Swallow, James

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:

2 out of 5

(1 book)

Doctor Who: Peacemaker

An original adventure featuring the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) and his companion Martha.  Arriving in the Wild West, the Doctor and Martha discover a town where a smallpox outbreak was cured by a mysterious healer.  But when the cured people begin having terrible nightmares and two corpselike mercenaries begin wreaking havoc, the Doctor realises they have to trackdown Professor Alvin Godlove, the healer.

I've never been a fan of stories which mash-up Westerns and science fiction and this book didn't do much to sway my feelings on that.  What makes Westerns so appealing is that frontier feeling of people trying to make a life for themselves with little in the way of resources.  However, that feeling is diluted and spoiled when you add in laser blasters, time/space ships and sonic screwdrivers.  The blending of the two genres just ruins its constituent elements, like milk curdling in orange juice.

The last act of the book does recover some of its lost ground by having the Doctor once more confronted with the contradiction of his pacifist nature and his actions during the Great Time War, but it's not enough to redeem the book as a whole.

2 out of 5

Collaborations & Anthologies:

Doctor Who: Short Trips - Dalek Empire (here)

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Doctor Who (here)