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Head Games

A Virgin New Adventure by Steve Lyons, featuring the seventh Doctor, Mel, Ace, Benny, Chris and Roz.

Publication Date: October 1995
ISBN number: 0-426-20454-9

'This isn't Hell,' the Doctor assured her. 'It's only a sequel.'

Stand by for an exciting new adventure with Dr Who and his companion, Jason. Once again, our time-hopping friends set out to seek injustice, raise rebel armies, overthrow dictators and beat up green monsters.

But this time, Dr Who faces a deadly new threat; a genocidal rogue Time Lord and his army of combat-hardened, gun-slinging warrior women. To make matters worse, this foe is a twisted version of the good Doctor himelf - and if Dr Who and Jason can't stop him, he'll end all life on Detrios and Earth.

Armed with only their wits and the modest power of control over reality, our heroes must face DrWho's evil double: the megalomaniac scientist who calls himself simply... 'The Doctor'.

Continuity

Mel appears to be early to mid twenties in age, with hair cut short.

Six months after leaving Glitz to find Earth, Mel ended up on Avalone where she spent almost two years prior to this adventure. At that point it had been three years since leaving the TARDIS. She'd also had an affair with a cook named Peter. She had designed a "Dragon cypher program" to allow Glitz to break into bank's computer systems, which she used as a method to contact him by hacking into the Galactic Banking Conglomerate's computer system to leave him messages. She was, however, rescued by Jason, current master of the land of fiction, and a fictional version of the seventh Doctor.

Whenever Mel talks about something awful happening, it always seems to.

Mel dislikes guns and regards Chris and Roz as gun-toting killers. The Doctor claims he subliminally sent Mel away at the end of Dragonfire, regarding Mel as one of his previous self's mistakes and referring to the events of Millennial Rites. It has been four years since she arrived on the TARDIS, in the year 1986. The Doctor drops her and Ace off somewhere in the 90s, parting not on the best of terms.

Comments

Where do I start? The rather tactless cover designed especially for all the Mel-haters? No, I'll save that rant for later...

"'Why?' Mel demanded finally", and so did the rest of us. We rarely see into Mel's thoughts in this book. Although she acts like Mel, she spends most of the time trailing around after the Doctor and moaning about how horrible and nasty everyone's suddenly become. The thought of people carrying guns which hadn't previously bothered her now seems to fill her with Dread and Horror.

Matters aren't helped by the Doctor, who in this book is twice as manipulative as any other. He reveals to her that he manipulated her into leaving with Glitz, tells her she is one of his previous incarnation's many "mistakes" and as much as tells her that he never liked her anyway.

Add to this the difficulty of imagining Bonnie delivering such lines as "A hardened space bitch!" and making cheap shots at the Doctor, and you see why most Mel fans deny this book take place. Head Games utterly destroys Mel's faith and friendship with the only long-term friend she's had since leaving Earth.

"And they all lived happily ever after."

As well as scripting the audio adventure The Fires of Vulcan, Steve Lyons has written a number of other Doctor Who books, including two rather good sixth Doctor stories.

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