purplecat | Sick Building (Reply)

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Sick Building by Paul Magrs, has been very well received, at least in my neck of the woods, but I can't for the life of me see why. This book has much in common with his short story in the Doctor Who Storybook 2007 in that there is nothing actually wrong with it in any way, but compared to talking poodles, men transforming into lizards just because, a literally two-dimensional Mike Yates, and a Doctor who is half-human on his mother's side because his mother is a mermaid and so her top half is human this was pretty tame stuff. I wasn't necessarily a huge fan of Paul Magrs other Dr Who books but I was a fan of the fact that this sort of bizarre stuff was being written under the Dr Who banner. It now appears that, stripped of the permission to let his imagination run riot, Magrs is a competent but otherwise uninspiring author.

Sick building is, unsurprisngly, an evil building novel. Our heroes spend much time being menaced (or assisted) by vacuum cleaners, sunbeds and vending machines which, when put that way, makes it seem not so far from talking poodles after all but somehow this feels bereft of the sort of verve and excitement I picked up from Magrs' other works. Certainly the vacuum cleaners etc. don't seem particularly representative, or illustrative, or to be having conceptual fun with or of anything in particular. There is an (almost) obligatory kidult and another mention of the Doctor's apparent preference for Rose over Martha. As an interesting side issue the book was originally entitled The Wicked Bungalow, this being vetoed, by all accounts including his own, by RTD. Since I am at a loss to understand why "Sick Building" is preferable to "The Wicked Bungalow" I can only assume that this must be one of those reasons why I'm not in charge of a vastly successful television brand.

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purplecat

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