And now on BBC1, the 27th season of Doctor Who continues with the first in a new four part adventure...

They wish.

As was often the case with the tv series, Storm Harvest is different in tone to its predecessor - the authors' own Matrix - being somewhat sillier despite some very serious themes. Where Storm Harvest also echoes Doctor Who-as-tv-show - other than an unnecessary four-episode structure - is in its brief and welcome acknowledgement of the unresolved themes of that preceding story.

The reader might deduce from that, however, that as with all the novels from this pair, Storm Harvest is inspired just that little too much by the tv series' last run. Here, this is evident from something as central as the Doctor-companion relationship, right down to the trivial re-use of coinage from Battlefield. This is not a problem as such, but anyone who's been following the various novels series long-term could have a mindset to overcome when presented with a novel featuring such a clownish seventh Doctor and exuberant Ace.

Following a conventional story-opening attack scene, Storm Harvest slows down, taking time to establish the seaside setting of the Earth colony Coralee. The society is so recognisably Earth-like, it becomes difficult to keep in mind the fact that not all the characters are human. The two main non-humanoid races recall Douglas Adams - specifically, the Cythosi bring Vogons to mind, although the cetaceans (look it up!) are amusing and something that definitely would not have been attempted on television.

From a sedate opening episode, a story develops with a multitude of themes - war, slavery, schizophrenia, voodoo, sleeper agents, nuclear power, genetic engineering - which I'd hesitate to denounce as overload, since the result is a book which manages to be more than just a novelisation of a non-existent tv adventure. The most important feature - a dormant weapon - is clear and catchy enough, and the book has a few impressive surprises and a confident, steady acceleration of pace, albeit to the extent that the ending is a bit sudden; indeed, I'm still not certain what actually happened.

Despite that rushed denouement, Storm Harvest is a pretty good story, and one which intermittently manages to be a bit more than that.