Speed of Flight by: Paul Leonard: Faster than the Speed of Flight

Paul Leonard has written three novels previous to Speed of Flight.  His debut Venusian Lullaby was all right, but nothing to really write home about.  Dancing the Code and Toy Soldiers however were both really good novels and he does know how to write for the Third Doctor’s era so Speed of Flight, featuring the Third Doctor, Jo, and Mike Yates should be at least a good novel.  Its best aspect is that it is mercifully short for the Virgin Missing Adventures considering how dull the actual story the novel contains is.  The plot really does start out in an intriguing way introducing us to a race of creatures that grow and eventually learn to fly and a setting which really does feel like something good for Doctor Who.  The introduction of Jo and Mike into the story that follows is also great as Sergeant Benton and Corporal Bell set them up with each other for a blind date.  It’s a scene that’s hilarious as we all know that the two characters would never get together, but they go along with the date just to appease their colleagues.

 

This is the set up as to how in Timelash there’s a photo of Jo in a character’s locket, but we don’t actually go to Karfel, but the planet Nooma.  The planet Nooma has three castes of people which is an interesting society and Leonard does a decent job of making the planet stand out from the crowd of other planets.  The inhabitants of the planet have an interesting ideas on how death works as there is an entity that enters your head and influences your mind.  However nobody really dies in the novel who doesn’t come back at the end which really doesn’t make the story be endearing to readers in any sort of way.  The supporting characters are similar to the era as they present themselves as extremely boring people with nothing really to allow them to stand out from the crowd.  The villain doesn’t even get much development with the large amount of the novel devoted to him as a character.  The biggest flaw of the novel is what happens to Mike Yates.  So for a big shock twist in the middle of the book Paul Leonard decides to kill off Mike Yates which allows us to see a wide range of emotions from Jo and the Doctor, but Leonard has the Doctor revive the Captain, bringing him back from the dead.  Maybe this allows for the beginning of the character arc in The Green Death, but it makes me furious as we see a character, a main character, be killed only to be revived because death doesn’t seem to mean anything in this world.

 

To summarize, like this review Speed of Flight is short.  As a book it is extremely boring with characters that don’t really do anything interesting, a plot twist that will infuriate any Doctor Who fan or fan of good storytelling.  A definite step down for Paul Leonard and the quality of the Virgin Missing Adventures.  10/100