Time for the next in the Cat’s Cradle series! We are going to read together Cat’s Cradle: Warhead
Please discuss below - no need to finish it first, discuss as you go along but please add spoiler tags for anything that could be considered a spoiler!
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Andrew Cartmel easily delivered the best book in the VERY loose Cat’s Cradle trilogy; one which prioritised gorgeously bleak world-building above all else.
That scene where the Doctor and Ace find the burnt out McDonalds and it’s described as being almost like an old forgotten temple is burnt into my mind.
I reviewed this story a while ago, so feel free to give my review a read!
“Sometimes it’s necessary to fight back.”
#006. Warhead
If you enjoy reading these reviews, do feel free to drop them a like - I’m working towards those illustrious reviewer badges.
Warhead is… a lot. It’s one of those books which I appreciate more than I enjoy. I don’t think it’s a fantastic story—it’s very scattered and unfocused, and I’m not too keen on Ace’s characterisation—but I do admire the concept, which is essentially to showcase the worst possible outcomes of climate change, capitalism, industrialisation and eco-disaster.
That means, though, that the world Andrew Cartmel depicts—the cyberpunk-inspired future Earth—is a guttingly bleak, destructive, violent and miserable one. It’s both fascinating and off-putting. And very, very 90s. I read this book a year or so ago and couldn’t keep it up for more than a chapter or too at a time, it’s so grim. And I like bleak storytelling—but when it’s so unremitting, with good people choking and dying on the fumes of a cruel future, it’s just too much. Even the ending—which I remember liking a lot—can’t inject more than a tiny amount of hope into the story.
I’ll definitely need to reread Warhead to know exactly how I feel about it, but despite that, it definitely left an impression on me. But not entirely a good one! 
I like this more than Time’s Crucible but not much. A much more linear story but still unfocused. The Doctor has some dark manipulative moments that this incarnation is famed for and it is a bleak story. I feel that on a reread in a few years I may appreciate it much more but at the moment I’m not fond of this book.
The obligatory Poparena video:
I remember, back in the 90s, I wasn’t really at home to the bleak, depressing future that a lot of the NA authors had in store for us. This wasn’t something that appealed to me very much at all. I wasn’t a fan of Cartmel’s War trilogy at all - although Warlock was fine.
I do wonder how I would find this book now, around 30 years later. Wish I had time to reread this stuff!
Also, I don’t know, but something about that image of Ace with an automatic weapon just sits uneasily with me. It smacks of a range that was still trying to prove it was ‘grown up’ and that Doctor Who wasn’t for children anymore.
Warhead is a weird one for me.
I adore the worldbuilding and the grim dark story but a lot of it feels somewhat meandering and the characters besides the Doctor and Ace really leave no impression for me, I actively disliked most of them.
I read it a while ago now so it’s a little foggy for me but I found the whole thing to be somewhat average.
Any thoughts on the comic strip related to this story - Ravens:
I began reading this last Friday. I’m making slow progress because I’m not overly blown away yet. Cartmel describes a possibly bleak future very well (a lot of it feels even more relevant today), but the Doctor and Ace barely appear and the supporting characters are boring.
For those curious about the Ravens comic strip but without access to old issues of DWM - there’s an app for that:
I have read the first three chapters of this and this feels like a literary masterwork after the last one. I really like the worldbuilding and some of the descriptions are scary and accurate. Loved how he described the video meeting where one logged on but kept working and another was not in the frame. It felt like all the meetings I have for work.
The Doctor and Ace have not had that much to do yet and I don’t really understand what the story will be about but I guess I have to keep reading.
This is one of my favorite Who novels. Incredibly immersive, very well-plotted, and containing genuinely interesting philosophical discussion. Also, the house on Allen Road is one of my favorite things ever to be introduced to Doctor Who. A couple elements/scenes are definitely too much (mostly just the part with ||Ace getting Vincent out of the barrel||), but overall I think the book is really excellent. Unfortunately I don’t share the same feelings for Cartmel’s two sequels later on in the VNAs, tho they have some good moments.
I love the house on Allen Road—in both this book and Transit, it feels like a real safe place outwith the chaos of the main plot.
I may be misremembering - and I think it may only be an issue in Warchild - but I think I felt that Cartmel was more interested in his own characters than the regulars. Problem is, when I’m reading a Doctor Who novel it’s the regulars I’m there for. If guest characters stand out I’d rather it wasn’t because they were my only option to read about in the book.
I am halfway through chapter 7. It feels like he did not want to write a Doctor Who book but this was a way to get published. The main characters feel wrong and are not that relevant to the plot. The world-building is really good and I am interested in continuing reading.
Regarding the comic Ravens: The Doctor went back in time to get a sad samurai warrior to kill some gangsters. This does not feel like the Doctor I know and love…
Far more so than the ill-judged attempts at adding ‘sex’ into the world of Doctor Who, I think the New Adventures propensity for including extreme violence was far more distasteful and un-Doctor-like.
Finish this and don’t have that much new to say. Great world-building. Great small stories and introductions of new characters. But don’t feel like a Doctor Who story. 3/5
I struggled immensely with this novel. It took me eight days to finish this novel, and I usually finish DW novels in two or three days. My biggest problem is that there are too many characters I don’t care about, a needlessly convoluted plot, and not enough of the Doctor or Ace to make this one interesting or rewarding. I simply found it dull and dragging, and I could only read a couple of chapters at a time before I found myself annoyed by the book and my mind wandering.
It’s not all bad, though. Cartmel has a very rich writing style, and his worldbuilding and themes are superb. He also writes a very believable Doctor and Ace when they actually do appear. The last third of the book is actually pretty interesting. This novel has some violence, nudity, and bizarreness we would never see on TV, but unlike John Peel and Timewyrm: Genesys, Carmel actually writes it much more tastefully.
While Timewyrm: Revelation and Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible are confusing, convoluted, and weird at times, at least they had strong ideas, intriguing characters, and an effortless flow. This one simply doesn’t work for me, despite some of its very scary and very palpable ideas and themes.
3.6/10
