Series Three of Doctor Who provided Martha with a nice, year long gap to have a lot of adventures that we would never know about because the entire year was undone when the paradox machine was destroyed. Dan Abnett attempts to bridge the gap a little with this particular novel, though it is interspersed with a number of short stories by other writers who give us adventures that Martha had with the Doctor elsewhere.
David Roden's story tells how a group of people appear to be turning into monsters, though it transpires that this is actually a natural evolution and when the final survivor gets the opportunity to die or change...well...
Steve Lockley & Paul Lewis tell the story of a space station who receive messages from aliens that offer the the opportunity to solve all their problems.
Robert Shearman's story deals with the Doctor and Martha joining an explorer who plans on going to Antarctica, but the Doctor begins to realise that they are going nowhere and have been doing the same thing over and over again.
Finally Simon Jowett's story is a love story of a human and an "artificial" which is forbidden, although it soon turns out that the humans are actually only advanced "artificials".
Most of these stories, truth to tell, are quite underwhelming. Only Robert Shearman's story really stands out above the others, and this is primarily because it is told in such a different style to the other three.
However, that said, the framing story is quite a lot of fun as we join Martha tracking across the world and we discover why Japan was destroyed at the Master's insistence. It's quite a novel idea to think that an alien race were about to invade Earth but were interrupted by the arrival of the Master's own invasion.
The Story Of Martha is an entertaining read, and shows that there is still a place for the short story concept in the new world of Doctor Who. It's a shame that we don't see more of it.
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