Cat's Cradle: Warhead

"I just had the power to make those things turn into something real."

Writer: Andrew Cartmel

Format: Novel

Released: April 1992

Series: New Adventures 06

Featuring: Seventh Doctor, Ace

Synopsis

The place is Earth. The time is the near future – all too near.

Industrial development has accelerated out of all control, spawning dangerous new technologies and laying the planet to waste. While the inner cities collapse in guerrilla warfare, a dark age of superstition dawns.

As destruction of the environment reaches the point of no return, multinational corporations and super-rich individuals unite in a last desperate effort – not to save humankind, but to buy themselves immortality in a poisoned world.

If Earth is to survive, somebody has to stop them.

From London to New York to Turkey, Ace follows the Doctor as he prepares, finally, to strike back.

Verdict

Cat's Cradle: Warhead was a somewhat decent novel to continue my reading of the New Adventures! After a strong start to the Cat's Cradle trilogy with Time's Crucible and all of the mythology opened up there, I was a little disappointed that this one kind of felt stunted and didn't really continue the story in any way. It didn't feel like part of a trilogy and just seemed to have the continuity you would expect from any episodes or instalments in a series. Trying to judge the book in isolation, it certainly had a lot of good and one compliment I can give it is that it had a feeling like it was a movie. I thought the futuristic setting actually worked against it as I think actually establishing when the events of this book took place would have been great. It was very dark in atmosphere but quite whacky in tone and I got the feeling that this book could have fit right in with the Blade Runner films. It was a dystopian adventure for sure! I'm not sure if my expectations were raised given who the author of this story was, but I wasn't a huge fan of the style and I thought things were actually a little clunky. There seemed to be sometimes way too much backstory for supporting characters or a lot of action that didn't have any or little bearing on the overall book. I was really surprised that Ace didn't feature until nearly 100 pages in and there wasn't a huge amount of the Doctor before that. Things definitely improved when they got together, and I did quite like that the black envelope the Doctor tackled so desperately to obtain was intended for Ace. Her venture in Turkey was way too long in my opinion and didn't really seem that crucial to events. I enjoyed the Butler Institute as the corporate baddie and O'Hara as the head of that and the experiment was great. They seemed to go missing for such an extended period of time midway through the novel which was disappointing as I think there is some untapped potential there with them. Justine and Vincent had a good relationship and the backstory of the latter was actually something I enjoyed. The story of him getting the rare comic was a bit long, but I did feel sorry for him when every time he got a kiss from a girl it wasn't purely for that purpose. I'd like to think he and Justine would work out though. Combining the pair and the explosive nature of her with his powers as a conduit was good, but I do think there was a simpler way to bring an end to the project. Surely Ace could batch up some powerful nitro-nine? The idea of transferring consciousness into a computer mind was decent, but it was essentially the Cybermen without the body so it didn't feel unique. The way it was presented to the press and targeting the rich was excellent though. I enjoyed the calm nature of O'Hara, even at the end when it was clear that he was defeated. The description of the explosion at the end was really well done though and I did enjoy Ace's reaction as it even impressed her. Shreela appearing briefly was some nice continuity from the television series and the nature of the Doctor having everything worked out in this book was great characterisation from the end of what we saw of his era on television. One thing I didn't like was how nearly all of the chapters were purely from a singular group of characters' perspective. I think some mixing would have really helped with the flow and the style of storytelling. Overall, a decent idea at its heart with some shining moments but for me things petered out and I wasn't always sure what the aim was. 

Rating: 6/10