Players

This was one of the novels brought out especially for the 50th anniversary. It's set during world war II, and follows the Doctor and Perri as they do battle with a strange game-playing alien race that, in this instance, use the people of earth as pawns in a huge game; A war-game in this case, as it turns out. A few characters from history worth mentioning include Winston Churchill, who is portrayed as a real have-a-go hero type, and none other than Adolf Hitler himself as he plans to take England.

All of this is actually just a war-by-proxy and everything we see happening is planned and instigated by the mysterious Players. It's a wonderful premise and the world war setting with it's actual historical figures just add to the interest.

Very good. ( )

When his companion Peri demands elegance for their next destination, the Doctor sets the coordinates for London in 1900 to enjoy the season there. Instead the TARDIS arrives in South Africa, just in time to witness a Boer ambush of a train containing British soldiers accompanied by a young war correspondent named Winston Churchill — whose life the Doctor saves after he is nearly assassinated by a mysterious man with a rifle. Captured along with Churchill by the Boers, the Doctor and Peri soon discover a second unknown individual, this one working to aid in Churchill's escape. Realizing that there are people involved whom he encountered when he met Churchill during his second incarnation, the Doctor travels to London in 1936 to get to the bottom of the mystery, one that soon involves stopping a plot that threatens the course of all of human history!

I must confess that I approached this novel with a degree of ambivalence, given that the Sixth Doctor is by far my least favorite version of the character and a storyline involving Winston Churchill was one primed to fail. This was a mistake on my part, as I should have taken into consideration that the author was Terrance Dicks, arguably the most prolific writer of Doctor Who media in the history of the franchise. In his experienced hands what could have been a name-checking tale involving an off-putting central character is instead a rollicking adventure spanning across four decades of one of the most adventurous lives in human history. In this it represents everything that a first-rate Doctor Who novel should be, and one that other authors in the franchise should turn to when dealing with some of the more awkward elements in the long-running series. ( )

As far as time travel stories go, this one ticks a particularly large number of boxes for me. It takes in the Boer War (an under-discussed conflict in time travel, at least in my experience), Winston Churchill, and England during the inter-war years, with a major thread about the 1936 abdication crisis. And running through all this is a group known as the Players, who get their jollies by travelling through time and messing with human history. In this story it is the (Sixth) Doctor's job to thwart their callous games, with the assistance of Peri.

I tore through this in a couple of days and really enjoyed it. Lately I've gone off alternate histories involving WW2, but in this case the story was set in the years leading up to WW2. This meant that, while the idea of the Players succeeding in creating their alternate history was horrifying, the story was still in the real world, which made it easier to handle.

Another bonus was the flashback set during the First World War, in which the Doctor was actually the Second Doctor. It was like getting two Doctors for the price of one!

I would recommend this book if you like the historical Doctor Who stories or want to check out an adventure involving the Sixth Doctor. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2079089.html#cutid1

This is the first of Terrance Dicks' three novels about the Players, a mysterious race of manipulators of human history for the sake of a grand Game, reminiscent of Roger Zelazny's "The Game of Blood and Dust" (a favourite short story of mine). Anyone who wondered why Ian McNiece's character seemed so chummy with the Doctor back in 2010 can find the answer in this book, which is largely about the Sixth Doctor and Peri encountering Churchill in the Boer War and then in 1936, though with a brief flashback to an adventure of the Second Doctor with Churchill in 1915, in which the future prime minister is rescued from capture by the Germans.

Dicks is of the generation who knew Churchill as a genuine time-travelling hero, in that he progressed from a young officer in the British army's last meaningful cavalry charge at Omdurman in 1898 to being the man in charge of a nuclear power. It sort of seems obvious in retrospect that Churchill and the Doctor should meet, and it's almost surprising that it hadn't happened on screen or page before.

The plot itself is thrilling stuff, ending in confrontation with Joachim von Ribbentrop and a direct intervention into the 1936 abdication of Edward VII, where the Doctor and Peri successfully keep history back on the right lines despite the efforts of the Players. Fun, if not profound, told in Dicks' characteristically clear prose, and bringing in plenty of references to Dicks' other Who work - The War Games, of course, but also Dekker from Blood Harvest and off-screen references to the events of Timewyrm: Exodus. Interested readers can pick up a brand new edition, as it is one of the 11 books reissued by the BBC for the 50th anniversary. ( )