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Loading... Fear of the Darkby Trevor Baxendale
  
None No current Talk conversations about this book.  rabbitprincess | Apr 9, 2016 |  no reviews | add a review
The Tardis has landed on the moon of Akoshemon. As the Doctor arrives, so does a renegade interstellar mining crew, and their investigations turn up a lot more than the valuable minerals they were hoping for. No library descriptions found. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
1
****
The Doctor, Tegan, and Nyssa confront an ancient evil on one of the moons of Akoshemon in this spine-tingling tale. This moon is reputed to have been a haven for depravity and corruption over many centuries, and a team of archaeologists is on hand to learn more about the civilizations that lived through such terrible times. But their presence on the moon reawakens that evil… that monster that all living creatures instinctively fear… The Dark.
Overall, I liked this story. The Dark is terrifying. Properly scary. And its sidekick, the Bloodhunter, is so disgusting and scary that I am glad it exists only in book form and not on television, otherwise I would have nightmares. This is also a high-stakes adventure for the Doctor, as Tegan and especially Nyssa are placed in significant danger and there seems less of a guarantee that everyone will come out alive. (We know that they all should, but this adventure comes shortly after Earthshock, in which Adric died, so another companion death is not out of the question.) Nyssa faces a great deal of peril because of her telepathic capabilities, which the Dark uses to lure them to Akoshemon's moon in the first place. She also gets to use her scientific brain and even fight on occasion. Tegan, meanwhile, never lets the Doctor deter her from getting involved in a fight. And the Doctor has met a catastrophic enemy in the Dark. The fact that we know he has future selves may detract from the suspense a little bit, but this adventure takes a great toll on him.
This story was originally published in 2003 and reprinted in a 50th Anniversary Collection, which was my edition. This publication spanned just over 300 pages -- I'm not sure how long the story was in its original edition, but this edition felt overlong. There were also puzzling spelling errors that seemed to suggest a slightly faulty OCR conversion.
I would recommend this book for those who like really creepy Doctor Who villains, with the caveat that it does run a bit long. (