The Wheel Of Ice (2012) Review

     

NOTE: This review was written before I'd seen a Second Doctor story.

The Wheel Of Ice, written by Stephen Baxter.
In many ways this story reminded me of Arthur Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey with its detailed descriptions of the Saturnyan(is that the right word?) system with all its moons and rings plus all the complicated, realistic technology and storytelling.

The star of the novel is the Second Doctor(originally played by Patrick Troughton). The character here is mixed for me, mainly because we see little of his personality. He's more or less a generic Doctor, if such a thing can exist. However, he did have one killer line in which he responded to an insult of Zoe's(towards the villain). "Now that Zoe, is unscientific, unkind and quite funny."
And of course he played his recorder at the end. I did grow to like him, even if he's a little confused.

Jamie McCrimmon isn't Ian, but he's a damn likable companion. Love his loyalty to Scotland, his determination to stand by the rebel kids and just the fact that the Doctor's traveling with someone from the far past. His reactions to all these future concepts are pretty funny. Also, the scene where he had to defuse the Z-Bomb was awesome. Go go Jamie! Can't wait to properly meet you.

Zoe Heriot was... bland. I'm sorry, but she's a walking computer who didn't advance the story in any way. It all could've happened without her being there and her only plot arc was becoming more human. To that end, she spent the whole climax babysitting. Not a fan.

The story itself had the TARDIS detect a time anomaly("Temporal Displacement Zone") in the 22nd century Saturnyan system. There, the characters are taken to the Wheel Of Ice, a cobbled-together space station which is mining bernalium from a moon called Mnemosyne. But there's something else down on that moon... the Doctor and his companions have to go up against the most stubborn bureaucrats, alien invasions, ticking bombs, labyrinths, timey-wimey devices, alien planets. All mashed together by well-written, fantastic characters(A Scottish spider robot!) and Doctor Who references(none directly connecting to NewWho though).

My favourite character of the book was either MMAC(the aforementioned Scot AI) or Florian Hart simply because she's a caricature of greedy, vengeful monopolists(and people that I happen to know) on steroids. She made me hate her, which is a rare accomplishment for a villain.

Overall, it's more of a hard sci-fi story that the Doctor and co. just happen to be in rather than a Doctor Who story itself and that isn't a bad thing. Stuff happens here that is still too expensive to put on screen. It was like a super-duper episode that just went on and on and on and never turned boring(maybe except the beginning bits, but still). I highly recommend it to both fans of lighthearted Doctor Who and fans of hardcore 2001: A Space Odyssey.
It's not big on character development, but a great romp of a story.