This has everything. Romana I(or is that Fred!), The White Guardian and a search for part of the Key of Time. Some nice one-liners from both the Doctor and Romana. The beginning was very good with all the to-ing and fro-ing with Romana's name and the end was very satisfying.

Very good characterisation too, with both the Doctor and Romana.

Recommended.
( )

Eh. I'll stick to the TV show. ( )

Instead of going off on holiday, the Doctor has been roped into carrying out an urgent mission: recover the six segments of the Key to Time and keep them out of the hands of the Black Guardian. He’s given a device to help him locate each segment, and an assistant to help him with the mission: a Time Lady named Romanadvoratrelundar, whom the Doctor immediately christens “Romana”. The first segment is on the planet Ribos, which is rife with monsters, con men and spooky catacombs.

I wasn’t crazy about this Doctor Who story, to be honest. As much as I like having a story arc that spans multiple episodes or books, the Key to Time feels a bit forced as a framework. (I had similar restlessness with The Pirate Planet.) The characters struck me as being over-the-top in their dialogue, especially the Graff Vynda Ka, and I had a hair trigger for adjectives and adverbs. Part of that could be chalked up to my mood, part perhaps to having seen the TV story and remembering the slow pace of that. But I did like K9, as always, and Romana acquitted herself very well.

Overall, I wouldn’t consider this a must-have for a Doctor Who fan—more if you’re determined to complete your collection. (That’s the main reason I’m still hanging onto this one.) ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/763482.html

What I remember most about the TV version is just the sense of cold; this is a snowy city on a chilly planet. Really very little sense of that in the novel. The intial set-up between the Doctor and Romana is changed substantially, and in my view not for the better; in the TV version, the White Guardian tells the Doctor that he will be assigned an assistant, and the Doctor when he encounters her spends the first few minutes practically hiding from her behind K-9. Marter's novelisation has Romana's arrival as a total surprise, and puts the two characters on a more equal footing, but somehow doesn't sparkle the same way. The final battle is much more gory in the book; but that's as we expect from a Marter novel. ( )