to find most of the Doctor
Who novels I try to read, I end up putting down before the end, but
when I manage to get into a book, I find they are thoroughly enjoyable
novels. I have to say that the quality of the novels has greatly
increased, since BBC took over the range and Players is probably
the easiest book to read of the lot.
From the outset, it is almost impossible to put the book down. Terrance
is reliable as usual and tells a good story extremely well and simply.
This book is basically a double length target novel, but it’s a pity that
it wasn't actually broadcast in the middle of season 22. It would have
knocked spots off even the best (Revelation of the
Daleks and Vengeance on Varos) and would have
made Timelash look like a Disney cartoon in
comparison to its Titanic.
One of the best parts of this novel is the Players themselves, even
though we don’t find out much about them. They should be brought back in
another novel, to flesh them out a bit more.
The characterisation in this story is good. Dicks seems to know exactly
what he wants and Winston Churchill becoming a great aid for the Doctor,
but for me, the best of the bunch is Dekker. Making a return appearance
from Terrance’s own Blood Harvest, he is a new
character, as I haven't actually read the first book. I think that he is
probably characterised better in the first book, but having not read it,
there was no reason for me to be disappointed.
Another of the best plot points is the appearance of the second Doctor
in the second part of the novel. This is written in very well, and the
revised ending to The War Games is super. The return
of Carstairs and Lady Jennifer were welcome and actually necessary to the
continuity. But the second Doctor doesn't feel like the second Doctor! He
doesn’t have the bumbling mannerisms we have come to expect. This is also
a problem with the sixth Doctor, who seems a lot more placid and calm than
his season 22 persona would have been. He is calmer and a lot less snappy.
This is good if you don't like the way he was represented in this season,
but it is bad if you do.
A great novel, and one that makes a great prelude to Exodus, Terrance's first new adventure.
Dr. Who: How to be a Player by Matt Haasch
3/4/00
Right off the bat, I'd like to say, Terry's no Shakespeare.
Unfortunately. But then again, the only one to prove himself a
Shakespeare was Francis Bacon, and that's not Uncle Terry's job. His job
is to write intricate plots, and here he does so, a bit more than I found
in Catastrophea, which I liked, but "me likey" this
one a bit more. I started to read it. I got bored when after they reached
Earth, during their capture, but the mud-soaked teaser at the begining was
very entertaining. I shouldn't say that it's booring, I'm just lazy.
I pushed fourth to the Second Doctor bit, which I found good, but
would've enjoyed better with viewing The War Games beforehand, 10 episodes
that I, unfortuantely, have yet to see. While Peri watches it, I just
kinda think that in the bit of The Two Doctors, which
everyone gripes about, when Chessene reads Peri's mind, I don't recall her
telling Shockeye that she didn't recognise him. Either way, the gluttonous
Androgum chased her. I also like the tie-in to the rumored season 6-b
here, with the first seen use of the time ring. Why do those two Doctors
seem to have a rapport that the others don't? Churchill is enjoyable to
see maturing throughout the book. You can't tell much, but I could still
picture it. Von Ribbentrop is a pretty good nasty, and his battle of wits
with Peri is a great scene to see what she thinks of interrogations.
Dekker and the Doc are a great pair, along with the Op, and should meet up
more often, the Doc saying for him not to kill anyone, and Dekker pulling
out his tommy gun, but where's the Op? They probably did in Blood Harvest, but I didn't read that sucker yet!
Wallace Simpson is a naughty dowager, and she plays the part
elequently, rather like Myrtel Wilson in "The Great Gatsby." The King is
nothing but a blinded dope who is easily swayed, and Hitler...as little of
what we see of him, is nice to know the scorching hatred is still there
while he drinks tea. The Players themselves were good too, and should be
seen more of, those manipulative jerks are almost worse than the 7th
Doctor! The housebreaking bit reminds me of the Buridian's Ass chapter
from The Eight Doctors, both which I liked extremely.
It isn't Douglas Adams, but who is? Terry's an author in his own right,
concise and to the point. The radio announcement was exciting, not knowing
anything of my British history. The ending was a whimper, instead of a
bang, and I thought it was a great whimper, the Doctor saving the day, but
not snagging all the bad guys, and not knowing where they'll meet next.
Kind of like Logopolis in that respect, and I hope
that the Players return for a sequel. A good read, and a more satisfying
one than trying to get through the first half of Interference - Book One.
P.S. Monty Python bit- John Cleese says:"Will the Op stand up,
please?"- from 'how not to be seen.' Truthfully, he's probably 90 years
old, and hiding in my backyard!
Churchill the Man rather the Churchill the Myth by Tim Roll-Pickering
23/4/00
The Doctor meets Winston Churchill.
This is arguably the single most obvious historical encounter and it
initially surprised me that it hasn't been done in any previous novel or
television story. However on reflection it's easy to understand why it
hasn't at least been done on television -- Churchill was alive during most
of the Hartnell era and the only real historical characters who
subsequently appeared in the series were George Stephenson (in The Mark of the Rani) and H.G. Wells (in Timelash), which incidentally makes Season 22 perhaps
the most appropriate place to set this novel in. The prospect of the
Doctor turning up in the midst of the Second World War and telling 'the
Great Man' how to win would seem incredibly cheesy and difficult to pull
off (though it is worth noting that when Stafford Cripps came back from
Russia and tried to give Churchill such advice, the Prime Minister's
response was to get away as quickly as possible!). Instead Terrance Dicks
has wisely focused on Churchill the Man, rather the Churchill the Myth,
which was particularly welcoming to me when I first read Players as
I was then studying Britain during the Second World War and in particular
looking at Churchill's rise to power in 1940. Players is set during
three of the lowest periods of Churchill's long political career --
shortly after he had first been defeated at Oldham and had left for South
Africa as a war correspondent in 1899; during his time on the Western
Front after leaving the Government when Galipolli proved such a
catastrophic failure; and finally during the 1930s when he was excluded
from the National Government due to his stances on India and appeasement.
This gives the reader a somewhat different perspective on Churchill,
though it is interesting to note that Terrance Dicks has remained loyal to
his childhood hero and so there is no mention of the fact that for many
years Churchill was hated by the Left for his stances on strikes and
Russia amongst other matters.
But what of the book itself? Apart from The Eight
Doctors, Terrance Dicks has never previously written for the Sixth
Doctor (The Ultimate Adventure was really written
for the Third and the changes for when Colin Baker took over were minimal
and largely instigated by the actor) but it's easy to imagine Colin Baker
speaking the lines. There are perhaps two areas in which the Doctor does
differ from the perceived norm in that he does clearly display his dislike
of violence when talking with Dekker (although even in Season 22 there
were times when he expressed his traditional stance) and for most of the
book he is in period dress. The description of the Doctor in what is
almost (by about fifteen months!) Edwardian attire in the early part of
the book and then later on in 1930s suits and dinner dress conjures to
mind a somewhat subtler Doctor than was portrayed on screen, though his
personality is still the familiar forceful one which provides for an
interesting comparison with Churchill. Peri is not captured quite so well,
coming across as being a little more American than she was
portrayed on screen with her references to her native culture more obvious
but she does show a considerable amount of strong independence, especially
when she discovers the attitudes of the 1930s British upper orders towards
morality. Of the other characters, Ribbentrop receives far more attention
here than he did in Timewrym: Exodus, whilst Edward
VIII, Hitler, Baldwin and Wallis Simpson are all used sparingly. We also
get to meet Lieutenant Carstairs and Lady Jennifer Buckingham (both from
The War Games) after they were returned to their
proper place in time and space via a flashback sequence featuring the
Second Doctor that finally confirms that he did have adventures
after his trial...
The plot of Players revolves around the mysterious Count and
Countess and their ilk as they seek to alter the course of history by
assassinating Churchill before the Second World War even starts whilst at
the same time co-operating with Wallis Simpson and the German government
to bring a very different outcome to the Royal Crisis of 1936. Whilst the
book is rather shallow when compared to some Doctor Who novels, it
doesn't just give the mythologised version of the Abdication -- namely
that Wallis Simpson was unacceptable purely because she was a divorcee.
The plot is woven so perfectly into the real historical events that one
could easily believe it actually happened, unlike some of the historical
events depicted in other stories.
Players is a very traditional style Doctor Who story, but
that by no means makes it a bad one. On the contrary it is a thoroughly
enjoyable read and of particular delight to history students who have
studied either the periods or Churchill's career since it generally
portrays them well (one or two minor details such as the Doctor
inaccurately claiming that the South African diamond fields are located
within the Transvaal aside) and can be read without being repeatedly
thrown across the room for any inaccuracies. 8/10
A Review by Sean Gaffney
19/10/00
This was a book that came out in that dark period where I simply wasn't
reading Who. And for the most part, I don't really intend to go
back and catch up with those old books either. However, Terrance is
putting the villains of this book in his November EDA, it would seem by
that book's back cover blurb, so I felt a need to go back and read this
one so I wouldn't miss anything.
Imagine my surprise to be quite glad that I got it.
I wasn't expecting to like this. Terrance has been incredibly variable
of late, he's a very trad PDA writer and I'm not the traddest person in
the world, and I didn't think my English History would be enough to keep
me interested. By the end of the book, I was fully drawn in to Terrance's
easy to read style, and wanted to read up on Churchill's life to see what
subtleties I'd missed (similar to my reaction on finishing Turing Test).
PLOT: Quite simple and straightforward, with the added quirk of never
really getting a handle on the true villains' motivation - mostly as they
really don't have one. Well, they do, but as a motivation to move along a
book, it's paper thin.
THE DOCTOR: I had read a lot of reviews saying this wasn't Colin or
Patrick, but rather TradDoc. I really didn't see this, though. I could
easily imagine Colin saying the lines he's given in the book, albeit
perhaps more in a later, Season 23 Colin style. The relish with which he
shows Peri around society especially sticks as a fine 6Doc bit. The 2Doc
interlude doesn't give us as much time to see his foibles, but I didn't
have problems.
PERI: Great fun, easily one of the best books I've seen with her.
She's accurately American for the most part, she doesn't scream or trip,
and the interrogation scene with Von Ribbentrop is priceless. Nicola
Bryant would adore this book.
CHURCHILL: Sort of a Bruce Willis Churchill, playing the action hero
role throughout. We see the great statesman in action throughout his
life, though I'd have preferred a few more really good lines - most of
those went to Dekker!
DEKKER: It's been so long since Blood Harvest, I
can't even remember what he was like there. Still, he was the consummate
pro here, almost becoming a deus ex machina with his ability to come up
with weapons or shoot down villains. Oh, and the Op was cute. You wanted
to hug him. :-D
VILLAIN: The Players, and what mysterious, unreadable villains they
are. In hindsight, it seems obvious that they were written in such a way
as to cry out for a sequel. The Countess was a lot of femme fatale fun,
and I hope she spars with the Doctor in Endgame.
OTHERS: Ribbentrop is a little worm, but that's historically accurate,
at least. Carstairs is OK, except for the one truly atrocious bit in the
book where the Doctor says that he and Lady Jennifer are in love and they
turn and say, 'Wow! So we are!'. x_x OK, subplots deserve to be tied up
a LITTLE better than that. I realize the outline prolly said, "On the
way, Jeremy and Jennifer fall in love", but jeez...
STYLE: It's a Target book writ large. Moves along at a roaring pace,
no excess Pip and Jane verbiage... works wonderfully for this story.
OVERALL: This really isn't a book with deep meaning or something that
will make you think. But it's a hell of a lot of fun. This is what trad
fans want in Who books, and for this month, I don't mind either. More
like this every once in a while would be great.
9/10.
Playing the Game by Terrence Keenan
13/3/01
Players by Terrance Dicks, is the story of meddlesome, bored
aliens influencing Earth history for their own pleasure and under a set of
rules called The Game. The Sixth Doctor and Peri, along with the Second
Doctor (in an extended cameo) keep running into Winston Churchill in
various parts of his life and help him keep time on its proper course.
Also along for the ride is Wallace Simpson, David a.k.a, the King of
England, a couple of characters from The War Games,
and an American detective named Dekker, who showed up in Blood Harvest.
This was a great TradDoc story with good action, some fun characters,
and a page turning plot that, although slight, never felt that way until
you looked back upon it. The pages flip by and although you know
everything will come out all right in the end, the little twists along the
way make the trip worth it.
Methinks Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant would have loved to do this
story. Their characters sparkle, and you can hear them reciting the lines
as you go. Complaints have been made that the Sixth sometimes comes across
as GenDoc/PertDoc, but I didn't notice this. The Second Doc didn't come
off as well. His, like the Fourth, is sometimes harder to capture in
print. Notwithstanding, his small section of the book is fun going. The
canonization of the Theorised Season 6b is nicely underplayed.
The funniest scene in the novel is the Interrogation scene between Peri
and Von Ribbentrop. Very reminiscent of Robert Holmes in taking the cliche
and turning it upside down. And I thought Hitler's hissy fit at the end of
the book was a nice touch.
Players succeeds because it is squarely TradDoc. Not to say
there is nothing wrong with stories that take Doctor Who in radical
and wild directions. It's a good thing there are complex, mindf%^*ing
stories in Who. But, without fun Trad tales like Players,
what's the point?
For those of you scoring at home 8/10.
A Review by Eva Palmerton
20/6/01
I liked it. Just not that much... It had some fun bits. I enjoyed the
transitions from Doc 6 to Doc 2 and back. That was very well done.
Characterisation was quite well done. Peri had more brains and guts than
I was used to seeing, which is a good thing.
The bad points - I've never been terribly fond of the horrendously
powerful time meddlers playing their "Ming the Merciless" routine with
Earth history. It's a tiresome plot that would have been far more
tolerable if the book had been shorter. Also, there were no surprises at
all, which you really need if you're going to try pulling off such a
common plot. Lastly, I just don't think Hitler ever adds anything
good to a story. Unfortunately, he seems to be a favourite
returning character in Doctor Who for some unknown reason.
Fun bits:
A slight editorial mistake made for the fastest sex change I've ever
seen written into a science fiction novel - "Peri looked at himself in her
mirror..."
The prison break... that was very nicely done.
Overall, not a bad read. Nothing spectacular, but certainly above
average - 6.5/10.
A Review by Andrew McCaffrey
30/8/01
I'm not usually a big fan of Doctor Who stories where the main
characters have adventures with historical figures. Not to say that this
situation can't be and hasn't been done well, but the usual result is that
the historical events end up being cheapened and the sense of history
never gets properly conveyed. So when I read on the back-cover blurb of
Players that the Doctor and Peri were going to be having adventures
with (among other people) Winston Churchill, I hoped that I wouldn't be
disappointed with the result.
Thankfully, I wasn't. Terrance Dicks has done a wonderful job of
making his Churchill appear like the historical figure he was and doesn't
let him fall into the trap of being just another character who happens to
have a famous name. By allowing us to view Churchill over the course of
several decades, a real sense of history is established. This lets us
view Churchill in the proper context; he's a real person who has done
hundreds of things before without contact with the Doctor. He has his own
life and his own place in the history books. This may seem like a simple
thing to setup, but I've seen far too many instances where this background
isn't established and the result is that there is no connection between
the real person and the fictional version used in the story. Dicks passes
with flying colours here. With the periodic dips into Churchill's
timeline it seems more like the Doctor is jumping in and out of
Churchill's personal biography rather than just pulling Churchill into his
own otherworldly adventures.
The story itself is straightforward without being totally simplistic.
Aliens (the Players of the title) are attempting to manipulate the course
of human history for their own bored amusement. The plot is slightly
frustrating in that the back-cover summary tells the reader exactly what
the Players are up to, but until almost the conclusion, the characters in
the book are virtually oblivious to any of their machinations. Another
annoyance is that by the end of the story the reader hasn't learned much
more about the Players than what the blurb has already informed us of.
Fortunately, the sections that deal specifically with the Players (they
exist behind the scenes and rarely make personal appearances) are done
stylishly enough to compensate for the lack of explanation.
For the most part, the characterization of the sixth Doctor and Peri
are handled very well, especially in the beginning section. There are a
few places towards the middle and end where Dicks seems to forget the
bombastic nature of the sixth Doctor, but overall, he's got them spot on.
Even the extended portion featuring the second Doctor is done well, which
should not be a surprise after all of Dicks' Target novelisations.
All in all this was an entertaining, fast-paced book that kept me
interested the whole way through. During the reading of it, I kept having
flashbacks to Terrance Dicks' Target novelisations, but I mean that in the
best possible way. While a lot of those books have been criticized for
being shoddy, cut-n-paste hack jobs, some of them were excellent examples
of the best of Doctor Who. There were only a few places were the
comparison to Targets was unflattering and that was the numerous
paragraphs that consisted entirely of passages like: "The Doctor brought
Churchill up to date and told him of their adventures while Churchill
laughed loudly." These information dumps for the varying characters
seemed to crop up in far too many places, were very annoying and really
broke up the pace of that section. On the other hand, for every one of
those present there were numerous places in which his minimalist prose
style really helped to quicken the pace and tighten the action. Terrance
Dicks has been writing these characters for (literally) decades, and the
result is that he can make it look easy and effortless. When he's on
form, he can produce some of the most enthralling Doctor Who
fiction out there. This is not an example of his best work, but it's
certainly not his worst and it comes recommended.
A Review by Brian May
25/5/06
Players is typical middle-of-the-road Terrance Dicks fare: not
his best effort, but by no means down there with his worst. It's an
easy-to-read, engaging story. It's simple, perhaps too simple. The events
that occur are enjoyable, yet predictable. The writing ensures that
nothing drags, but at the same time feels like it's aimed at a ten year
old.
There's a generically faithful rendition of the regulars, in this case
the sixth Doctor and Peri. Their speech, mannerisms, behaviour and
relationship to each other are depicted capably, echoing the surrounding
televised era, but they're hardly fantastic characterisations; they
certainly don't capture the onscreen rapport the actors shared. Once again
historical figures are included; a whole bevy of them in fact. They're all
as standard as you would expect from Dicks, except for the star of the
book: Winston Churchill. You can tell the author's had a lot of fun
bringing him to life, reflecting more on his faults and failures rather
than lauding him as the hero history has painted him. It's also fortunate
that Dicks is an apolitical writer; after all Churchill had his more
shameful episodes: he had no qualms about gassing Iraq's Kurdish
population in the 1920s, for example. I can imagine plenty of other
Who writers meting out a far more damning portrayal than just a
pompous, self-important, failed politician.
Okay, token political statements aside, on with the review. This being
a Dicks book, reliving his past glories is obligatory as he brings his
distinct form of self-fanwank to the adventure. It's a veritable
mix-and-match of his earlier work, with many "spot my previous
story/character/scenario" games to play. The War
Games gets a look-in, with the first look at season 6B, as initially
put forth by The Discontinuity Guide. Terrance does
quite a good job of this: it's a feasible attempt to describe what
happened in this interregnum, the cause of so many continuity nightmares.
He's also written an excellent second Doctor, but Carstairs and Lady
Jennifer only work on a superficial level, mainly because they were never
endearing enough for a return appearance.
Other recycled characters are Hitler, Bormann and von Ribbentrop from
Timewyrm: Exodus. The last of these formerly played
a peripheral role, but here is made more of a central character, while the
reverse applies for the Fuhrer and his secretary. Decker from Blood Harvest also returns, but unfortunately he lacks
the goofy charm and affability from his Chicago days and feels like he's
been reused simply because the author can reuse him. But just check out
Bormann's last line (p.241) for the ultimate groan!
The villains of the piece, the Count and Countess, are lots of fun, but
that's only because they're such laughably awful characters.
They're cheesy and cliched, with zero depth. But because of, and in spite
of, this, they're an absolute hoot, in the ultimate "so bad they're good"
way. I do hope Terrance wrote them with a tongue-in-cheek attitude (but
with him, you can't always tell). And am I the only one, or is the
Countess a carbon copy of Rocky and Bullwinkle's Natasha Fatale?!? The
whole notion of them, their fellow Players, and the Game aren't as
mystical and omniscient as intended, but I do appreciate the ambiguity of
their origins. Dicks has deliberately avoided linking them with the
Guardians/Eternals/Great Old Ones etc., but still they fail to enthral,
and the promise of a sequel isn't much of an event to anticipate.
But the story is fun, in an unspectacular, forgotten-by-tomorrow way
that still passes the time nicely. Incorporating the Doctor and Peri into
the various events of Churchill's life is particularly good, there's an
authentic period feel, and it would have been nice to see the sixth Doctor
dressed elegantly, just once! But Players is standard Terrance
Dicks. Everything a knowledgeable Doctor Who fan expects from him
is here, and a newcomer would be suitably entertained. 6/10
The opening bit was really fun - Doctor Who meets sketch
comedy. It was an excellent way to start a book. Pity it was also one of
the most exciting parts.