OK, as a history lecturer, I take my hat off to Darvill-Evans on the historical accuracy front - he evokes Oxford from the middle ages supremely well - and judging from his afterword, he researched it carefully (apart from the decoration of Oxford Castle - sorry but it would be cold, cramped and smelly by today's standards, not done up like something out of Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen's sick mind - did Matilda ask 'Changing Castles' to give it a make-over?). But really, the plot...Sorry, I mean, the plot? Where was it? There appeared to be one in the intriguing introduction, but then to my horror, I realised that the introduction was all the plot there was - that was it - the entire plot written out in 2 pages at the front of the book - I thought this guy was an editor? Surely you don't do that with any novel? Proof positive of just how incestuous DW has become - as if one needed any more proof after Mr Russell's appalling 'Divided Loyalties' (one thing I will say about 'Asylum' - I didn't throw it across the room and swear at it, unlike DL which got thrown in the bin by chapter 3).

Well, then of course, we have the 4th Doctor meeting Nyssa before Traken, but after Terminus - as most other reviewers have pointed out - err, why? Why not have it set betwixt 'Time-Flight' and 'Arc'. And also - wouldn't anyone just picking up this wonder what the bloody hell was going on. Oh no, silly of me, this isn't written for anyone new is it? It's written for a bunch of jaded, novelled-out (and rapidly shrinking in number) fans, who have had so much 'who' that like junkies, they have to start combining wierder and wierder elements just to get a fix: 'Hey man, have you tried pre-regeneration Hartnell and Jeremy Fitzoliver? It's a right good bang...' (etc, etc)

Then there is the characterisation of the two. I'll start with the Doctor (as it just postpones the agony of what was done to her...). I say, the Doctor, as I really had no idea which one it was - at first it talked a bit like Blackadder crossed with Tom Baker, but not at all like the 4th Doctor - then it turned into Brother Cadfael (just read some of the atrocious Doctor dialogue in the monastery - he's trying to write for Sean Connery in the 'Name of the Rose'!). Then at the end he appeared to turn into Oprah Winfrey ('tell me about your pain, Nyssa') Urghh - Davison in Terminus had more character than this. OK, so I can't put it off - poor old Nyssa - in the books she's been turned in to Vampires, anti-matter monsters, hypnotised for 1,000s of years, made to meet naked men (see 'Cold Fusion' and don't get too excited...), been made to slap the Doctor and have a talking teddy bear called (it's etched on my brain in pain - I can't forget, no matter how hard I try) BeeBee. On two occasions ( the first half of Zeta Major and all of Cold Fusion) she has emerged with her dignity intact, but now... she has been an integalatic aid worker (oh, so well considered) and has jumped from 'lover to lover' (Bwaahaahaahaahaa - yeah, right - in your dreams, buddy!) and has now ended up as a lecturer in the history of technology at a 'space university' (cos you can just go and ask for a job and they'll give you one (fnaar, fnarr - sorry) - you don't need any qualifications, experience, just tell them you'd like to do some really obscure research and they'll even give you your own house with a silly talking computer). And having just thrown this great steaming glob of retcon at us and forced the poor girl into the plot, what does PD-E then do to justify her appearance - absolutely bugger all - she turns into a hermit and hides in a castle - why? Because she once shot a cyberman! Oh........................cobblers, really. PD-E admits he picked up 'DW- the Companions' to research her character - and we all know how full and in-depth (but not in that sense) that is! I really hate to spoil everyone's fun, but remember Tegan's line 'She'll die here'. Of course she did - read Clive May's 'Gift of the Garm' if you don't believe me...

And then, just to reveal his past interests (PD-E used to edit porno novels at the same time as the DW series - I know 'cos I applied to him for a job with Virgin as a proofreader and got a section of 'Rememberance of the Daleks' and some smut to proof read - I washed my hands and forgot about it...), he gets her to hang out in a see-through nightie and get a randy knight to watch her and describe his feelings.

So. Asylum. Had a bad press. Yes, Nyssa's entry into the plot is highly forced. However, why is this novel attacked when many others have taken out of Doctor/Companion combinations, this month's Bullet Time, the early Genocide, many, many novels that feature UNIT with the wrong Doctor? I don't know the answer to this one, because in my mind beyond this conceit of teaming Doctor 4 and Nyssa, there's not too much that's gone wrong.

Yes, the plot is scanty, the alien subplot really only bookending a murder mystery. So, okay, maybe this shows another conceit - inserting the Doctor into another genre of book. Maybe the writer had done the research on Oxford and could only get this work paid for by making it a Doctor Who book - if so blame the Commissioner and praise the writer for the guts of it. Despite that it held my attention; I wanted to read it, and the final line was great. It was a little obvious maybe but still a 6/10 good effort sort of plot, which unlike the Quantuum Archangel I could actually/and was motivated to, follow.

Nyssa was treated very well in this novel. Others do not agree, well the 'lover to lover' line was typical of the writer's rather teenage attitude to sex - see his Independence Day, and the unrequited love story was a bit twee. However, beyond that what we have is a description of someone basically having a nervous breakdown - the sheer horror of living has got on top of Nyssa (and it has nothing to do with killing a Cyberman). Nyssa is shown to have devoted herself to trying to improve things, to helping people and when her efforts fail the sheer disappointment of it has crushed her spirit. We watch Nyssa slowly withdraw from the life around her, she stops talking to her friends, she throws herself into solo minutae driven pursuits, runs away, and eventually stops talking - and it is clinically accurate and moving. This is what happens when you have clinical depression - and the whole set up was such, leaving Terminus full of hubris, having the inevitable fall, and not being strong enough to cope with the guilt, that it was totally believable that this could be happening to Nyssa. The resolution was a bit Star Trek: Reset, but they do it every week.

The other side of the coin is that we have a novel with a character having a nervous breakdown running bareback on a medieval murder mystery, and they do not really connect. And the last 30 pages was boring reference material.