Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

The Ancestor Cell

And relax.  After forty odd novels and a handful of short stories, I finally reach the biggest spoiler I was going to encounter in this endeavour.  Rather like the Master’s return in Utopia, I’ve known what happens at the conclusion of The Ancestor Cell for seven years and not because of a tabloid (imagine if they’d given a toss in two-thousand) but from our own party newsletter.  Like Utopia though, the devil was going to be in the method, how it was going to happen and it seems only right and proper that a very big lever should be involved.  But, since I know there will still be a couple of people who aren’t totally aware of the magnificent conclusion of this particular story of the timelord Doctor that’s all I’ll say.  This review will be largely spoiler free. Heavy sigh.

But feel free to email if you have any questions. 

What I can say though is that it’s the kind of work which is largely impossible to review.  I know Vanessa Bishop gave it a decent go in DWM way back when and noted that it mostly looks like the authors Peter Anghelides and Stephen Cole made a list of everything they thought needed to be sorted out in terms of the plot-arc and the characters and worked their way through from top to bottom.  That’s not an impression I can disagree with -- this does pack in a whole vast range of continuity references, so much so that at times they threaten to overwhelm the impetuous of what all of these books should be about -- the adventure.  In case it hasn’t become apparent much as I love continuity, it’s needs to be in the service of the romp, not the romp itself.

Despite that, the authors have still managed to produce a highly entertaining read, largely because they've taken the material and molded it into what's essentially a solidly traditional narrative, without the fractured time structures, interesting literary devices or experimentation of the likes of The Blue Angel or even Frontier Worlds.  Lawrence Miles isn't much of a fan of what Cole and Anghelides did to his ideas (he's said so in many an interview) to the point of disregarding whole sections of it in his own Faction Paradox work.  To be fair to Miles, the concepts are interesting and exciting but unfortunately within the format of these novels and the way they were published they weren't given the necessary space to breath.  He perhaps imagined that the novels resulting from Interference would be all about the Faction Paradox, the Celestis and the timelords making plans for the enemy. 

Unfortunately, up to and including the new series, Doctor Who as a concept has never been comfortable with structured plot-arcs, b-stories that last across whole stretches.  Its stock in trade, and when it has been most successful has always been when adventures that are comprehensible to the newbe or fairweather or non-fan.  Otherwise an odd kind of fatigue sets in as the particular producer, editor or writer tries to circumvent the premises inherent randomness by setting the Doctor on an imutable course.  BBC Books, quite rightly, didn't want any of the books to be too obscure for the casual browser who remembers the show as a kid. 

With the exception of The Taking of Planet 5, the books have tried their best to set the Interference issues aside and with The Shadows of Avalon try and defocus them, putting the burden of plotting in Compassion's hands.  Under these circumstances, Interference looks like the publishing equivalent of the tee-totaler going out and getting blissfully rat-arsed, sleeping with the wrong person and then regretting it for months afterwards, trying desperately to reaffirm their natural tendencies, with just a few lapses here and there.  The Ancestor Cell, then, may well be the novels turning up at an AA meeting, standing up and saying 'I'm a Doctor Who tie-in and I'm addicted to continuity.'

The novel is about as Doctor Who as one of these books can get.  The Faction Paradox in here then, become to all intents and purposes a fairly traditional antagonist bent on invasion, of Gallifrey instead of Earth, their overall plan no different -- if slightly more graphic -- than the Daleks hollowing out the Earth and turning it into a giant starship or using Satellite Five as a way of blocking an invasion fleet.  The timelords, in trying to capture Compassion aren't that much more different than Torchwood or some Terrabound scientists looking for a way to battle the Enemy (taking into account that the Enemy here is different to the Paradox).  The final battle between the Doctor and whoever is as old as the hills really, literally fighting his own future.

For a Gallifreyphile this offera an embarrassment of riches and it's worth noting that the planet and city described herein fits perfectly with the Doctor's description from series three.  Transduction barriers are mentioned and the whole place becomes far larger and the rather drab walls of the classic series, creating exactly the place I imagined from the Big Finish series.  Romana III is fleshed out some more, shades of grey introduced -- she's become the woman best suited apparently to defend her planet against the upcoming War -- regal and spoiled but not unsympathetic.  I'm not sure who the authors had in mind for this incarnation but I couldn't help but be reminded of Catherine Zeta Jones in Traffic, resorting to desperate, darker measures when her kin is threatened, and made hard by that.  The other timelords are all pleasingly fusty just as they should be, praiting naives all.  With the exception of Mali, who seems purposefully to be a reflection of the younger Romana conterpointing what the timelady has become.

Considering everything else that's happening, it's a surprise that the regulars are as well defined as they are and given as much focus.  The Doctor, who as the back of the book reveals, is being sought to join by the Faction Paradox is restricted and in the one place where he can't be the exciting legendary hero that we've come to expect.  He's a tragic figure only rarely able to exert his independence essentially leaning on his own faltering past to carry him through.  Fitz's story is just as complex, what with finally coming to terms with being a construct and meeting the real, older version of him, a bitter, twisted barely human soul.  But he's still irrepressible, wonderfully human despite his origins, unable to keep his fly zipped.  Pity about his conquest though.  And Compassion is as contrary as she usually is with her eye on a new timelord to carry about in her innards.  She's given a decent, heroic send off and I can't imagine this will be the last we (I?) see of her.

This then is the final end, for now.  Having reached what feels like a grandiose season ender and as was planned by new series editor Justin Richards a conscious break from the past to enter the new I'm taking a conscious decision to go on hiatus from the EDAs, a word I'm taking back just for this occasion, until at least next summer.  With three almost consecutive Who related series to come, the Key To Time season box set, the final two old school McGann Big Finish stories and the second series of the new school adventures, the storybook and other related new series novels coming soon (not to mention The Web of Fear, fingers crossed) there'll be a fair amount of Who floating about to enjoy anyway and I've other reading to do, there are worlds out there where a woman has become the time traveller's wife, a kid stays in the picture, and the men say yes. People made of celluloid and towns made of tinsel etc.

What a bizarre venture. 

Thirty-odd authors collectively writing a series of adventures for a forty-odd year old character in a version that appeared but once on television, in a desperate and often successful attempt to continue a legacy which under normal circumstances would have died out years before.  As well as producing work in the style of the classic series, here they all were actively trying to continue the story, enveloping in their own mythology, alienating some, fascinating others, never once producing work which will simply do, always experimenting creating as many blistering successes as wopping failures, just like the television series they're ostensibly based on.  All so that somewhere, their hero in his rackety old police box was still fighting the monsters, in the hopes that one day he'd be a hero for their own children too. 

And he is.

The Banquo Legacy

It’s 1898, at the cusp of a new century.  Compassion is dying and after dumping the Doctor and Fitz into a frosty landscape she materialises inside the body of a local, Susan Seymour.  The nearest civilization is Banqou Manor, a pile in the area of Three Sisters in South-West England, where a rather nasty experiment related to thought transference goes horribly wrong (or right from a certain point of view) and murder results.  Tapping into the hats and tales horror genre, The Banquo Legacy will also please Sherlock Holmes fans, Mark Gatiss’s The Unquiet Dead, the Hinchcliffe seasons and Christopher Priest’s The Prestige (book and film).

The story is related in the written accounts of a Detective Ian Stratford, one of Scotland Yard’s finest in the area following up an inquiry related to the apparent suicide of one scientist, and the colleague of his John Hopkinson.  Relating a story in the first person from two perspectives is always a tricky proposition, but authors Andy Lane and soon to be series editor Justin Richards have produced a masterpiece -- witty, atmospheric and genuinely creepy.  Both of the voices are distinctive and clear; Stratford is very much one for reporting the facts and nothing but even when they don’t put him in a good light -- Hopkinson’s writing is far more emotional and you’re often under the impression that he’s omitting something vital, presumably so that the reader's finger of suspicion isn’t ever deflected from him. 

It would be an interesting exercise to read the novel again seeing if a coherent story is related through just one of these pairs of eyes.  On more than one occasion the same scene is played out through each of the reports and Roshoman-style with each participant remember differing details.  The also means that our appreciation of the other participants from the servants Simpson and Beryl, the Wallaces, the Harrieses and the Inspector’s sidekick Baker (who’s hardly mentioned by Hopkinson but held in high regard by Stratford).  For once in one of these novels, either despite, or because of the multiple perspectives, each of these characters is sympathetically and complexly drawn, the kind of figures that Robert Holmes would be proud of.

The only weak moments are when the writers have no choice but dump a range of exposition into the dialogue, talk of Artron energy and whatnot which is ostensibly then being related to us by either Stratford or Hopkinson despite obviously being well beyond their comprehension.  I don’t know about you, but when I hear high science being described and I’m then asked to repeat what I’d heard at best the result is garbled but here everything is echoed verbatim.  It’s a necessary result of the storytelling device, but just now and then it pulls the reader out of the action and it might not have been such a bad idea to have the correspondent remark ‘I have no idea what any of this means but I report it as best as I can remember’.

Even if it’s a generally excellent piece of writing, is it a good Doctor Who novel?  Lane and Richards apparently originally began the work as a piece of non-Who then offered it to the range.  If that’s the case, they’ve worked hard to make it seem of the ongoing plot arc and the way its written works in the arc’s favour.  In many ways, this is the literary equivalent of a new series double-banking episode with the regulars dropping from the story when they’re off doing something out of view of the storyteller. 

When they are in view, they’re perhaps as vivid as they’ve been for a while, with Paul McGann being manifested perfectly in the Doctor.  It’s a surprise to see that this was produced pre-Big Finish since the authors (in and out of the fiction) capture his speech patterns perfectly.  The business of Fitz trying the affect a German accent is hilarious, as is the detail of the ring around the inside of his eye which gives away to the Inspector that Kreiner hasn’t ever worn a monocle before and therefore can’t be all he seems. 

Because we’re reading about our heroes adventures from one remove, we’re possibly paying even closer attention to the minutae and a lot of trust is put in the reader to notice inferences and clues to what various happenings mean in the relation to the travels of The Doctor, Fitz and Compassion.  In terms of the latter, that means being able to notice when she’s in control of Susan’s body or being subsumed by her host.

Beyond that there’s a rather brilliant moment when one of the characters says something which is very important to us and the Doctor and puts a whole new complexion on what has gone before but is passed over by Stratford, who has other things on his mind, like why he keeps having weird dreams and seeing the house from odd angles and finding himself slipping into hallucinations of the past.  As it transpires everything is connected, though.  Just as it should be.

I imagine when The Banquo Legacy was published in the year 2000, there was a collective wince of horror from the fans who were expecting a continuity fest.  Just when you would expect the arc that began in Interference or earlier to be winding through to its denouement, series editor Stephen Cole drops in a late Victorian murder mystery with supernatural overtones told in the first person of two non-regulars.  In hindsight though, it's an example of why I love the franchise, its repetitions, hesitations and deviations and that it’s at its best when it isn’t feeding the fan gene.

Next:  The Ancestor Cell.  See what I mean?

The Space Age

Science fiction has always had a slightly over accelerated expectation of the future.  Only recently have the kinds of issues Orwell talked about in 1984 come into being frightening the life out of all of us; the film Strange Days hedged its bets about what the millennium would look like and struck out somewhat in thinking that Skunk Anansie would still have a career let alone sing in the year 2000; 20o1 was a bust and the less said about Blade Runner which was the kiss of death to all of the brands it featured, the better.

It’s against this kind of landscape that The Space Age is established, this time with the expectation that the future would look like The Jetsons or those modernist cityscapes that graced the likes of Amazing Stories or Galaxy magazines in the 1950s and 60s and the cinema of the time, by the year 2000.  Within this, author Steve Lyons inexplicably drops the cast of the classic mods and rockers film Quadrophenia and has them and our regulars experience a plotline straight out of The Twilight Zone.  It’s exactly the kind of list approach to story lining that Russell T Davies says he never does in the new series even though he clearly does and on this occasion it really works - to a point.

Lyons has always been one of my favourite spin-off writers, with his chameleonic ability to recreate any of the shows eras in print, the likes of The Witch Hunters (which set Hartnell and friends in against the Salam witch trials) being so good that sometimes its easy to forget that there wasn’t some original lost story, so I was interesting to see how the author dealt with the kind of anti-era, the experimental Doctor without a continuous house style.  The answer is that like the best authors in the series, he’s followed his own nose, letting the scenario and the ideas dictate the mood of the writing.

The book opens then in the manner of a Rod Serling voice over speaking directly to the reader as the scenario begins, friends at the beach discovering the alien space craft that would be both their saviour and eventual downfall.  After this prologue, and as we discover that the kids have apparently been taken to the future to continue their turf war within a future city that fulfils their every limited desire.  The writing shifts into a kind of pulp style redolent of those sci-fi novels of the early 50s and 60s filled with descriptions of the world and reveling in the technology with slightly banal dialogue, then as the novel progresses, and the Doctor and pals intervene with the world, the text becomes more sophisticated, the concepts shifting towards Philip K Dick then eventually into something approaching a ‘real’ Doctor Who novel.

For once, this kind of intellectual game works because Lyons is pitch perfect in his portrayal of the regulars, convincingly keeping them in the tradition of the series.  It’s utilizes a very simply structured with the Doctor becoming involved with the rockers and Fitz with the mods each group trying to take advantage of these space men from the sky, their plight and progression through the story and the world forever being compared and contrasted, juxtaposing each others discoveries on top of one another.  Compassion meanwhile has seized up, the TARDIS section of her rapidly subsuming her original personality. 

If the novel doesn’t quite convince its because it collapses under the perennial problem of the novels of providing a range of characters few of whom are clearly defined enough for us to care about their fate.  Obviously the heads of the two gangs Alec and Ricky are supposed to be largely the same, their preoccupation being to kill the other, and although that helps the reader to see them from the Doctor’s perspective and futility of taking sides it also means that they’re difficult to sympathise with them as well.  The female characters probably come off best, with Sandra (who I’m sure looks exactly like Grease’s Olivia Newton John) being caught between her brother and her boyfriend, Juliet-style, and technician Gillian, Doctor’s one off companion for much of the story who slowly begins to see his view of the conflict and eventually follows him into the dark heart of this neo-futuristic city.

Coldheart

One of the great joys about returning to university the other year was being able read more books and more particularly books which had previously been read by many, many people.  I like books that have a history, that have entertained and educated many previous people.  It’s for that reason that I very rarely buy brand new books unless there’s no other option, such as not many other readers would actually want to read that sort of literature.  No not that sort of literature, more in the area of finding out that a second edition of Lance Parkin’s Ahistory is soon to be available.

It’s been then a bit of a disappointment that so few of the books I’ve been reading have been more than second hand, despite having been found on eBay.  And then I turned to the inside cover of my(ish) copy of Trevor Baxendale’s Coldheart and found this:

Which is wonderful, and not just because Ade seems to make a note on the inside of all of the books he reads to remind himself of when he read them.  It's the detail that he read the book when Mr and Mrs Jones came which suggests that they weren’t great company and neither where Mr & Mrs Fry since it was Baxendale’s book which got the most attention when he met them.  He completed it on Easter Sunday 2000 too.  It’s the first time I’ve encountered this so it can’t really be a tradition but how wonderful would the world be if it was -- and how charming if every time you picked up a second hand book, it’s life story was scrawled inside in the various hands through which it had passed, a solid, real world version of Bookcrossing.

Obviously, Ade enjoyed reading the book more than I did.

What an attractive cover!  At no point did I feel embarrassed reading this on the train yesterday, this yawning maw looking for all the world like the goatse photograph with the hands missing.  Another Black Sheep special, not only does it give away one of the few mysteries of the story but it actually causes you pause in deciding where to put your fingers when you pick it up.  Some argue that simply slapping a picture of the Doctor onto the cover of a tie-in novel is a boring business, but at least it doesn't make you want to chunder.  Unfortunately the synopsis on the back of the book is pretty annoying too since it describes the plot right up to about page a hundred and seventy (I checked) which has the potential to make reading the actual book a pointless exercise.  I’m remainded of Empire Magazine’s old adage that the longer the trailer last the worse a film is.

Coldheart isn’t bad, just a bit boring.  As said synopsis reveals, the new randomiser takes the chronological coach party to Eskon, a planet of fire and ice whose civilisation is also divided between the health and those who are infected with genetic mutation that makes them undesirable to be around.  It’s thematically about slavery and apartheid and also the treatment of the disabled in society.  The main city, then, is ringed by the shanty towns of these expelled slimers something as you’d imagine the Doctor’s none too happy about and just has to get involved to discover the cause and bring about a resolution -- but not before Fitz inadvertently gives the disenfranchised ideas about over throwing their masters. 

Which sort of underlines the main problem with the book -- it’s such a well worn formula that there really isn’t anything in here all that surprising.  In earlier novel, much was made about how this Doctor seemed to travel the universe helping the helpless, bringing down governments, creating benevolent mayhem and this is an example of that.  There are also inadvertent reminders of the kind of classic Star Trek story in which Kirk would break the prime directive in order to teach the locals what’s right -- the likes of The Apple -- the Doctor just has to get involved even though somewhere in here Fitz rationalises that these things would have happened anyway eventually -- he just speeds up the process.

It’s not an enjoyable read though and that’s largely down to the author’s technical ability.  Baxendale is currently the writer in residence at Doctor Who Adventures where fortnightly he’s turning out, short, fun, complex tales in around twelve pages.  This past story began in the Cavern with The Beatles in a geographically correct Liverpool of the 1960s and ended on an alien world where the locals were using human DNA to extend their lifespan.  The story is well paced and the landscape is beautifully described and lucid and the closing moments in particular would be spectacular up on the big screen.  I suppose you could say it suffers from the disease that most summer film blockbusters have -- wonderful visuals, technically well directed but ultimately predictable and slightly empty.

Part of the problem too is that outside of the regulars, Baxendale hasn’t created a too memorable cast.  It’s the trap of the tie-in novel probably -- you’re not writing anything that would be in a script in the series, but without an actor to breath life into the words, there’s nothing for the reader to hold on to.  The members of the city’s ruling forum, whilst genial are generally two-dimension and like the rulers of Trakken or the background time lords in The Deadly Assassin would only really stick in the mind if played by some legendary Shakespearean.  The main villain of the peace, Tor Grymna works to a degree, but once his big secret is revealed (and not too hard to guess) he lacks teeth falling into irrational growl mode.  Of the slimers, only the main rebel, Revan makes a mark but even he’s rather one dimensional, one for dull terrorism rather than impassioned speeches.

The principal interest then is in the ongoing story of the regulars and thankfully that’s very well handled.  It’s made abundantly apparent that with her randomiser fitted, the Doctor relies on Compassion for his freedom and that if he really pissed her off again she could simply dematerialise and leave him and Fitz behind and there’s a moment when he fears that this is exactly what she’s done.  But what she’s not telling him is that she can’t -- she’s inherited some of his old TARDIS’s properties, one of which is loyalty.  She also notices that Fitz is changing too, gaining a far more complex view of situations than before, but not so much that he can’t have some fun with one of the slave girls of Eskon.

There’s a pretty remarkable conversation towards the end which almost covers the same ground as the one between the Doctor and Captain Jack in Utopia; like the man who would be Boe, Compassion can’t die and is concerned about what that actually means.  Eighth is more philosophical than Tenth.  He reminds her that he can’t die either (apparently) and that the way he saves himself from the boredom is by travelling and seeing the stars and the people who live around them.  That’s not the only new series interest though -- a tragedy is described to the Doctor by one of the venerable old war horses who puts his arm around him and says:  “I’m sorry.  I’m so sorry.” 

Next:  The Space Age.  Oooh -- I hope there are flying cars.

The Fall of Yquatine

Much as I liked The Fall of Yquatine, which is as good a piece of space opera as this series of books has produced and has some wonderful material related to Compassion who after the Doctor waywardly decides to fit a randomiser circuit to her innards spends decades in the time vortex trying to get back to his and Fitz’s position.  It even has a calender printed in the front listing the various seasons -- the Yquatine year has 417 days and tenmonths of roughly 42 days each apparently.  Rather than simply writing the usual like that/don’t like that kind of review, I want instead to concentrate on the treatment of a single character because in the end Nick Walters’s inability to make the most of her stops the novel from being a classic.  As you‘d expect, there will be minimal spoilers.

The character in question is Arielle, described on the back of the book as ‘the president’s runaway girlfriend’ although she’s far more than that.  The first chapter is spent in her company as we discover that she’s a exobiology student visiting the ill-fated world of Yquatine, central world of the Minerva System to study the many ‘alien’ species that have settled there from within the area and beyond.  She’s described as being ‘beautiful - pale, smooth skin, gleaming golden-brown hair, big brown eyes, and elegant nose and perfect lips’ (whatever they look like).

Insert whichever actress you like in that role -- I’m thinking Rachel Weisz or Jennifer Garner -- mostly because as well as all that, she’s a bit funny, at least at first.  When she’s noticed by some of the locals, she gives them the finger and on entering her first local drinking establishment ends up facing down the reptilian Klingoneque Anthauk with enough bravery that she scores an invite to a reception at the palace that night, a perfect opportunity to do what she does.  By this time, we love her, and love her even more when she meets the aforementioned President Vargeld and isn’t phased by him.  Then after we’re told they fall in love.

Insert whichever actress you like in that role -- I’m thinking Rachel Weisz or Jennifer Garner -- mostly because as well as all that, she’s a bit funny, at least at first.

She then drops from the story for over eighty pages, whilst the Doctor makes his mistake, Fitz is dumped into the past, Compassion goes a bit mad, the planet is decimated by some superweapon and a two time zone narrative is set up that Steven Moffat would be proud of.  When Arielle does pop up again it’s whilst Fitz is working that bar she visited but crucially we see her from his point of view.  Essentially, her story becomes wrapped in his.  Which doesn’t stop her from becoming more complex.  As they flee the planet, she explains that her beauty is completely manufactured, created by rich parents who didn’t want a gauky looking daughter.

What an interesting character, someone whose has a different body image forced upon her, who has travelled to the one world in her vicinity where her ethereal beauty will be largely be ignored and she can be herself again.  Only to be seduced by its president who it turns out only loves her image not the person she is inside after all, a person who she’s only recently come to terms with after, as she admits, years of fulfilling that image by being a bit of bitch.  It’s like a psychologically complex version of Mean Girls with Freudian influences and extra violence.

It’s like a psychologically complex version of Mean Girls with Freudian influences and extra violence.

Here is what I don’t understand.  Having gone to the trouble of creating this really interesting character, why, half the way through the book she stops being a complete character altogether, the spark knocked out of her.  She’s certainly a presence -- Vargeld is fanatical about her and Fitz ends up spending jail time when the president discovers the time traveller helped his non-fiancé to leave the planet, and he leaves the planet looking for her at just the moment of genocide.  And in the end, she‘s revealed to be the inadvertent reason for that genocide, leading to much soul searching from the Doctor and Fitz, and to spoil that aspect of the book completely, dies in Fitz’s arms.

If I had been Nick Walters I would have seen how useful Arielle is, both as something for Fitz to live for during his prison days and in completing a circle within the finale, helping the gang to talk the pres into doing the right thing.  As it stands, as the Anthauk threaten to blow up the president’s space station unless he signs some treaty giving them power over the system (temporarily deferring war), Compassion impersonates the student to trap the president so that the new TARDIS can them impersonate him and sign the treaty and bring and uneasy peace.  This conclusion is a bit of a cheat; although it demonstrates Compassion’s new powers, it’s played behind the scenes and feels like a dreaded deus ex machina and all too easy.

This conclusion is a bit of a cheat; although it demonstrates Compassion’s new powers, it’s played behind the scenes and feels like a dreaded deus ex machina and all too easy.

It is the Doctor Who way of course, especially in the new series, the good ones always die and we have to love them for their death to have resonance.  We have to understand why Fitz would fall in love yet again  (which I still think is as a result of how he was remembered during his resurrection) and what the president, a far more central figure overall is so obsessed by and the only way to do that is to make the target of his affection irresistible.  But it is one of the most tiring aspects of Doctor Who -- why does it have the propensity for producing so many interesting characters and then not knowing what to do with them?

Next:  Coldheart, which is presumably a celebrity historical about Hank Williams.

The Shadows of Avalon

Back then in the company of the Eighth Doctor on this ride through his lives.  Much as I enjoyed those Tenth Doctor novels there’s something to be said about picking up a spin-off novel and being sure of the universe contained inside.  Regular readers might have gathered that despite some of my protestations I’m a big fan of continuity and one of joys of a novel like Paul Cornell’s The Shadows of Avalon is that occurs in a Whoniverse where continuity is being created and developed, it's not just a single story that occurs and will never be referred to again.

I love too that the book not only references the television series and is part of the ongoing EDA plot-arc but also refers back unapologetically to the Virgin New Adventures and actually effectively carries on a story sparked back there, for the first time unifying the two continuities in a very substantial way.  Not only is Paul’s own creation Professor Bernice Summerfield name checked (rather than being ‘an archaeologist’ the Doctor once knew) but this also features the new regenerated version of the Brigadier I’d heard about.

This makes the book written by a fan for fans, repaying the investment they’d put into keeping with the novels since the series left the air in ‘89. 

This makes the book written by a fan for fans, repaying the investment they've put into keeping with the novels since the series left the air in ‘89.  Having not read many of the New Adventures, I’m sure there were other references in there but again I’ve never liked being in a situation were everything is explained, where I understand everything.  It’s almost like being a child watching the new series and hearing about Axons or Sea Devils and knowing that there’s a whole universe out there to be discovered.  Iit's also influenced the new series too, however inadvertently -- the kind of portal into the time vortex that the young Master looks into during SOD U LOTT makes an appearance here.

If  it hasn’t become apparent already, I was really impressed with The Shadows of Avalon, not least because as you can see it was signed by the author ( it was a present).  I mean look at the cover for goodness sake!  It does exactly that thing which Doctor Who has always been good at -- clashing the relatively conventional with the relatively fantastical and seeing what happens, but in this case its on a rather larger scale than that Yeti who seems to spend an inordinate length of time on a toilet in Tooting Beck.  It’s A Bridge Too Far meets The Lord of the Rings as a portal opens between Britain and the dream world Avalon and after a strategic pact war breaks out between a UNIT co-ordinated British Army and the mythic creatures inside in which not everything is as it seems because (as the book synopsis reveals) a couple of Gallifreyan agents are manipulating the situation for their own ends.

It’s A Bridge Too Far meets The Lord of the Rings

If  that plot summary lacks for the presence of the Doctor, it’s because the main theme of the book is how our characters are coping with obsolescence.  Eighth is still dealing with being knocked about the pocket universes and tortured and the realisation that with the Faction Paradox bouncing up and down on his own personal timeline that nothing he does could matter because it could be changed (his potential multiple origins are mentioned) so what’s the point?  The new younger Alistair, having recently lost his wife Doris in an accident can’t find purpose in having to essentially re-experiencing a life already lived.  Fitz is feeling lost in the cracks of the adventure, missing the girlfriend we met in Parallel 59, and Compassion is feeling the pressure to change.  Like much of Cornell's work it mixes the big epic adventure with the small human experience.

It’s also a book that constantly surprises.  Like Sarah-Jane in Interference, The Brigadier is given a massive chunk of the story, in many way his journey has equal if not more prominence than anything else.  He’s a perfect extrapolation of the man we knew and in a style not dissimilar to the new tv series, he’s given that emotional arc -- dealing with his own personal tragedy leading to a range of critical mistakes which cost lives.  Rather than simply standing around blustering, sending his men to shoot an alien and looking foolish, he’s given room to become a three dimensional being.  When he reaches a pit of despair it's gut wrenching and yet understandable under the circumstances, it doesn't come out of the blue.  I’d imagine some of the older fans will have found this material difficult but as someone sometimes frustrated by the lack of emotional depth in the classic series I lapped it up.

Rather than simply standing around blustering, sending his men to shoot an alien and looking foolish, he’s given room to become a three dimensional being.

His course of action leads to a rift with the Doctor, who is also feeling marginalised for the reasons discussed above.  If I wished anything from the book it’s that there would be more of its title character, although his absence could be a planned attempt to show how the universe copes when the star timelord is out of sorts.  After he and The Brig are stranded on Avalon for various reasons, he actually tries to build himself a new Tardis out of ply-wood and only really perks up when the aforementioned Queen, Mab sends him on a mission and he only really becomes his Doctorish self in the close stages (which I’ll come to later).  He’s become an old a wary traveller of late, almost as though he’s finally had too many experiences and adventures and seen too many people die and that it’s all just stopped being fun.

Avalon too is a wonderful creation, a fusion of classic fantasy archetypes shaken about and plugged into a new power source, a world which exists in the dreams of a single being.  There be dragons here and lizards who it’s inferred are Silurians and beautiful if cynical queens in big castles.  The impression given is that this is the world that would go on to become King Arthur’s realm and then our own -- that this is his ancestry in much the same way that Elizabethan Britain is to us.  The pieces are almost in place.  But it’ll never develop into that -- Arthur and the place where the Doctor is Merlin exists on yet another plain of existence.  It’s another approach to fantasy from the people who brought you Hyspero but more Tolkien than The Brothers Grimm.  But again, it’s scientifically rationalised and the franchise’s dictum than what looks like magic is actually some higher form of technology is carefully maintained, just as it should be.

Avalon too is a wonderful creation, a fusion of classic fantasy archetypes shaken about and plugged into a new power source, a world which exists in the dreams of a single being.

There isn’t much, but the book also features the most realistic depiction of near-contemporary Earth I‘ve seen in a while, at least in terms of these novels.  The book is set in 2012 (no sign of the Olympics and the beacon of hope and love, thank goodness) but the opening stages in which Compassion is tasked with learning about humanity and later when she and Fitz are tasked to find someone unreal in the real world you do get a lovely sense of the space inside the M25.  The EDAs have spent a surprising lack of time overall on contemporary Earth in London even though it would provide some really potent images, at least with this Tardis crew, as a section of this novel shows.

But in the end, without giving too much away I hope, it’s all about Compassion.  As with the best story-arcs, there have been hints and allegations as to what’s been happening to her and when revealed unsurprisingly its Gallifrey related, leading to the biggest surprise of the book, the appearance of President Romana.  She’s now in her third incarnation and very much the Imperiatrix of the audio series, her travels with the Doctor a distant memory.  That she would send these two agents, only a parsec away from the agents of the Enemy from The Taking of Planet 5, perfectly and coldly demonstrates the change in her from the girl who skipped about Paris in a school uniform.  It’s a tragedy to see her like this but it shows the franchise moving on and not dwelling and allowing for friends to become enemies.

The series has never been better than when the Doctor has something  of his own to fight for.

At the close of the novel the Doctor’s on the run again, has a sense of purpose and as one long story ends another begins.  The series has never been better than when the Doctor has something of his own to fight for.  In the early days, it was control of his Tardis, then it was gaining his freedom from Earth, then it was getting to Metebelis 3 (ish), then search for the Key to Time, then on the run from the Black Guardian, then trying to get Tegan back to Heathrow (again, ish), then dealing with a duff regeneration and subsequent trial, then with the excesses of the universe and now trying to save his a friend from an ex-friend.  Sadly, looking at the pile of books on my shelf and the burning bright orange cover which looms there I don’t think this state of affairs is going to last long.  But it should be fun while it lasts.

Parallel 59

 Parallel 59 is an adventure of two halves.  On the one hand it’s a fairly standard tale in which the Doctor and Compassion are captured, interrogated then help to lead a revolution.  On the other, at the risk of spoiling a surprise, it’s a wonderfully bleak tale reminiscent of Terry Gilliam‘s Brazil with Fitz in the Sam Lowry role which is eventually revealed to be an iteration of a certain other pre-millennium sci-fi adventure in which there is no spoon and the problem is that despite the two being so carefully entwined, it’s the latter which really draws in the reader leaving the former as something of a chore.

The problem is that for over two hundred pages the reader isn’t really given much to be interested in as the Doctor, pitched up in the planet Skale having guided a lifeboat there from a malfunctioning space installation is fingered as a spy, not believed and is dragged through cells and meetings and largely shouted at.  He’s utterly charming of course in the Tom in City of Death sense of the word, bluff when required yet stunningly intelligent when that’s required.  If anything he’s more Doctorish than he’s been for many novels and there’s a particularly exciting moment when suicide is the only escape option.

it’s a wonderfully bleak tale in the style of Terry Gilliam‘s Brazil with Fitz in the Sam Lowry role

But surrounding him are a cast of military types who just seem so desperately interchangeable and unlikeable.  They’re apparently fighting over one another to defend their world in their own way but it’s difficult to really get a handle on any of them so when the traitor is revealed much later it takes a page or two to actually remember who they were.  Luckily said traitor is thinning out the ranks so actually a couple become slightly better defined towards the end but largely they’re defined to such a limited degree it’s difficult to be bothered about their fate.

Meanwhile, Compassion escapes and falls in with a fairly identikit group of rebels who are tying to break back into the installation and save the world or something.  Compassion is really interesting in these passages, once again telling all of her new ‘friends’ exactly what they think they want to hear so that she can get them to do exactly what she wants.  One of them keeps calling her space girl and it takes everything she has to stop herself from breaking his arm.  We're also given more hints that there's something very wrong about her physical make-up -- making a body scanner explode spectacularly.  At least authors Natalie Dallaire and Stephen Cole have a real handled on the main characters.

Meanwhile, Compassion escapes and falls in with a fairly identikit group of rebels who are tying to break back into the installation and save the world or something. 

But like the military camp, there’s so many of the rebels and crucially we’re not given much of a description of them so they’re not too easy to empathise with.  It’s the schism that has existed throughout these books between novelistic Who and the television version -- there’s not much between these characters and the visitors to The Impossible Planet, but those actors bring a presence to the wafer thin characterisation that’s just not possible on the printed page, and again even when one or two make the supreme sacrifice it lacks the emotional punch that say the death of Mr. Jefferson in The Satan Pit had.

Then, threaded through that, first-person Fitz is back, this time relating his new life through diary entries which very vividly and empathically create an alien world, with characters that are all carefully defined, make sense and actually make the reader interested about in their  welfare.  As the novel opens, the ex-Londoner is already ensconced on Mechta, a masterpiece society with predetermined roles, his being a worker in a care home for children.  The city is an apparent healing zone for the sick of Skale who are slowly each given an order to leave for home by red taxi when they’re deemed in good health by a central control directive.  The fact that everything is planned out and ordered gives the reader some hint as to what’s actually going, but it’s how Fitz interfaces with the society which is the real joy.

think Renton in Trainspotting without the heroin and AIDS and whatnot

He has friendships -- think Renton in Trainspotting without the heroin and AIDS and whatnot with his best friends Serjay and Low Rez as the Sick Boy and Spud figures.  He has relationships, sleeping his way around Mechta, from Anya to Denna to Filippa each of these women perfectly defined and totally realistic.  He ponders (as I have) whether the TARDIS has created a much more pronounced version of his old self, doomed to have a girl in every time zone (or words to that effect) but I’d say his propensity for rebellion and questioning of authority are also a facet of that.  And unlike Frontier Worlds it feels like a perfectly natural device, of the story in that they’re diary entries rather than simply bolted on for effect.  But it’s the same voice as the earlier novel and since Peter Anghelides is singled out for special thanks in the acknowledgements I wonder if these are his work.

There’s a great sense of the city with its tram system and northern quarter and largely idyllic sense of community in which people hardly ever lock their doors because there’s not a lot worth stealing (sounds like a student hall in the early nineties) which makes the darkness and twisted version even more shattering when it inevitably arrives, as this society decays.  Perhaps were supposed to see a comparison between the bombs and gunplay in the Doctor’s story with the mysterious doom infecting Mechta but it’s the bending of that reality that’s most scary with Fitz at the centre trying to make sense of it and wanting to save Filippa, the girl for him.

I’ve rapidly come to the conclusion that many of these books don’t work because they’re too long and that some of the story ideas simply aren’t enough to fill the two-hundred and eighty odd pages that are expected of them.

What ultimately stops to book from totally convincing is it’s length.  I’ve rapidly come to the conclusion that many of these books don’t work because they’re too long and that some of the story ideas simply aren’t enough to fill the two-hundred and eighty odd pages that are expected of them.  Sometimes that’s dealt with through a more relaxed attitude to line spacing and shorter pagination.  But in some cases, such as this one, there just seems to be a lot of padding and far too many characters and stripping both back would have paid dividends instead of this thing which apart from the Fitz story drags horribly in the middle.  As it stands, Parallel 59 is half a great book trying to break away from the average.

Great cover though …

Frontier Worlds

There’s nothing more annoying than when one of these novels is quite an enjoyable read, has a few good ideas but doesn’t quite hold together much as an experience.  Perhaps a lot of Doctor Who in any media could be described that way, but the main problem with Frontier Worlds is that in the end it’s a bit boring and not a patch on its possible inspiration, The Invasion of the Krynoids or The Krynoid Invasion (Seeds of Doom).  Not necessarily a chore to read, just the kind of book in which you’re forever checking to see how many pages there are left to read.

The back of book blurb essentially tells you everything you need to know about the story.  It’s another human-style race on some alien world with a corporation doing to some not very nice things, in this case in the area of genetics trying to use plants to prolong their lifecycle.  Having landed on the world before the text of the novel begins, the Doctor, Fitz and Compassion set about working out what the problem is and how they should deal with it. 

It’s The Big Combo substituting the atom bomb for GM crops.

Author Peter Anghelides, is essentially playing some Chinatown-style genre games mixing the spy game with elements of hard-boiled neo-noir and an environmental thriller.  It’s The Big Combo substituting the contemporary thematic issue of the atom bomb for GM crops.  By keeping the story relatively thin, the author is able to concentrate instead on character and particular Compassion and Fitz.  The Doctor recedes into the background as the two companions (by the time lord’s design) spend most of the book together, either as they infiltrate one of the corporations pretending to be siblings or on the run through the wilderness to a top secret facility. 

The majority of the book is told from the first person perspective of the Fitz and we’re giving great chunks of insight into his childhood and how he feels after being brought back from being genetically photocopied for all those years on the remote.  This material is richly layered, replete with pop culture references mostly related to the disguises that he and Compassion have adopted of Frank and Nancy Sinatra.  Fitz spends most of his time quoting lines from Frank’s songs and film roles and wearing the hat -- which is usually at both extremes of endearing and annoying.

The relationship is not unlike Kirk and Spock from Star Trek. 

We also get to hear what he really thinks of Compassion who as they spend a hundred odd pages in the wilderness is also fleshed out considerably.  The relationship is not unlike Kirk and Spock from Star Trek.  Fitz is hot-blooded and passionate whereas Compassion is cold-blooded and logical.  Fitz gets into a relationship with a local girl but won’t simply leave her because ‘it wouldn’t be right’ -- but Compassion can see that he should just walk away, even without telling her because it is effecting the mission and their safety.

Their two-handers are the best scenes in the book as Fitz is continually trying to get the measure of her, and she is forever surprising him.  She certainly looks down on him -- and everyone else including the Doctor and one scene in which she lives up to her name is later revealed to be an example of her telling Fitz exactly what he needed to hear at that moment so that he would calm down and continue with the plan -- she didn’t really mean the words.  After an initially shaky start Compassion is turning into a rather unique creation (at least for the Whoniverse -- just how did she survive being hurled through a windscreen?) and I look forward to seeing how she develops.

Compassion is turning into a rather unique creation

It’s just a shame that the whole novel isn’t written with Fitz’s words.  The author skips out whenever he needs to tell the parts of the story which isn’t in the cockney’s eye line -- then altogether towards the end and although some of those sections are fitfully enjoyable -- the best is a conversation the Doctor has with a robot in which none of his usual tricks manage to out think the android -- none of them seem to sparkle in quite the same way as when Mr. Kreiner is the storyteller. 

It's just all a bit perfunctory (a bit like this review).  The main villain of the peace, Sempiter, doesn't do anything all that unexpected as the story progresses -- having pumped some of the alien plant into his system it slowly saps his will and physically transforms him and he becomes psychotic and how often have we seen that before?  When in the end the Doctor appears to saves the day it has a whiff of the kind of deus ex machina that the new series is criticized for.  About the only surprise is that he's not entirely being a hero and his solution is a selection of the best of the available evils.

It's just all a bit perfunctory (a bit like this review).

In the end, because there isn’t an awful lot of story, because the goals are never defined too clearly and because the story tends to meander more than it needs to, Frontier Worlds doesn’t really hold together and you’re left with a feeling of having read some very good writing, of having witnessed some very well written scenes, of having a better idea of who Compassion and Fitz are and how they relate to the Doctor (she’s a cat, he’s a dog) but overall not being particularly satisfied.  Ho hum.

The Taking of Planet 5

The Taking of Planet 5 opens with a rather wonderful, new series friendly idea.  The Doctor and his plus two pitch up in Professor Mildeo Twisknadine’s Wandering Museum of Verifiably Phantasmagoric, a museum of fiction items which at one time or another were thought to be real before being debunked or disappearing, the primary example being the planet Vulcan which was ‘detected wrongly in 1880, disproved by Einstein, and then deliciously discovered again in 2003, only to vanish by 2130’. 

There’s a lovely moment too when letters sent to 221b Baker Street are pulled out, sent to an obviously fictional detective, the Doctor’s reaction to which is an obvious reference to All-Consuming Fire.  What makes it work for the new series and the spark for the story is that they inevitably discover evidence for a totally fictional entity which really shouldn’t be there and the Doctor decides to head through time and investigate what it’s doing there. 

The distinctly unnewseriesy choice (listen, if these authors can make up words so can I) is that the newly non-fictionalised entities are the the Elder Things from H.P. Lovecraft’s work.  I once went to university with someone who was nutty for his work and Doctor Who and would probably love this book.  Personally, I wouldn’t recognise Cthulhu (or whatever his/her/its name is) if they held a door open for me but if there’s something positive to be said about the book, I did get a general idea of some of the concepts of those stories and what the Elder Things should look like. (1)

listen, if these authors can make up words so can I

But not enough to follow whole tracts of the story because unfortunately the rest was a pretty hard going and crucially it’s to do with the language being employed.  Simon Bucher-Jones and Mark Clapham develops into another story set with the mythology begun in Alien Bodies as time lords from the future have also been attracted to the past by these Elder Things hoping to use them within their time war.  Meanwhile, their mission is being manipulated by the Celestis, the race developed from the Gallifreyan Celestial Intervention Agency and it transpires that a monster from the old series is the ultimate reason for them all being there and what the Doctor eventually ends up battling against.

What the authors have done is attempt to employ the same rather incomprehensible syntax which Miles tends to use in relation to these characters or technology almost as though we’re reading a version of our language from the far future.  Example:  “Inchoate, undifferentiated mass, the chronoplasm of the outer shell engulfed him, drinking him down with great drafts of its own substance, pulling him remorselessly into the interior dimensions.”  Which is fine in small doses, but whole tracts of the book are written that way and more often than not the action is lost; it’s Doctor Who with literary pretensions again, and once again it keeps the novel from being the rattling good read it could be.

What you come away with is the sense that actually what the authors have been trying to do, as with Alien Bodies, is to use tricks and subterfuge and complications to obscure what is in essence a fairly simple base-under-siege stories, and on this occasion two running in parallel;  as well as the running about in time lord base in pre-historic Antarctica, there’s also an expedition site in 1999 and both eventually end up being menaced by Celestis.  It’s fairly clearly inspired by John Carpener’s The Thing (which I believe was also influenced by Lovecraft -- how meta) (2).  There are a couple of long scenes between the Celestis and the head time lord that explain what the outer shell of the plot is about, with giant universe sized creatures (3) but after a while they end up seeming about as relevant to this story as the Xeraphin in Timeflight.  Perhaps they’ll become really important in some later books.

after a while they end up seeming about as relevant to this story as the Xeraphin in Timeflight

Despite all of this, it’s not an unenjoyable read.  The characters are pleasant enough company; most of the human characters are Pertweesque cyphers but the two Celestis, called One and oh yes, Two come across as murderous, alien, Mulder and Scully (as well they might) trying to deal with the fact that the universe isn‘t quite the way they hoped it would be (4).  There’s the welcome return of the Humunculette from Alien Bodies, the roguish version of the Doctor, and the scenes between him and Compassion are a delight (they even have the ‘is you’re name supposed to be ironic’ conversation).  Fitz has regained some of his charm, wonderfully unbewildered by they many oddly shaped people he comes in contact with.

There’s also a strong dose of humour throughout, the epicentre of which being the Doctor who is in full bluff mode attempting to convince the time lords of the future that he’s one of their generals by referring to The Green Death as one of the major battles and the Adamsy scene towards the end where he’s floating in deep space and daydreaming about where his life has been and where it could go.  There’s also a quite touching scene in which his has to convince a new-born TARDIS (see below) that he’s been good to his type-40 and that they’re best friends rather than slave owner and property.

Also, this is the book which may have inspired the line from The Impossible Planet about TARDISes being grown instead of built.  Part of the time lord plans is the building of a ‘hatchery’ (for want of a better word) in which a flotilla of young battle-TARDIS are grown in order to aid the titular planetary invasion.  These are far more organic items than the Doctor’s TARDIS, with even greater sentience.  As the Doctor says to them when he thinks the situation is particularly grim, if they take care of the blue box, it’d be like human’s adopting a neanderthal (think California Man).

this is the book which may have inspired the line from The Impossible Planet about TARDISes being grown instead of built

Such concepts are certain to return in future ‘episodes’.  At one point we meet a future President of Gallifrey and he’s a bloke which means it doesn’t look good for Romana.  In that same scene, the presence of nine Gallifreys is revealed, some hidden in pocket dimensions, which sounds like a pretty good insurance policy.  This is ‘mythology’ story too and towards the end there’s also a cathedral sized bit of foreshadowing as the Humunculette’s TARDIS, Marie implies that there’s even more to Compassion than meets the eye and a figure appears from the darkness who I think will turn out to be a pretty Masterly presence in the future. 

(1)  On page 57, there’s a footnote.  Fitz mentions Griffin, the villain of the piece from Unnatural History and at the bottom of the page is a message which simply says ‘See Doctor Who - Unnatural History’.  In the early days of Star Trek tie-in novels, pages would be filled with these as every single reference to a past adventure would be indicated comic book style, mostly to the James Blish novelisations of the classic tv stories.  My reaction on seeing this one is -- with all the other continuity references throughout the book to this series of books and the television series, you think this one needs explaining!?! 

(2)  While I'm here, I could also mention that the All-Consuming Fire also featured the Cthulhu Mythos and that its no stranger to the Whoniverse since it's also appeared in White Darkness by David A. McIntee and Gary Russell's Divided Loyalties [source].  I haven't read either of those, but if that stuff is already in the Whoniverse, already part of that reality, how can the Doctor identify it as otherwise fictional?  Oh well.  Three reasons for the fall of Atlantic etc ...

(3)  At the end of the book, after the epilogue, there’s an ‘Annexe’ (a posh way of saying Appendix) which is apparently (assuming it’s not simply made up) an extract from a cosmology paper by Simon Bucher-James.  Isn't this like a rerunning an old Open University programme on BBC Four directly after the main programme just in case we didn't understand what went on?  Apart from explaining why it often seems as though you’d need to be a cosmologist to actually follow half of what’s going on in the book, if its presence is to enunciate some of the concepts it pretty well fails because it’s even less comprehensible.  Plus it manages to include ten more footnotes within three pages which has to be some kind of record -- that's impressive even to someone like me who turned squirreling information away in footnotes to keep an essays word length down into a fine art, to the point of even, I think, including a footnote within a footnote.  That said, Bucher-James is to be congratulated for using the phrase ‘that said’ at the start of a sentence just when I was beginning to think it was one of the lazy crutches only I use.

(4)  It's hard to hate any character who kills off the Borad from Timelash for sport.

The Blue Angel

You’ve got to love Doctor Who sometimes.  Any other series would have followed the experimental Interference with a nice, light generic adventure to get things back on track.  Even Buffy The Vampire Slayer, having thrown the ambiguous, premonition strewn character study Restless in at the end of its fourth season began season five with Buffy Vs. Dracula just to remind everyone what the show was actually about.  In this version of Doctor Who, series editor Steve Cole instead called upon one of the series true auteur, Paul Magrs to co-author with the mysterious Jeremy Hoad a work that’s truly innovative and about as experimental as the series has been so far.

I always remember Doctor Who Magazine’s review of the book -- they said it was like Season Twenty-One opening with the Fifth Doctor, Tegan and Turlough enjoying breakfast in a kitchen having settled down into suburbia (and how preferable would that have been to Warrior’s of the Deep?) -- and they’re not wrong.  One part of this dreamlike tale features the like of a domesticated earth-bound Doctor, living in an old Edwardian house with Fitz and Compassion, who has a shrink who’s obviously supposed to be an allusion to Doctor number three and a pub on Sunday. 

All signs and allusion, this thread which weaves through the main story of the book, seems to be the time lord’s attempts to rationalize the events of the previous novel particularly his torture, except that there’s a suggestion that this is real and everything else is a story; the events of The Scarlett Empress are referenced as well as the Magrs authored past Doctor novels in relation to a fantasy book that Fitz is reading and the Doctor’s old friend Sally is writing and the most exciting action is the build up to a dinner party given to Sally and her dog Canine and the Beryl Reid inspired incarnation of Iris Wyldetyme.

If the rest of the book is a story, it’s extremely busy and just as imaginative as Magrs previous writing.  The Doctor and friends are on board the Federation starship Nepotist when it visits a pocket dimension called the Enclave, inhabited by a race of glass people, lorded over by Daedalus, a talking Elephant.  Meanwhile, Iris, now regenerated to resemble Jane Fonda in Barbarella mode saves a couple of  middle-aged women and a young man from a shopping centre with has been attacked by giant owls, little suspecting that the boy is the Blue Angel of the title, resting in their company on Earth.

this isn’t an affectionate Galaxy Quest-style reading

The Federation starship Nepotist with its erstwhile Captain Blandish are an obvious Star Trek homage, but this isn’t an affectionate Galaxy Quest-style reading, highlighting instead how the show’s multi-cultural philosophy always seemed to be filtered through jingoistic US eyes -- literally, we come in peace, shoot to kill.  As Blandish orders the removal of the Valcean’s capacity to create weapons of mass destruction by effectively leveling the place, it looks like a comment on the Iraq war with Blandish as the Bush figure -- except this was published in 1999 and none of that had happened yet. 

Given how much of Doctor Who’s premise has been strip mined for episodes in that series (my favourite being the pod which randomly turned up during the Enterprise episode, Future Tense which was discovered to be ‘dimensionally transcendental) it seems only fair that we pay them back literally in a novel fashion.  What Magrs and Hoad do, however, is have that crew rerun elements of an Enterprise adventure from kamikaze decisions and fodder for fan fiction effectively crashing through the very different kind of fiction which is going on around them.

Like Interference, it’s the kind of story in which all the stuff you’d expect to happen in Doctor Who happens but not necessarily in the order you’d expect it to happen.  Unlike Interference, there’s a more clearer rhyme and reason for it

Like Interference, it’s the kind of story in which all the stuff you’d expect to happen in Doctor Who happens but not necessarily in the order you’d expect it to happen.  Unlike Interference, there’s a more clearer rhyme and reason for it -- in the idiom within with its written and the way the authors are investigating the nature of fantasy, hurling elements of a typical television tie-in novel and material from a far more literary realm to see which is the stronger or whether they can co-exist and ultimately deciding that they can’t.

So, yes, there are the wonderfully described men of glass whose only organic component, their heart can be seen beating in their chest; there’s the one-dimensional corridors which link the edges of the Enclave, weaving our adventurers in and out of each other; the flying owls who in one atmospheric scene become the transport for Iris and Fitz sitting on their back, clutching their feathers, this whole kingdom infused with winter light, the primary colours blue and white.

And in the midst of it all the Doctor, in his element, if not quite back to being his old self, not quite able to do the right thing, perhaps following Iris’s lead a bit too much.  With the latter taking the lion’s share of the action, happy to blow off a ray gun, we’re supposed to see their differing methods and why, despite everything our Doctor is the hero whereas Iris, no matter how likeable has too many secrets for comfort.  She is still a treat though, more prone to costume changes and catching Fitz’s eye.  If I was the Doctor I would have settled down with her years ago.  Yes, and her bus.

Fitz has become something of an unknown quantity -- in so many ways still the man we knew, but in so many others a stereotypical version, even more of a womaniser but also even more loyal to the Doctor.  The ironically named Compassion’s still coalescing too -- a product of the Remote, still able to tap into the signals around her, but not quite a complete person except in terms of her survival instincts.  One of the best scenes in the novel is a screwball discussion between them on Iris’s bus, straight from Capra's It Happened One Night about the Doctor’s tendency to babble in which the time lord is thrown into the Clark Gable role and Compassion becomes Claudette Colbert.  He points out to her that she hasn't been travelling with him long enough to know how these conversations are supposed to go.

Like Buffy’s Restless, some elements will probably become really important across the general arc of the books whereas other will be ignored completely. 

As the wheels of the story crank to a stop, the book closes literally on a question, twenty of them in fact which intimate that as the reader suspects there’s far more to the story than has been presented in these 274 pages and perhaps more to be revealed in the future.  Like Buffy’s Restless, some elements will probably become really important across the general arc of the books whereas other will be ignored completely.  But if I’m being honest, much as a love this, I’m getting pretty tired with the books being comments on the Doctor or the Doctor Who concept.  What happened to telling a good, light generic adventure with nuts and bolts shocks and laughs?

Five Questions

1.  According to the wikipedia, 'The novel attracted some controversy for its portrayal of an alternate, apparently homosexual, version of the Doctor'.  Did I miss something?

2.  Just how much of a fan of Marlene Dietrich is Paul Magrs?

3.  How did either of the authors get through this interview without plugging the book?

4.  Do they know there's a very good club in Liverpool called the Blue Angel?

5.  Will Iris return?