City at World's End

Christopher Bulis

I was given this novel as a gift, and being a fan of the old black and white Doctor Who episodes I was quite looking forward to digging into this one. The only other novelisation I've ever read though is Alan Dean Foster's treatment of Aliens, so it was with a bit of trepidation. It started well enough, and drew you into the story quite quickly, openly relying on the readers familarity with the characters. The story is pretty standard fare for Doctor Who, the moon is on a decaying orbit and is going to collide with the Earth, the religious cult who rule a huge city have built a spaceship large enough to take believers to another planet when the disaster occurs. The Doctor and his companions are thrown into the middle of this, a stark separation between those allowed on the ship and those who have to remain behind.

It doesn't take long though before the problems start to appear. Despite the infinite budget offered by the novel, the sets were still creaking and imagination frequently limited by the BBC's old special effects budget. They would have loved to get their grubby hands on the giant hoover monster. Sub plots and sub-sub plots clashed with one another for domination, fighting against a swell of plot twists. It degenerated into a mess. To be fair the author did manage to wrap everything up in the end, but it became so ridiculous and tiresome at times that the ending couldn't come soon enough. There were just a few important sub-sub plots too many.