Fairly engaging.

In 1996, after five years of publishing novels about the further adventures of the Doctor as portrayed by Sylvester McCoy in the now-cancelled TV series, Virgin Books lost its license. The BBC had decided to take these things back in-house, and update the series to feature the new Doctor, as briefly played by Paul McGann in a failed TV movie pilot. After an initial novel that was, frankly, a bit of a waste, and designed mostly to explicitly link McGann's incarnation to his seven predecessors, Vampire Science feels like a true pilot for this new approach.

Orman and Blum already had well-established street cred in the Whoniverse, and together they create a snappy, sassy, engaging narrative. It's about vampires, so not especially original, but it keeps the pace up. Both the Doctor and his companion Sam come through strongly, leaving me enthusiastic for what comes next in this series (which I'll now be reading concurrently with the McCoy NAs). Having said that, where the novel struggles is that it feels like a Doctor Who script turned into a novelisation. Which it's obviously not but, for fans of the program's first 26 years on the air, it's understandable that this can become the go-to template. There's a hectic amount of dialogue, scenes that last too long, attempts at portraying recurring comedic bits or rapid action sequences that are clearly intended to be visualised as an episode of the program, and in general an approach that feels televisual rather than literary. I like both Orman and Blum so I can forgive that, although it will sadly relegate Vampire Science to "tie-in TV merchandise" in the eyes of lay readers.

Looking forward to this series - even though I'm aware that many fans believe it went in some strange and deeply unsatisfying directions! ( )

Blum and Orman get a lot of flak from the fan community, but they're usually fairly fun and only occasionally completely obnoxious.

Plus they angst the Doctor up a bit and do their part to make the Eight Doctor more interesting than a few of the others. ( )

This is the second EDA but (so people say) the first one worth reading. The Doctor and his new companion, Sam, fight vampires in 1990s San Francisco. I enjoyed it: it's a good mash-up of the sensibilities of the NAs with those of the 1996 television movie. It gets a little violent at times in ways I don't see as very eighth-Doctory, but outside of that it captures his character very well: there's a big emphasis on the sleights of hand he did in the TVM, and how his whole way of operating might itself be a sleight of hand. What's trickier: having a complicated plan like the seventh Doctor, or not having a complicated plan like the seventh Doctor... but everything still working out in the end? This isn't quite the eighth Doctor that Paul McGann would end up playing in the audio dramas (which didn't start for another four years), but this is a legitimate extrapolation of how he played it in the movie. It gets a little bogged down in vampire stuff at times, but it usually has a good sense of humor about it. (I was surprised to realize it was published four months after Buffy began, because it feels like Buffy must have been an influence, and yet it could not have been.) I remember liking Sam in the later Orman/Blum EDAs I've already read (Unnatural History and Seeing I), and that was true here as well; they give her that Rose-esque sense of someone who wants to do something in the world that the Doctor enables, but often feels overwhelmed by the realities of the universe.

A very enjoyable Doctor Who novel, featuring the Eighth Doctor fighting vampires in San Francisco. Blum and Orman did a good job showing the differences and similarities between the immortal vampires and nearly immortal Doctor; the Doctor's compassion and empathy count for a lot, but the authors do point out that his behavior can have catastrophic consequences for those around him. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1383037.html

I winced at first at the depiction of California vampires, so familiar from Buffy, who actually gets referenced (presumably meaning the Kirsty Swanson film rather than the TV series which started only a few weeks before the book was published in 1997). But actually the book takes the vampire mythology in a couple of interesting directions, one of which (the vampire nest squabbling about strategy) was later followed by Buffy, but others (the vampire intellectual researching what makes them vampires, the possibility of turning in reverse) which were new to me. With all of this, the book doesn't particularly tie into the vampire lore of the Whoniverse (ie Terrance Dicks' State of Decay and Blood Harvest, and Paul Cornell's Goth Opera). I also expected a bit more to be made of the San Francisco setting, given its relevance to the Eighth Doctor's only on-screen appearance (according to the lore, Grace Holloway was originally intended to be in the book but they couldn't get clearance). The book does however do quite a lot for the development of the Eighth Doctor as a character - he gives the vampires several chances for redemption - and his relationship with Sam (presented here as a companion of long standing rather than someone who tagged along at the end of the last book). There's also some intriguing continuity with a Jonathan Blum story which apparently brought the Seventh Doctor into contact with the US branch of UNIT. ( )