Item - Crisis in Space

This book is considerably shorter than the previous entry in the series thanks to its large print, and it's also considerably worse. Michael Holt, as far as I can tell, has never been involved with the show, and, from reading this book, it's questionable as to whether or not he ever even watched it. Not only did Peri and Turlough never travel together with the sixth Doctor, they also never acted anything like the way they behave in this book; there's just far too much use of communicators and laser guns... To make things worse, the dialog is consistently cringe-inducing, featuring a new terrible pun at nearly every turn of the page. The gameplay does nothing to help matters; as in the previous book, most choices are pretty much pointless, and rolling the die serves only to cause a random possibility of instant death at various points in the story. Avoid this like the plague, whether or not you're a Doctor Who fan!

More reviews by Demian

I read a couple books in this series some time ago and didn't think they were as awful as Demian's scathing reviews would indicate, but I chalked that up to my being a casual fan of the show at best and not having a deep interest in the Who mythos that would cause me to pick up on the inaccuracies of the books.

So when a copy of this book came my way, I gave it a chance. Plus it had a pretty cool-looking cover. But even as a casual viewer without a deep knowledge of the source material and characters, this book was absolutely punishing to get through. The reader is assaulted with a literal barrage of terrible puns and jokes on every page, making the book come across as almost a spoof. A bad one. Not helping was a stupid decision to have the Doctor's translation box get stuck on "rhyme" so all of the villains' dialogue comes out in ridiculous-sounding poems that made it impossible to take them as any kind of threat. I even caught a reference to the Star Trek slogan. I suspect this was done to inject a sense of energy into the book, but the author was trying way too hard.

Other gripes of mine include winning a duel with the main villain thanks to my character's cricket-playing skills, which I was almost prepared to let go as something that MIGHT happen in an actual episode of Dr. Who. But another prominent villain is named Queen Tyrannica and has snakes for hair. Really? Sounds like a villain from a particularly lame season of Power Rangers. There's even one ending where your character is sentenced to death by being given the job of her hairdresser. Preposterous.

Do not read this book.

More reviews by Fireguard

Both the American and British back covers say that the cover painting "features Colin Baker as The Doctor, Nicola Bryant as Peri and Mark Strickson as Turlough." However, the hulking and evil-looking figure on the American cover doesn't appear to be Turlough, and that girl doesn't look very much like Peri....

The link from section 65 to 66 is incorrect; it should probably lead to section 38 instead.