The Dr., Benny, Androids, a fake world, monsters, and chaos. What more can you ask for? The story line was a bit confusing, the writing choppy. Not my favorite (or should I say favourite?) story line and the ending left things a bit up in the air. What would Dr. Who be without the possiblity of bringing foes back for another round? ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1515615.html

Gosh, this Seventh Doctor novel is pretty poor. Lots of good ideas, including William Blake, disappearing planets, Cthulhoid monstrosities and the secret history of Rassilon, but thrown together really hastily so that the reader must find some real motivation to make sense of it all, and I could not find that motivation. ( )

Eugh! ( )

Calling a book 'The Pit' really is tempting fate and asking for a critical kicking isn't it? Of the multitude of novels published under the Who banner there's few with such a bad reputation as this - there's no flow to the prose, a lot of stacatto sentences often seem thrown together at random, it regurgitates concepts from the parent TV series, attempts to go for epic by bringing in Time Lord history, Lovecraft and All Powerful Evil from the Dawn of Time and (first novel cliche here) includes every idea the author's ever had to the point where any semblance of a story disintegrates.

And yet I'm still strangely fond of it, despite knowing that by almost any literary standard it's terrible. Penswick manages to create an effectively doomy atmosphere and provides a far more effective ending than many NA authors of the time were, even if what's preceded it doesn't quite give it the power it probably should have had. William Blake's appearance ties in with the book's themes, even if he only seems to be there beause the author thought the Doctor meeting Blake would be cool. And, to his credit, Penwick's work at least has some ambition beyond being a simple action runaround that could've been four forgettable episodes at any point in the series history, even if that ambition far outstrips his writing talent. For me that raises him above the reliably dull and unimaginative likes of Bulis or Baxendale who, from their books, don't appear to have had a single original thought or fresh perspective in their lives. And at least Penswick had the excuse of having his deadline cut severely, as his was the first book in line when the range moved from a bimonthly schedule to a monthly one.

Virgin's New Adventures range took chances with the sort of stories Doctor Who could tell, more than at any other point since the very first season of the show. And if you're doing that you're going to fall flat on your face sometimes, as happened here. At least the failure's one of ambition outstripping ability though, rather than one of being a dull retelling of a story we've seen a hundred times before. ( )