We Don't Understand the Truly Idyllic
The Doctor, Benice Summerfield, and Ace arrive in an idyllic manor house somewhere in England, but as Ace suggests at the beginning of the book, where ever the Doctor is concerned there is never any such place as idyllic. I would change that slightly to suggest that idyllic is really only a state of mind because when one digs beneath the surface of any idyllic situation one does tend to find rot and decay. This is where it becomes clear that something is wrong because there does not seem to be any rot or decay, and everybody appears to be living a blissful existence, that is until one of the occupants of the house dies when she is bitten by an alien insect.
When they try to explain the tragedy to the other occupants of the house they do not seem to understand the concept of death, or even of change. This to me is typical Doctor Who, especially when he encounters a race of innocents, and I guess this is an idea of the world before the fall where we neither understood death or change. However because we live in a world of death and change, and have never experienced anything other than a world of death and change, it is impossible for us to truly understand an existence without it.
However, the Doctor has arrived and things begin to unravel, and is confronted by an evil scientist whose only goal is to kill the Doctor. After his investigations, as well as ignoring warnings about how curiosity killed the cat (or the Gallifreyan equivalent), the Doctor discovers that the house is in reality a Tardis that has been set up on one of the asteroids orbiting Earth, and that a time lord is attempting to get more regenerations than she is entitled.
It is suggested that this book attempts to explore the nature of good and evil, and in reality, this book never really stuck in my mind and I really cannot comment upon it. However, a Doctor Who book, while it can be a vehicle to produce philosophical treatises, it is the fact that it is a Doctor Who book that really makes any philosophical rant quite pointless.
