Story: Sometimes even a Time Lord can get ahead of himself, and this adventure is a perfect case of that. The Doctor, along with Nyssa, and Tegan, arrive in 1920s London under the cover of darkness, right in the middle of the British Museum’s Egyptian exibit. It seems, though, that their arrival was expected, as Nyssa is immediately kidnapped and sent back in time to ancient Egypt, by powers not yet known.
So, as expected, The Doctor and Tegan head out to try and deduce what has happened. They leave the Museum and are immediately met by a man who appears to know them both qite well, and tells them that he has been instructed to take them to meet with a Lord Kennelworth. Apparently the Doctor and Tegan, some time in the past, had been with this Lord on an archeological dig in Egypt, where they had instructed him to bring back a specific sarcophagus containing a remarkable mummy. It seems that The Doctor and Tegan had arrived at the precise time for the “unwrapping of the mummy” party, and were shocked to see that the body wrapped with crumbling linens inside the ancient burial casket was not a dried-out corpse…but a seemingly comatose Nyssa!
Review: Oh what a fun book! Not only was it well written, but Nyssa was asleep for nine tenths of it, so we didn’t have to put up with her smarm for very long. I loved the way the Doctor would hear a snippet of what he’d done in the past, but it hadn’t yet actually happened to him. We get to see the events unfold, and the anecdotal refrences all come to pass. There is alot of TARDIS usage in this book, so it seems the Doctor has figured out how to get the “old girl” to work properly without any console banging.
This is one case where the sequel “out-classics” the original. Pyramids Of Mars is considered to be one of the best Tom Baker episodes, but it pales in comparison to this, its literary offspring. With only 11 left in the Missing Adventures series, I find it comforting that they can still pump ot a 9 out of 10 book. There’s hoping they stay this good down the final stretch.
Year: 1995
Author: Justin Richards
Publisher: Virgin