Review: Doctor Who: Autonomy
Mar. 15th, 2010 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charameiAs I commented to aleas_iacta a couple of days ago, my reading pile seems to be sitting on top of a minor spatio-temporal anomaly that continually spits out new Doctor Who. (It's better than Weevils, I suppose.) Why, just today I went into W H Smith's to get the Guardian and see if they had restocked Young Bond: By Royal Command (they haven't), and came out with the Space Museum/The Chase boxset and Wishing Well.
Only one of those was entirely planned, and I'm sure my accidental acquisition of Wishing Well has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the Doctor Who books are shelved just above Young Bond in the children's section.
This tendency of mine to go into Smith's, gravitate to Young Bond, discover that the book I'm looking for is out of stock (Double or Die was missing when I was looking for that one, then it was Hurricane Gold, and now it's By Royal Command - I swear they're doing it on purpose) and turn to the shiny orange oval for comfort also explains how Autonomy got onto my pile.
So. Autonomy.
It was pretty amazing. There were some minor style annoyances (Blythe likes to refer to his characters by their full names, sometimes two or three times in one paragraph. I have never been so pleased that the Doctor has no name: can you imagine if Lady President Romanadvoratrelundar was in a novel with that quirk?), and the application of a little Fridge Logic to the plot will reveal that the Doctor actually destroys the world rather than saving it, but overall I think this was better even than Hurricane Gold - which makes it the best book I've read since, er, Prisoner of the Daleks.
Not sure what that says about me.
The three temporary companions - one adult, two kids - were all wonderfully competent, distinct and believable. Kate in particular deserves a promotion to TV companion at some point, in my opinion. At one point there were five, maybe six, different interrelated plot threads, yet I never felt confused, cheated or frustrated. It was pacy, and exciting from start to finish, full of in-jokes. I struggle to think of a single contrived plot element - Blythe even has the decency to show us the aftermath, in which the Doctor calls in UNIT to clear up the mess, commandeers four soldiers to find the TARDIS and then legs it before Magambo makes him do the paperwork. It's one of those scenes that seems to be missing from so many current-era Earth stories, and it was great to see it used at last.
The main villain perhaps needed a tiny bit more backstory, and the head of security needed a bit less (I strongly suspect that the latter died in an earlier draft, given her introduction as 'loving mother of two, who always tell her to be careful when she goes to work'). But really, I have no problems with this novel, and only good things to say about it.
Oh.
Except the fridge logic.
Which wasn't really fridge logic for me, I must admit: I cottoned onto it almost immediately after reading the Doctor's explanation of his plan. But whatever, here goes.
SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT.
So he mixes up an anti-plastic from acetone and alcohol and has Kate dump it into the sprinkler system. Okay? And to prevent it being diluted, there's some technobabble about how the stuff will bond to water molecules and replicate itself. Since the rate of replication will obviously increase exponentially, the sprinkler system will be converted in a matter of seconds.
Great for killing Autons. But acetone is toxic to humans, alcohol's not too great either, and this story is taking place in a shopping complex the size of a small city.
Presumably it has a way to dispose of waste, and there's no indication that its water system is self-contained (nor any reason it should be). In other words, a couple of hours after the sprinklers go on all the water on the planet is going to be highly toxic and capable of melting plastic.
Nice one, Doc.
It's one of those things that would have taken about a line to clear up - he calls in UNIT anyway, so hopefully he made an antidote and handed it over. But that line isn't present, so the Doctor has doomed the human race (again).
As I said, it's fridge logic that just happened to hit a bit early for me, and it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book at all. But Doctor, you ginormous alien idiot!
If you're looking for an enjoyable Who fix, try Autonomy. It's fast, clever, exciting, and even the massive authorial oversight couldn't make it worse. Wishing Well is going to have to work hard to top this one.
/\/\/\
Death in Blackpool has (a) been out since December and (b) an hilarious canon conflict with End of Time? Aww, man! I need a better rift manipulator :(
(Not buying it. Noooooot buying it. Waiting until I've saved up enough to buy the whole series and get my discount. Waaaiiiiiitiiiing.)
aleas_iacta a couple of days ago, my reading pile seems to be sitting on top of a minor spatio-temporal anomaly that continually spits out new Doctor Who. (It's better than Weevils, I suppose.) Why, just today I went into W H Smith's to get the Guardian and see if they had restocked Young Bond: By Royal Command (they haven't), and came out with the Space Museum/The Chase boxset and Wishing Well.Only one of those was entirely planned, and I'm sure my accidental acquisition of Wishing Well has nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that the Doctor Who books are shelved just above Young Bond in the children's section.
This tendency of mine to go into Smith's, gravitate to Young Bond, discover that the book I'm looking for is out of stock (Double or Die was missing when I was looking for that one, then it was Hurricane Gold, and now it's By Royal Command - I swear they're doing it on purpose) and turn to the shiny orange oval for comfort also explains how Autonomy got onto my pile.
So. Autonomy.
It was pretty amazing. There were some minor style annoyances (Blythe likes to refer to his characters by their full names, sometimes two or three times in one paragraph. I have never been so pleased that the Doctor has no name: can you imagine if Lady President Romanadvoratrelundar was in a novel with that quirk?), and the application of a little Fridge Logic to the plot will reveal that the Doctor actually destroys the world rather than saving it, but overall I think this was better even than Hurricane Gold - which makes it the best book I've read since, er, Prisoner of the Daleks.
Not sure what that says about me.
The three temporary companions - one adult, two kids - were all wonderfully competent, distinct and believable. Kate in particular deserves a promotion to TV companion at some point, in my opinion. At one point there were five, maybe six, different interrelated plot threads, yet I never felt confused, cheated or frustrated. It was pacy, and exciting from start to finish, full of in-jokes. I struggle to think of a single contrived plot element - Blythe even has the decency to show us the aftermath, in which the Doctor calls in UNIT to clear up the mess, commandeers four soldiers to find the TARDIS and then legs it before Magambo makes him do the paperwork. It's one of those scenes that seems to be missing from so many current-era Earth stories, and it was great to see it used at last.
The main villain perhaps needed a tiny bit more backstory, and the head of security needed a bit less (I strongly suspect that the latter died in an earlier draft, given her introduction as 'loving mother of two, who always tell her to be careful when she goes to work'). But really, I have no problems with this novel, and only good things to say about it.
Oh.
Except the fridge logic.
Which wasn't really fridge logic for me, I must admit: I cottoned onto it almost immediately after reading the Doctor's explanation of his plan. But whatever, here goes.
SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT.
So he mixes up an anti-plastic from acetone and alcohol and has Kate dump it into the sprinkler system. Okay? And to prevent it being diluted, there's some technobabble about how the stuff will bond to water molecules and replicate itself. Since the rate of replication will obviously increase exponentially, the sprinkler system will be converted in a matter of seconds.
Great for killing Autons. But acetone is toxic to humans, alcohol's not too great either, and this story is taking place in a shopping complex the size of a small city.
Presumably it has a way to dispose of waste, and there's no indication that its water system is self-contained (nor any reason it should be). In other words, a couple of hours after the sprinklers go on all the water on the planet is going to be highly toxic and capable of melting plastic.
Nice one, Doc.
It's one of those things that would have taken about a line to clear up - he calls in UNIT anyway, so hopefully he made an antidote and handed it over. But that line isn't present, so the Doctor has doomed the human race (again).
As I said, it's fridge logic that just happened to hit a bit early for me, and it didn't detract from my enjoyment of the book at all. But Doctor, you ginormous alien idiot!
If you're looking for an enjoyable Who fix, try Autonomy. It's fast, clever, exciting, and even the massive authorial oversight couldn't make it worse. Wishing Well is going to have to work hard to top this one.
Death in Blackpool has (a) been out since December and (b) an hilarious canon conflict with End of Time? Aww, man! I need a better rift manipulator :(
(Not buying it. Noooooot buying it. Waiting until I've saved up enough to buy the whole series and get my discount. Waaaiiiiiitiiiing.)