The novel “The Doctor Trap” by Simon Messingham was published for the first time in 2008.
The Tardis receives a distress call coming from the Earth’s South Pole. There, the Tenth Doctor and Donna Noble find an expedition attacked by an alien found in the Antarctic ice. While the Doctor is trying to save the members of the expedition, someone somehow manages to steal the Tardis.
On the legendary Planet 1, Sebastiene has absolute power. His passion is hunting and he already has many trophies of creatures from many planets. Now his goal is to hunt down a very unique and hard to catch prey and that’s why he summoned the best hunters in the universe. His new trophy will be the last of the Time Lords.
“The Doctor Trap” is part of a series of novels connected to the new “Doctor Who” series. They’re targeted to a wide audience by being linear enough to be appreciated even by very young readers but sophisticated enough to interest more mature readers.
In “The Doctor Trap”, Simon Messingham puts together some ideas that make a story very plot-oriented definitely going against the character-oriented trend of Russell T Davies’s management of the new “Doctor Who” series. This is one of the first novels featuring Donna Noble, published a few months after the broadcast of the episode “Partners in Crime” in which she became the Doctor’s companion.
Donna is a character who evolves a lot in the course of the TV show and perhaps for this reason Simon Messingham chose to focus on the Doctor ending up leaving her a role that’s a bit marginal. The result is that Donna appears only in a limited part of the novel, which may not appeal to her fans.
In “Doctor Who” characters who were more or less egomaniac appeared a number of times, in “The Doctor Trap” there’s Sebastiene, who maybe used to be human but over time became just a ruthless hunter. He managed to conquer the rarest and hardest trophies and has now decided to add the Doctor to his collection.
One element that instead was just mentioned in the show is the existence of fans of the Doctor but an important character in this novel is Baris, a fan who thanks to Sebastiene becomes absolutely identical to the Doctor. This is related to the theme of the doppelganger, another “Doctor Who” classic as it’s been part of various adventures.
Sebastiene uses Baris as part of a plan to lure the Doctor into a trap but the situation quickly becomes complicated. In a plot that requires some attention in order to avoid getting lost among the many twists and turns, the Doctor has to use his cunning to turn the use of a doppelganger against his enemy.
A good part of the story is a mirror dance in which the tension is always kept high because for Sebastiene that’s a great game but can be deadly at any time and not just for the Doctor. Sometimes Simon Messingham leaves ambiguities in the narrative so after a while the reader doesn’t always know exactly where the author is describing the the Doctor’s or Baris’s actions.
In the end, the story is perhaps too complex and Simon Messingham wanted to put too many twists in it, especially in its ending, which in my opinion would’ve been stronger if it had been a bit more linear. Of the characters, Sebastiene is developed quite well but doesn’t go much beyond the cliché of the egomaniac villain. Baris is perhaps the best developed while the others are extras.
I liked “The Doctor Trap” because it’s a kind of story with a sophisticated plot which is great for my taste. I consider it a very good novel but at the same time I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone because of its characteristics. Specifically, I wouldn’t recommend to the readers who prefer character-oriented stories and Donna fans would be disappointed with it, for the others I think it’s worth reading it.
