Let's get one thing straight: despite the fact that the Second Doctor and Zoe Heriot are on the cover, The Indestructible Man is not a Doctor Who novel. Rather, it's a fan novel for Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, with bonus references thrown in for other creations of Gerry Anderson's as well. All the various pertinent names of characters and organizations have been changed, of course, but this thing is very clearly a Captain Scarlet/Doctor Who crossover fan novel.
That said, this is not actually a bad thing, if you don't mind that a novel with Doctor Who branding on it does not actually really heavily feature the Doctor. He and his Companions--in this particular case, Zoe and Jaime--are almost really bit players against the larger backdrop of the story. They serve crucial plot functions, and there's some good character development for all three of them, but they're really only there to be catalysts to the story.
Which is this: thirty years after the original invasion of the Myloki, the Earth organization PRISM has been driven underground to become SILOET. Earth won their war against the alien invaders, but at the heavy cost of planet-wide deterioration of civilization. The society in which the Doctor and the others arrive is a twisted and dystopian one, and surviving what havoc this wreaks upon their own lives takes up a good portion of the initial stretch of the action--also the weakest part of the story, as it was in this part where my one issue with the plot occurs (i.e., the handwavy explanation for why the Doctor sustains a fatal wound yet does not regenerate). Later on, though, once the main conflict gets underway, the book gets its feet under it and is quite enjoyable.
And I have to admit, Messingham does do an excellent job ramping up the tension for the inevitable bringing on camera for his analogues of Captain Scarlet and Captain Black: Grant Matthews and Karl Taylor. There's a bit of an amusing attempt to link into past Doctor Who history by setting up UNIT as a predecessor organization to PRISM, and references to old UNIT records about the Doctor--though the Doctor, I note, never fesses up to being the same man who dealt with UNIT a hundred years before. Last but not least, in reading about Matthews, I couldn't help but think of how the Doctor Who universe has its own Captain Scarlet analogue: Jack Harkness. ;)
So yeah, fun, once it got started. Three stars.
That said, this is not actually a bad thing, if you don't mind that a novel with Doctor Who branding on it does not actually really heavily feature the Doctor. He and his Companions--in this particular case, Zoe and Jaime--are almost really bit players against the larger backdrop of the story. They serve crucial plot functions, and there's some good character development for all three of them, but they're really only there to be catalysts to the story.
Which is this: thirty years after the original invasion of the Myloki, the Earth organization PRISM has been driven underground to become SILOET. Earth won their war against the alien invaders, but at the heavy cost of planet-wide deterioration of civilization. The society in which the Doctor and the others arrive is a twisted and dystopian one, and surviving what havoc this wreaks upon their own lives takes up a good portion of the initial stretch of the action--also the weakest part of the story, as it was in this part where my one issue with the plot occurs (i.e., the handwavy explanation for why the Doctor sustains a fatal wound yet does not regenerate). Later on, though, once the main conflict gets underway, the book gets its feet under it and is quite enjoyable.
And I have to admit, Messingham does do an excellent job ramping up the tension for the inevitable bringing on camera for his analogues of Captain Scarlet and Captain Black: Grant Matthews and Karl Taylor. There's a bit of an amusing attempt to link into past Doctor Who history by setting up UNIT as a predecessor organization to PRISM, and references to old UNIT records about the Doctor--though the Doctor, I note, never fesses up to being the same man who dealt with UNIT a hundred years before. Last but not least, in reading about Matthews, I couldn't help but think of how the Doctor Who universe has its own Captain Scarlet analogue: Jack Harkness. ;)
So yeah, fun, once it got started. Three stars.
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