7) The Infinity Doctors, by Lance Parkin
While I liked the overall idea, and numerous details of the scenery, I wasn’t so sure about some of the plot. I felt that the Gallifrey audios managed to balance the idea of competing factions in Gallifrey, powerful external forces and rogue Time Lords rather better, and without having to invent a whole new continuity. One crucial point is that the Gallifreyan security system really is unrealistically poor, even for the sclerotic Time Lord society: there is little sense of urgency from the President and High Council as the body count rises in the corridors of the citadel, or when important visitors start going astray, and the Watch’s investigations are astonishingly incompetent.
However, the interactions between Time Lords and the rest of Gallifreyan society are well done, and so is the depiction of Omega’s universe and its limitations. There are also some intriguing hints about the Doctor’s own lost past, and his capacity for loving women of his own race. (And of course it’s impossible to know which Doctor we are dealing with here – Paul McGann without the wig, perhaps?)
Fails the Bechdel test, I’m afraid. There are few women characters – Omega’s unnamed wife, Larna who is the Doctor’s quasi-companion, and Larna’s maidservant; the first of these never meets the other two, and the only direct speech interchange between Larna and her maid is about a male visitor.
Otherwise, not bad, but not a classic either.
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