January Books 2) The Indestructible Man, by Simon Messingham
"You're not the Doctor. It's a trick. You're one of those doubles, Mr Mackenzie told me."
"I don't know who this Mr Mackenzie is, Jamie," said the Doctor. "But I assure you that I am definitely me."
"You're dead." He looked the Doctor up and down. "You're not the Doctor. I want to go back."
A slightly unusual Past Doctor Adventure here: the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe end up in a future which is based very strongly on the work of the late Gerry Anderson, the Tracy family of Thunderbirds fame translated into the Sharon family with their Lightning rescue craft, and various other adaptations from parts of the Andersonverse that I don't know as well.But this future is a dystopia where society had collapsed globally, and which is under threat from the Myloki (who combine attributes of both the Mysterons and the attackers of Earth in UFO). It is lovingly drawn, and my lack of familiarity with the source didn't spoil my appreciation of the detail. Messingham also has the Doctor and companions go through hell - the Doctor so badly injured before the story starts that he almost regenerates, Zoe drawn into a doomed love affair, Jamie traumatised and distrustful - which is not at all true to the series of the time, but does take the characters to interesting places. However, though I liked the setting and what was done with the regulars, I wasn't really grabbed by the plot such as it was, and too many of the borrowed Anderson characters - especially the women - were simply background coloration.
A bare pass for the Bechdel test (and I think some readers would fail it). Zoe is often thrown together with some of the aforementioned cardboard women characters and it is suggested that they have conversations, which may not always be about men. (I am going to try and systematically tally this for all fiction I read this year.)