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Eighth Doctor Adventures #63
Doctor Who: Reckless Engineering
The history of the planet Earth has become splintered, each splinter vying to become the prime reality. But there can only be one true history. The Doctor has a plan to ensure that the correct version of history prevails -- a plan that involves breaking every law of Time. But with the vortex itself on the brink of total collapse, what do mere laws matter? From the Bristol riots of 1831, to the ruins of the city in 2003, from a chance encounter between a frustrated poet and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, to a plan to save the human race, the stakes are raised ever higher -- until reality itself is threatened.
288 pages, Paperback
First published April 7, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 8, 2013
On second thought, maybe the parallel universe storyline wasn't quite the kick in the pants this series might have needed.
Several books into it now, it's become slightly less clear what exactly the problem is beyond the obvious "we're in a universe where everyone is wearing insect heads", what the stakes really are and if anyone is behind it, or if the Doctor is doing anything other than putting out fires as he goes along. Even good ol' bwah-ha-ha standby Sabbath gets only a token mention of this book and little else. So what the heck exactly are we doing here?
If we're the author, we're taking a jumbled mess of an arc and attempting to do our best with it, which to his credit he acquits himself well, or as well as can be expected. And if you think that's easy to simply coast on the good vibes this show gives us you can look as recently as, er, the last book in this series to see how the ball can be utterly dropped, as if down the side of an endless mountain.
Here, at least someone is trying. The Doctor and stalwart companions Fitz and Anji wind up in another parallel universe where civilization has utterly crashed. Some people are living in settlements, weird naked savages are running around and technology seems to have become frozen. Meanwhile a weird wispy poet is living in an impossible house which is so amazing that time can literally standstill for you. Impressively, it takes a while before the plot requires everyone to separate, which at least is somewhat a thumb in the eye to the shadow of predictability.
As it turns out, something called "The Cleansing" has occurred, which means that everyone aged like forty years in two seconds, which stinks if you're at all over, say, forty, and really stinks if you're five and suddenly learn what hemorrhoids are. As the Doctor investigates, Anji falls in with people who have exotic eating habits, Fitz has qualms of conscience about the morality of deleting parallel universes and the wispy poet composes absolutely no poetry at all (probably good if the author wasn't so hot at creating his own) but feels really bad about something.
The world itself is interesting and as the mysteries pile on top of mysteries that seems to be enough. Unlike the last few parallel earths, it brings the crew into uncharted territory and keeps them off balance, even if the scenario isn't anything we haven't seen on Earth-like worlds. So it's not totally original but its well-handled and the author handles the details of the new world quite well, unspooling the various surprises and shocks in a way that unveils the local color and keeps us reading. His prose is nicely precise as well, at least in parts, he has a way around a description, so well in fact that it's extremely noticeable in the scenes when he's coasting because those instances feel far plainer.
The book, however, wouldn't be able to sustain itself based on sightseeing and eventually we have to get to something resembling a plot. Unfortunately, this is where things start to fall apart. Not to any catastrophic degree but enough so that the flaws are obvious. For one, pretty much all the supporting characters exist to deliver exposition, not a one of them seems to break out of their initial character mold and while their insights are useful to understanding the world that the team finds themselves in, it doesn't exactly make me care a lick about either of them. The author does his best to give us that emotional angle through Fitz, who has some serious misgivings about replacing an entire world with their own, even if this world is wrecked, but with the world itself not having any grasp on our hearts, it becomes more a hypothetical issue than an actual one.
But at least Fitz gets a point of view to run with. Poor Anji mostly finds time to suffer and run around, if nothing else this book marginalizes her contributions to a somewhat ridiculous degree, almost writing her out for a chunk of it for dramatic purposes, even as Fitz seems to be starting to pine for her as more than friends (the series has danced around with a toe in the water about considering it, probably testing it to see how people would react, though its come up often enough now that I wonder if they're really going to go for it). The interactions between our main principals is entertaining on its own and makes me realize how much fondness the series has built in for me with these people, to the point where I would have loved to see a televised version of these people acting around shoddy sets. Alas, twas never to be.
In the meantime the author tries to make it all tie in with famed civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, but since he's not that famous unless you're English or a student or architecture, he winds up being a guest star with no real import. I give the book credit for not going with one of the big historical names but his inclusion seems to mostly be about Walters proving how much research he did about his life. As the book starts to shed the mystery that kept it going initially, the plot can't quite pick up the slack, especially when parts of it seem liberally cribbed from Asmimov's "The Gods Themselves" and the solution winds up being so obvious in a "really, that's it?" kind of way you wonder how it took the Doctor two hundred and fifty pages to get around to it. The only scenes that come close to the strangeness I've come to love about the series is in the pocket dimension sections, where we get the eerie sense the rules may have floated away. But even then it barely lasts and except for a brief dream sequence with Anji that hints at the metaphorical symbolism the series can employ when it gets half a mind, we're back into standard, if capable written, territory again. It makes the whole affair seem fairly rote, as if the scenario was conceived and they wrote half a plot around it, with no real sense of urgency other than trying not to get killed. Even all the hand-wringing about slaughtering a parallel universe, even in the abstract, seems to fade away as Fitz has to readjust to being himself again.
It's more readable and entertaining than it has any right to be, but you alternate passages of fascinating situations with ones that feel completely by the numbers, giving you at best an average experience. It's not the complete misfire the last book was (thank goodness) and shows the hand of an actual adult behind the wheel, but the truth is the bones of this arc aren't clearing the heights this series was able to for a brief moment. But maybe it'll wrap up nicely eventually.
Several books into it now, it's become slightly less clear what exactly the problem is beyond the obvious "we're in a universe where everyone is wearing insect heads", what the stakes really are and if anyone is behind it, or if the Doctor is doing anything other than putting out fires as he goes along. Even good ol' bwah-ha-ha standby Sabbath gets only a token mention of this book and little else. So what the heck exactly are we doing here?
If we're the author, we're taking a jumbled mess of an arc and attempting to do our best with it, which to his credit he acquits himself well, or as well as can be expected. And if you think that's easy to simply coast on the good vibes this show gives us you can look as recently as, er, the last book in this series to see how the ball can be utterly dropped, as if down the side of an endless mountain.
Here, at least someone is trying. The Doctor and stalwart companions Fitz and Anji wind up in another parallel universe where civilization has utterly crashed. Some people are living in settlements, weird naked savages are running around and technology seems to have become frozen. Meanwhile a weird wispy poet is living in an impossible house which is so amazing that time can literally standstill for you. Impressively, it takes a while before the plot requires everyone to separate, which at least is somewhat a thumb in the eye to the shadow of predictability.
As it turns out, something called "The Cleansing" has occurred, which means that everyone aged like forty years in two seconds, which stinks if you're at all over, say, forty, and really stinks if you're five and suddenly learn what hemorrhoids are. As the Doctor investigates, Anji falls in with people who have exotic eating habits, Fitz has qualms of conscience about the morality of deleting parallel universes and the wispy poet composes absolutely no poetry at all (probably good if the author wasn't so hot at creating his own) but feels really bad about something.
The world itself is interesting and as the mysteries pile on top of mysteries that seems to be enough. Unlike the last few parallel earths, it brings the crew into uncharted territory and keeps them off balance, even if the scenario isn't anything we haven't seen on Earth-like worlds. So it's not totally original but its well-handled and the author handles the details of the new world quite well, unspooling the various surprises and shocks in a way that unveils the local color and keeps us reading. His prose is nicely precise as well, at least in parts, he has a way around a description, so well in fact that it's extremely noticeable in the scenes when he's coasting because those instances feel far plainer.
The book, however, wouldn't be able to sustain itself based on sightseeing and eventually we have to get to something resembling a plot. Unfortunately, this is where things start to fall apart. Not to any catastrophic degree but enough so that the flaws are obvious. For one, pretty much all the supporting characters exist to deliver exposition, not a one of them seems to break out of their initial character mold and while their insights are useful to understanding the world that the team finds themselves in, it doesn't exactly make me care a lick about either of them. The author does his best to give us that emotional angle through Fitz, who has some serious misgivings about replacing an entire world with their own, even if this world is wrecked, but with the world itself not having any grasp on our hearts, it becomes more a hypothetical issue than an actual one.
But at least Fitz gets a point of view to run with. Poor Anji mostly finds time to suffer and run around, if nothing else this book marginalizes her contributions to a somewhat ridiculous degree, almost writing her out for a chunk of it for dramatic purposes, even as Fitz seems to be starting to pine for her as more than friends (the series has danced around with a toe in the water about considering it, probably testing it to see how people would react, though its come up often enough now that I wonder if they're really going to go for it). The interactions between our main principals is entertaining on its own and makes me realize how much fondness the series has built in for me with these people, to the point where I would have loved to see a televised version of these people acting around shoddy sets. Alas, twas never to be.
In the meantime the author tries to make it all tie in with famed civil engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, but since he's not that famous unless you're English or a student or architecture, he winds up being a guest star with no real import. I give the book credit for not going with one of the big historical names but his inclusion seems to mostly be about Walters proving how much research he did about his life. As the book starts to shed the mystery that kept it going initially, the plot can't quite pick up the slack, especially when parts of it seem liberally cribbed from Asmimov's "The Gods Themselves" and the solution winds up being so obvious in a "really, that's it?" kind of way you wonder how it took the Doctor two hundred and fifty pages to get around to it. The only scenes that come close to the strangeness I've come to love about the series is in the pocket dimension sections, where we get the eerie sense the rules may have floated away. But even then it barely lasts and except for a brief dream sequence with Anji that hints at the metaphorical symbolism the series can employ when it gets half a mind, we're back into standard, if capable written, territory again. It makes the whole affair seem fairly rote, as if the scenario was conceived and they wrote half a plot around it, with no real sense of urgency other than trying not to get killed. Even all the hand-wringing about slaughtering a parallel universe, even in the abstract, seems to fade away as Fitz has to readjust to being himself again.
It's more readable and entertaining than it has any right to be, but you alternate passages of fascinating situations with ones that feel completely by the numbers, giving you at best an average experience. It's not the complete misfire the last book was (thank goodness) and shows the hand of an actual adult behind the wheel, but the truth is the bones of this arc aren't clearing the heights this series was able to for a brief moment. But maybe it'll wrap up nicely eventually.
December 15, 2008
Did I like it, did I not? Yes, I did and no I didn’t.
On the surface, it’s a perfectly entertaining EDA. Alien-perpetrated science-stuff has happened. How to put it right? The companions are being arsey and the Doctor’s in a pickle. So far, so good. But…
The characterisations – of the Doctor, mostly but Fitz and Anji too – are all over the place. When they hit the mark, the book takes off and you can overlook the confusing anomalies and inconsistencies of the plot. When the characterisations falter and fail – as they do rather too often – the plot seems to grind down along with them.
The whole thing feels rather badly thought through. Nick W. had a great idea but he just couldn’t carry it off inside the confines of a 270 page EDA; this story needs far more pages to tell itself and the characters need more background, more rounding. We needed far more of Fitz’s adventures in Totterdown to truly see him losing himself in that reality to the extent that he did. How did Anji grow so fond of the (to my mind) frankly appallingly self-interested murderer and hypocrite Gottlieb? It made no sense!
The Doctor, especially, exhibits his cold, clinical, ‘the needs of the many’ side – occasionally balanced with conscience and warmth but just not often enough for it to feel like a flesh and blood characterisation; he wasn’t complex enough – no one and nothing in this novel was complex enough.
In short, not enough space to tell this over-complicated tale. NW should have simplified the plot and expanded on the characterisation, or been much more sparing with the colour and the detail because in the end, you don’t get enough of one or the other to satisfy on either count.
On the surface, it’s a perfectly entertaining EDA. Alien-perpetrated science-stuff has happened. How to put it right? The companions are being arsey and the Doctor’s in a pickle. So far, so good. But…
The characterisations – of the Doctor, mostly but Fitz and Anji too – are all over the place. When they hit the mark, the book takes off and you can overlook the confusing anomalies and inconsistencies of the plot. When the characterisations falter and fail – as they do rather too often – the plot seems to grind down along with them.
The whole thing feels rather badly thought through. Nick W. had a great idea but he just couldn’t carry it off inside the confines of a 270 page EDA; this story needs far more pages to tell itself and the characters need more background, more rounding. We needed far more of Fitz’s adventures in Totterdown to truly see him losing himself in that reality to the extent that he did. How did Anji grow so fond of the (to my mind) frankly appallingly self-interested murderer and hypocrite Gottlieb? It made no sense!
The Doctor, especially, exhibits his cold, clinical, ‘the needs of the many’ side – occasionally balanced with conscience and warmth but just not often enough for it to feel like a flesh and blood characterisation; he wasn’t complex enough – no one and nothing in this novel was complex enough.
In short, not enough space to tell this over-complicated tale. NW should have simplified the plot and expanded on the characterisation, or been much more sparing with the colour and the detail because in the end, you don’t get enough of one or the other to satisfy on either count.
January 25, 2019
This was actually fairly intense for a Doctor Who book and while there were places that dragged and others that needed more attention, I was impressed by how serious some of the issues were and the fact that the world was in deep shades of grey.
March 3, 2010
Again, slightly biased, as this book is a) written by a friend b)set in Bristol and c)has a brilliant cover. Outstanding.
June 29, 2020
This little arc is pretty intriguing, and Reckless Engineering manages to continue to deliver some pretty interesting concepts.
Things are feeling pretty desperate for the Doctor, Fitz and Anji at this point, and this book doesn't let up. They get put through the wringer a fair bit, but in the process we get some great world-building and a really interesting exploration of this strange timeline. I really like the idea of
The pacing is maybe a little off and drags in a few places, and I think this brings it down a bit for me, but it's still an enjoyable enough read.
Things are feeling pretty desperate for the Doctor, Fitz and Anji at this point, and this book doesn't let up. They get put through the wringer a fair bit, but in the process we get some great world-building and a really interesting exploration of this strange timeline. I really like the idea of
The pacing is maybe a little off and drags in a few places, and I think this brings it down a bit for me, but it's still an enjoyable enough read.
May 26, 2011
"Just because it's not ours doesn't mean it it's the wrong one! We could be from the 'wrong reality'!"
**WARNING THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!**
Doctor Who: Reckless Engineering by Nick Walters Wow another mind-boggling Doctor Who story. This Doctor Who story takes place during the Eighth Doctor's Incarnation. The Doctor is traveling with his novel only companions Fitz and Anji. I'm not sure which story they started with, but since they are from different times, Fitz from the 1960s and Anji from the 1990s or early 2000s they joined at separate times. Any who in this story the Doctor and his companions find themselves dealing with an alternate reality. It is 2003 to them, but in this reality a temporal disturbance called "The Cleansing" occurred in 1843 and to the people in this reality it is the year 160. The industrial revolution never happened in this reality of year 160 and it is against the law to speak of the The Cleansing. Nobody knows what caused the Cleansing, many think it was an act of God so they don't question it. The truth of the matter is that under the influence of an alien from the distant future a young engineer creates a machine called the Utopian Engine he is told will save the alien's race from dying by bringing them back to the past and in return they will help man with all sorts of technical and medical advancements. Well of course it was a lie (in part) true the alien race was dying, but they didn't care about mankind at all typical. The Utopian machine was flawed and instead of bringing the aliens back, it created a temporal jump of forty years to occur within a minute. Children suddenly found themselves in grown up bodies with long hair and fingernails and all the adults and animals were suddenly rotting corpses. The Doctor is faced with trying to figure out what this Cleansing thing is, which he doesn't like from the very beginning, and then finding a way to corrected the damage it has done. The problem is more complicated than it appears and it appears to be impossible to solve.
I'm not a huge fan of Doc number eight so this story dragged for me in some areas. Also the companions Anji and Fitz get boring fast. Fitz is a typical cocky fight first companion who tends to act without thinking things through first, and Anji (who I think is of middle eastern origins from India I think) has to deal with racism and sexism. Even though these characters have appeared in many other Doctor Who books, I think it is only the second one that I have read with them in it. I should try to track down the books where they first appear to get a better grasp of who these characters are. In the meantime I find them sort of dull. By the way this particular book I didn't initially pick up by choice, it was packaged with an issue of a Doctor Who magazine as a "Freebie" but with the price of the magazine and the added cost of it being an import from the UK I don't really think I got much of a bargain with the combo.
**WARNING THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!**
Doctor Who: Reckless Engineering by Nick Walters Wow another mind-boggling Doctor Who story. This Doctor Who story takes place during the Eighth Doctor's Incarnation. The Doctor is traveling with his novel only companions Fitz and Anji. I'm not sure which story they started with, but since they are from different times, Fitz from the 1960s and Anji from the 1990s or early 2000s they joined at separate times. Any who in this story the Doctor and his companions find themselves dealing with an alternate reality. It is 2003 to them, but in this reality a temporal disturbance called "The Cleansing" occurred in 1843 and to the people in this reality it is the year 160. The industrial revolution never happened in this reality of year 160 and it is against the law to speak of the The Cleansing. Nobody knows what caused the Cleansing, many think it was an act of God so they don't question it. The truth of the matter is that under the influence of an alien from the distant future a young engineer creates a machine called the Utopian Engine he is told will save the alien's race from dying by bringing them back to the past and in return they will help man with all sorts of technical and medical advancements. Well of course it was a lie (in part) true the alien race was dying, but they didn't care about mankind at all typical. The Utopian machine was flawed and instead of bringing the aliens back, it created a temporal jump of forty years to occur within a minute. Children suddenly found themselves in grown up bodies with long hair and fingernails and all the adults and animals were suddenly rotting corpses. The Doctor is faced with trying to figure out what this Cleansing thing is, which he doesn't like from the very beginning, and then finding a way to corrected the damage it has done. The problem is more complicated than it appears and it appears to be impossible to solve.
I'm not a huge fan of Doc number eight so this story dragged for me in some areas. Also the companions Anji and Fitz get boring fast. Fitz is a typical cocky fight first companion who tends to act without thinking things through first, and Anji (who I think is of middle eastern origins from India I think) has to deal with racism and sexism. Even though these characters have appeared in many other Doctor Who books, I think it is only the second one that I have read with them in it. I should try to track down the books where they first appear to get a better grasp of who these characters are. In the meantime I find them sort of dull. By the way this particular book I didn't initially pick up by choice, it was packaged with an issue of a Doctor Who magazine as a "Freebie" but with the price of the magazine and the added cost of it being an import from the UK I don't really think I got much of a bargain with the combo.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 1, 2014
As I'm from Bristol myself I thought the bits of this novel that related to Bristol were pretty cool and well done.
The plot itself is pretty interesting. The Doctor and his companions end up in a "wrong" alternate reality where some sort of disastrous time event has happened, and they have to fix it. It seems this is part of a whole series of novels where bad time events happen, but you don't really need to have read those to get what's going on in most of this, except for a couple of bits that I didn't really get that must have been references. But as this is the 63rd novel in the Eighth Doctor Adventures I wasn't going to read the others first.
At times I found this a bit wanting, with the actual writing being a bit simplistic and dry. There are some bits that are a bit "adult", the "gap years" Doctor Who books being aimed at more mature audiences than the old TV show, so it seems a bit at odds with the simplistic writing. The adult scenes seemed a bit odd to be reading in a Doctor Who novel, but there isn't much and it didn't really bother me.
I also felt there wasn't really enough bits with the Doctor going around doing Doctor-y things until a fair way past halfway. His companions Anji and Fitz, new to me, are who the reader sticks with for a lot of this, and their personalities seems a bit all over the place (partially explained within the plot), and generally fairly annoying. Somewhat disappointing as the one-off characters/companions in this novel outshine them, so it could just be Nick Walters getting the short end of the stick.
Still, this is an easy and enjoyable read, and if you have any interest in Bristol or Brunel then this is definitely something you should give a go.
The plot itself is pretty interesting. The Doctor and his companions end up in a "wrong" alternate reality where some sort of disastrous time event has happened, and they have to fix it. It seems this is part of a whole series of novels where bad time events happen, but you don't really need to have read those to get what's going on in most of this, except for a couple of bits that I didn't really get that must have been references. But as this is the 63rd novel in the Eighth Doctor Adventures I wasn't going to read the others first.
At times I found this a bit wanting, with the actual writing being a bit simplistic and dry. There are some bits that are a bit "adult", the "gap years" Doctor Who books being aimed at more mature audiences than the old TV show, so it seems a bit at odds with the simplistic writing. The adult scenes seemed a bit odd to be reading in a Doctor Who novel, but there isn't much and it didn't really bother me.
I also felt there wasn't really enough bits with the Doctor going around doing Doctor-y things until a fair way past halfway. His companions Anji and Fitz, new to me, are who the reader sticks with for a lot of this, and their personalities seems a bit all over the place (partially explained within the plot), and generally fairly annoying. Somewhat disappointing as the one-off characters/companions in this novel outshine them, so it could just be Nick Walters getting the short end of the stick.
Still, this is an easy and enjoyable read, and if you have any interest in Bristol or Brunel then this is definitely something you should give a go.
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