This book by Martin Day and Keith Topping is a great starter to the novel universe. It features the Third Doctor and offers a story which could never have been performed on the budget of the show. Somehow, the story expands the WHO story away from quaries in the south of england to include the whole world, without cheapening or mocking the original source material. The benift of writing in the recent past is that the authors are to provide extra information and provide problably a restrospective more realistic and nunanced repsentation of the different superpowers of the time,rather than the more traditionaly us good them bad oversimplification.

The story is strong and has three strands which which comes together nicely at the end without being forced. There are lots human and moral ammibituity characters and the The villians are interesting - one dimensional but is in a great way.

The Doctor shines in the story - He leads not as a WWI sargent storming from the front nor an emotional empathy comforting at the back but as someone who doesn't want to play the game of war and fighting.

I love this doctors modernistic approach to everything. Science can make it better so we can overcome and resolve. We just don't need to nuke and fight everything. There is also a sense of resignation. The Doctor knows when he can and can't win.

The only loser in this story is Dr. Liz Shaw who doesn't really add much to the story, and feels a bit forced in.