The queen of the
Cat-People is a generally humorous character whom appears a few times in scenes
that had me chuckling which is the only real thing I can say about her. Atimkos is a character on the opposing side
and sort of acts as Polly’s mentor as she is part of this prophecy about the
invasion of the cat-people and there are bits of telepathy. Tim is extremely manipulative of Polly which
I find fascinating as she wasn’t very developed on television and seeing her
here doing some great stuff actually gets me interested. That segues nicely into the characterization
of Ben and Polly who are both done really well by Russell. Ben suffers from not really having much to do
as this is Polly’s story, but they both get twenty pages or so to realize that
the two of them have been taken out of time.
They both find the world they find themselves in is terrifying and
rightly so but there are interesting parables, especially concerning fast food,
of how it really isn’t very different from what they are used to in their own
time period. The Doctor also gets to
have his own characterization being done very well, at least better than the
one seen in The Menagerie. It is Gary Russell who has a respect for
Patrick Troughton’s Second Doctor which comes through extremely well in this
novel and is a highlight. He feels very
much like a transition of the character seen in The Power of the Daleks and The
Highlanders.
Another large problem in
the novel is that Gary Russell puts in a lot of continuity, especially in
references to the Cheetah People from the final story of the classic series, Survival. This causes the novel to suffer greatly as
you keep being reminded of other stories.
Continuity references aren’t bad in their own right, but doing them
correctly can become very difficult when you put too many put inside the
novel. The Cat-People also come across
as very generic villains even if Russell’s fan casting in the back of the novel
is jam packed full of actors and actresses who have been in Doctor Who
before. The same can be said about the
other alien faction which just doesn’t come across very well in the grand
scheme of things.
To summarize, Invasion of the Cat-People is a
perfectly average story that really comes from a genuinely interesting plot
that in the hands of say Jim Mortimore or Andy Lane could have been done a lot
better. Sadly as it has been given to
Gary Russell who at this point is inexperienced in writing which causes the
novel to go rather slowly. The characterization
of the regulars is mostly spot on but the supporting cast is really where everything
falls apart as Russell falls into the trap of making them have names that are unpronounceable
making them less relatable as a result.
50/100
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