Longest Day by: Michael Collier

As a show about time travel, it is perhaps odd that before returning to television in 2005, rarely played around with the concepts of time travel.  The Space Museum and The Ark are two William Hartnell stories which play around with the concepts of time travel, the later having the TARDIS crew arrive at two points in the history of a ship and the former taking the crew sideways in time.  Outside of these two stories, it is really the mechanics of time travel and the occasional time loop in stories like The Claws of Axos and Meglos to really play around with the basic premise of the show.  Longest Day is the ninth novel in the Eighth Doctor Adventures and the debut for author Michael Collier, a pseudonym for range editor Stephen Cole.  The plot of the novel takes place on Hirath where the planet is going through its “longest day”.  It is dying and there is time distortion as the planet is covered in various time zones.  The idea of the novel is great, yet sadly Collier in his first novel, doesn’t have the best grasp on prose to keep the reader engaged.  There is a poor sense of pacing with scenes either running far too long or ending too abruptly so they do not feel complete. 



The novel is also the beginning of a mini story arc within the early Eighth Doctor Adventures with Sam Jones departing (going missing) for a few books.  This ‘cliffhanger’ on the novel is perhaps one of the more interesting developments of the story, at least as it gives the reader a chance to have some novels where Sam does not appear.  That is not to blame Collier for the poor characterization of Sam Jones in Longest Day as it is apparent, he is only writing her with the paramotors of the other authors.  She is written as slightly above the bland character the other books as Collier gives her a subplot on the surface of the planet where like Option Lock, she gets good chemistry with characters on the planet, albeit not romantic chemistry.  Collier fully realizes the idea that Sam is in love with the Doctor and that is the trigger which makes her leave.  Sadly, this does nothing to improve the character, as companions who are in love with someone as ancient as the Doctor.  Matters are only made worse with the fact that Sam as a character understands that the Doctor could not love her, and she simply cannot cope with the fact.



Collier writes the Eighth Doctor as perhaps the biggest redeeming quality of the novel.  The Doctor of Longest Day is still the hapless romantic, arriving to the situation without a care in the world and attempting to fix everything quickly and with an almost flighty attitude.  There is a point in the novel where the Doctor drives his Volkswagen Beetle down the hallway of a moonbase.  Scenes like this really give the Eighth Doctor his own identity apart from the TV Movie portrayal, yet much of the book is focusing right on Sam Jones.  The Doctor is most definitely developing as a character in line with the later work done by McGann and Big Finish Productions.  Sadly Collier makes far to many missteps in writing his first novel making Longest Day feel like a much longer read than it is as well as the weakest of the first nine Eighth Doctor Adventures.  3/10.