This was a nicely written novel. The completing colliding schemes are plotted very well. ( )

Given the lack of quality both in Timewyrm: Genesys and in Terrance Dicks's later writing, I wasn't expecting much out of this... but it turns out that in 1991, Uncle Terrance could still write a cracking Doctor Who adventure like none other. He gloms right onto what makes the seventh Doctor and Ace work, and sends them through a fun adventure: Doctor Who on television probably could never have done the Nazis during its original run, but this takes a lot of those classic tropes of the Doctor infiltrating and bamboozling an occupying force, and inserts them right into the Third Reich. The whole thing is just a blast, as this is the Doctor at his most cunning and also his most clownish, pulling one over on the ultimate bad guys, but also being fairly direct about what makes Nazis the ultimate bad guys. I wouldn't have thought that making Hitler the pawns of two different aliens would work, but Dicks pulls it off, and with style. Trad, but with just enough rad to delight, basically the most you could want out of any New Adventure not written by any of the actual "rad" authors.

In the 1990s, when Doctor Who was no longer being made for television, a series of original novels not only continued the adventures of the Doctor but redefined what a Doctor Who story could be. This novel takes on a familiar science-fiction/time travel them with a Doctor Who twist: what if the Nazis won World War II? It's a griping adventure with the Doctor in his role as master manipulator and schemer. It is discomforting in how Dicks makes Nazi characters somewhat sympathetic and even more so the suggestion that Nazism was due to manipulation by aliens rather than the worst of human nature. That aside it's a well-written and entertaining novel. ( )

What a terribly rubbish novel. It starts off reasonably promising - when the Doctor and Ace arrive in a Nazi-controlled Britain of 1951, it's a reasonably familiar Star-Trek-adventure-story what-if scenario. But as they go back to genuine, 1930s Nazi Germany, the grim reality shows the story for what it really is: trite, undermining pap. Terrance Dicks seems to take an almost perverse glee in the details, far too glib to respect what actually happened. It doesn't help that the Doctor's characterization, more stuffy Pertwee than scheming McCoy, is insufferably arrogant; you almost want Himmler to shoot the miserable sod. All this, with the Timewyrm arc poorly integrated into the plot, go a long way toward skuppering Dicks' authorial reputation. What was he thinking? ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/683725.html

Gosh, Terrance Dicks can actually come close to writing tolerably well. Here we have the Seventh Doctor and Ace pursuing the Timewyrm (last seen in ancient Babylon) to Nazi Germany - or rather, first to a 1951 Festival of Britain celebrated after a German victory; then following Adolf Hitler from the Munich putsch to 1940. It would be easy to do this very crassly, but Dicks manages to stay (for my money) the right side of the line. Still a slight feeling that he wished he was writing a TV series rather than a novel, but satisfying enough. Also brought back a villain from one of the series I have not yet seen... ( )