Burning Heart by: Dave Stone: Douglas Adams Wannabe

I’ve decided that I have to keep this one extremely brief for the reasons that it is a novel that doesn’t really have anything of real substance outside of a few points.  Burning Heart is Dave Stone’s third novel and it has become very clear as to what Dave Stone tries to do as a novelist.  He takes a general Doctor Who idea and then tries to imitate the style of Douglas Adams to make it a funny novel.  His first novel, Sky Pirates! Didn’t work at all in any context coming across as some good ideas muddled by bad attempts at humor and a convoluted plot.  His second novel is Death and Diplomacy which while good has a lot of flaws with its plot as its really only there to set up Happy Endings and move on the Virgin New Adventures to a new area.  It’s a good novel and all that has humor on its side, but now we have his third novel.

 

 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.