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 The Hollow Men

APRIL 1998

If the TS Eliot-inspired title didn’t give it away, then the Jack-in-the-Green avatar emblazoned on the novel’s cover must have done. Yes, this is the one with the scarecrows, but they’re not even the half of it…

Keith Topping and Martin Day’s second Doctor Who novel is, in broad terms, on a par with their first; the series’ final season is every bit as well drawn on the page here as its seventh was in The Devil Goblins From Neptune. I’m now getting used to – and dare I say, enjoying – reading about the Ace of the television series, particularly when she’s captured as well as she is here, but for me it is Sylvester McCoy’s Doctor - at his scheming, manipulative, and indeed melancholy best here – that really makes this one worth reading. The authors have really tapped into that magnificently manipulative aspect of the character that ran through the 1988 and 1989 seasons as here the Doctor intentionally visits Hexen Bridge – just like he wilfully visited Shoreditch, Terra Alpha, Gabriel Chase et al – with a view to furthering his own discrete agenda.

“Maybe I don’t want to end up like that, a nobody. When I grow up, I wanna be somebody important.”

However, once again the authors have spiced things up by throwing some discordantly adult elements into the mix – the promiscuous Rebecca Baber punctuates the odd chapter with a naked and/or amorous appearance, whilst  he vile Kenny Shanks perpetrates acts so brutal that they would make a Sontaran cringe.

In fact, Shanks is far more chilling

to read about than even the epony-

mous Hollow Men; in a sense he’s

too real. And, more impressively

still, The Hollow Men bookends his fall from grace delightfully, the scenes from his past giving the reader a fleeting glimpse of the sadness that must follow the life of Time Lord.

An angry and often quite political novel, this follow-up to The Awakening is not to be missed, particularly by those who, like myself, have a fondness for Seasons 25 and 26. A delectable fusion of nostalgia and prescience, The Hollow Men is the perfect bridge between Doctor Who’s final televised season and the Virgin New Adventures that would follow it.

  This is the way the world ends

  This is the way the world ends

  This is the way the world ends

  Not with a bang but a whimper.

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2006

E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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