Despite the fact that he originated in a very different style of television, Big Finish and BBC Books both wasted no time forcing the eighth Doctor into the mold of classic Doctor Who: BBC Books' Eighth Doctor Adventures felt of a piece with the Virgin New Adventures, while Big Finish locked him into the same 4x25 format as the classic Doctors, despite him never having appeared in such a format on telly! The eighth Doctor, after all, originally appeared in a 90-minute telemovie of the week. One could imagine an alternate world where Fox commissioned a series of them, the eighth Doctor periodically appearing on American television screens for a standalone adventure, like how The Librarian was originally. If that had happened, I think you'd have ended up with stories very much like Spore: the Doctor turns up in contemporary America, discovers something odd is going on, befriends a local woman, and puts a stop to it. Slight, like a lot of these novellas, but an intriguing glimpse of a version of Doctor Who that never was.

I like stories with underutilized incarnations of the Doctor and ones that have a creepy alien threat. Since this one features the 8th Doctor and a mysterious pathogen that destroys all organic matter, I found it highly satisfactory, with just the right amount of peril. ( )

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2161655.html

It being August, it is the Eighth Doctor's turn, in a brief but effective tale of body horror: a flesh-absorbing alien attacks a small American town, and the Doctor and a hastily acquired Asian-American companion must deal with it. Decently constructed and with sufficient callbacks to The Movie to reassure that this is meant to be part of the same continuity. (No detectable callbacks to the other Eighth Doctor books/comics/audios though.) Scarrow is apparently a rising YA writer, and on this basis I would look for more of his work. ( )