‘Doctor Who: The Star Beast’ – Gary Russell (BBC Books/Target)

 

Page Count: 149 Pages

A life-changing encounter. A fugitive from the stars. Wrathful warriors in pursuit.


Landing on Earth, the Doctor finds a stranded alien in need of protection – and is dragged headlong into the life of his old friend Donna Noble, knowing that if she ever remembers their time together, she will die…

Just a quick one today as I had my Covid vaccination yesterday and I’m feeling pretty rough with it right now. It’s worth it though :o)

I will never say no to a ‘Doctor Who’ tie-in novelization, even if I wasn’t too keen on the original TV episode… And that is where I found myself with ‘The Star Beast’. The book works fine, I’m just not so keen on the story. Does that even make any sense? I’ll try and explain myself…

As a tie-in novelization, ‘The Star Beast’ works just fine, laying out what happens and fleshing things out enough that you’re not left wondering why you didn’t just stick with watching it on TV. And that’s all you can ask for really, for the book not to take too many liberties but still have a little something extra to keep things interesting. And on that level, ‘The Star Beast’ does the job.

My problems lie with the story itself and its capacity for self-indulgence. Does every loose end, in Nu-Who, need to be tied up and resolved? I’d say no, not everything has to be tidied up, but ‘The Star Beast’ loses sight of its plot as it’s too busy trying to sort things out between the Doctor and Donna. It was a nice thing to do but was there any need for it? I’d say no, not really. If anything, it has robbed the original ‘DoctorDonna’ story of its impact. That’s just me though ;o)

And while I’ve got nothing against a little fan-service here and there, the business with the Meep was signposted a little too heavily for me. If you know the character then you already know what’s coming; even if you don’t, the Meep is a little too good to be true (at the beginning) and you can take a pretty good guess about where the plot is headed.

I was always going to read ‘The Star Beast’ but now that I have, I can’t help but wonder if I should have bothered. For me, the book did its job but the plot had issues before it even made it into a book. Oh well...

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