NA2 Timewyrm: Exodus (Terrance Dicks)

'In an authoritarian society, people tend to obey the voice of authority. It can be very useful at times.'
I'm liking these Timewyrm books- two hits so far. Terrance Dicks obviously agrees that the Timewyrm herself is of frankly negligible interest: she is lazily tacked on here to what is actually a really good, entertaining, perverting-the-course-of-history World War II romp.
Dicks gets to animate all the Nazi bad guys (though occasionally in ways that make you feel that the war had a touch of the Carry Ons about it- and that is perhaps not as it should be), and he also gets to bring back the War Lords. Yes really! 'The War Games' and all that malarkey! He's having great fun here, and a lot of that fun is infectious.
The best stuff comes early on though, before we meet Himmler, Goering and co, and well before there's any mention of SIDRATS- the Doctor and Ace land at the Festival of Britain, but in an alternate timelines, and it's hugely satisfactory seeing the Doctor get the upperhand over the Nazis here. You kind of imagine Sylvester McCoy performing this stuff, but an idealised Sylvester McCoy, where he really was the greatest Doctor there ever was. Just as he should have been. But that's a whole other spiel. In as much as the Doctor behaves exactly as you would always wish the Doctor to behave, this is really top stuff, and it makes my frustration that I can't locate a copy of 'Vampire Science' for under a tenner easier to deal with.
'Adolf Hitler in person. The lad's done well, hasn't he?'

NA1 Timewyrm: Genesys (John Peel)

Catch people off-guard, give them something out of the ordinary to consider, and then be terribly polite- it usually worked wonders.
I don't recall any of the Timewyrm books, the initial batch of NAs, being particularly highly regarded, but this is top stuff. Easily the best historical adventure since Hartnell. Not saying much? Well perhaps. We have a bickering Doctor and Ace in Mesopotamia, assisting Gilgamesh to battle the seemingly invincible Timewyrm, respelendent in the guise of the goddess Ishtar. Sophie Aldred goes to great lengths in the book's forward to emphasise her familiarity with Gilgamesh and Enkidu from her schooldays, but they were new ones on me. When Sophie Aldred makes you feel like an ignorant oaf you've got problems. There's a cracking energy to this, and Peel adds layers to the Doctor-Ace relationship that were hinted at but never really explored on screen. You can tell there are fireworks down the line, and again that's the author doing his job well, setting up things to come.
The weak link here is Ishtar / Timewyrm. She's just not terribly interesting in either of these forms- just a shouting, gloating, megalomaniacal super-being, and darling they are three-a-penny round here. More interesting is the little team of outcasts the Doctor gathers around him- bare-breasted priestesses, hairy throwbacks and semi-talented street performers. And that's just Ace! Nah, I'm kidding. Peel actually works some decent educational material in here, again making this feel like a weird hybrid of an early 60s story and something more faithful to the McCoy TV era. It's no masterpiece of course, but weighing this up with 'The 8 Doctors' I know which series I'm more looking forward to spending time with.
'I never make stupid mistakes,' he retorted, trying to muster all his dignity. 'Only very, very clever ones.'
Four stars- and my goodness these books are turning out to be more expensive on ebay than I was expecting.