Review: Wooden Heart (Public)
Doctor Who: Wooden Heart by Martin Day. HC, 247 pages, BBC Books, 2007.
The Doctor and Martha find a deserted starship in deep space, and then a country village within it. The people living there are experiencing some difficulties with fog and disappearing children. So it's up to the Doctor and Martha to investigate!
*Warning: SPOILERS* Yet another book that reminded me of The Girl in the Fireplace. However, in this case the comparison wasn't quite as favorable. There were some bits that I enjoyed, like the way the Doctor mentioned how companions always run off and get into trouble, Martha said she'd never do that, and then promptly did so. Overall I think Martha came off pretty well in this novel. As a fan of Martha, one of the things I think to myself whenever reading a 10/Martha story is, would she tell this one during the Year That Never Was? And the answer, I think, is yes.
On the other hand, this didn't come off quite as well as The Girl in the Fireplace. For starters, the title didn't seem to have much to do with the novel. Yes, there's a fake woods at what is arguably the "heart" of the spaceship, and sure it sounds cool, but it doesn't have the close ties to the novel that Shining Darkness, The Nightmare of Black Island, or even Martha in the Mirror had. Also, the discovery of the alien and the rest of the closing didn't ring true with me. I don't mean that it was bad. It's hard to articulate exactly what I mean, but it just didn't have that "real" feeling to it.
The whole storyline with Ben Abbas didn't seem to add much. I suppose it was a way of keeping the Doctor in the story while giving us backstory and suspense as to the outcome of the Doctor's encounter with the creature, but I was just bored during those parts. Getting into a killer's mind is difficult and in this case I don't think it added more to the storyline than it took away from the writing.
All of the above left me feeling that this is another okay addiction to the Doctor Who series. I'm willing to believe these events could possibly be canon, and it read fine, but this is not the top of the line.
The Doctor and Martha find a deserted starship in deep space, and then a country village within it. The people living there are experiencing some difficulties with fog and disappearing children. So it's up to the Doctor and Martha to investigate!
*Warning: SPOILERS* Yet another book that reminded me of The Girl in the Fireplace. However, in this case the comparison wasn't quite as favorable. There were some bits that I enjoyed, like the way the Doctor mentioned how companions always run off and get into trouble, Martha said she'd never do that, and then promptly did so. Overall I think Martha came off pretty well in this novel. As a fan of Martha, one of the things I think to myself whenever reading a 10/Martha story is, would she tell this one during the Year That Never Was? And the answer, I think, is yes.
On the other hand, this didn't come off quite as well as The Girl in the Fireplace. For starters, the title didn't seem to have much to do with the novel. Yes, there's a fake woods at what is arguably the "heart" of the spaceship, and sure it sounds cool, but it doesn't have the close ties to the novel that Shining Darkness, The Nightmare of Black Island, or even Martha in the Mirror had. Also, the discovery of the alien and the rest of the closing didn't ring true with me. I don't mean that it was bad. It's hard to articulate exactly what I mean, but it just didn't have that "real" feeling to it.
The whole storyline with Ben Abbas didn't seem to add much. I suppose it was a way of keeping the Doctor in the story while giving us backstory and suspense as to the outcome of the Doctor's encounter with the creature, but I was just bored during those parts. Getting into a killer's mind is difficult and in this case I don't think it added more to the storyline than it took away from the writing.
All of the above left me feeling that this is another okay addiction to the Doctor Who series. I'm willing to believe these events could possibly be canon, and it read fine, but this is not the top of the line.