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Anyone expecting Stephen Baxter to give us the 2001: A Space Odyssey of Doctor Who novels will be disappointed. There’s some hard SF in here for sure, but his Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe tale is Doctor Who to the core - both classic and new, oddly enough. Because while at times it’s so authentically Troughton-era that the world seems to fade to monochrome as you read it, at others Baxter seems to be auditioning as a scriptwriter for the new series. “Look! Skiing on Titan! Timey-wimey stuff! A Scottish robot! I can do silly!”
It’s no coincidence the book has a title similar to TV's “The Wheel In Space”. It’s set just a few decades earlier, and Baxter has fun showing Zoe’s discomfort in this familiar yet unfamiliar setting, as early human colonists struggle to mine one of Saturn’s moons. Of course, there’s something inside the moon they really shouldn’t disturb…
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