Review: Decent story hampered by poor characterization
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 07 25, 2013
The story follows the age old conceit of seeing what life is like in another time/universe. Ace and the Doctor get zapped into a dimension where bad guys are good guys and no one but the Doctor and Ace remember. The moral of the story would seem to be that we shouldn't be prejudiced but that never really comes to fruition and as such it leaves the Doctor looking like a guy who can not accept that things change. As portrayed here, we get a Doctor that's not so much Seven but more Two and Eleven mashed together. It feels off and he never comes across as the Seventh Doctor of the TV show, and no where near the dark manipulator of the books or audios. Ace feels tone deaf. The writer knew all the elements of Ace - baseball bat, ghetto blaster, jacket, nitro nine - but had no idea how to make the character feel like Ace outside of surface details. As well, the character feels especially young and naive. (Fans wishing to figure out a continuity placement for this story should note that it seems to hew close "Remembrance" and "Silver Nemesis" and relies on Ace not knowing much about the Doctor or about the wider universe.)Lastly, the story covers a similar tack as that of the Seventh Doctor Story, "Shockwave" from Big Finish and AudioGo's 50th Anniversary Audibook Series. Both feature Ace befriending a young girl whose fate she and the Doctor interfere with. The audiostory does this in a devastating way, the book seems almost nonchalant.