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Mindwarp

by Philip Martin

Book review by Mark Sherstone

Mindwarp is the second story in The Trial of a Time Lord season, which was just shown here. There are some very interesting characters and, oh, no, Sil is back (boring), but the good news is that he is killed near the end of the book (thank goodness). I have a few personal favourite characters in this book. Firstly Yrcanos, you get the impression that he fancies Peri (mind you, who wouldn't?!) and yes he does.

The second character I liked was the sinister Valeyard, I thought he was trying to get the Doctor convicted at any cost, or so it seemed. My other favourite was the Inquisitor, who appears first on the Doctor's side, and then the Valeyard's, however I feel she sympathises with the Doctor over the death of Peri.

With most books there are minuses as well as pluses, so on to the minuses or the real bummers! I'm not insulting Philip Martin's writing ability at all but the ending is for one thing pathetic, and another impossible, well, at least to my mind. Peri is killed in Mindwarp, but in a most horrible way, I was very disappointed how they killed her, she could at least have died trying to save the Doctor or something, couldn't she?

In one or two scenes, you see Peri's head bald (imagine that, yuck!). I was most upset, because I'd grown rather fond of Peri (Nicola Bryant), oh, well, you can't win `em all, can you? On a lighter note there was one bit of humour amongst all the death and doom which goes something like this... Yrcanos to Peri: "Your name, rank and title?" Peri in reply: "Er, Perpugilliam of the Brown."

TARDIS rating: five out of ten.

This item appeared in TSV 17 (January 1990).

Index nodes: Mindwarp