"The Doctor Trap"
by Simon Messingham

Donna Noble's second literary outing in the TARDIS is The Doctor Trap, a novel by Simon Messingham, who makes his debut in the New Series Adventures line with this book.

We're introduced to a powerful man called Sebastiene. He's a hunter: a ruthless, brutal man, who has rooms upon rooms filled with the corpses of his various alien prey. He has brought a small group of fellow hunters to his home planet, which he inhabits with an army of robotic servants, with just one aim: Sebastiene wants to add a Time Lord to his collection . . .

Messingham wastes no time at all setting things into motion: within the first six pages of text, the TARDIS has been stolen. As a reader, you're instantly grabbed by the scruff of the neck and pulled into a fast-moving plot. The author maintains the pace of the story with a lot of short sentences, lending a choppy and pacey feel to the prose at times; this works wonders in the more action-packed and exciting moments of the story, which feel very much like something you'd see on screen, but doesn't quite work for dialogue or scenes where such unrelenting speed is a bit inappropriate.

The occasional brevity of the sentences is mirrored in the length of the scenes: we jump between different times and places on an unusually frequent basis. For me, this often didn't work; every time I felt I was getting to know the characters in the early chapters, for example, they were taken away from me as the story jumped somewhere else, which I found frustrating. It wasn't until I was eighty-something pages into the story - which is about a third of the novel - that I finally engaged with it, whereas I'm used to being absorbed sooner with this series of books.

I was also frustrated by a couple of occasions where things happen "off-screen". At one point in the novel, Donna is trapped in an unreal hotel, where all her plans to escape are blocked. When she finally does leave, we're given a few tantalising details, and then we cut to a scene in which she runs back into the hotel screaming. I can understand that this might've been done to create some mystery, to keep the reader wondering about what happened to her; but with the amount build-up that was given to her escape, I was really invested in discovering what was out there, and felt betrayed by the anticlimactic outcome and lack of follow-up.

However, I was very pleased by the relative complexity of the plot. Compared to other New Series Adventures, The Doctor Trap has a more layered storyline, and it's handled very well. For instance, the fact that there are two Doctors dashing about having separate adventures for much of the novel could make things hard to follow - even more so when they meet! - but Messingham is a skilful enough writer to make it complicated and intriguing rather than plain confusing. There are probably more twists and turns in this novel than in any of the previous New Series books.

It's also a very clever book: to give just one example, the blurb - which heavily implies what the eponymous "Doctor Trap" is, and threatens a story very similar to The Last Dodo - turns out to be something of a red herring. Messingham has used some familiar building blocks to create a pleasingly original plot, and the various explanations of what the titular Trap is are nothing like what I had assumed. There were a number of occasions where I thought I'd gotten a grip on what was happening, and believed I could predict where the story was heading, but the plot is shaken up on a satisfyingly regular basis, so I was almost always wrong.

After having mixed feelings about the portrayal of Donna Noble in Ghosts of India, I was interested to see how she'd been handled here. However, when I finished the book, her character hadn't made much of an impression on me; thinking about it and re-reading certain scenes with this review in mind, I'm still struggling to think of much to say, because her involvement really is relatively minimal, especially in the first half of the book. This is no Midnight, but it certainly feels like Donna has been sidelined for a large chunk of the novel. Messingham seems to have a decent enough handle on her, but I'd be happier with a shakily-characterised Donna in that first half than not much Donna at all.

Messingham excels, though, with his depiction of the Tenth Doctor; his is a portrayal anchored on the Doctor's more childish and playful side. He's excited, full of wonder, and over-enthusiastic ("You love everything," complains an irritated and cynical Donna), and easily hurt. Whilst the books have often tended to focus on the talkier aspects of the character, Messingham's version is equally valid, and hugely enjoyable to read. There's a liveliness to the Doctor's scenes, which suggest the author had a lot of fun writing for the character.

There are some cheeky moments of self-referential humour, too; the description of the groups of fans who search for information about the Doctor's doings could easily be applied to any number of internet message boards, and the mention of "obscure cults" keeping the legend of the Doctor alive while he was absent would seem to be a cute nod towards the audios and books, and long-term fans will enjoy picking up on moments like these.

When The Doctor Trap works, it's perhaps some of the best stuff the New Series Adventures have produced to date: polished, exciting, and intelligently plotted. Those moments are infrequent, though, and on the whole I'm not quite sure if everything came together as it should have done. For most Doctor Who readers, this will be an okay book: not terrible, but not brilliant either. Fans of Donna Noble, though, are likely to be somewhat disappointed. Either way, it's a fairly solid read, and this is probably worth a look.