Doctor Who: The Highest Science by Gareth Roberts

Doctor Who: The Highest Science Reviews

• 
  James Barnard

  Hindsight gives us the chance to see patterns and connections that weren’t obvious at the time. So it proved here. ‘The Highest Science’ was first published in February 1993, and was written by the then unknown Gareth Roberts. The strength of this book led him to be commissioned to write another New Adventure and then, as the Missing Adventures progressed, carve a niche in new stories which recreated the Fourth Doctor – Romana mark 2 – K9 era so faithfully that part of me is still convinced I watched, rather than read, at least one of them.
  
  Such was his impact that Roberts became one of a select group of professional fans to graduate to the revived television series, where he hasn’t lost his touch. But we didn’t know all this when his first book was published. What was clear was that this was streets ahead of the baffling, swearword-ridden and rather soulless ‘Transit’ which preceded it in the running order. ‘Transit’’s author, Ben Aaronovitch, had written for the TV series, and continues to get everything else he’s ever written absolutely right. Yet ‘Transit’ remains one of the the worst-received Doctor Who novels of all. At the time it left many fans with the concerned impression that this may be the route Doctor Who would take from that point on. ‘The Highest Science’ proved everyone wrong, as, with its light, uncomplicated, yet hugely readable style, it harked back to a much more innocent age.
  
  That isn’t to say it’s without its serious parts. Roberts is acutely aware that danger and menace will always seem much more dangerous and menacing when it arrives in unexpected guises. Thus, Sheldukher, the most wanted criminal in the galaxy, resembles a short, portly middle-manager, and the new race of monsters the book bequeaths to Doctor Who, the Chelonians, are a race of bad-tempered tortoises. Both appear harmless, yet both are capable of shocking violence and cruelty, often without any provocation. As with the work of Douglas Adams – an author whose style Roberts evokes so well it really is impossible to ignore – when bad things do happen, it’s sudden, and usually without any pause for breath after a joke or two.
  
  Then there are the regular characters. This was Bernice Summerfield’s third story – or the second if you ignore the deliberate personality transplant inflicted on her in ‘Transit’, and, two decades on (following her starring role throughout the New Adventures and in more than one spin-off series of her own) it’s remarkable how well Roberts captures the character. I suspect that it was his ability to write for her so well that led fans to take her to their hearts – a mishandling at this stage may have caused Virgin Books to reconsider her status as a companion.
  
  And as for the Doctor – yes, this is unquestionably Sylvester McCoy, even without the rather peculiar front cover to this book! Roberts captures McCoy’s speech patterns perfectly, without overdoing it (which isn’t as easy as it seems). In his use of the character, Roberts treads the line between the light-hearted approach of Season 24, the slightly distracted version seen in Season 25 and the more manipulative version of Season 26, with aplomb.
  
  I’m almost tempted to give this five stars except for two things. First, the fate of the 8:12s seems a bit of a cop-out – surely it wouldn’t have hurt to give some closure to that plot strand. In fact, I’m not convinced the book wouldn’t work better without it – I’d remembered their presence as more substantial than this re-reading showed it to be.
  
  Secondly, and most importantly, Roberts’ later books are even better!
  
  I enjoyed re-reading this immensely, and I’m really glad Virgin Book’s policy on taking on promising new authors and not releasing books of a similar tone each month meant that Roberts progressed to the career he richly deserves.
• 
  Chris Wing

  It's been quite interesting, reading Doctor Who books that I read almost (if not more than!) 20 years ago.
  My only real memory of this book involved the image of the Chelonians and a drugged up/Possessed Benny (I admit that such a possession *could* be a memory from another book; time will tell!) wandering about in an underground cave.
  
  So, to re-read this (in anticipation of listening to the Big Finish audio adaptation) has helped to give me refreshed mind's eye view of the tale.
  This is (I believe) Gareth Robert's first New Adventure/Doctor Who outing and you can feel a mixture of influences.
  Right off the bat, he has the Doctor and Benny's voices coevered perfectly. Only a few books in an Benny is a clear character that authors can find inspiration in.
  This may be my own bias of read books recently, but you can also feel that tug of DOuglas Adams' 4th Doctor era (and around that time), that Roberts excels at effortlessly, all-the-while maintaining the seventh Doctor's unique personality.
  I like how Roberts' also allows a smidgen of his pratfalling to remain, as well the nuances of his conniving and plotting, that we all love this Doctor for.
  I also felt a little bit of Paul Cornell in there, when reading the other human characters.
  I must admit that I felt very little for the troupe that Benny ended up with, but that may well be appropriate, since they were all supposed to be addled on Bubbleshake (which made me me smile, remembering how Roberts used this again, as Bubbleshock in the Sarah Jane pilot).
  There's a lot of groups of people to keep an eye on that all keep the plot going and they are all distinct and enjoyable, everyone gets a moment of depth (although,again, I found Benny's lot kind of merged together, so I kept mixing up which ones were which), and I particularly liked the depth the CHelonians were given. Comic relief that you have to take seriously, for all their warmongering. Their usage kind of reminds me of the new series Sonatarans, which is fine, but you start to wonder how many Doctor Who baddies are war-mongering jokes (Cheloninans, Sontarans, the Grell, Salachians, etc) - I'm not too bothered, this sort of mindset must be a dime a dozen in Doctor Who world!
  
  All in all, this was a very enjoyable book. ALthough the bleak ending for most characters and the final conclusion to the 'threat', I felt could have been resolved (maybe with a further epilogue perhaps?); or one can easily take it for granted that the Doctor ties up such loose ends when Benny's asleep in bed.
  
  A good book for anyone starting out in Doctor Who prose and one that hasn't really dated, which is good.
  I previously gave this three stars, but upon rereading, bumped it up a little.
• 
  Matt Smith

  (Obligatory warning that I do go pretty deep into the Doctor Who weeds here. I'd apologize, but that would be dishonest.)
  
  I'm looking back at my old interviews for The New Adventures and the most recent one was from March, and it opens with "I'm trying to get through one of these a month." And here I am now at the end of the year and this is the only one I've read in the intervening time. C'est la.
  
  It's never a good sign when a book that I wanted to blow through takes forever to read. I could reference that back in August my reading fell off an absolute cliff and I've gotten basically nothing done since then, but that doesn't explain the full four months when I could have read this book and barely made it just past the halfway point in that time. The big lesson to learn is the one I took from Cat's Cradle: Time's Crucible: It's fine to dip the toes in a bit to get a vibe for a book before plowing forward and falling into the "do not DNR pride" that I have. There's a lot of these and life is too short.
  
  Anyways.
  
  There's stuff to like in Gareth Roberts' The Highest Science. The Chelonians are clever and funny (although their hermaphroditism... well...). Roberts clearly has a deep, deeeeep love for the Williams era and especially the Douglas Adams elements of the Williams era. It's extremely in that vibe. And the ideas are overall good and the characters are funny. And... and... and...
  
  Look. I wanted to read this because I had heard it was good. And very early into this book it was clear that I was not jiving with it or connecting with it. Maybe because I think Douglas Adams is the only one who can Douglas Adams and even then I can only handle so much of him. Maybe because I wasn't really clear on just how everything was going to come together because it was so much thrown at the wall.
  
  But let's be real. That's not the problem here.
  
  The problem is I thought I could ignore Gareth Roberts's anti-trans onerousness enough to make me look past who he was almost thirty years ago when he first wrote this book. I thought it was possible. But all I could think while reading this was about all of the messed up shit he's said, how outspokenly against a Female Doctor he has been, the ways the jokes in his television stories (which I have more or less loved across the board) have aged. And the dude is known for comedy, so like... if you don't have that...
  
  And it's a shame. Because Gareth Roberts is maybe not even in the list of the five most important writers in the Wilderness Era (Cornell, Orman, and Miles all easily EASILY outstrip him) but that doesn't mean he's not important or influential (hell, if I remember my lore correctly he was the one who first defined the "gun v frock" debate (and came down firmly on frock, and frock Who is absolutely the best Who so like... way more disappointing)). That doesn't mean that his work hasn't been one of the main driving forces in a re-evaluation of the Graham Williams era in the 1970s, an era which (while certainly troubled) also produced some of the best Who ever. I've got two Williams stories in my top ten Doctor Who of all time and one of those is in my top three (the other is in the top six, ahead of anything that isn't "Caves", "Heaven Sent", "City of Death", "Pandorica Opens", and "Curse of Fenric") (#6 is "The Ribos Operation", btw). And reading this book you can absolutely see Roberts's love for the era bleed into Doctor Who's vernacular. Anyone who liked this book would like the best of the Williams era at the very least. And Roberts would go on to push and push and push that era, going so far as to write The Romance of Crime, The English Way of Death, and The Well-Mannered War, books that are widely loved and respected explicitly FOR being deeply soaked in the best possible ethos of the Williams era.
  
  All of this is important because it's irresponsible to pretend like the New Adventures happened in a vacuum, and sometimes these Wilderness Era writers had profound impacts on Doctor Who as an institution and fundamentally re-shaped fan conception such that it defined what the show was when it was revived. And Roberts is absolutely one of the bigger cogs of the era. And it kills me. Because I want to read that good good Roberts. And I want to enjoy his work. And I want to experience its being as good as I know it can be.
  
  But that's not what happened, and I'm not quite at a place where I can ignore who the man has turned out to be. Maybe I'll get there someday. Maybe there will be a rehabilitation. Or maybe it won't ever happen, and he'll be just a minor stain on Doctor Who, problematic as people so often are, and just enough that it's pyrrhically difficult to celebrate their virtues. I wish Roberts were one of the good ones, but it's so hard to say that now, and it feels awful to put him in the same category as say Haisman & Lincoln or Toby Whithouse (or really, Chris Chibnall at this point, let's be honest), but that's kinda where I'm at.
  
  Until I can get past this, I think I'm just going to have to leave Roberts here the way he leaves The Doctor at the end. I'm encasing the unsolvable problem in a bubble of stopped time and walking away. Maybe some day there will be a solution and time will heal it and it'll be better, but until then, I'll just have to live in that unfortunate purgatory. It's deeply unsatisfying, but then again, that seems right on brand for this book.
  
  Doctor Who Book Ranking
  1) Love and War
  2) Timewyrm: Revelation
  3) Timewyrm: Exodus
  4) Transit
  5) Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
  6) Timewyrm: Apocalypse
  7) The Highest Science
  8) Timewyrm: Genesys
• 
  Seb Hasi

  Another one of the very esteemed VNA’s, Highest Science is your usual sci-fi romp, full of aliens, war, mythology, and comedy. A cross between an Andrew Cartmel and a Graham Williams story, Highest Science adds a nice new alien species to the lore of the show and fleshes out the characters that we have grown to know very well by book eleven in this series. Very thin on long term arcs and setting up things to happen later on, it’s a refreshing breath of air from the constant ‘this links to that, and this foreshadows this’ that you get a lot in the New Adventures. Granted I may be wrong and it’ll turn out that something will be linked to the story but it seems on the surface that it’s just a simple Dr Who adventure.
  
  A very notable detracting point from the book is the book that you have about three main plots running concurrently, which obviously do tie together in the end (not really, the Chelonian one just sort of sods about then ends but I’ll get to that in a bit). You have the Doctor and Benny looking for an alien thing, the Chelonians at war for some reason, and this very hard to follow plot about some criminals on a ship in orbit of the planet. Constantly cutting between the plots is not fun, especially when Benny and The Doctor split up and it becomes very much four plots, with the latest addition being by far the most boring. Thankfully the way they tie up in the end is pretty neat, even if one of the plots is a deliberate dead end that foreshadows another. You get a very tidy resolution with all ends sorted out (well bar the Doctor leaving a bunch of humans stranded on an alien desert, but oh well) and it’s quite satisfying to have such a frenetic narrative be so concisely resolved.
  
  The Doctor is absolutely one of the highlights of the book as he has finally stopped his ‘moody git’ phase that started after Witch Mark. Unlike the last few books he isn’t just violently dour and boring, and provides some of the comedic relief whilst also allowing himself more Season 26 seventh Doctor moments to offset the comedy and make the climax of the book a lot more interesting. Benny too is a highlight with her character development continuing, but this time not all about her past. Her interactions with her characters in the side plot she leads adds a new layer to her character; showing her serious side. We get incredibly morose moments and her reactions to them and her ‘next moves’ are something that define her character.
  
  All the side characters in the book are possibly the weakest point, with them doing more to drag the pace and dramatic build down, than building it up. The characters in the side plot with Benny offer almost nothing to the narrative and she could easily have had the same story with Shedulker’s crew and that would’ve proved far less boring. The humans who accidentally get teleported to the planet are far worse as one, they just show up intermittently and do nothing but provide about four pages worth pages worth of drama, and two, don’t really get resolved. I assume the Doctor takes the back to earth after the book ends, but it beggars the question why they are there? It could so easily have just automated sentinels that the Chelonians are fighting.
  
  Chelonians are excellent. Funny, sad, exciting, and absolutely mental. The highlight of the book for me, I was if anything disappointed when we had to go focus on the main plot as they were just so much to follow. A perfect opening sequence is provided by them, and the few twists and turns with dissension in the ranks, and family drama are just a blast to read. If anything this book has just made me want to get ‘Well-Mannered War’ the Fourth Doctor missing adventure, just for more of these loveable turtles.
  
  Overall, a book that starts off with lots going on, and only about half of the stories being told really hit their mark, but as the novel progresses, things start to tie up and make for a clever storyline. Most of the characters are interesting and the last third of the story, as we get to the nub of what the highest science is, is really good. This is probably this first of the highly regarded VNAs that I would genuinely recommend as worth reading.
• 
  Thomas

  It's a lot of fun, this one.
  
  Not all of it works. Rodomonte, Sendei and Molassi never truly come to life and their introduction doesn't really separate them from the Chelonians, making their introduction a bit confusing. The extended subplot where Benny loses her memories doesn't really work either - this is the second book in a row where she's spent most of her time either possessed or amnesic. Given how she's only appeared in three books at this point, it does feel like no-one's actually figured out who she is yet and keeps pushing her to the sidelines. The thing is, when Roberts writes her without the mind manipulation, he really seems to get her - she really comes alive as a character when Roberts allows her to. Instead, the removal of her memories seems to be an attempt to define her character by removing her personality and bringing it back piece by piece. This seems like a silly thing to do when you could've defined the character by... I don't know, just writing her consistently from start to finish. There's just something about the whole Benny/Rodo/Sendei/Molassi plot that never quite gets going.
  
  If you can get past that plot though, there's also Cybernetic War Tortoises, Homocidal Admin Robots, a very enjoyable sadistic bastard in the form of Sheldukher, and a version of the Seventh Doctor whose the closest the New Adventures books have got to the character seen in the TV show. There's a lot to enjoy in this, it's just that you do have to get through the one plot that doesn't quite work to get to them.
  
  An oddity in it, given Robert's now commonly known anti-trans opinions and issues with the LBGT+ community, is just how many genderless and genderswapped characters there are in this book. Apparently he's sullied with age.
  
  Still, it's a very fun book that works much more than it doesn't, and when it does work, it works amazingly well. You can see from this how Roberts would end up eventually writing the new series.
• 
  Adrian Halpert

  Ok, folks, here's one of the AWFUL NA books! Like really awful.
  I had high hopes for this when I saw the Gareth Roberts had written it. I really enjoyed his novelization of Shada and thought this would be as good if not better. Boy was I wrong. Ugh! I'll be in therapy for years because of this book.
  There were WAY, WAY too many characters and something like six plotlines in a 250 page book. The result is that none of the characters, the Doctor, Bernice, the so-called "most wanted criminal in the galaxy", or the Chelonians, are anything more than tissue paper cut outs and none of the plot lines are really developed. This was an utter mess and I can't believe I even read the whole thing. I would only recommend this book to people I hate - or maybe not even them. I'm not that cruel.
  It gets a .5 rather than a zero (0) because despite this disaster, the Chelonians were kind of interesting.
  .5/5 stars
• 
  Kelly McCubbin

  Having read this and listened to Roberts' Big Finish audiodrama (coincidentally) very recently, it's pretty clear that he is a fan who got an inexplicable opportunity which he, at least initially, blew.
  This is a train wreck of a book, a bunch of lifts from better writers that call to mind your irritating friend in 7th grade showing you his gorey stick figure drawings that he made because he'd read an issue of Heavy Metal once.
  I'm trying to crawl chronologically through the New Adventures, as I only read a handful when they came out, and there has already been some truly wonderful stuff, but I may be skipping Roberts' work from now on.
• 
  Glenn

  A slow start but the book ramps up to an exciting finish. I had hoped the Doctor would have resolved a situation that was left hanging, but perhaps he will in a later book, or perhaps he already has. You know how it is with time travel.
• 
  Louis

  I have very few positive things to say about this novel, which ultimately felt like a profound waste of my time.
  
  The novel's original characters are shallow and uninteresting, and the Chelonians in particular are one of the most uninspired alien races created as part of the Doctor Who universe. They're clearly intended to be comedic, but the humour falls completely flat. Gareth Roberts' attempts at humour are unfortunately ubiquitous throughout the novel; he seems to think that he's hilarious, and is very much mistaken. The zany, juvenile "comedy" is instead tiresome and irritating, and made me care even less about what was going on.
  
  The plot seems to be deliberately convoluted and hard to follow, for which the coincidence-causing MacGuffin is used as a lazy excuse. A positive aspect of the meaningless chaos is that the story keeps moving at a fast pace, which I was grateful for. This also papers over the side characters' superficiality and the fact that the Doctor only feels half in character. Most of the time, he seems like a cardboard cutout of a generic 'Dr Who', and only occasionally could I easily visualise him as his seventh incarnation.
  
  The main thing I liked about this novel was the chance to get to know Bernice Summerfield a little better, particularly the sections where she's able to express her archeological expertise and interact with the Doctor as herself, unlike in the previous novel. She's still subjected to a mind-altering influence in this one, but I'll take what I can get.
  
  Overall, this whole book feels pointless, messy, and like it was written by a wannabe comedian who didn't get the memo about the intended vision and purpose of the Virgin New Adventures range. I wouldn't recommend this novel to anyone other than die-hard completionists.
• 
  Gareth

  Fun fact: Gareth Roberts reeeeeally likes Douglas Adams. The Highest Science is intent on flattery by imitation, with a plot revolving around random yet interconnected events, hopelessly obstinate aliens and even a suicidal artificial life-form. I’m surprised the Guide isn’t in it.
  
  Still, it’s frothy and fun. The Chelonians - motherly, murderous space tortoises - are a delightful addition to Who canon, and although the book’s primary villain is a one note bore, Roberts’ plot resolves very satisfyingly in the last stretch. (Not including a huge loose end that would be randomly tied up in Happy Endings.)
  
  The Doctor is very well written, leaning towards his sillier side, and Bernice is worth reading here as well - except that, like Transit, there’s a feeling of “do I have to include her?” She misses out on a lot of the action. Roberts has a knack for her, which makes this even more annoying somehow.
  
  It’s not your typical New Adventure, being light-hearted from the outset. I think there’s room for that.
  
  7/10
• 
  Peer Lenné

  Das war doch wunderbar erfrischend. Zwar merkt man, dass Roberts hier noch nicht so viel Erfahrung im Schreiben hat und die Geschichte ist nicht ganz so wunderbar stimmig wie bei seinen späteren Werken, aber der Schreibstil und die typische Skurrilität sind größtenteils schon vorhanden. Auf jeden Fall ein sehr empfehlenswertes Buch.
• 
  Laura

  2.5/5
  
  I just didn't connect with this book in any meaningful way. Not really sure why - the individual elements were interesting enough but they ended up not coming together satisfyingly for me. I think it might've been a case of too many plot elements for one relatively short novel, to be honest.
• 
  Christopher M.

  More of a fun romp than some of the other NAs, but the narrative is a bit of a dog's breakfast in which the humans, aliens and ninja tortoises kidnapped to a desert planet during a quest don't ever really join the main plot and just kill time.
• 
  Joe Cooper

  My Gott, how could it just end like that??? Does anyone know if he goes back and helps those people trapped in the time warp at the end? Might be a cop out at this rate.
• 
  Colin Hoad

  While this is not an awful New Adventures book (think Witchmark...) it is nevertheless pretty mediocre. It suffers from a number of problems, the biggest being the author's apparent inability to concentrate on any one plot thread for more than a couple of paragraphs. Like an attention deficit child, Roberts jumps from one set of characters to another so often that you end up not caring much about any of them. For reasons best known to himself, Roberts chooses to invest his story with a huge number of superfluous characters, develops none of them and then gradually kills them off without any real purpose. Indeed, there are entire threads that could have been cut from the novel and it wouldn't have made any difference to the story: the group of passengers from 20th century Earth were entirely irrelevant to the story and seemed to have been added as an afterthought by Roberts, perhaps because he couldn't concentrate long enough on the character groups he already had.
  
  Then there are the subplots that Roberts tosses into the narrative without much consideration. The addictive soda, prophetic pop music, devastating 'black blob' weaponry and the backstories of Sheldukher's crew are all mildly interesting but none of it really goes anywhere or reaches any resolution. Ultimately the trio of characters Bernice ends up with, as well as Sheldukher's crew, all die off anyway and could just as easily have not been in the story. The supposed twist in the plot regarding the imaginatively named Cell (Krang from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, anyone?) is vaguely surprising but, by this point in the plot, not enough to salvage the story from the dross to which it has descended.
  
  And then there are the Chelonians. Oh dear me. As if the Krang reference wasn't enough, Roberts dreams up an entire species of cybernetically engineered super-fighter tortoises. Their modus operandi is to just kill anything that isn't them, but their personalities are so shallow and dull that they fail to inspire any terror. On the contrary, the almost comical nature of their war rhetoric makes them fit for ridicule.
  
  There are a few good things to enjoy here, however. Roberts' characterisation of the Doctor is good (a far cry from the appalling treatment he received at the hands of Aaronovitch in the preceding 'Transit' novel) and this also feels like a solid story for Bernice in which she actually has a decent role. In fact, the early scene in which Bernice is confronted by a sleazy barfly is perhaps one of the best in the novel. Sheldukher is also a fairly decent villain and adversary; it is a shame Roberts chose to make him play second fiddle to the Chelonians, as the story would have been much better with the Chelonians cut out all together and Sheldukher positioned as the central threat.
  
  One final word on the novel's denouement. Roberts chooses to resolve the story by having the Doctor freeze everyone in a slow time bubble. And then he gets in the TARDIS and leaves. Bernice asks him what he's going to do and he says he doesn't know, but that maybe one day he'll figure it out, come back and free everyone. This is the novel's lowest point, on a par with '...and then he woke up and it was all a dream.' If the Doctor can't be arsed to solve the situation at hand, having taken 200 odd pages to reach this conclusion, what on earth was the point of the entire story? And now that he's armed with that incredible MacGuffin device, why doesn't he just freeze every subsequent encounter he has, so that he can have more time to mull it over and sort it out later? We are left to wonder: what if the Doctor never does figure out what to do? The people inside the time bubble might just as well be dead, in that case. It is such sloppy, lazy, deus ex machina plotting that I am amazed Roberts was allowed to get away with it.
  
  In summary: not terrible, but certainly not great.
• 
  Nicholas Whyte

  
  http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1490630.html
  
  This was Gareth Roberts' first Doctor Who book (in the Virgin New Adventures series), laying the groundwork for a subsequent career that has most recently produced The Lodger (though we have a couple more Sarah Jane Smith stories by him coming out towards the end of the year). A small plot element - London commuters whisked through a wormhole in space to encounter an alien menace - was re-used in Planet of the Dead, by Gareth Roberts and RTD. Fannish opinion on this one seems a bit polarised; I thought it was OK but not brilliant, with the best bit being the introduction of the alien Chelonians, a race of militant cybernetic tortoises who crop up in other, later Who novels and who were recently name-checked on screen in The Pandorica Opens. I was less impressed by galactic war criminal Sheldukher who I felt varied between dull and nasty. Poor Benny Summerfield has a hard time of it, with her brain being partially rotted by a spiked soft drink. Various other elements jumbled together, not completely successfully, but a fairly satisfactory Big Reveal at the end. The prelude to the book, published in DWM in 1993, is online at
  http://www.drwhoguide.com/whona11p.htm
• 
  Drew Perron

  Gareth Roberts is not a serious writer. He's a Douglas Adams-esque writer, reveling in absurdity, ridiculous setups, and undercutting seriousness while still delivering an interesting message. It's why his adaptation of Adams's Shada worked (where other post-Adams efforts to do Adams, like And Another Thing, didn't).
  
  Unfortunately, this book came out in the early stages of the Doctor Who New Adventures, where they were terribly concerned with being adult, dark, and above all, serious. The result is something that just doesn't work. There's a lot of moments that feel like they're building up to good satire... except that the satire, the deflating of the pompous, the self-absorbed, and the self-important, gets interrupted by the need to show the pompous, self-absorbed and self-important as Real Threats That The Heroes Should Be Threatened By And The Reader Should Feel Tension About.
  
  And the thing is, it really could've worked. I mentioned Shada above, and this one is very Shada-influenced, with a super-space-criminal and ancient secrets and things that turn out not to be what they seem. But Roberts doesn't let himself go with it like he needs to.
  
  Still - he got better about it later. Doctor Who as a whole did, really. I definitely recommend his later works over this; it's not bad, but it's more for completionists.
• 
  Kris

  This is Roberts first book for the Virgin range and he would become one the most prolific writers for it (equaling only Cornell in prose pieces with both writing 7 books and 2 short stories). However for me this is one of his weaker efforts.
  
  There is still a good amount of humour to be found but some of the jokes are hit and miss, whilst others date. The Chelonians to me are the first example of the trend to emerge of basically sticking an animal head on a sontaran and calling it a new species. And the stuff around them being angry as they are constantly pregnant actually come across as in really poor taste.
  
  Also annoying is the treatment of Bernice, who, for the second book in a row, has her mind altered. This time by drinking a weird form of soda. This largely seems to be to keep her out of the way of The Doctor's plot til the end and to avoid having to give much characterisation to a new character. She even says that how pointless that all was.
  
  The Doctor's plotline is good but he is less manipulative than he is in the other books, more like the chaotic Fourth Doctor. The end twists however are dark and rather interesting.
  
  Still very much an example of the series trying to find its feet.
• 
  Don

  This Doctor Who novel is largely praised, and it's certainly one designed to appeal to fans of "traditional" Who. Regrettably, that class doesn't include me. The story is decent enough, and Roberts' prose works well. Others have mentioned the story's heavy Douglas Adams influence (seen in the concept of the Fortean Flicker, and the eight twelves), and this can even be seen in the writing style, with sentence construction bearing the same subtly wry tone and cadence often found in the Hitchhikers books. Still, the story was a little too straightforward for my tastes, and didn't provide nearly enough variety for my liking. But, as said, "trad" fans are sure to enjoy it, and the book regularly pops up near the top of various lists of favorite Who novels. Read it if it sounds like this is your thing; comfortably avoid if it's not.
  
  I did somewhat enjoy the Chelonians, though, and would love to see them appear on the small screen some day.
  
• 
  James Lark

  Was a bit nervous coming back to this after such a long absence, as I have very fond memories of reading it as a teenager and worried that it might not live up to them - needn't have worried. It's a cracking story with a perfect balance of elements and an effortless control of comedy, horror and fantasy. The Chelonians are an inspired creation and taking on the role of dangerous-but-also-kinda-funny monsters they make room for Sheldukher to be the real villain of the piece, quietly sinister and genuinely disturbing.
  
  Okay, some of the cyberpunky stuff involving the youngsters in a motorspeeder feels a bit trite, and the Chorleywood passenger train is rather underused, but this is a deft piece of work for a first novel. Roberts has a fan's affection for the Doctor and Bernice and a pro's ability to characterise them accordingly.
  
  Easily the best New Adventure to have been published back then...
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  Sean Homrig

  "The Highest Science" is a refreshing change from the angst-driven companions and manipulative Seventh Doctor that became the trademark of the New Adventures. There's not much character building here; the Doctor and Bernice are simply dropped into a caper involving the titular "highest science" which ends quite well without the commonly used incomprehensible omnipotent villain from the Dawn of the Age of Time. The problem is that the first half of the novel is filled with characters we really couldn't care less about, with the exception of the Doctor and Bernice. It all gets there in the end, however, albeit at the expense of a great many lives. This is Gareth Roberts' first "Doctor Who" novel, and it's fun to read it and compare and contrast it with what he's done all the way to the current series (that being "The Caretaker").
• 
  April Mccaffrey

  I've finished reading the book and I re-listened to the big finish adaptation to it last night for comparison and I have to say, I much prefer the book. Gareth Roberts first novel.
  
  The book itself was quite humorous and found it quite funny at times with all these small coincidences thrown in together and poor Benny getting amnesia and high on drugs. Over all situation, the highest science was quite camp at times and didn't take itself too seriously which I think it was all about.
  
  Although one critique I have to say-the paragraphing in this book is absolutely awful. One point I didn't know whose point of view started with or where it ended and had to back track a few times to make sure I wasn't misreading it. The editor of the book did a very poor job with this and could have spaced them out more.
  
  But otherwise, enjoyable and silly novel.
• 
  Numa Parrott

  Despite being just as cheesy and ridiculous as all the other books in this series, it managed to be enjoyable--probably because it laughed at itself a little. While the plot dragged at times, there was still plenty of action and an actual interesting plot of sorts. That's a big deal for this series.
  There was a cool villain, some crabby (snaily?) aliens, and the Doctor actually acted like the Doctor. Bernice starts off as a promising companion and I already like her a lot. That being said, there was too much wanton destruction and all the deaths did start to feel a tad meaningless.
  It really only got 3 stars from me because it was so much better than the majority of these awful books. My expectations are very low at this point.
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  Scott Haworth

  I would rate this book more highly if it had ended differently. It feels as if the Doctor is doing something undoctorish, abandoning innocent people, after spending most of the book trying to help them. It feels like the author ran out of room or ran out of ideas. That said, there's a lot to enjoy here. The story is entertaining up until That Ending, with plenty of different monsters and villains and cool things to see, but it does feel like the author has thrown a ton of stuff in a blender just to see what happens when he turns it on. If there's a theme here, the theme is the randomness of existence.
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  Alexandra

  It starts out really funny, but the humour fades in no time, giving way to repetitive dialogue between a bunch of cardboard cutouts and Bernice (the book's saving grace).
  
  Then there's the squandered aliens. The aliens in this book had great potential--they were really alien, really DIFFERENT from humans--but they end up sounding about as real as the bubble wrap monsters in the classic series looked. It's hard to believe that these creatureswere able to reach their level of technological advancement, nevermind conquer countless planets.
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  Grant Howard

  A solid entry in the series. Certainly a improvement of the dismal "Transit" which preceded it. Roberts has a great handle on the character of the 7th doctor and we get a bit of a better look at Bernice in this one, after her being a small part in "Love and War" and possessed throughout "Transit". That being said she's still drugged for around half of the novel, but I'm really getting to like her.
  Some good new aliens in the Sontaran-esque "Chelonians" who I wouldn't mind seeing again.
• 
  Shane

  My only gripe was that at the beginning of the book I found it a little hard to get in to, but after I did I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm enjoying how Bernice is fitting in, she's space savvy and can hold her own in an adventure. Ace had been written to become too angst ridden and tiresomely petulant I found, here Bernice fits in to the New Adventures better. With so much going on in the book, there was a danger of too many sub-plots and not one to focus on, but I think Roberts handled it well.