Lungbarrow

Back in the day (and by "day" I mean late eighties) a fellow in charge of Doctor Who the TV show, Andrew Cartmel, came up with an idea of eventually revealing more of the Doctor's past. The last two seasons had spent a lot of time showing that the Doctor was quite a bit more mysterious than he had seemed at first glance and this "Masterplan", as it were, was going to slowly peel back the layers and show us some of this. But then the show got cancelled and those who had heard of this plan couldn't see the ultimate results of it until almost eight years later, when this book came out. And whoa, did it reveal. If you were a regular viewer of the show or buy the DVDs, you may remember a tale called "Ghost Light". Remember how awfully complicated and dense that one was, and how you felt stupid upon watching it because you were pretty sure ninety percent of it had gone over your head? Yeah, this is written by the same guy. Apparently the initial plans were that this was going to be an episode in the last season (replaced with "Ghost Light"), although for the life of me I cannot see how they could have made this into a TV story with the kind of budget they had at the time. It would have looked terrible, probably. However, the nice thing about the print medium is that the imagination needs no budget and thus the results are near-glorious. There's two things going on in this book but only one of them is really important, the secondary plot about the CIA (not the Earth one, bear with me) and the High Council fighting it out yet again really only exists to give the other characters something to do in between revelations. The meat of the story resides in Lungbarrow. The TARDIS drops the Doctor back at his old house, which doesn't seem to really exist anymore, and we meet his Cousins, who have been festering in there for nigh on six hundred years, waiting for him to come back. Needless to say, things get a bit awkward. The concepts that Platt sketches out here are nothing short of fascinating, he weaves bits of Gallifreyean history, myths and whatever else he can grab into the mix and what you get is this heady concoction. The House of Lungbarrow becomes a character in the novel, the Cousins scrambling around underneath it are pathetic and contemptable, pitiful and mad, a dozen different things. His characterization are fantastic, he makes everything readable and yet alien at the same time, the Doctor switching between caught off-guard and in masterful control of the situation. In it, we're treated to scenes of a young Doctor, his leaving of Gallifrey, and flashbacks to the beginning of Gallifrey's history, with glimpses of Rassilon and the mysterious Other, who is connected to the events more than you'd think. The ideas are fascinating enough that you don't want those portions of the book to end, on some level it's like they condensed Gorminghast down to three hundred pages. There's a mystery afoot and the Doctor solves it but at the same

Well it's about time the mystery of The Other has been revealed. A plot thread set up in the tv series in Rememberance of the Daleks. Actualy you had to read the Target novel of Rememberance to catch all the Gallifrey flashbacks with Rassilon, Omega and the Other. It's always nice to see Gallifrey in the Doctor Who books. With no finacial restraints, writers can pretty much make what they want as far as the Doctor's homeworld goes. Seeing the almost undefeatable Seventh Doctor cower before his family was different. Knowing finally that our favorite Time Lord comes from somewhere is a nice refreshing character development. The character of President Ramona has come a rather long way since his appearance in Happy Endings. Here we see that it is the Gallifreyan Politico that corrupts a person. I wasn't a big fan of Marc Platt's refrence that Leela and Andred may be the Doctor's parents. -bleh- Seeing Gallifrey's past and the Doctor's connection was also an interesting spin and hearing the First Doctor reference Gallifrey as a planet full of Valeyards and Vampires was a catching phrase. Also finally seeing as a fan, The Caretmel Masterplan come full circle, it may have well have been a good thing that the Fox movie hit when it did and the rights revoked. I think as far as the Seventh Doctor goes with Virgin, his life had been played out. Even Lungbarrow establishes he is due for a regeneration. However I always wondered where the series would have gone without the TV movie. The Dying Days was proof that they could have taken the Eighth Doctor many, many miles beyond the scope of Seventh Doctor stories. But without the movie I think the New Adventures would have died and vanished... I agree with some of the other reviews here, "Farewell Seventh Doctor", you will be missed. Doctor Who is dead... Long live Doctor Who!

I really, really loved this book. I never really got on with the NAs when they were being produced [but then I was about 7 when they started so forgive me]. Recently though [well over the past year or so] I have been tracking them down and enjoying almost all of them.This book is a very good end to the NA series, and although the links to the TV movie seem a bit contrived, they work better than a lot of the series' more fragile inter-book links. At times it's difficult to tell whether what you're reading is really good, imaginate metaphoric prose, or actual occurances; once you get the hang of Platt's style though the book is greatly entertaining. It's true that not a lot actually happens [what does, though, is big] but the book is mostly concentrated on exploration of character - the Doctor's especially - and there are some interesting turns. The Cousins are all well crafted and really stick [I found myself fighting tears when Innocet "folds her thoughts away in the dark"], and some moments are truly surprising.the connections to Ghost Light are obvious, given that Lungbarrow was the script they felt gave too much away for season 26 of the TV series, turning into Ghost Light instead. It's also really interesting to compare what happens in the book with what would have happened on TV - check out the author's commentary on the BBC Doctor Who website, in the E-Book section. Also, if you can't get hold of a hard copy, the whole book is available from this e-book section, complete with a few revised/extended/additional scenes.

I have to say that this is the best N/A, no matter what anyone says. One of the hardest things to do with this series is to think of an original plot. Marc Platt always seems to do it though. I realize that this is hard to get a hold of, so if anyone would like to buy my copy, e-mail me at [email protected]. I would be glad to share it with other fans.

If you haven't read most of the NAs (and especially Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible), you will be lost with this book. Still, Marc Platt paints his normal elegant landscapes and writes a very entertaining plot. The novel doesn't slow down in the middle as Time's Crucible did and the details were much clearer (except for the big flashback sequences which were vague and hard to follow by design). I found some of the revelations a little disappointing and the links to "Enemy Within" were very tacked on. Still, it was a fun read