Decalog 4: Re:Generations: Ten Stories, A Thousand Years, One Family

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1402244.html

This is the first Doctor Who anthology without any mention of the Doctor: ten stories exploring the family history of Roz Forrester, a companion from the Seventh Doctor spinoff books (I have read only one which features her). The concept is of telling the story of ten Forrester ancestors, direct or collateral, over a thousand year period starting in the twentieth century; I was a bit surprised that the framing historical narrative, having gone in the standard space opera planet-colonisation direction for most of the book, then contracts back down to a declining and dying Earth (and the Forresters' Xhosa background) for the last two stories, and didn't quite understand why. But none of the stories is bad; I particularly enjoyed Ben Jeapes' 'Heritage', which put an original twist on the generation starship theme. ( )