Clarke, Kevin

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:

1 out of 5

(1 book)

Doctor Who: Silver Nemesis

The novelisation of a TV story, originally written by Clarke himself, which celebrated Doctor Who's 25th anniversary of being on screen.  Here the Seventh Doctor (Sylvester McCoy) and Ace find themselves competing with the evil Lady Peinforte, a group of neo-Nazis and the Cybermen for possession of Nemesis; a statue made of living metal with unlimited destructive power.

Doctor Who anniversary specials usually live up to the monniker of 'special' pretty well, with the likes of 'The Three Doctors' and 'The Five Doctors' (both novelised by Terrance Dicks) being fan favourites and the 50th anniversary special 'The Day of the Doctor' being my personal favourite episode of all time.  Very sadly, this is not the case with this story.  Instead of a multi-Doctor adventure, Clarke takes the themes of 25 years and silver and weaves a frankly bizarre tale of a sentient all-powerful metal statue.

The author throws everything at the wall, including Hitler devotees, a crazy woman from the 17th Century who uses magic potions to time travel and the Cybermen in the hope that something will stick.  Nothing does.  At times I genuinely had no clue as to what was happening or why and was not enlightened by the stunted and often random-seeming dialogue.

There were a couple of moments, particularly where the Doctor is facing down the Cybermen, which I enjoyed enough to consider giving this book two out of five, but the truth is there's just far too much bad stuff outweighing them.

1 out of 5

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