Temple, Keith

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE:

2 out of 5

(1 book)

Doctor Who: Planet Of The Ood

A novelisation of Temple's own script for a Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) adventure featuring his companion Donna Noble.  The TARDIS arrives on a snow-shrouded world, where the Doctor and Donna discover Ood Operations, a company built around the export of the servant race, the Ood.  However, something has changed and the Ood are no longer content to serve humanity, rising up in revolution with the Doctor and Donna caught up in it.

I've always rather enjoyed the televised version of this story, featuring one of my favourite Doctor/Companion combos in the Tenth and Donna, as well as diving into the back story of the Ood, one of the more iconic of New Who's new monsters (perhaps second only to the Weeping Angels).

To succeed, a novelisation has to walk the fine line of keeping the things that made the original good, whilst also making the most of the change in media by giving us internal monologues, extra scenes and the suchlike.  Unfortunately, I don't think this novelisation strikes the right balance.  Where the TV version was firmly focused on the injustice of the treatment of the Ood and the emotional pathos of the captivity of such a peaceful race, this book all too often finds itself bogged-down in needless incidental information.  The prime example of this is just how much time we spend getting to know one of the sales reps who, honestly, I couldn't pick out of the crowd of extras if I was to watch the episode again now.  There's no need to learn his backstory, his hopes and dreams because he has absolutely no impact on the plot at all, therefore dragging the pacing of this not-overly-long book to a crawl.  It felt like padding and it negatively affected the impact of the story overall.

2 out of 5

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