Doctor Who

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1. Doctor Who and the Rebel's Gamble - Score = 3.8   Tier = Bad

Sections: 301
Attempts to reach optimal ending: 11

Now I begin my long-awaited trip into the world of Doctor Who, and as with the most recent series I have played, that being "Narnia Solo Games", I enter a world with which I am mostly unfamiliar. My experiences with Doctor Who come down to two small things. One, some of my earliest memories are of my dad watching the show, and although I was far too young to understand the show itself, the creepy theme music always stuck with me. And two, this very theme music was later used to produce one of the biggest "earworm" songs I have ever heard, that being the 1988 hit "Doctorin The Tardis" by The Timelords. This song of course was just a combination of the Doctor Who theme and the song "Rock and Roll" by Gary Glitter (which itself was an absolute staple of a song played in sporting arenas throughout the 90's), but I always find myself singing it for days on end whenever I hear it. I also recall watching the video for this song many times, and found it to be wonderfully ridiculous and confusing to someone out of touch with the Doctor Who universe. In the video, a rusty old police car rushes to the scene of an apparently empty parking lot where 1950's looking robots are wheeling around, only for the police car to smash them to bits. These robots, which I later learned were meant to be the "Daleks" of the show, were hilariously amazing, with their top mounted laser guns (or sonic rays or whatever they were supposed to be), bouncing around in tune to the music, and you could even clearly see the feet of the people operating them from underneath, along with their heads through the slits in the wooden crates that appear to have been used for the outer shells of the robots. Wonderful stuff!

I am a bit depressed in the admission that I do not have much knowledge of the Doctor Who universe, because with science fiction being my favorite genre, and time travel my favorite subgenre, I feel that I really may have missed out on something here that I would have greatly enjoyed. I was of course aware of the television show, and it could be found on some late night channels in my area growing up in the late 80's and the 90's, but it was not what I would call hugely popular in my neck of the woods, certainly not compared to Star Trek The Next Generation, which dominated the sci-fi TV landscape around that time. This gamebook is written by author William H. Keith Jr, and even just reading the introduction to the gamebook, I found myself incredibly intrigued. We get a brief description of the Time Lords who originate from the planet Gallifrey, and of which the Doctor is one, and their purpose in preventing anyone messing with the timeline (beat Jean Claude Van Damme and "Timecop" to the punch there didn't they?), along with how they use their time machines known as a TARDIS to travel through both time and space. What I really loved though was the explanation on how when a Time Lord "dies", they are able to regenerate, but in doing so take on different physical characteristics (a new "body" if you will). This is absolutely brilliant, as it allows for the character to continue on with different actors in perpetuity while still retaining all the knowledge, history, and development that the Doctor has undergone. Speaking of that, I am assuming the character is referred to as "Doctor" because he actually is one, although I am just basing that on the character appearing to have knowledge of advanced healing procedures in this adventure. 

We are additionally told that in this adventure we will be playing as the Sixth Doctor, who is apparently arrogant, egocentric, and outlandish, even though he is still one of the "good guys". Not only that, but particular mention is made of the way this Doctor dresses, with an incredibly colourful, and yet completely mismatched wardrobe. We are also told that we have two travelling companions for the adventure, Dr. Harry Sullivan, a British surgeon in the Royal Navy, and Peri Brown, an American teenage girl who is apparently trying to get back to her own time, although not much about that is really explained. (So, Harry and Peri eh? Where are Sherri and Terri?) The game system is then explained to us, and we learn that the system here is based on the Doctor Who Role Playing Game. We then get a list of Attributes to mark down, with the scores for each being provided for us in the areas of: Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Charisma, Mentality, Intuition, Brawling, TARDIS Operation, Computer Systems, Stealth, Haggling, and Negotiation. (Aren't those last two kind of the same?). Phew, 12 different stats! You can then expect to have to roll 2D6 at various points in the adventure, perform some math on it, and then come in equal to or below the value of the attribute being tested in order to pass the skill check. Should you find yourself being killed, you will also be given the chance to regenerate by passing a similar style dice roll, and I found this to be rather easily passed, as in all my playthroughs I never failed to regenerate when required. 

Wow! Ok, the cover of this gamebook does not do him justice. Imagine coming across this guy in the park! 

However, I'm sorry to say that this adventure is not nearly so wonderful as the Doctor Who premise. Although as with several bad gamebooks I have played, it actually starts off rather well. The prologue here begins in a psychiatrist's office in the year 1986, where a Dr Jenner is in the middle of a session with a patient by the name of Everett Marshall. This man Marshall has a most unusual story, as he claims to actually be a Confederate soldier from the American Civil War, who while fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg against the Union army, who ultimately would win the conflict, suddenly found himself transported in time to the current year. Dr Jenner has been treating Marshall for several weeks now, but Marshall is becoming increasingly agitated, feeling that some powerful force has been "pulling" at him with greater and greater intensity. It turns out that Marshall is not in fact crazy, and right in the middle of the session, a time vortex opens up, pulling him back to his own time, but also pulling back Dr Jenner with him, due to Jenner's close proximity to Marshall at the time. The prologue then ends with a stunned secretary bursting into a now empty room to investigate the noise, wondering where the doctor and his patient have gone. 

From there we go to the first section of the adventure, (and this is another gamebook which starts not at section 1, but at section 100) where the TARDIS arrives in 1860's Pennsylvania, carrying The Doctor, Harry, and Peri, who step out wondering why the machine stopped here. The Doctor immediately realizes that something is wrong with the Temporal Vortex, and figuring there must be a reason they arrived here, decides to investigate. It doesn't take long before he stumbles across a disheveled and confused Dr Jenner, and our group is then brought up to speed on what is going on. In a confusing story beat, Marshall was brought back to his own time yes, but not at the point when he vanished. In fact, he was brought back many months before the Battle of Gettysburg, and this was after having spent several weeks in 1986 learning all about the Civil War. It is then determined that, in an attempt to save his younger brother who apparently died at Gettysburg, Marshall intends to use his knowledge in an attempt to change the course of history by helping the Confederates to win the war, and thus hopefully save his brother. I immediately experienced a sense of deja vu, feeling like I had encountered this situation before, and checking my notes realized that this was the same plan that the villain of the "Falcon" gamebook series also once attempted to enact, going back in time to try and make it that the Confederates won the war. Although that was just one sequence in that otherwise far, far superior gamebook. 

The Doctor and Dr Jenner determine that there are 3 different points in time that Marshall could affect events enough so that he might indeed change history enough to see the Confederates win, which would cause irreparable damage to the course of history, possibly affecting billions of lives throughout the galaxy in the present timeline. (No pressure I guess!). These key points in time include: The Three Cigars, the Battle of Chancellorsville, and the Battle of Gettysburg, You must then use the TARDIS to travel to these points in time in succession, and foil Marshall's plans at each. Breaking these down below:

1. The Three Cigars - Ok, so in our desired timeline, the Union army will discover a set of Confederate battle orders that had mistakenly been wrapped around 3 cigars and left in a field when the Confederates retreated. These orders will allow the Union to know the Confederate plans, and contribute to them winning the key Battle of Antietam, a turning point in the war. Marshall intends to find the orders in the field before the Union army can, thus hopefully preventing the Union from winning the key upcoming battle. Your job is to then keep Marshall from finding the plans so that the Union army still can. I thought this was one of the more trickier sequences of the adventure, and it took me more than a few tries, because just about any wrong move will see you taking too much time to get to Marshall, and he will be gone with the orders before you even get there, and it's game over. It's also somewhat odd in the way you "pass" this section, as you need to talk some sense into Marshall, at which point he leaves the orders to be found by the Union army, as history dictates, before moving on. Huh? So he sees the problem with altering the timeline, gives up on getting a hold of the orders, but still intends to continue to try and help the Confederates win? Okaaaay. 

Interlude - The Battle of Antietam - After passing the above sequence, you are given the option of going to the Battle of Antitetam to see if you can locate Marshall there and perhaps talk some further sense into him, or you can just choose to continue straight on to The Battle of Chancellorsville. This turns out to be wholly optional, and can be skipped if you just wish to proceed to the next step. And oh how I wish I had done so. But, wanting to see as much as the adventure had to offer as possible, I decided to check it out, but I get the sneaking suspicion this whole Antietam sequence exists merely so the author could do some lecturing on this particular battle, and there are pages upon pages of such here. You get to observe the battle while the author throws historical information at you left, right and centre, with little to no development to the story occurring. I really don't know what the point of this is, and on later playthroughs I would just skip it completely, even getting to the optimal ending while doing so. 

2. The Battle of Chancellorsville - In the actual timeline, it was during this battle where the famous Confederate General Stonewall Jackson was shot and killed by his own men in a "friendly fire" incident. Jackson is made out to be such a brilliant leader and strategist, that his survival here could have made the difference between the Confederates later winning the war. So, Marshall heads here in an attempt to prevent Confederate forces from mistakenly shooting Jackson. This sequence is much shorter than the first, and gives you a couple of different routes to make your way towards Marshall and stop him before he can intervene (by literally tackling him before he can warn his comrades not to shoot Jackson). You can actually win the adventure right here should you stop Marshall, although only with the second best ending and not the optimal one, which is a rather abrupt end to a rather thick gamebook. Strangely, should you want to proceed to the final sequence and a shot at the best ending, it seems to me you need to FAIL a key roll here. And I always hate it when gamebooks do that. This roll occurs should you have prevented Marshall from saving General Jackson, and you then attempt once again to talk some sense into him. Should you pass, he gives up on his quest to change the outcome of the war and you win the game, but again, with only the second best ending. However, should you fail to convince him, he heads on to Gettysburg, where he plans to advise the Confederate General Robert E Lee on exactly the moves to make in order to win that battle and the war. 

3. The Battle of Gettysburg - Simple goal here, find Marshall and take one last try at getting him to change his mind about altering the course of history. Marshall himself is not all that hard to find, and there are several different options to try here based upon things that may have happened earlier in the adventure, but I did feel I got lucky in ultimately convincing him to give up, as I needed to roll a low number twice in a row, and was able to do so on my first attempt at getting here. Passing this final test gets you the very best ending, where you not only just prevent Marshall from changing history, but also succeed in rescuing his brother, who is brought forward in time along with Marshall back to 1986, with the both of them to live out their lives in modern times. So much for not messing with the timeline, but I guess bringing these guys forward in time wasn't considered important enough to sufficiently alter history too much. There is also a pretty nice ending twist here where it is explained what caused the rift in time that brought Marshall forward, and then back in time, in the first place, and it involves one of those mind bending time travel paradoxes that will start to drive you crazy as you begin thinking in circles (and I think the mind-bending is part of what draws me to time travel stories in the first place).  

By now you have probably gathered that there are multiple possible endings here, and in fact there are 6 different ones. They are each contained in a section at the back of the book, and whenever your adventure comes to an end you are sent to one of the 6 possible Outcomes, which are numbered from the worst possible ending, Outcome 1 which is a "Total Failure", all the way up to Outcome 6, which is a "Spectacular Victory". I have to say though that there were a couple of things that didn't seem to make a lot of sense, even for a time travel story. First was Marshall's plan to save his brother. Surely he could have found a simpler way to do it rather than attempting to alter the whole outcome of the war through such elaborate means. I actually found Marshall  to be a rather sympathetic figure, and despite being told by The Doctor several times about what changing history would mean to the future of the galaxy, it was hard not to relate to him just wanting to save his brother. As Marshall himself would say, why should he care about anyone else's future? I'm sure if most of us were confronted with the same decision, we would probably choose to save our loved ones as well, and to be fair, The Doctor recognizes this too, and Marshall is not treated as an enemy. The second thing that didn't make a lot of sense was that we, as The Doctor, are attempting to prevent Marshall from taking certain actions, but if we failed to do so, who cares? We have a time machine and he doesn't! Just go back and try again until you get it right. Although we could be back in a time travel paradox situation here. (At the moment Marshall succeeds....do we fail to exist? And also, doesn't his brother have to die in order for him to alter time in the first place?) 

So the review so far doesn't sound all THAT bad right? Well unfortunately there is a huge problem with the adventure which I have saved until now. And that is, the author rambles on and on about all the various battles to a ridiculous degree, and it effectively ruins the book. Every single landmark, troop movement, and blade of grass is described in such detail that the sections go on for pages and pages of what reads like a historical textbook. It's not just the odd section that contains this either, but sequence after sequence where I was struggling to keep my eyes open. What's worse, some of these long text sections are repeated, as depending on how you arrived at a section, the author may have thought you missed out on something, so you might find yourself reading what you just read all over again. It got so bad that eventually when I would turn to a new section, I would take a quick peek to see how long it went on for, dreading one of those 6-8 page long sections of run-on descriptions. Hell, even when I finally got to the optimal ending victory section and knew I had finally won, I still had to put the book down and come back to finish it later, as at that point I was completely tapped out and my brain could take no more. Getting to the final victory section and coming back to read it later was a first!  

Additionally, as if all that historical exposition wasn't enough, there is even MORE of it contained in a section at the back of the book, where you can get even further details on the battles of Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. Jeesh! I'm surprised there was still more to tell! At least these extra sections are optional though, which was a huge plus. There are also some alternate histories included in the back of the book here too, which give some possible scenarios as to what might have happened had the Confederates actually won. An interesting bit of "What if?" I suppose. 

Special mention must also be made of your companions, Harry and Peri, who as far as gamebook companions go, are some of the more useless ones you will find. Most of the dialogue comes between The Doctor and Dr Jenner, as they confer on what history says will happen next, and what their next move should be in attempting to find Marshall. There were stretches I completely forgot about Harry and Peri altogether, only to be reminded that they were part of the adventure when one of them would chime in with a one sentence, completely unhelpful remark before fading into the background again. Peri can actually be taken prisoner by the Confederates in the opening act, but even in rescuing her she does nothing to help you. I suppose you could say Harry contributes somewhat, in that if you find yourself shot and needing to regenerate, Harry will help by dragging you back to the TARDIS, but I learned incredibly little about either of these two, and that was a huge disappointment. Also, we were told in the introduction that the Sixth Doctor was arrogant, egocentric, and outlandish, but I got absolutely none of that impression while playing the adventure, and he just seemed more like "generic good guy" than anything else. And speaking of the dialogue between The Doctor and Dr Jenner, having them both referred to as "Doctor" all throughout the book could get somewhat confusing at times, as there were moments I was not totally sure which Doctor was talking or which was being addressed.  And it just occurred to me now, but throughout the book, our character only introduces himself to other people as "The Doctor", so is that where the name Doctor Who comes from? I'm imagining a typical introduction going something like this:

"Hello! I'm The Doctor!"
"Doctor? Doctor who?" 

Wrapping it up, there is a fair amount of gameplay here at least, you just need to wade your way through a morass of long boring passages to get to it. That said, even the game system felt somewhat over-complicated. Oftentimes instead of just asking you to roll 2 dice and compare to one of your attributes, you would be asked to make several modifications to the numbers. An example of such is given below where you can find yourself struggling with Marshall:

"Roll 2D6. From this result subtract 1 for each point of your STR and 1 for each point of your DEX. Now add 18 to represent Marshall's DEX and STR. If the final result is 5 or less, go to 180. If it is 9 or more go to 178.
If the result is 6 through 8, the two of you continue to struggle. Roll 2D6 again, then subtract your STR and DEX and add 10. If the result is again 6 through 8, Marshall's friends will arrive for the third roll. This time, add 50 for Marshall's STR and DEX!"

Not a huge deal I suppose and nowhere near the level of something like "Sagas of the Demonspawn", but it felt rather unnecessary, especially in seeing that the starting stats were provided for you, so just giving you a single number to roll equal to or under should have sufficed, but seeing as how this is based on the Doctor Who Role Playing game system, I can at least give this something of a pass. I can also somewhat appreciate that the optimal ending was well-hidden, prompting repeated playthroughs in order to find it, the problem being that this is not the gamebook you want to play any more than a handful of times! I can think of a particular song I would rather listen to though....

Yeah, I'll be singing this song for the next two weeks. "Doctor Whooooooo....Hey!....The TARDIS!"

Ranking: Well, that may just be the biggest gamebook disappointment I have had in a long time. This is a classic example of the old "bait and switch", promising one thing but delivering something else. As a Doctor Who adventure, this stinks (and this is coming from someone unfamiliar with Doctor Who no less). If you take the Doctor Who aspect out of the equation, it's slightly better because expectations would be different, but it still stinks. To be fair, I have certainly played worse gamebooks, but I can't recall one as tedious and boring as this in a long time. Don't get me wrong, I love to learn about history, but if I had wanted to read a textbook on the American Civil War I would have done so, and that is definitely NOT the reason I was playing this gamebook. I learned a little bit about how the TARDIS works (I think anyway, for all I know the author was just making it up), but other than that I learned almost nothing about The Doctor himself or his companions. And no Daleks? C'mon! This appears to be the first gamebook written by Keith and it shows, with its wonky design and interminably long sections. I see that the second book in the series is also written by this author, so I am holding my breath a bit as I take the plunge into the next adventure, hoping that the historical lecturing is toned down considerably.