I found this book rather annoying in its tone. Cartmel clearly sees a wide gap between most classic Who and his own conceptions. He slights Who traditions/classic SF cliches such as separation of the Doctor and companion early in the story, separation from the TARDIS, or plot McGuffins, yet thinks the cliched supercomputer in The Green Death to be one of the best villains. He is obsessed with the notion that the character of the Doctor must be utterly central and uneclipsed in any way by any superior character or race. This is understandable after the marginalisation of the Doctor in some Colin Baker stories, but he carries it too far and this clearly resulted in the overblown Cartmel "masterplan" designed to restore some mystery and almost God-like significance to the central character.

His section on missing episodes is full of hindsight judgements. He rather immaturely implies that those responsible for their destruction are Nazis. He gets some basic facts wrong, such as saying that the first Quatermass serial was a victim of this policy (it was in fact broadcast live and most episodes never recorded in the first place, so never existed to be destroyed).

How can you trust the view of someone who thinks City of Death is dull and overlong?;) ( )