Subject:      Killing Ground:  review by the Happy Guy
From:         gaffney@iconn.net (Sean Gaffney)
Date:         1996/06/28
Message-Id:   <4qvglp$8ql@news.iconn.net>
Organization: i-Conn
Newsgroups:   rec.arts.drwho

Ah, another MA down the pike.  Adn a Colin Baker, too.  One of
my favorites.

SPOILERS!!!

Killing Ground.  Steve Lyons.  A 6th Doctor MA.  I wonder if they'll
be violence?  However, the violence is very realistic and wrenching,
as opposed to Time of Your Life (which I also liked) where the violence
is mainly metaphorical.  Nonetheless, if you hated TOYL, and if you
hated Head Games, then I *still* think you'll enjoy Killing Ground.

I must confess to not having read David Banks' Cybermen, and so I
have no idea how much of this is taken from it.  Onward...

PLOT:  Simple and concise.  Cybermen against colonists, a modern day
Frankenstein with the monster as the baddie.  The Bronze Knights are
an obvious defence that should never had happened.

THE DOCTOR:  Still in the middle of his mid-life crisis.  Treating Grant
like a tapeworm, acting callous and occasionally suicidal, this is the link
between early and late Colin.  The end of the book has a fascinating
study of the guilt that secretly eats at this incarnation.

GRANT:  A lot more developed, he is trapped on a world of his nightmares,
with a distrustful Doctor and a bunch of Cybermen.  Nevertheless, he
performs the companion role admirably.

OTHERS:  I really liked Max, the conscience of the book.  Hegelia was
absolutely creepy and bad.  Taggart (who I kept thinking of as Michael
Keating) was a visceral portrayal of an ordinary man carried along by
rebellion.

STYLE:  If they ever do the original Blake's 7 novels, I want Steve to
write the first one.  This is eerily reminiscent of some of the themes of rebellion
that go along wiith Blake, and Henneker is an interesting study of a Blake
gone wrong.  I also like the idea of the Doctor being sought out and trapped
*immediately*.  D'oh!

OVERALL:  Another good one from Steve, but non-fans of his work will
like it too.  An interesting examination of Cyber-life.

9/10.

Next:  The utter *weirdness* that is Christmas on a Rational Planet.

--Sean Gaffney
--why isn't Steve online, anyway?