Burning
Heart is Stone’s attempt at writing a Virgin Missing Adventure and he
decides that he is going to write for the Sixth Doctor and Peri early in their
relationship. This backfires as while on
television their relationship did develop slowly, when he decides to place this
novel in the realm of continuity (between Vengeance
on Varos and The Mark of the Rani)
causes the characterization of the Doctor and Peri to feel extremely off. He writes the Sixth Doctor as a total and
complete asshole to Peri and everyone around him. But that’s what the Sixth Doctor was famous
for wasn’t it? No he wasn’t, outside of The Twin Dilemma Part One and Part Two,
the Sixth Doctor continuously developed his characterization towards the
character we know today. Yes he and Peri
still fought, but it became less and less antagonistic as time went on and they
began to understand each other as friends which is something extremely
developed. I honestly think if Colin
Baker was given this novel as a script for television he would outright refuse
to do it as it isn’t what he wanted his Doctor to be. Stone doesn’t do any better with Peri who
really feels forgettable in this novel. He uses someone who may be Jason Kane,
but really that isn’t very interesting for the novel to go with for a
story. She doesn’t do anything in the
novel that couldn’t be done by any other supporting character in this novel.
In
other reviews I see people compare this novel as Doctor Who as a story done in
the world of Judge Dredd as it deals
with a planet run by corrupt Adjudicators.
In my own opinion it is more like Stone is trying to emulate the style
of 1920s and 1930s gangster era America on a planetary scale taken into a
dystopia. I am unaware of Judge Dredd and that series style of
telling stories so it could easily be a homage, but as it stands Stone does do
a good job of creating the world. There
are also some jokes that really do hit home in the novel, but most of them
really don’t as Stone can’t get his head around using comedic timing. I have a theory that Stone just wanted to
make a multi-Doctor story with the Sixth Doctor, Peri, the Seventh Doctor,
Chris, and Roz while there are evil and corrupted Adjudicators running
around. It wouldn’t really have worked
so soon after the excellent Cold Fusion,
and at least as it turned out the novel just isn’t very good. To quote the Fourth Doctor from an actual
Douglas Adams script this book is “Paralyzingly dull, boring, and tedious!”
To
summarize, Burning Heat is not a good
book. The characters aren’t good, the
plot is nonexistent, and while there are jokes that sometimes work, they pale
in comparison to the work of Douglas Adams.
The setting is really good and Stone does a lot to make at least the
setting interesting, but it isn’t enough to save this novel. 15/100.
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