Product Description

One of a new series of adventure stories featuring the TV science fiction hero, Doctor Who. They call it the Dead Frontier; it's as far from home as the human race ever ventured. This is the planet where mankind dumped its waste and left its culture out in the sun to rot.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #910461 in Books
• Published on: 1999-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 314 pages

Customer Reviews

Raises the bar for all future Doctor Who stories
(Be warned that INTERFERENCE Books I and II are not actually separate, distinct books. This is not a story and its sequel. This is one story split across two books. This should be read straight through as though it were one 600-page book. Book II builds off of the foundation that's been put down in Book I. You won't be able to follow anything that's going on in Book II without having read Book I. Do not buy Book II and expect a complete work.)

INTERFERENCE is a startlingly vast undertaking. It pushes the limits of what can and cannot be discussed in a Doctor Who story, and the book is all the richer for it. And while it doesn't manage to quite grasp everything it reaches for, what it does achieve is both powerful and thought provoking.

The book definitely has an epic feel to it, although as it's the "first ever full-length two-part Doctor Who novel" it would be a disappointment if this were not the case. The story reaches over several thousand years and intersects the Doctor's personal timeline twice. It's complicated and told from several viewpoints. It has fairly heavy themes and the attitude running through it gives it a very important feel. The atmosphere that becomes built up (particularly effective in the opening sections) makes for a spellbinding and captivating read.

This enormous, two-book, six-hundred page marathon is divided into two sections which are then split roughly in half. The first section deals with the Eighth Doctor's adventures on Earth, and the second is centered around the Third Doctor being taken out of his normal time-stream and placed on the planet Dust. The Eighth Doctor segments are also divided up into smaller pieces, each slice not necessarily taking place at the same time as the others. At times, it can be a very confusing read, although ultimately the experience is very rewarding. During a few points I had to stop reading and make mental notes about how exactly the story was unfolding and which pieces were occurring in what order. While the book definitely made me work harder at reading it than others in the EDA line, this change was quite welcome and the pay-off well worth it.

As I mentioned, this story is dripping with atmosphere. The tone is set right from the very beginning - this is a very dark story. It's also a very well told story. Lawrence Miles isn't interested in what technological nonsense the Doctor will use to escape from a prison cell; he wants to go deeper than that. He isn't interested in having Sam repeat some clichéd Save The Whales slogan; he wants to explore her mind and her mentality. He's using the conventional tools of Doctor Who to tell a story that reaches outside of the normal parameters of what we expect when we see the blue logo on the cover. But he's not kicking down the ladder of Doctor Who after he's climbed up it; Sam's beliefs and experiences form the very heart of the book. Sam's politics aren't just a springboard for Miles to say Bigger and Better things about Politics, they remain under the microscope during the entire book. Miles has merely taken everything that we know about Sam and drawn them out to their logical conclusion. Who would have guessed that the result would make for such fascinating reading?

As in ALIEN BODIES, this story is packed full of great ideas and new pieces of excellent continuity. Here they all fit together much better and work at forming a cohesive work. The little asides and narrative passages that dragged the plot of ALIEN BODIES to a standstill work rather effectively here. Despite its massive length, there's very little (in the Earth sections) that doesn't contribute to the overall tone of the work. Everything just feels right, even the passages where the Doctor comforts a tortured and dying political prisoner with stories about a fantasy world of TARDISes and Time Lords. I think that in the hands of a lesser writer, this section could really have turned out to be rather embarrassing, but fortunately Miles knows what he's doing and treats the subject with the delicacy it deserves. Extra points are given for not tiptoeing around the subject matter.

In my opinion, the biggest flaw is that the themes and atmosphere don't translate properly from one part of the story to the other. The Eighth Doctor segment is about the effect of media and culture upon society, the way perceptions change people, and how close perceptions of people come to reality. With only a few exceptions, these themes are totally absent from the Third Doctor segments. The only thematic link between them seems to be Fitz's ruminations on how he is perceived (and how he will be remembered by others) and a character in the Third Doctor segments who is proud of the fact that no one will ever be able to get close enough to know the real her. The jumps between the Earth and the Dust segments seemed much more jarring because of this. If the themes had been held together more coherently, I think this would have ended up being one of the best (if not the best) Doctor Who stories written. As it stands, it's still extremely good, but somewhere well below perfection. The difference in tone between the two segments is unfortunately distracting.

All in all this is a really excellent book that is unfortunately let down by a few flaws. While the book does fall slightly short of some of it's goals, it must be commended for daring to aim so high. With the publication of INTERFERENCE, the bar has been raised for all other Doctor Who books and stories. Thank you, Lawrence.

This is not you father's Doctor Who story.
It's very interesting that Doctor Who has gone on for 36 years without exploring the ramifications of messing around with the Doctor's past. The introduction of Faction Paradox, a thoroughly amoral group dedicated to undermining the Time Lords and their "renegades," breathes an air of menace into this story that has been lacking for some time. We finally have a protagonist who is both more powerful than the Doctor _and_ intelligent and ruthless enough to succeed in their schemes. Other standouts in the novel include the best of use of Sarah Jane and K9 in a long time, the first wholly sympathetic and understandable version of Sam Jones, and the misadventures Fitz goes through (believe me, you won't believe it until you read it). Best of all, the events in this story set off a chain of subplots which will presumably roll through the series. Highly recommended.

Still Disjointed
As the second part of the story began in Interference Book One, this does us the favor of filling in all the holes and confusion started in the first book. The Dr. takes action against the villians and saves the day once again.

But I still didn't like it. Once again, as with the first half, the action is more side-kick centered as the political ramifications of a media-determined society are hammered home. In both regenerations, the Dr. seems to do astoundingly little, while the loops and paradoxes in the time stream become so cumbersome that I often had difficulty putting the plot line together. It was nice to find out what happened to Fitz, but it seemed a long way to go for very little plot reason.

The sheer scope of this two book story is very impressive, but I didn't find it carried off very well. Even the resolution felt unsatisfying. If I had not been so desparate to find out how the pieces from the first book fell, I would not have bothered.

And on a personal note (SPOILER!), I know the authors of these books can bend the work abit around the "official cannon" of the TV series, but having the third Dr. undergo his regeneration on Dust for dramatic purposes rather than on the Planet of the Spiders as the series has it seemed just too indulgent on Mr. Miles' part.