Review of ‘The Last Dodo’ - Jacqueline Rayner

I’m not a massive fan of sci-fi as a genre, however, I make an exception for Doctor Who, but it’s quite rare for me to do anything other than watch the TV show. Nevertheless, my youngest loves both the Doctor and Dodos, so when I did a search for books about Dodos, this one came up and we thought we’d give it a whirl. He was really enthusiastic after reading it, so I decided to hang onto it for a bit longer and read it myself. I’ve only ever listened to the Doctor Who books, so I decided it would be a bit of a new experience all round.

The plot itself is typical David Tennant-era: lots of fast talking, even faster thinking and an enormous amount of running around. It was interesting to have some of the story told in first person, from Martha as well, because certainly in the TV show, we don’t often get to hear from the companions and see them acting in their own right; their role is generally to do what the Doctor has told them to do and it’s even rarer to hear their thoughts without them being filtered through what they can say to the Doctor.

The museum that the Doctor and Martha end up travelling to, is one which collects the last of a species and inevitably, chaos ensues following their arrival and nothing is quite what it seems. I particularly enjoyed the little description of the various extinct animals provided by the Doctor’s guidebook, as it felt like the reader was learning something from the real world as well as enjoying a good book. As Doctor Who stories go, it wasn’t particularly far-fetched and consequently, felt more like a glimpse into a potential future than a wholly sci-fi book. But then, that’s the beauty of some of the best Doctor Who plots - when the parallel world Cybermen episode aired, earbuds were not particularly popular - I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror the other day and was struck by how similar mine looked to the Cybus Industries ones.

We were initially interested in the book because it had a Dodo in it and the story didn’t disappoint. The titular Dodo is important in many different ways to the plot and I was delighted for my son that the quagga also got a mention, as it’s his favourite extinct animal.

All in all, this was a good read and I’m sure there will be more Doctor Who books in his future!