Wooden Heart

"The mystery of it all - a Mary Celeste that drifts in the spaces between the stars..."

Writer: Martin Day

Format: Novel

Released: April 2007

Series: NSA 15

Featuring: Tenth Doctor, Martha

Synopsis 

A vast starship, seemingly deserted, is spinning slowly in the void of deep space. Martha and the Doctor explore the drifting tomb and discover that they may not be alone after all.

Who survived the disaster that overcame the rest of the crew? What continued to power the vessel? And why has a stretch of wooded countryside suddenly appeared in the middle of the craft?

As the Doctor and Martha journey through the forest, they find a mysterious, fog-bound village - a village traumatised by missing children and prophecies of its own destruction...

Verdict 

Wooden Heart was a fantastic novel adventure with the Tenth Doctor and Martha! This is a pairing that I enjoyed on television for series three and was actually the pairing that in my first ever Doctor Who story, The Lazarus Experiment. Amazingly, that story is near the bottom when it comes to ranking episodes but thankfully it didn't put me off the programme! Here we are, over eight years on and I'm reading a brand new story with this pairing, a pairing which is increasingly going up the ranks when it comes to TARDIS pairings thanks to the three novels I've read recently. I noticed how good this pairing was in prose during Sting of the Zygons, it occurred again in The Last Dodo and definitely continued here! I was reading the story on the train back home after a week away, in which I was very busy with mainly comic strips, so it was nice to be back doing a novel after reading Meglos on the train journey up. Whilst the comic strips were brilliant, it was nice reading a story that had a lot of detail. That's obviously natural with novels, they're a lot more detailed with a much lather backdrop than say a two-part comic strip story like Once Upon a Time Lord. Funnily enough, that gets a considerably higher rating from me though. I'm not sure if you can compare a comic strip to a novel. When it comes to ratings I'm pretty sure I don't judge it on past stories but if I were, it would only be on ones in the same format I think. I liked how the start of the novel, setting the scene, initially seemed to conflict with where the Doctor and Martha arrived. Usually we have the scene set and the TARDIS arrives during what the viewer/reader already knows. But where we had disappearing children in a village, the Doctor and Martha landed on a deserted space station! Now, how are those two things going to become linked? The result was very good. The moment the Doctor and Martha were done exploring and intended to return through the door they came to get back to the TARDIS but instead arrived in a forest was great. The Doctor seemed incredibly excited! I liked the enigma that the ship had. The Doctor had worked out quite a lot from very little, as you expect him to, and it was clear early on that the Doctor didn't like what he saw. This wasn't an ordinary research ship. This was also a prison. On which there were experiments - a word the Doctor said with utter distaste. I absolutely loved my opening quote, a wonderful observation. Though for obvious reasons, I was hoping for a reference to The Chase! It didn't come however. But we did get some very nice references to Smith and Jones and The Shakespeare Code. Unlike Made of Steel, with those the only TV stories referenced we can assume this is very early on in Martha's travels, but she did seem very assured. I guess that's due to recent encounters with Zygons and Dodos. The characters were mostly good with the strained brotherly relationship of Petr and Saul the standout. I certainly wasn't expecting the revelation that Thom was actually Saul's son though! That did shock me. The Dazai was very enigmatic and I liked how she seemed to know everything. The Creator of the village, who was nameless which wasn't ideal, reminded me of a certain character from Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways in that she was hooked up and powering the station. She was tormented and the Doctor was so sorry. His plea to hold on to powering the village was excellent but I wasn't overly struck on the reason for the children disappearing. The analogy to a hard drive was repeated too often. However, Jude was a wonderful character and the moment the Doctor referenced one of the most famous songs of all time in saying "hey, Jude" was just magic. The climax was good with all just about ending well. The dark creature had allowed the Doctor and Jude to live, and they'd saved the rest. Overall, a very enjoyable read!

Rating: 8/10