Matthew Jones pens an entertaining and well-written column for Doctor Who Magazine on a regular basis.  His first shot at writing a Doctor Who novel shows the same flashes of inspiration and polished prose.  The novel is set immediately following So Vile A Sin, and Chris especially is feeling the pain of the death of Roz.  This book features homophobic gang members, some of whom are just plain saidistic and some of whom are mentally unbalanced.   The Doctor is able to cunningly exploit their weaknesses when he is battling them.  This is one of the series’ most direct atttacks on prejudice, and although it is set in the 1950s, it could easily be occurring in the current-day world.  Tom Beck commented in his 1997 Borusa Awards article in The Friends of Doctor Who Spring 1998 newsletter that this book wasn’t a good Doctor Who novel but was a good novel in general.  He made the same claim for Damaged Goods.  I would say that these novels certainly stretch the confines of what was done on televised Doctor Who.  However, as Kate Orman pointed out in her review of the McCoy years for DWB serveral years back, the television series was headed in a direction when it went off the air in which it embraced more social commentary in its stories. It appears to me that those two novels are following in the direction that the series was slowly headed in when it went off the air.  For myself, I think they’re much more in character for the series than novels like The Pit and Cat’s Cradle: Warhead where the Doctor acts in ways that seem to be out of character.  As I’ve noted before, the scary thing about Cat’s Cradle: Warhead was that its author, Andrew Cartmel, was the script editor of the series during the McCoy era.  His conception of the Doctor was out of synch with that of most fans and previous writers on the series. Still, he can also share the credit for moving the series in a direction in which it paralleled contemporary society more closely and discussed current issues in a thoughtful way.  Whether you think the series should do this sort of thing or whether you think it should be simply a fantasy tale for children is a matter of personal taste.  Personally, I think that a mix of the two styles in the correct way to go. 

       For people that don’t like the more serious approach toward the program, Bad Therapy also features the return of Peri Brown, and at least I was relieved to learn that Peri didn’t actually love Yrcannos.   I’m glad that the New Adventures did something more with her than just leave her as the TV show did.   Seeing her and the Doctor attempt to reconnect after many years and a bitter parting (with the Doctor seemingly out of his mind in “Mindwarp”) makes for fascinating reading.  The guest characters in this book are very well drawn, and the author creates some very sympathetic characters to be the Doctor’s allies as well as a police inspector who must fight his natural instincts and aid the Doctor and his friends. McCoy’s Doctor comes off well in this book, and Chris is also easily captured.  This is a truly good novel that is very suspenseful.  The book also raises some interesting questions about what determines whether something is alive and sentient.  This book has shocks aplenty, and it will definitely keep you entertained.  This is a book not to be missed.