Doctor Who - The Space Museum, by Glyn Jones, 1987.
Number 117 in the Doctor Who Library, 142 pages, paper back.
Original script by Glyn Jones, 1965,
I was looking forward to reading this when I saw it was the Target novel selection for the month. I’ve read it before but it had been awhile and I seem to remember having enjoyed it previously. I don’t know why but it took me forever to read it this time, yet that didn’t really detract from my enjoyment.
The Space Museum is an interesting concept. For a television show that concerns itself with time travel,
Doctor Who has seldom explored time itself.
The Space Museum attempts to do exactly that in presenting time as a dimension. In the dialog the concept is somewhat clumsily never quite explained. The idea that the TARDIS has jumped a time track works well enough but tying that to time as a dimension might have been a concept too difficult to technobabble.
The story of the Xeron revolution is a pretty straight-forward Doctor-and-companions-arrive-at-something-already-happening storytelling typical of
Doctor Who. The characters have life and motive and are well-written. The storyline of becoming exhibits in the museum goes to the background for Barbara and Vicki as they get caught up in the revolution. Each character has a subplot, each of which is tied up nicely, though the Doctor seems to get sidelined. I liked the characterization of Lobos even if I didn’t like him. He was an enjoyable lunatic. I thought Ian whined a bit much.
The real heroes of the story are Vicki and a Morok named Pluton.