"The Beautiful Death. The ultimate theme-park ride. For twenty galactic credits, you can find out what it's like to be dead. But something has gone wrong. Visitors expecting a sightseeing tour of the afterlife have been transformed into mindless zombies, set on a killing rampage. The TARDIS arrives in the aftermath of the disaster and, then to the Fourth Doctor’s baffled delight, he is immediately congratulated for saving the population from certain and terrible destruction. The only problem is, he hasn't actually done it yet. Aided and abetted by a drug-addled hippie lizard, a hard-hitting investigative reporter and a suicidal ship's computer, the Doctor has no choice but to travel back in time and discover exactly how he became a hero. And then he finds out. He did it by sacrificing his life."
While Festival of Death was released in 2000, it features many hallmarks to Steven Moffat’s era as show runner during Matt Smith’s time as the Doctor. It’s a complex tale of mixed up wibbly-wobbly time-travel shenanigans, dark humor and spot on characterizations of the Doctor, Romana, and K9 (this tale seemly set just after the events of City of Death, in season 17 of the Classic Series). It’s a fairly marvelous idea, intricately detailed and often very funny, with its witty dialogue, a bunch of running gags, and some wry observations. Author Jonathan Morris combines the gallows humor, the sort of Gothic style horror from producer Philip Hinchcliff’s era of Tom Baker reign as the Doctor (season 12 through 14) with the silly humor that would become prevalent during Graham Williams years (15 through 17). Some of best parts deal with ERIC the depressed computer, which any reader of Douglas Adams will realize is homage to Marvin the Paranoid Robot.
But ultimately, this novel reaches a certain peak level of greatness that a lot of the New Adventures and Missing Adventures sometimes failed do during the 1990s and early 2000’s (this was, btw, the last MA published).
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