This is more like it. Get lost, Menagerie.
The Wheel of Ice was the first BBC Books novel to feature a past Doctor for years; the line was rejigged to pump out pretty bland fiction starring current Doctors once the series had returned to television. In 2012, though, someone at the BBC decided that there was merit in revisiting the past Doctors, and author Steven Baxter provided this novel to so just that. And it's pretty damn good.
Wheel has a lot more of a science edge to the science fiction, with a lot of physics and real world technology about starting a colony in space squished into the narrative. This sort of story is right up the alley of the team of the second Doctor and Zoe, both brilliant and both loving a challenge. Together they interact with the people of the Wheel to help them figure out the true nature of the menace that faces them, and a lot of the time the Doctor knows the answers but coaches Zoe along until she herself reaches them. It's all very teacher and protege between them, something that the televised series hinted at but never got to take too close a look at. Zoe has been shown to default to cold logic at times, both in the televised episodes and the new episodes across many formats, and sometimes this is a benefit to her and helps her solve a problem a lot quicker; it's the human side of things which slow her down. The Doctor's gentle nudging allows her to see other angles and have more creative solutions; it's all very reminiscent of the seventh Doctor and his companion, Ace, in the final years of the classic series.
So with all this Doctor and Zoe bonding going on one might expect Jamie to be sidelined, knocked out a lot, or just shoved to the background to just say "Aye" a lot. Not so - Jamie comes into his own as the defacto liason between the administration of the Wheel and the angry youth element of the colony. Falling in with them was at first something the Doctor directed him to do, but as the story progresses Jamie spends time with the youth of the colony as they rebel and escape to the moon Titan, and eventually becomes the only one they will talk to. It's worth noting that had he stayed at home on Earth and lived Jamie would have probably ascended to some level of nobility himself among his own clansmen, so here we see him effectively following those same footsteps albeit in a less permanent sort of way.
As far as placing this one in some timeline goes, it feels like early days for this crew with Jamie telling Zoe if she stays with them long enough she will see many strange things, but there are references to the Ice Warriors and the subversion of the T-Mat technology from The Seeds of Death to indicate that they have been together a long time already. Indeed, the T-Mat disaster is referenced in the novel itself as something relatively recent, with one of the residents of the Wheel being the daughter of it's creator.
309 pages went by very fast. I had the audio downloaded as well but opted for the physical book this time. Given that it is read by Patrick Troughton's son, David, there are moments where his voice channels his father's with the same eerie similarity as Fraser Hines does with Big Finish. I didn't have almost 10 hours of time to set aside for listening though; had there been a road trip on the go then it would have been perfect. I realized early on that I was tearing through it quickly but not out of a sense of "I must finish this" but more because it is fast paced and enjoyable. It's Doctor Who done as a proper science fiction novel, which is not always what we get, and not always what is needed either, but sometimes a good hard scifi romp is just what the Doctor ordered.
NEXT EPISODE: THE QUEEN OF TIME
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