Fallen Gods
By Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman

     Like Rip Tide (also reviewed on this site) this book features the most elusive Dr Who of all - the eighth incarnation, played only once by Paul McGann and replete with possibilities. The story takes place on Bronze Age Thera, known as the possible candidate for having been Atlantis after it vanished beneath the waves following a volcanic eruption. It was a relatively sophisticated place and looked back upon as being something of a golden age for Greece. The Doctor lands here and becomes friendly with the potter and ex-priestess Alcestis. Demonic bulls made of fire that nobody can fight are plaguing the island, until he teaches Alcestis to fly (nobody has seen a parachute) and in her fluttering costume like a living kite she alone can battle them. Therefore, the king enrols the Doctor to tutor his two sons, but soon he will discover the reason behind the bulls' appearance and the true secret behind this perfect-seeming island and the price it has paid for what it possesses.

     Ancient Akrotiri comes to life here in a way BBC TV might have found rather expensive and this is the beauty of keeping Dr Who alive between the pages of a book; you can have him however and wherever you wish. The eighth incarnation comes across as being attractive and lonely, a reflective outsider who appears out of nowhere to make things right but gets nothing in return for his pains. The ambience here manages to feel romantic, but there is no actual romance happening. It is just that here he is portrayed as being male instead of the sexless being from children's TV and a wistful male at that. Reading these books, one can see that if Dr Who is brought back to television as people now say that it might be the old children's teatime show format is probably as much ancient history as Thera. One can imagine people of assorted ages watching this; surely the UK's answer to modern SF. Highly readable, imaginative and thought provoking as ever.