This is the story of Hsui Tai's breakout which was one of the most detailed and unusual that we ever got to see. I'll avoid spoiling too much, but this story brought a new twist to the way the Tomorrow People lived. Like most of the Tomorrow People novelisations, this is fairly faithful to the script but does introduce some more explanatory material. In particular we can an insight into John's relationship with Mike, which makes interesting reading.
The story itself was quite good, and this does translate very well into novel form.
One of my favourite stories in the Original series, although one which is based on a pretty faulty scientific principle (this is The Tomorrow People after all.) This story and this novelisation are quite good for examining what happens when a Tomorrow Person is torn between their peaceful nature, and another force and instinct that is totally opposed to it.
The novel seems to (from recollection - it is some time since I saw the episode) add a fair bit to John's reaction to Mike apparently embracing Nazism. The story is also quite good, as for the first time, the British military are not portrayed as some sort of evil organisation, but are portrayed in a far better light.
In my opinion, this is the weakest of the three stories in the Novelisation. It does have an interesting basic idea - two groups with different stories and the Tomorrow People don't know who to trust, but personally I found it quite boring. Throw in a Third World dictator (who seems to be based on Idi Amin), who serves very little useful purpose and you still don't have that much to recommend this story. There's nothing wrong with it, but there's nothing great about it either.
This review © 1997 Shaun Hately, but please feel free to link to it, or copy it.
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