Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

Fear Itself

Even with Big Finish’s rather fabulous special release The Company of Friends, the idea of dealing with the Eighth Doctor in a past/missing/lost adventure/story context is still a fairly rare, some might say unusual concept. There have only been a few short fictions, the flashback sections of Wolfsbane and a vignette in IDW’s The Forgotten comic strip, for the simple reason that with the exception of the TV movie, Eighth has been defined in three different ways by three different publishers and it’s incredibly difficult to sell a character which the majority of the great unwashed only recognise from about an hours worth of (highly rated) television in the mid 90s. Stick Tom and Lis on the cover of something and you’ve an instant audience because they know what to expect. Stick Paul on there and outside of fandom (and even in some corners of fandom) and the results are confusing at best.

Which is why Nick Wallace’s Fear Itself, is itself something to cherish. Appearing after the shutters on the regular Eighth Doctor novels had been pulled down, and featuring advertising for the first and second wave of nu-Who novels with Ninth, Rose and Captain Jack when they were in a good mood in the back, this was the last hurrah for the character in BBC Books but is set between Earthworld and Vanishing Point and like the past Doctor novels has been written to fit right into that era, if it can be called an era (The Stephen Cole era? Do people call it that?), and precisely the point I’m at in my j-word through this version of the timelord’s adventures. Not having read anything from this period before, it’s just another novel to me, but for fans if must have been something quite special and surprising.

I won’t be able to judge how seamlessly it fits until I work through the next book, but it’s a credit to Wallace that even though he was writing this four or five years after the event, Fear Itself reads like the next natural book in the series. Following directly on from the events of Earthworld, the book opens on Mars in 22nd century with Anji already ensconced as a business news reporter and together we witness the destruction of a space ship orbiting Jupiter which we quickly discover was the temporary residence of the Doctor and Fitz. Fear Itself is the story, told in flashes back and forward, of why Anji is making a life for herself in the future and what her friends were doing before they apparently lost their lives.

Rather like Alejandro González Iñárritu’s miserablist drugs and faith drama 21 Grams we greet the regulars in three different timeslots constantly flashing backwards and forwards (not unlike also Big Finish's audio Time Works), with the truth of events and how they’re connected not revealed completely until the climax. And as that final truth impacts on everything which has gone before, like Iñárritu’s film, it’s very tempting to go back and read the book again to see how this knowledge explains or changes our understanding of the motivations of the characters. About as complex a Doctor Who story as there’s been probably and it’s this constant sense of mystery that keep you turning the pages and even though ultimately the structure Wallace has employed masks what isn’t the most original of plots in Doctor Who terms, he’s to be applauded that you don’t realise that until some time after you’ve finished.

The characterisation is vivid which is important because there are a lot of bodies to keep track of. It helps that Wallace usually introduces us to a character then undercuts our perception of them by showing us the same figure four years previously but the approach and difference is thankfully more the final few episode of Battlestar Galactica and less Defying Gravity (where it just seems to be about wearing different pants). On the one hand Caroline Arquette is a hardened soldier and wife but no too far into the past she was the nice girl across the bar that her husband quite liked and wanted to ask out. That husband, Robbie, was just a deckhand but is now a figure of real authority on the ship keeping the thing from falling apart.

In short, it’s amazing and by far one of the best of the books. Nothing is wrong with it. At all. Wallace was apparently influenced by Ian Rankin’s Inspector Rebus novels for goodness sake – how aspirational is that? Though he would go on to write bits and pieces for Big Finish this was the only full length Who novels he’d get the chance to write, which is a tragedy. I’d love to see what he’s make if nu-Who. So if it sounds like I’m being as deliberately vague about the details as I usually am when reviewing one of the nu-Who books (not mentioning at all one of the main action elements), it’s because this one of the few occasions when I’d genuinely recommend you read one of these EDAs even if you didn’t following the series and I don’t want to spoil it (synopsis available here if you really must).

I don’t think you’d be too lost either. Perhaps expecting that new fans might pick up the novel just as the new series was starting, Wallace layers in loads of information explaining why the Doctor seems to have the majority of his memory missing, why Fitz is unsure of whether he’s still friends with him and why Anji isn’t sure if she likes either of them but cares enough that she’d head halfway across the solar system looking for them. He’s probably also included some foreshadowing for later events (in the acknowledgements he thanks Lance Parkin for a peak inside The Gallifrey Chronicles) but since I’m reading these in order I will have missed those.

BBC Books stopped publishing past Doctor novels in late 2005 and there’s been no word yet as to whether there’ll be anything new. The tragedy is that having built up this publishing history, if they do produce any past Eighth Doctor novels, despite this long publishing history, they’re unlikely to revisit any of these eras which is a real shame, especially if the results are as deft as Fear Itself. He’ll either be travelling alone, or they’ll create some new companion for the occasion which is a real shame. As I’ve said on many occasions, for some people, these books were the continuation of the tv series and just as important and it seems unfair that we’ll end up getting the umpteenth adventure for the Sixth Doctor and Mel when clearly a revisit with Eighth and Sam or Eighth and Anji and Fitz could be far more entertaining and slightly less jaded.

Earthworld

Having enjoyed the first seven of the Watcher’s guides to the Doctor’s various incarnations that are being used to bulk out Doctor Who Magazine during the off season, I was quite looking forward to the Eighth Doctor survey, wondering how they were going to boil down into four pages eight or nine years worth of stories and all of that history. Disappointing, the Watcher elected to celebrate the Paul McGann era by talking about the other Doctors a lot more and then after mention the spin-offs in passing on one page, decided on the opposite side that he’d only in fact had one companion before going on to suggest that Grace might not count anyway. Reading this, I felt like a born again Christian at a Richard Dawkins lecture.

The problem is, despite Big Finish’s best efforts and the reprints of the comic strips, eighth's tenure is receding further and further into limbo, far more than the sevenths even. These books might well be available second hand or at an increased collectors price brand new, but with both of these incarnations and all of the missing and past Doctor material, there is a bunch of stuff which isn’t being remerchandised, taken advantage of, reprinted in deluxe editions with additional material such as the authors interviews that appeared on the BBC website or retrospectives. Largely celebrated by an ageing fandom, they're receding into memory like prog rock albums still only available in vinyl.

I expect it’s because tonally many of these novels were written for a much older audience, in some cases akin to Torchwood, and Jacqueline Rayner’s Earthworld is an example of that (and I think that segway was worthy of Christine Bleakley on The One Show). I’d be genuinely uncomfortable about letting a Doctor Who Adventures reader anywhere near this, not least because their role models are teen terrorists or dictators. People don’t just die in here. There are massacres. Someone is shot in the head. There’s sexual humour and at least ten different existential crisis’s. And this is one of the lighter reads. Imagine if they turned over Larry Miles’s Interference in the hopes of reading about the exploits of Sarah Jane and K9. Oye-vay.

It’s over a year since I read the last of the novels in this series, Escape Velocity, which puts me rather in the same position as the Doctor, only vague memories of what’s gone before, impressions. There are continuity references which I’ve had to go and look up, but given the number of novels which came before anyway and the one read nature of these things I wonder if it’s likely a lot of readers at the time were reaching for Google or Lycos or whatever search engine people were using then. “Oh she’s the one from…” “Oh that what that means …” It’s brilliant that 8th novels were willing to take advantage of their own rich continuity but it’s bugger when it comes to wringing out some emotional resonance.

The Doctor still barely able to remember his own name, Fitz and newcomer Anji (as per the cover) land in what appears to be prehistoric Earth. Rather than a rewrite of some Doctor Who Discovers, pretty soon it's revealed to be a Jupiter-based theme park filled with various historical recreations using androids, presided over by three princesses, Asia, Africa and Antarctica, the daughters of the President, who, after being locked away for all their natural lives have turned psychotic and are using the newly minted attraction for fun, frolics and murder. It’s Lewis Carroll meets Michael Crighton, Alice through the Futureworld, with the timelord falling into his comfortable role of regime toppler and status quo dissembler.

Rayner’s story is about history, memory and identity. Set in the far future, the various historical recreations are misrememberings of reality, in which Elvis really was a king, Mort and Arthur were mortal enemies and London is a City of Swings! The sisters have created android copies of themselves. The Doctor is clearly pretending that his memory has returned to some extent even though he doesn’t know how to use his sonic screwdriver. Fitz realises that he’s a copy of the original grown from biomass and can’t decide if that means he really exists. Anji is dealing with life without her boyfriend Dave by writing him emails that he can’t receive.

There’s an odd balance at work here. On the one hand this is a surreal romp, which like Frontier In Space actually, largely consists of the regulars being captured and escaping only to be captured again. The derivative nature of the scenario is largely overcome by the more surreal details though it never quite manages to brush off the impression of this being a old-nuWho refresh of The Mind Robber with a certain embracing of the fiction the only way to survive. The three sisters, because of their one dimensionality, eventually become quite irritating adversaries, rather like the Billy Bunter knock off in The Celestial Toymaker and their father lacks presence also.

But Raynor has an amazing handle on the two companions. This is the first time Fitz’s status has really been addressed and there’s a wonderful sequence courtesy of a mind-probe in which we read his biography backwards, demonstrating what I always thought – that all of the women he’s loved across time have all meant something in their own way – it hasn’t really just been an exercise in shagging about. One of the scenes, in which his whole identity comes into question is one of the most powerful these novels have generated and carefully underscore that the Fitz who was picked up in the 60s is gone. All hail Fitz 2.0 Business Edition.

Anji too becomes a three dimensional figure in this writer’s hands, filled to the brim with believable girly foibles laced with grief being set aside for the duration the adventure. She’s accompanied for much of the adventure by Jupiter freedom fighter co-incidentally called ANJI and it’s fun to find her having to deal with teenagers who’s bark is louder than their bite. I’m just not convinced that she is Milly from This Life here. If indeed she was the inspiration, Rayner takes her far beyond that into Martha or Donna territory, especially the latters mix of sarcasm and surprising intensity.

The novel climaxes curiously with an excursion into a recreation of a different current Saturday night entertainment (hint – that’s current Saturday night entertainment) and I wasn’t entirely happy with the stuttering climax, which reads rather like reaching the end of a six parter and then finding that one of the Terrys has sent along another one just in case. But for 90% of its pagination this is a fine introduction for Anji’s character and a decent justification as to why Fitz would be sticking with the series for the rest of its run. But I’m worried about the sustainability of this new version of the Doctor. The big speeches and frivolity are all still their but they lack weight. I hope he gets some of his marbles back. It’s depressing when we read that he thinks Sam was a bloke.

Next time: You've nothing to fear but ...

Escape Velocity

Pity Colin Brake, or at least the 2001 version of him.  Writing his first novel, he’s commissioned to cap off one of the most experimental and interesting story arcs in the series’s history, finally answering the question of what will happen in St. Louis when the Doctor (and we) meets Fitz for the first time in a hundred years (or half a dozen novels) and doesn’t know him then send the time lord back into the vortex with his old companion and a much publicised new addition and also following Father Time, an instant classic and one of the best stories the franchise has produced in any medium.  Pity him, and then wonder …

Why does Escape Velocity have to be so catastrophically disappointing?

The ‘stranded on Earth’ arc has by and large been very entertaining.  Bits of The Turing Test might have been incoherent and as is often the case in Doctor Who some of the climaxes of the novels haven’t quite lived up to the promise of the preceding pages, but we’ve seen a largely coherent description of the passage of time and its effect on our favourite albeit debilitated timelord.  It’s been most interesting to see the Doctor thread himself into society, to gather friends and allies and we ended Father Time on a note of optimism and the impression that to be frank, the Doctor had got his shit together and though still not completely in control of his faculties looking forward to seeing the decade out in the knowledge that it’s going to be alright, just wait and see.  In Escape Velocity, Brake largely ignores all that and decides that since this may be the only Doctor who novel he ever writes, he’s going to tell the story he wants and basically pays lip service to everything else.  In other words, wall wait just there whilst I piss up you.

In other words, wall wait just there whilst I piss up you.

I should say that for much of the time the novel is at least readable, even if its taken a good two weeks to read it, for reasons related to bitter resentment.  The story, in which members of an alien race having crash landed on Earth motivate rival earth scientists in developing manned missions into space so that they can liaise with their fleet and argue the case for invasion or not, isn’t bad and offers a decent literal space race, suitably tipping its hat at the rivalry across the iron curtain of Wernher von Braun in the US and Sergey Korolyov back in the USSR.  The slightly dull Kulan are probably the alien type this kind of story requires -- like the Stoans in Voyage of the Damned, just human enough for us to see that they don’t all have the same point of view.  It’s the kind of romp which is the franchise’s stock in trade and has been done far worse elsewhere.  But why does it have to be so determined to be a romp with dozens of characters and yet another Star Trek-lite space battle when a quest story with a personal angle would have been so much more appropriate? 

The meeting in St. Louis, could have been at the climax of the novel and a more thoughtful approach would have made it what the novel is about -- perhaps making the time and place a ticking clock with both Fitz and the Doctor held up for some reason and fighting to get there for their rendezvous which they both do at the last minute or to make it really interesting not -- only to actually enter each other’s company due to an amusing coincidence related to the fact that whatever they’ve been doing is linked.  Instead, Brake has the Doctor take over a bar in London, rename it St. Louis and sit in the back brooding for some months until Fitz stumbles through the door which he inevitably does at the appointed time, even though actually travelling to Missouri is the more logical option.  Then, the much signposted, much awaited reunion is curtailed in favour of the aforementioned two hundred pages worth of running around only to transpire about two pages before the end and in an ill advised homage to An Unearthly Child.  Hardly The Stolen Earth is it?  I’m clearly falling into the trap of reviewing what’s not there, but after all the build up, we’re desperate for a story about the Doctor’s search for identity, whereas moments, such as realisation that he is a time traveller are thrown away in a sentence or two.

Hardly The Stolen Earth is it?

You want to be seeing the Doctor coming to terms with the fact that his extended stay on Earth should soon be at an end and his optimism at what may lay ahead, that his quest for knowledge will continue in time and space as he resumes his journey through the cosmos, finally able to see the sights that he‘s been reading about at The British Library all of these decades.  Instead, Brake decides to unnecessarily shoehorn in the character of Control, previously seen in two past Doctor novels on the assumption that there is a cross over in readership and who I had absolutely no knowledge of.  He apparently appeared in The Devil Goblins From Neptune and The King of Terror, but from what I’ve seen he’s hardly a well loved character; compare all this with the cameo of Iris in Father Time which was done with some humour.  The problem is that were not really told who Control is, he doesn’t seem to have much to do with the main story and you hardly miss him when he’s gone.  The sub-plot has the look, feel and chemical properties of padding and I spent much of it trying to square it with the character that Stephen Fry played in A Bit of Fry & Laurie.  You can’t help but feel that if Paul Magrs had been writing the book it would indeed have been the character that Stephen Fry played in A Bit of Fry & Laurie. 

To an extent, such expectations are born of our collective change in presumption as to what Doctor Who should be doing and how story arcs these days do have an epic though emotional quality.  But this was being written at the same time that the audio Neverland was being recorded so there was already evidence that the franchise was already sailing its 'ships into uncharted waters.  If anything in the preceding forty or so novels had done anything its to emphasise the mythic qualities of the character and the stories and here both are in short supply.  Though its interesting to see him and Anji entering the TARDIS together, the Doctor and companion having largely the same reaction to its scale for the first time, it's on their way to save Fitz and planet Earth from the Kulan.  Their next reaction?  To have cup of tea and sit down and a chat about what to do next.  Yes, the TARDIS can sit in the vortex for days before doing something, but this is supposed to be the same man who stole a space shuttle to save his daughter in the previous book!  Miranda doesn’t even warrant a mention by the way.  Brake’s simplistic characterisation of the Eighth Doctor seems based on a recent viewing of the TV Movie more than anything else and lacks any of the depth injected by the likes of Parkin, Miles, Orman, Blum and Magrs in their version.  In places too he seems to be channelling First as though amnesia automatically leads to befuddlement. 

Brake is far more comfortable when bending his breezy if sometimes grammatically incoherent style around the supporting characters.  Fitz is pretty well described, though now he's conveniently developing amnesia too.  There’s a quite wonderful journey through gender politics when a female scientist whose superior position on a team is torpedoed when the Doctor strides in and takes over and a figure like science fiction fan Dave, which could so easily have been a stereotype has very real world concerns, not least in keeping his girlfriend on side and taking her to Brussels does strike a chord as the kind of boneheaded thing some like him (or us to be fair might do).  Said girlfriend and new companion Anji, though created by series editor Justin Richards, has a good start here, as she slowly realises that everything her boyf has been saying about aliens is true and a certain quote from Hamlet pretty much covers everything.  It helps that at launch time, Richards very particularly publicised that she was inspired by actress Amita Dhiri, or rather he character Milly, from the iconic 90s sex in the chambers drama This Life, so for once we’ve someone in mind and it's often pretty amusing to imagine that often dower figure hurling bricks at windows and the like.  She's a neat, useful addition and a brilliant contrast to Fitz, Sam and Compassion.

But the rest?  Sweet Jehoshaphat.

Father Time

Father Time is awesome.  When the BBC held The Big Read in 2003 to find the nation's favourite books, I was unabashed in voting for this novel in the online section of the poll.  Partly this is because spin-off novels tend to be ignored in such things as though its entirely impossible that they might be considered in the same breath as other literature even though, as SFX’s recent articles have uncovered its often more difficult to write within a shared universe than one of your own choosing, but mostly because as I said, it's awesome.

In the end I was quite disappointed if unsurprised that my probably solitary vote did not lead to Parkin’s book receiving the advocate treatment with Paul McGann or whoever telling us in their allotted twenty minutes exactly why Father Time is awesome and so by way of a substitute I thought I’d offer my reasons instead and since this will involve spoiling a great deal of the book, you’ll have to click the link to read the rest.  If you don’t want to spoil the surprises all I’ll say is that this isn’t just one of the best of the Eighth Doctor novels, but one of the best Doctor Who stories of all time.  Period…

The Stranger

Surprise.

If ever a review on this blog was going to live up to the warning “Intended for mature readers only” it’s this one, and to be honest if I hadn’t read on the Wikipedia that Lance Parkin referred to some of the characters, albeit as an in-joke, in the next book Father Time, I wouldn’t a touched this with the Bargepole of Rassilon.  In writing the erotic novel, The Stranger, for Virgin Books’s Black Lace imprint, writer Portia Da Costa decided that she liked the Eighth Doctor enough that she’d use him as the main object of feminine desire and cast the timelord to fit within this very human story by making him an amnesiac (sound familiar).  This was published in 1997 just after the in-aptly named Virgin had lost their Who license and this offered an interesting way to sneak a further ‘adventure’ in under the TARDIS door. 

Claudia, a recent widow is surprised one day when she discovers a buff young man taking a skinny-dip in the lake on her land.  She prays that he’ll find his way to her big house, which he unsurprisingly does, bedecked in an Edwardian frock coat, covered in bruises and claiming to have lost his memory.  His only point of identity is a small note which says his name is Paul.  She takes him in, and after a doctor friend, Beatrice, gives him an examination, ‘Paul’ moves in with her.  Not long afterwards, her best friend Melody, leaves her husband and she moves in too.  Then there’s a fancy dress party and the truth of who this male house guest might be is stunningly revealed on television.  It’s not the most complex of plots, I’m sure you’ll agree and there’s a fairly obvious reason for that.

The Stranger is essentially Doctor Who Discovers The Joy of Sex, the unofficial nether regions of that most flexible of franchises touching on pornography.  As the back of the book proclaims this is ‘erotic fiction written by women for women’ and there’s people pleasure right the way through.  On page six there’s a description of something I’d never expect the Doctor to do and that’s pretty much the story on page nine, twelve, fifteen, eighteen, an educational cornucopia of images which though admittedly initially interesting do rapidly become repetitious; the family series equivalent is watching Tom and Lalla or Leela being captured and held in a cell and then escaping, over and over and over again for six episodes.  I'm no prude but there are things here it's going to take years of rewatching the Pertwee era to dislodge. 

No sexual barriers in evidence either; Captain Jack’s probably got a copy of this on the shelf in his bunk, disappointed slightly that one of the combinations doesn't include a tentacle.  In places it's quite an engagingly written book at least in relation to some of the characterisation especially Claudia, though having not read any other female erotic fiction for obvious reasons I'm hardly in a position to offer a bench mark as to whether the authors simply beefing up (if you'll pardon the expression) what are usually nothing more than cyphers.  Someone called Clifford in Weymouth gave it three stars at Amazon though he's (!) clearly unaware of the Who connection and suggests that this is actually quite tame stuff. 

Which a bit of an eye-opener, because at one point I began to wonder if Claudia’s sudden overwhelming desire to shag her best friend, GP, colleague from work and of course ‘Paul’ would be revealed to some kind of Torchwood-style alien intrusion or the inhibition softening virus from Star Trek’s The Naked Time finding a foothold in Oxfordshire.  But depending on how open minded you are this is very far from actually being proper science fiction and maddeningly, just to spoil the ending for you, it’s revealed that Paul might well be human after all, though if you are so inclined there’s nothing in there, other than his propensity to ‘dance’ to suggest that this isn’t what he was getting up to between Endgame and Father Time, trying the mortal life after regaining his sense of purpose whilst battling the Players.

I suspect that’s just wishful thinking having spent the best part of an hour this eveing reading and another hour and a half skipping through the book.  Da Costa does include a couple of amusing nods to the franchise, a bit of Puccini here, a chapter title there.  And it can’t be denied that even when he’s acting in an entirely untimelordy way, she does capture the Doctor’s voice as well as most of the official Eighth chroniclers.  But ultimately, despite an exciting news post at Outpost Gallifrey a few years ago to signal its reprinting, there’s not much for the average fan to see here, unless I suspect you’re already someone who enjoys reading this kind of fiction, in which case you’re in for a bonus.  Or fifty-seven.

Endgame

Terrance Dicks included an author’s note at the back of his novel Endgame:  “Due to the collision of two deadlines, a long-arranged family holiday and a Doctor Who delivery date, I found myself presenting Justin Richards with a book that was not only a bit late but a bit short – and immediately leaving the country. […] Justin rose to the occasion with some very inspired editing, above and beyond the call of duty.  I am very grateful for all the hard work that has made this not only a long but better book.”  It’s comforting to know that even in the wilderness years the kind of behind the scenes jiggery-pockery which occurred on The Brain of Morbeus was still being replicated and demonstrates how compulsive or at the very least a bit interesting a complete history of that time could be should Mr. Pixley choose to write it.

The reason the question of authorship’s important here is that I really want to congratulate both Dicks and Richards on producing a really entertaining, really exciting piece of prose.  The mother, father, two children, small dog and a hatchback of spy stories, pulling in elements of Le Carre, Ludlum, Fleming, The Manchurian Candidate and even The Champions, it’s everything I’d hoped these stuck on Earth stories would be like with the Doctor getting involved in international affairs whilst now and then having flashbacks to his former life, a returning alien he doesn’t remember, action, adventure and really wild things.  It’s even a sequel of sorts with a returning character who even offers his own criticism of four fifths of the previous book:  “Greene’s report was as remarkable for what it left out as for what it included.”  Which is pretty much what I said.

It opens in the early fifties with the Korean War in full swing but the Doctor disaffected and jaded by his predicament, spending most of the day in either a café or the British Library trying to jog his memory.  In contrast to his usual persona, he’s reluctant to get involved but rather becomes dragged into it when a friend is murdered and a Top Secret document is dumped on his person.  After evading attacks from various national flavours of security agency, he falls in with the defecting double agents MacLean, Burgess and Philby, the latter of whom, having read the Turing and Greene accounts from the last novel is aware of what the Doctor is capable of.  The spy holds the Doctor’s still forming Tardis to ransom in order to gain his co-operation in discovering the truth behind the secret societies mentioned in said document, in particular the shadowy Players, journey which takes him from one end of the cold war to the other and which will ultimately re-ignite his sense of being life’s champion.

it's difficult not to picture Toby Stevens, Tod Hollander and Rupert Penry-Jones enunciating the dialogue

All of which sounds terribly complex, but in reality much of the novel takes place in rooms and restaurants and darkened streets with people playing personality games trying to outsmart and outwit each other – at least when they’re not getting drunk.  For all his reputation as a nuts and bolts man, Dicks has always had a certain facility for character and that’s demonstrated here in capturing the distinct voices of the spies, spookily prefiguring Peter Moffat’s versions of them in his television drama Cambridge Spies; for most of the pagination it's difficult not to picture Toby Stevens, Tod Hollander and Rupert Penry-Jones enunciating the dialogue.  To an extent there’s a certain amount of characaturing though and towards the end a couple of other very public figures are presented in a form which reflects the general opinion of them rather than something akin to how real people behave, but it’s entirely in-keeping with the book’s chosen genre. In other words, you wait ages for a celebrity historical and two come along together.

Dicks does capture the period very well indeed.  We're reminded that in the early fifties, for all the apparent trappings of the modern world, rationing was still in place and a general feeling of hopelessness pervaded the land.  The reason the Doctor can meet such prominent people and essentially save the world again without really trying is because of the impression of a war being fought outside of the public gaze, inadvertantly prefiguring the situation today in which we seem to be in the grip of mini-cold wars which a range of different powers instead of one big one.  Once again Doctor Who reminds us that history has a habit of repeating with the people at the top only really figure heads, with men not just further down the ladder but hiding in the alleyway nearby wielding the real power.  Endgame is another expression of how far away from being family material the franchise had developed -- no wonder some of the ming-mongs were shocked when that wheelie-bin farted.

no wonder some of the ming-mongs were shocked when that wheelie-bin farted

Unlike The Turing Test, which was too clever for its own good, the Doctor is never less than the focus and as I’ve hinted for the first time there’s a real sense that he’s now been on the planet for quite some time and fallen into a routine.  There’s a hint that his sullenness is as a result of the events in the previous book and also that he might never discover his origin – finally he talks about the time before as though he knows that there’s a darkness hidden that he doesn’t want to deal with but the novel is very much about him dealing with his place on the planet and what he is capable of.  Much of the novel is intensely sad because we can see the old Eighth breaking through now and then, but as these moments take hold it’s almost as though they’re wrong somehow, the wrong parts of the real him. 

That’s especially true when he confronts each of the Players – there’s the kind of violence and anger which we’ve seen before and yet its being laid out on an adversary who could be dealt with very easily and inventively.  One of Dicks’s original creations, the Players have appeared in a number of his novels, none of which I’ve read which puts me rather in the position of the Doctor in hearing about events in the past that don’t make much sense.  The underlying motivation of these aliens is expressed well – that they’re using Cold War figures within a giant game with the winner being decided based on who manages to get things to warm up a bit – but in terms of this story they’re pretty underdeveloped and I know that one or two of them would have far greater resonance had I met them before.  That lack of internal consistency would be about my only criticism of a novel which renews my faith in the lost on Earth arc.

Next:  More than meets the eye

The Turing Test

I placed the book on the table and glanced out of the window.  The train seemed to be moving too slowly into the countryside, and I also didn’t remember there even being countryside so close to Manchester.  Yet there it was, rolling fields of corn, windmills and even a tractor.  Something was wrong, I knew, but I just put my head back and enjoyed the view.

Only then did I realise someone was watching me.  I shifted my eyes from the window and let them dart across the carriage before stopping on the man sitting opposite me, staring at me in a way which I suspect he always looked at people.  I could feel my eyebrows register surprise.  It couldn’t be, could it?  What would he be doing here, and why would he addressing me so intently?

I tried to ignore him, something I never thought I could do, yet he continued simply staring at me to the point that I wondered if I’d spilled coffee on my t-shirt.  I looked down just in case but thankfully all I could see was brilliant white.  As I tilted my head upwards I could see that he was still there and he was grinning at me.  I heard myself apologising.

“That’s quite alright.” He said.

I thought for a moment.  That wasn’t the accent I was expecting.  Surely he only dropped the scouse lilt for voiceover work and film (unless he was playing someone from around my parts).  What was surreal was that I hadn’t become jelly, asked for his autograph or wondered if he was going to be in any of the 2009 Specials.  Instead, I was mildly irritated by the attention.

Which is when it dawned on me.  The green eyes glowing with intelligence, the long Bryronic hair, the velvet green coat.  This wasn’t Paul McGann.  This was someone else entirely.  Now, I was become rather nervous, because it meant I was also becoming rather delusion.  I sat bolt upright in my seat.

“You’ve worked it out then.”  He said.
“But, but, but…”
“Yes.”
“Except.”
“Yes, that too.”

By now I was sweating visibly.  The landscape hadn’t changed for quite some time.  The train carriage was almost empty too, which was entirely unlikely at quarter past five on a Wednesday afternoon.

“This can’t be a dream.”
“Well if it isn’t” He said nodding his head towards the aisle “Explain that.”

I titled my head too.  Katherine Heigl was at the other end of the train buying a cup of tea from the refreshment trolly.  She held up a packet of digestives and shook them in my direction.  “Honey?” She mouthed.  I looked behind to see who she wasn't talking to.  There wasn’t anyone there.  Katherine rolled her eyes at me and scowled.  Now evidently she wasn’t talking to me.

“Dream.” I said, trying desperately to rise to the challenge of being in fiction.
“Yes.”  He said brightly.
“So you’re a figment?”
“If you like.” He leaned forward ever so slightly. “Or not.”
It was my turn to roll my eyes.
“Whoever … whatever you are, what are you doing in my head?”
“Well…” He pointed at the book. “I rather wondered what you thought of that.”

I looked down at the small red paper back still sitting on the table where I left it.  On the cover in big blue writing was a name, then The Turing Test, an illustration of an enigma machine and at the bottom the author’s name Paul Leonard.  I unconsciously reached down and picked it up and began fidgeting with the pages, letting the edges skip past the tip of my thumb.

“It’s quite good.  I haven’t finished it yet.”
“Yes, you have.”  He said.
He was right.  I had.  The night before, whilst listening to Rachmaninoff on the radio.
“Yes, I have.”  I agreed reluctantly.
“And…”

What was I supposed to tell him …

“The truth.” He said, finishing the thought for me.

I considered the question for a moment, and then another moment just in case.  I breathed deeply.

“Well” I said,  “I can’t.  Well, I can but to be honest I’m so freaked out by the fact I’m the middle of appears to be a lucid dream, talking to a fictional character about a book in which he’s a character whilst an actress who's far too tall and for all I know too young for me is buying tea and biscuits at the other end of the carriage as we swoop through a European landscape and I’ll doubtless wake up (assuming I’m napping) or wake up in the morning (assuming I’m in bed) and choose to use a similar first person technique as appears in the novel to produce a piece of writing which will in the end be something of a non-review should tell you everything you need to know about what I thought of the book.” 

I was happy to get that off my chest.  In hindsight, what I could have said was that though the idea was sound, the execution was muddled.  That having three of the great figures of the forties, Alan Turing, Graham Greene and Joseph Heller writing about an adventure with the Doctor was a fun way of relating what’s now referred to as a celebrity historical.  That the section described by Greene and Heller were very reminiscent of their own fiction, The Third Man and Catch 22 respectively (an idea very much like The Unicorn and the Wasp, in fact) but that however well written, however authentic the atmosphere, at no point did you feel as though you were reading a Doctor Who story, that in experimenting it stretched the format too far even to the point of making whatever the story is supposed to be too incoherent and the aliens involved too underdeveloped.  That there’s mystery and then there's a kind of willful obscurity which drains away much of the excitement.  But I couldn’t tell him any of that because I had an idea what was going to happen next.

“Yes, but Stu, Stu, Stu, Stu, how do you know that you’ve been reading fiction?” He became agitated.  “How do you know I’ve not used an imbalance between your universe and my own to come through and talk to you about the book, the events of which really happened to me, because I want to see if there’s anything I’ve missed, something I could have done differently?”
“I don’t of course, but that would be the stuff of science fiction.”
“Touche.” He grinned.  “But truly.  Could I have done anything differently?"
"Why are you asking me?"
"I like what you did for Elizabeth.  I thought you might be able to help me too."

Given that I hadn’t really understood what I had happened with the aliens or his role in their demise and that the Elizabeth of which he spoke was also someone I hadn't really met except in an unorthodox book review (!), I didn’t have an answer.  So I simply said:

“You probably just did what you felt was right at the time.”
“Thank you.”  He seemed genuinely becalmed by that. “Thank you very much.”
At the other end of the carriage, I heard a perky American accent repeat the gratitude presumably to someone else.
“She’s on her way back.  I hope the tea’s better here than the last place I visited.”
“Where was that?” I asked, just as a rampant ringing sound filled the train.
“Time to wake up.” He answered.  And it was.

Wolfsbane

Wolfsbane was published at an interesting time for the BBC Books.  Though it was 2003, the new series was yet to be announced and interest had waned to the point that the Eight Doctor novels and those featuring past Doctors were dancing a by-monthly publication waltz.  In addition, it was felt that Eighth’s adventures had reached their narrative limit (something I’m aware of through reputation, rumour and reviews in the party newsletter) and some thought was being put into how stories could continue with the character but set within the existing series, fitting in to story arcs which had already been established, presumably the lost- Sam arc, the Faction Paradox shuffle and the Time War One.

This Earth bound arc too (or whatever its called) was seen as fertile ground, since the original underlying linking idea of setting each of the stories during the period of a major conflict still left gaps in the timelord’s story, plenty of hints but nothing definitive.  Since the main story was still ongoing, the decision was made to produce a past Doctor novel, but have the characters interact with this earlier version of Eighth to see if reader interest was that solid.  With the commissioning of the new series and the curtailing of this version of the book series, it all became a mute point and the only other past Eighth Doctor novel ended up being Nick Wallace’s Fear Itself, which I’ll be reading in the new order soon.

At the weekend, Steven Moffat, our incumbent president was fielding the usual questions about whether he’d bring back the Daleks, if David was doing the fifth series, who River Song is and what his vision will be and in the middle there was the inevitable question about a multiple Doctor story.  He said that the problem with writing these stories is that beyond eight minutes of bickering it’s very difficult to write a coherent story and that the best way to do it would be to have one Doctor dealing with the consequences of another’s actions.  I can't seem to find a link to where I'd read he said that but in any case, he’s right (again) even if he didn't say it in those terms. 

Looking at just the television stories, you either end up telling the same story five times or render one of the Doctors, usually the guest star, insensible.  Jac Raynor’s Wolfsbane takes parts of each of these approaches in order to collect the Fourth and Eighth Doctors together in the same tale and how much you enjoy the results, rather like EJEST and colonic irrigation depends on what mood you’re in.  And since we do have this innovative spoiler shield and because I want to be horrendously spoilerish and do that thing I usually find really annoying in reviews of basically writing a synopsis, you can carry on reading below either if you’ve already enjoyed the adventure or don’t care too much and just want to see what a big chunk of prose looks like.

Casualties of War

It’s 1918 and Jason Bourne, sorry, the Doctor turns up in Hawksworth, a generic North Yorkshire village, saying he’s been called in by ‘the ministry’ to investigating strange occurrences of livestock being exploderised and soon after dead soldiers walking.  Suspicions turn to the hall on the hill, a Hospital for was wounded and its megalomaniac administrator Dr. Banham and its up to the ministry man and his new friends Constable Briggs and Mary Minnett to uncover the threat to the village and stop it spreading to envelop the whole world.

So far, so historical Who does The X-Files.  But what that purposefully broad synopsis seeks to demonstrate is the striking simplicity at the heart of first time novelist Steve Emmerson’s book – it’s the Doctor versus zombies!  Granted Emmerson (interviewed here) is keen to show the tragic similarities between the idea of the walking dead and the men in the trenches of World War One waiting to go over the top and each of these cruel inhuman forms has a history and past life cut cruelly short by world events, but in the end, it’s our timelord friend shouting in a room as these monsters gather for the kill, and unlike The Empty Child, there’s no child like order to stop their advance.

As you’d expect given the setting, it is a good companion piece for tv’s Human Nature.  That was about how young boys were essentially being groomed for the impending and inevitable war; here we see the effects that four years of mud, bullets and bombs would have on them.  The patients in the hospital are broken figures yet also so institutionalized they’re trying to get better so that they can return to the fight (though admittedly to an extent they have little choice).  When one of them is murdered, it's all the more horrific because it happens in a place were they’re supposed to find comfort and yet death still stalks them even there.  As Emmerson says in his notes:  "I wanted to get inside the men’s heads. Let everybody see what they’d been through. Have them remembering their loved ones, their mates, their real lives."

here we see the effects that four years of mud, bullets and bombs would have on them

Emmerson’s beautifully written book may be slow in plot development – its some hundred pages before anything of great note happens, but you can forgive him since his handling of both atmosphere and character are so well achieved.  The main representative of the local community is the broadly spoken Bill Cromby and the vague pun in his name suggests the author had Ambridge in mind when he was developing the story.  You can almost smell the village, a tiny outpost of civilisation in which the Doctor seems very metropolitan indeed, but at no point does he seem to patronise the locals, he clearly has some affection for the rural life.

Chiefly that’s seen through the local bobby Briggs, a silver haired copper close to retirement who’s served the community for decades and for whom this is the most exciting thing which has happened in his long career.  Without the Doctor he’d be sunk, and the timelord clearly enjoys his company – there’s some wonderful bluff work at times in their negotiation of the slippery Banham.  If this not been the war to end all wars but the one after that, he’d be front and centre in the Home Guard, presumably telling Captain Mainwaring were to stick his rules and regulations.

The best character though is undoubtedly companion for the duration, Mary.  Educated and aware, the Doctor’s attracted to her straight away though you detect that he’s not quite sure why – we know it's companion syndrome, the need to have someone helping him and watching the excitement, but he’s perhaps confusing that with a romantic connection which he’s not quite so comfortable with and that she isn’t either, though he awakens the blossoms within her (especially after a rather steamy moment outside her bedroom door).  Once the Doctor has moved into her spare room, they begin sparring over the dinner table, a chess game in which she’s attempting to discover exactly who this mystery ministry man is and he’s blocking her blows with half-truths and subterfuge.  In my head Mary’s played by Kate Winslet, and I can just imagine that scowl the actress has patented as the answers to her questions aren’t forthcoming -- and her performance during the pissed on port scene.

In my head Mary’s played by Kate Winslet, and I can just imagine that scowl the actress has patented as the answers to her questions aren’t forthcoming -- and her performance during the pissed on port scene.

Like his subject, Emmerson isn’t in a hurry to provide a recap of the intervening years.  The Doctor’s moved on somewhat; though he’s travelled a bit more and there are more flashes of the man we knew creeping through: the namedropping, the bursts of emotion, the machine gun repetition of the words.  When asked why he’s not aiding the effort, he says that its not his war which suggests that since the years have passed and he’s retained his youthfulness he’s realised he’s unlike other men, which has generated a new sense of purpose, beyond the waiting game for the next millenium and a meeting with someone called Fitz decades ahead.  It’s his naturally curiosity which draws him to Hawkswick and which leads him to almost accept the mantle of a steampunk Sherlock Holmes.

About the only weaknesses in the book are the villain and the denouement.  The problem with Dr. Banham is that he’s rather a stock cackler without the sympathetic motivations that made Nepath, the Doctor’s adversary in The Burning so understandable.  There are some neat parallels between the scenes in which he’s not giving anything away to the Doctor and the latter’s own secrecy, but you’ve never under any illusion that he’s the baddun and whilst not every Doctor Who story can or should be pinioned on a twist, his brand of bland evil is disappointing.  As for the ending, for readers who’ve not yet been through this otherwise rather wonderful novel, I’ll talk about that below.  Anyone not wanting to read the end of the review can always look instead at Emmerson’s own story of receiving the commission to write from BBC Books.

The Burning

Let’s begin with a quick recap, by way of a reminder and an introduction for newer readers.  In the off season I’ve taken to reading my way through the Eighth Doctor novels published by BBC Books between the broadcast of the TV Movie with the Pertwee logo and the new series with the whooshing taxi-cab sign and then publishing reviews up here in the style of Doctor Who Magazine’s Time Team.  The first volume can be read here.  Since this is, and I know it's hard to believe, the first time since last September that there hasn’t been some iteration of the franchise on television, I’m returning to them again, a junkie reaching for his methadone.

It’s 2000 AD and the chance of a new television series is looking even less likely than ever.  Paul McGann is in his second series of adventures for Big Finish, but potential readers of the novels are weary of jumping onboard the literary TARDIS because of the perceived amount of continuity that has built up over previous years.  Having read said books, I can see what they mean.  The range needed a relaunch, a way for newbies to join and be able to follow the story without having read the previous few dozen books, to make this corner of the franchise accessible.  So having tied up as many loose ends as possible in The Ancestor Cell, The Burning brought a reboot of sorts, heralded with an article in the party newsletter and some exciting in-store advertising.

The Doctor has destroyed his home planet in an effort to save the cosmos from an intractable enemy during a time war.  The apparent last of the timelords, he’s travelling alone, attempting to find a place in the world, an anomaly falling into myth.  It’s unsurprising in hindsight that series editor and opening novel writer Justin Richards would take much the same approach as Russell T Davies.  Making the Doctor the last of his race automatically throws out a range of baggage and adds bags of pathos, though you couldn’t have offered The Burning or something similar as the opening episode of the new series, simply because with the exception of the Doctor all of the icons are gone.  Imagine the nation sitting down for Rose and finding instead the period Torchwood with considerably less featherbed jigging (the title perhaps referring to a side effect of some particularly worrying STD).

Imagine the nation sitting down for Rose and finding instead the period Torchwood with considerably less featherbed jigging (the title perhaps referring to a side effect of some particularly worrying STD). 

The author & editor’s deviation here is to drop the Doctor in late nineteenth century, without his memories or experience, making him a wanderer not in the fourth dimension but rural England.  The reader knows far more about the hero than he himself does, and the title of the series becomes a question it’s main character is asking rather than the reader – he knows that his name but he’s not entirely sure why.  One of the motives Richards gave for removing continuity from the Doctor as well as the series was to place him in the same position as readers new to the series of forever being one step behind, of not knowing how to kill a Cyberman or Dalek straight away, of not being able to walk into a situation and have an answer having been there a hundred times before. 

It’s perfectly reasonable approach except, as fellow author Lance Parkin noted in a recent interview, it also saves the Doctor from having to deal with what he’s done, which in story and character terms is a horrendous missed opportunity.  Compare and contrast with how Davies began the first series of nu-Who in which we met a timelord dealing very specifically with survivor guilt, often impotent to act in case he went too far again, the fog of war still bubbling under.  Imagine if we were instead witnessing an intact Doctor experiencing a century stuck on Earth, unable to change history and also having to deal with the history he himself has destroyed.  As Parkin says:  ““In retrospect […] the problem with destroying Gallifrey wasn’t destroying Gallifrey, it was that the Doctor wasn’t forced to live with the consequences. The new show does that so beautifully. Often, watching the telly series is a bit like peeking at the answers to a test I sat years ago … ‘oh, that’s how you do it “

The familiar figure in The Burning, then, both is and isn’t the Doctor.  He’s very similar to John Smith, the humanised timelord from tv’s Human Nature.  Having spent some time wondering Britain, he’s absorbed the local culture and idiom and become the kind of Victorian gentlemen his image has always suggested – in his turn of phrase and action he’s proudly British.  Yet, he still retains that spark of brilliance, confidence and arrogance even, that sets him apart from that human counterparts.  He clearly knows that he is unlike his fellow countrymen, despite not knowing who he is, mainly because he still retains his vast reservoirs of knowledge which seem to surface when needed (cf, Sam Beckett’s swiss cheese memory in Quantum Leap).  This makes his most Doctorish moments quite poignant because we’re not sure if he’s acting to try and fill a space.

Like many of these Eighth Doctor novels it prefigures the new series in many ways -- there’s budget saving transmogrification, a walking army of fire monsters and lots of running

It’s wonder considering the job that Richards gave himself rejigging the premise that the novels turns out to be as entertaining as it is and still retain a tone which is inescapably Doctor Who.  A fissure appears near a small mining town on its uppers, attracting the attentions of a range of liggers including the Doctor and the man who develops into his nemesis for the two hundred odd pages the ghastly Roger Nepath, the Delgado Master with sibling issues.  Nepath has discovered that a malevolent magma lives underground and hopes to use its fiery properties to resurrect his lost sister, even though it’ll destroy the planet in the process.  Like many of these Eighth Doctor novels it prefigures the new series in many ways -- there’s budget saving transmogrification, a walking army of fire monsters and lots of running though he’s without his sonic screwdriver so has to use his wits and powers of persuasion in the end.

Structurally, it’s also a 70s Pertwee with a touch of angst, including a small army who won’t act until it’s too late because the Doctor can’t provide clear evidence only a hunch, and a couple of Brigadier substitutes, the genial Professor Dobbs from The Society of Psychical Research (which might as well be period Torchwood) and local Reverend Stobbold whose debates about how the world is oscillating between reason and industrialisation provide the thematic backbone to the story.  Significantly both of these men also fill in the companion gap, and the Doctor exposes himself – sorry – reveals his lack of memory to them both at various points.  Both are beautifully conceived and dimensional and both their fates are heartbreaking and shocking, particularly since as has become a theme in the new series they might have carried on as they were had the Doctor not stumbled into their lives.

Richards offers a slightly more complex writing style than Terrance Dicks, never losing himself in a description and understands how to pace the action.  He’s also aware of the benefits of the medium – he milks the first appearance of the Doctor in the book by playing about with the readers expectations and memory of how he’s been described in previous books and will withhold information to heighten the mystery.  If there’s any problem at all with the book, it’s the story is slightly too simple for the pagination but that’s clearly an editorial choice, like Bob Holmes in Spearhead from Space and Rusty in Rose not wanting to swamp the reader in too much plot given the amount of interest that’s already being generated by the reintroduction of a much love character.  Welcome back Doctor, whoever you are.

Next:  A century spent dodging wars in the twentieth century with an amnesiac Doctor.  Who's with me?