‘SUNSET OVER VENUS’
Please feel free to comment on my review.
Wispies on Venus with the Twelfth Doctor and Clara
In this ‘Doctor Who’ anthology book, it’s science and stories!
I purchased ‘The Scientific Secrets of Doctor Who’ anthology book at Waterstones in Weston-super-Mare before I attended the ‘Stars of Time Film and Comic Con @ The Tropicana’ event in August 2016. The book was compiled together by Simon Guerrier and public astronomer Dr. Marek Kukula.
This ‘Doctor Who’ anthology book is unusual in that it doesn’t just contain short stories. It also contains chapters of scientific interest related to the show. The science is beyond me as I wanted to read this book because of the short stories. But it was still interesting to read the science stuff here.
The book was published in early 2015 after Peter Capaldi’s first season as the Twelfth Doctor on TV. The story of interest to me was ‘The Constant Doctor’ featuring the Fifth Doctor, Nyssa, Tegan and Adric. I would have to read the book to the very end before getting to read ‘The Constant Doctor’. 😀
The stories are as follows. There’s ‘Sunset Over Venus’; ‘The Lost Generation’; ‘The Room With All The Doors’; ‘The Hungry Night’; ‘All the Empty Towers’; ‘Rewriting History’; ‘Silver Mosquitoes’; ‘In Search of Lost Time’; ‘Natural Regression’; ‘Potential Energy’; ‘The Arboreals’; ‘The Piper’; ‘The Girl Who Stole The Stars’; ‘The Mercy Seats’ and ‘The Constant Doctor’. These have different Doctors. 😀
The book begins with an introduction by Simon Guerrier and Dr. Marek Kukula collectively I presume, explaining what the book’s about before we get onto reading the stories. The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 is about ‘Space’; Part 2 is about ‘Time’ and Part 3 is about ‘Humanity’.
The first story in ‘Part 1 – Space’ of the book is called ‘Sunset Over Venus’ by Mark Wright. The story features the Twelfth Doctor and Clara. Mark Wright has written a number of Big Finish audios with Cavan Scott including the Forge stories. They also wrote the Ninth Doctor tale ‘Night of the Whisper’.
‘Sunset Over Venus’ has the Doctor and Clara rescuing astronaut Devika Cullen and probe specialist Rick Attah from the Genetrix probe that descended from the Lovell Platform to the surface of Venus. During the rescue, the Doctor, Clara, Devika and Rick confront these wispy gaseous aliens on Venus.
I enjoyed how Mark Wright wrote for the Twelfth Doctor and Clara in this adventure. Mark gets the mannerisms of Twelve and Clara spot on and I could hear Peter Capaldi and Jenna Coleman say their lines as I read the story. He’s definitely got into Capaldi’s Doctor from watching him in the TV series.
The aliens that the Doctor and Clara meet aren’t given proper names as the Doctor just called one of them ‘Wispy’ whilst Clara called them ‘Wispies’. I’m surprised they didn’t go the whole way and call them ‘Wispas’ based on the chocolate bar. 😀 This story does have the feeling of belonging to Twelve’s era.
The story features some continuity references to other stories including Devika recalling the 2049 moon crisis that happened in ‘Kill The Moon’. This story takes place fifty years after that. Adelaide Brooke from ‘The Waters of Mars’ is also mentioned as she happens to be Devika’s hero in the story.
‘Sunset Over Venus’ is accompanied by the chapter called ‘Alien Life and Other Worlds’.
‘Sunset Over Venus’ rating – 7/10
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