Ford, Phil

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:

4 out of 5

(1 book)

Doctor Who: The Waters Of Mars

The novelisation of the 2009 Autumn Special, originally scripted by Ford and Russell T. Davies.  The Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) arrives on Mars seeking solitude but instead discovers the pioneering space explorers crewing Bowie Base One, the first human colony on the Red Planet.  Although excited to be meeting such exceptional people, the Doctor is haunted by the knowledge that he has arrived on the very day in history that the entire colony is destroyed under mysterious circumstances.

The core story of a base under siege by what are effectively zombies is a solid, if somewhat derivative one.  It's the bread and butter of Who storytelling and is enjoyable purely on that basis.  However, things are taken up a notch by the knowledge that all of the characters introduced are destined not to survive and that it's a fixed point in time that the Doctor cannot interfere with.  There's a genuinely touching air of tragedy to this story as we, like the Doctor, are constantly reminded that all of these interesting new characters are doomed but that in their deaths, humanity finds a uniting impetus to take it out into the stars.  It forces us to confront the concept of people who've died in the name of progress and whether the world would have been worse off if they'd lived.

Furthermore, this story is a brilliant character piece for the Tenth Doctor, as we see him go through the stages of boyish enthusiasm, powerless melancholy and, finally, crossing a line to become the Time Lord Victorious.  It's a watershed (pun intended) moment for the characters and not only led into its own multimedia spinoff (the Time Lord Victorious novels, audio dramas and comics) but also built towards this incarnation's final story 'The End of Time'.

In general, this is just a really good Doctor Who story and surely you can't go far wrong with that.

4 out of 5

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