YMMV / Past Doctor Adventures Spiral Scratch

• Fan-Disliked Explanation: The new explanation of the Sixth Doctor's death is something fans can generally take or leave, but the revelation that Mel's perky, upbeat nature is her way of hiding her accidentally being responsible for her sister's death as an infant is widely seen as an unnecessary Cerebus Retcon that doesn't do anything to address the criticisms fans had of her on-screen portrayal.
• So Okay, It's Average: Has this reputation both as a story overall and for its attempt to provide the Sixth Doctor with a more satisfying finale. It suffers from the same Continuity Porn and convoluted storytelling that plagued the Past Doctor Adventures (and Eighth Doctor Adventures), but not as badly as many other books in the series, and has some suitably epic stakes for a Grand Finale. Meanwhile, its explanation of the Sixth Doctor's fate isn't considered anywhere near as unsatisfying as what we saw in "Time and the Rani", or as overly convoluted as the one the Doctor Who New Adventures gave us, but is seen as guilty of focusing on spectacle over character, which (along with its being released when all the focus was on the just-relaunched series, and the pre-Ninth Doctor novels were in their death throes) leaves it as by far the least-remembered of the official attempts to rewrite the Sixth Doctor's demise.

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