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Article 2 of 6

Subject:      Time of Your Life (SPOILERS)
From:         06gaffney@cua.edu
Date:         1995/05/09
Message-Id:   <1995May9.100041.1@cua.edu>
Newsgroups:   rec.arts.drwho
[More Headers]

And, once again, a review.  Hold on...

SPOILERS!!!

So we come to Time of Your Life.  Now, I'm a big fan of the 6th Doctor
(2nd only to the 7th), and so I was looking forward to this.  Yet, at the
same time, I was worried that, like State of Change, the Doctor would
be badly characterized, and not seem Colinish enough.

I needn't have panicked.  Time of Your Life is not only quintessential
Colin Baker, but it is perhaps the ultimate analysis of his era, containing
all the elements that were so controversial, heightening them, and then
forcing us to look at them from the perspective of hindsight.

This is a Doctor who is so worried about what he has been shown of his
future history that he has taken measures to avoid all contact.  He
becomes a hermit at last, and shuns all human company.  However, this
being the Doctor, company finds him.

Many people have said how disappointed they were that Steve Lyons took
all the trouble to create a three-dimensional, real companion only to
have her, for all intents and purposes, did on page 50.  Well, I had heard
all this already, and so I came in prepared.  And I think I see why he
did it.  Angela is a lesson to the Doctor that, no matter how much he
tries to avoid it, death will follow him (as Tegan pointed out).  By
keeping Angela on the ship, by trying to protect her, he leads to her
demise.

This is a Sixth Doctor who must rediscover who he is, must realize that he
is not the Valeyard.  The cartoonish violence, appallingly over the top,
is another example of how the Doctor cannot avoid who he is.  I would be
interested to see what this would have been like if the Fifth Doctor had
been portrayed.

The violence and deaths were there, I know, but unlike Infinite Requiem,
each of them had a purpose in the main narrative.  This book was a cleansing
of the Doctor's soul, and, as the Sixth Doctor cannot avoid who he is, he
must be cleansed in blood.

9/10.

--Sean Gaffney
--"You git!  I thought you were dead!  Git git git!" - Benny, No Future

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