January Books 15) A Big Hand for the Doctor, by Eoin Colfer
As soon as the last gloopy globs of the anti-grav beam had faded, the Soul Pirates cranked up their hoses and turned them on their latest victims, blasting Susan, the Doctor and the four others into a heaped hotchpotch of limbs and torsos in the corner of the pit.
Oh dear. This is the first of the planned 11 short Penguin ebooks to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who, one Doctor per month, the books to be released for £1.99 on the 23rd of every month up to November. It is by Eoin Colfer, best known for the Artemis Fowl books, but also author of an authorised sequel to the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy which I may not get around to reading, and it is about the First Doctor in London in 1900 trying to get a cybernetic replacement hand and defeat the Soul Pirates. There are meant to be lots of references to Peter Pan, which mostly passed me by. The central character bears little resemblance to any other interpretation of the First Doctor on screen, audio or page. The author's Guardian interview about the book is much shorter and much more interesting.
Fails Bechdel at the first hurdle: Susan is the only named female character. (The Doctor's mother appears separately in a flashback passage.)
Oh dear. This is the first of the planned 11 short Penguin ebooks to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Doctor Who, one Doctor per month, the books to be released for £1.99 on the 23rd of every month up to November. It is by Eoin Colfer, best known for the Artemis Fowl books, but also author of an authorised sequel to the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy which I may not get around to reading, and it is about the First Doctor in London in 1900 trying to get a cybernetic replacement hand and defeat the Soul Pirates. There are meant to be lots of references to Peter Pan, which mostly passed me by. The central character bears little resemblance to any other interpretation of the First Doctor on screen, audio or page. The author's Guardian interview about the book is much shorter and much more interesting.
Fails Bechdel at the first hurdle: Susan is the only named female character. (The Doctor's mother appears separately in a flashback passage.)