Planet Skaro > Reviews > Doctor Who: The Legacy > The Collector - Chapter One
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Chapter One Review by Elizabeth Medeiros

What is the Collector? After reading Chapter One, I still don't think I can accurately describe this story. What I do know for sure is that this tale takes the Doctor, Nick and Alf into a world unlike anything they've ever experienced before. Likewise, anyone reading this is also plunged into this weird and surreal scenario.

The story begins in the past, or the then, with the Doctor in agonizing pain. Then Chapter One opens with a scene with Nick and the Collector, a giant jellyfish (!) who is the most powerful telepath around discussing what has happened to the Doctor. The Doctor has been injured in the Collector's zoo and his mind is bleeding away. And that is only the beginning.

But how this chapter is told, in fact how the whole story is written, is very unusual. "In which the author bravely starts his tale of nonsense and giant jellyfish," writes Adam Perks, and that says it all. A jellyfish that communicates by telepathy and has just taken the Doctor and his friends and has put them into another environment? Strange indeed, and stranger still is that the Collector is not malevolent, but is rather well meaning if quirky. He has opened his zoo hoping that his exhibits will like it there and stay. The Doctor only objects briefly to this, adding to the Chapter's sense of unreality.

The story alternates amongst the past and the present and even the future focusing on different characters and their experiences in this underwater menagerie. At times it's hard to follow, sometimes I wasn't sure what was happening; the feeling is like being in an amusement park fun house where everything is off balance. It is a tale of nonsense, but an intriguing one. Perhaps one of the most fascinating parts of this chapter is the excerpt of Nick McShane's diary, where the editor Oolon Coloophid doubts that this adventure really happened, that Nick was just indulging in some creative writing to relieve his boredom. That's an interesting point of view, and it tells me to just relax, enjoy the rest of the story, for you certainly will not be bored reading it.

Chapter One Review by Paul Clement

And so to the third story in the season. Adam Perks' The Collector returns us to a much more quicker pace of story than the last outing, set "presumably" at a time in the far future.

The story immediately grabs the attention, with the Doctor suffering terrible agonies from some unknown source. The way in which Adam sets the story up from a later point works well, raising the question "What has happened to bring about this situation?"

The story then goes on to jump between the past and the present, an interesting technique that manages to effectively provide some of the background to the story as well as keep the readers interest in the current situation.

The Collector comes across as a well thought out individual, extremely intelligent but seeming to lack anything resembling common sense, and thereby making him seem so much more realistic and enjoyable. Some of the scenes involving him are excellent, particularly the way he seems totally oblivious to the situation he may be creating, leading to the Doctor's wonderful line, 'You really are the stupidest being I've ever met.'

The Interlude works well, briefly taking a break from the main action to provide an engrossing scene, which seems to provide an interesting push to the story, and providing a link between the past scenes and the present scenes.

When it comes to the Doctor and his companions, the story at this stage seems to concentrate on the Doctor and Nick, with Alf hardly featuring at all, in fact, I can't seem to recall any dialogue from her in this first chapter. Nick comes across well, almost as a focal point for the scenes set in the present, while the scenes featuring the Doctor let him take centre stage.

Unfortunately, despite a pleasant, if somewhat different, writing style, the story itself at this stage seems to be lacking that certain something that captures the imagination and makes you want to carry on reading, while there also seems to be a lack of description in the narrative that makes the setting hard to imagine.

In general, this first chapter is written wonderfully stylistically, but doesn't reach the same heights with the actual tale itself, though being only the first chapter, hopefully this will be rectified as the story goes on.