Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #13 – Deceit by Peter Darvill-Evans

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#13
Deceit
By Peter Darvill-Evans

Surprise!  Ace is back!  Phew?

I'm biased because I really like Bernice, and these books came out too long ago for me to say I didn't see it coming, but... really?  After three books that shoehorned Benny into the plot with varying degrees of awkwardness, it's rather sad to throw away the possibility that the writers will get better at it, not to mention the chance of developing an organic friendship between Bernice and the Doctor.  However these books shuffle it, what you're going to get from now on is one too many people in the TARDIS.

Okay, dismount soapbox, now for the actual book.  I might as well address an elephant in the room, as I did for The Pit: Deceit is another infamously unpopular New Adventures novel.  (Two in a row.  Huzzah.)  Knowing this and reading it anyway carries an obvious risk: you've only yourself to blame.  But I think it's important not to take received wisdom for granted, to make up your own mind and in any case, the rough will help you appreciate the smooth.  I want to follow the whole New Adventures story, warts and all.

Here be warts.  Deceit isn't as terrible as I was expecting, but it still makes complete sense that people tend not to recommend it.  This is a book many feel they have to read because it reintroduces a long-running character; it's as important to the world of the New Adventures as Love And War, but only in the strictest technical sense.  Given its significance I couldn't help wondering how this is the best they could come up with.

Deceit begins, as so many New Adventures do, by spinning a bunch of plates.  Over here you've got a sinister relationship between man and computer (and soon, woman and computer); over here, a woman tries to contact her husband in deep space, but he'll never get her messages; over here, a military operation sets its sights on the mysterious world of Arcadia and gathers soldiers for the cause, including a familiar citizen of Perivale; and over here, Arcadia itself, a medieval world descended from Earth colonists, where people die at a young age and strange Counsellors rule by suggestion.  The Doctor and Bernice are off doing nothing much in the vortex.

The book gives an impression of a lot going on, but it's false.  Instead of chapters we have parts of roughly fifty pages, and Peter Darvill-Evans saves much of the book's action for those intervals.  At 50-odd pages we finally hear from the Doctor and Bernice.  At 100-odd pages the TARDIS lands on Arcadia.  At 150-odd pages so do Ace and the remains of the military.  At 200-odd pages the Doctor and Bernice arrive on a creepy space-station.  At 250-odd pages, so does Ace.  Darvill-Evans is impressively strict about this, but in the interim, not a lot actually goes on.  Ace investigates her ship, her crewmates and her mission – really though, she just travels to Arcadia.  The Doctor and Bernice separate on Arcadia, they walk lots, meet people, meet up, get locked in rooms.  It kills time. Once the action shifts to the space-station it becomes Journey To The Centre Of The Corridor, while Ace and co. make shooty-peeow-noises on Arcadia for, as we later discover, no reason at all.  The 300-page mark looms, we learn what it's all about and the Doctor sets one of his traps to make it stop.  Then, congratulations: it's over!

There is no reason for it to take as long as it does.  Deceit is noticeably the longest New Adventure yet, a generous 325 pages including an Epilogue, Appendix and rambling Afterword.  As editor of the range, Peter Darvill-Evans didn't have to submit his book for editing, and it shows.  In the Afterword he admits: "I'm aware that I've tried to cram a lot into it.  Perhaps too much."  Ya think?

And yet, that's kind of the opposite of the book's problem.  He crams too many pages into it, certainly, but story, and even that frequent New Adventures fall-back, ideas are in short supply.  Action scenes trundle and explode, corridors are walked and answers take the scenic route.  In truth, it's long because it's long.

Fortunately there are some ideas to be getting on with, most having to do with continuity.  Deceit marks the return of Ace, three years older and even more skilled at demolition, so obviously there's some emotional content to do with Love And War.  Darvill-Evans does quite a bit of narrative housekeeping, and it's here you feel his hand as editor of the range.  The concurrent, similar endings of Nightshade and Love And War are folded into the same Doctorly narrative.  Events from Warhead inform Deceit's villains.  Something unseen occurred at the end of Witch Mark which is only now resolved – the tail-end of a sort of Cat's Cradle 2.0: Now Even More Off-Screen, as Darvill-Evans explains the Doctor and the TARDIS's so-called erratic behaviour since then.  (A way to write off the clumsy handling of the-Doctor-and-Bernice, perhaps?  Say he had other things on his mind?)  He even takes the ending of The Pit, when the Doctor had to let seven planets die to appease history, resound in a way that Neil Penswick had neither the time nor the ability to manage.  It's arguably a continuity-fest, which can be the worst kind of fan writing, but it's trying to inform the characters rather than simply stack up Do You Remember This points.  It felt more rewarding than intrusive, so he must be doing something right.

And as for those characters, while it is undeniably a mistake to maroon them amid great oceans of nothingy non-plot, they are at least likeable and recognisably written.  The Doctor is, let's face it, hard to get wrong: he plots and schemes, he has eccentric moments, emotions bubble beneath his eyes.  Darvill-Evans's Bernice is more of a boon.  She's in tune with Love And War, still possessing that nervous sarcasm and modest intelligence: "'Read all about it,' Bernice shouted, lifting her hands in what she hoped was a universally recognized gesture of peaceful intent.  'Town terrorized by unarmed archaeologist in scruffy jeans and old jacket.'"  But there's also a vulnerability that comes with half a dozen not-altogether-fun rides in the TARDIS.  When she meets Elaine, a troubled and grief-stricken girl locked in an attic, her distress and anger are palpable. And when Ace signs up at the end, her world is shaken. "The Professor and the Doctor.  They made a good team, didn't they?  They understood each other. ... The Doctor didn't need Ace any more.  Did he?"  I'm still – and I can't believe I'm writing this – surprised that the Doctor and Bernice spend much of Deceit apart, and that he sort of forgets about her again.  Just pair them up already, for god's sake.  But she acquits herself well.

And there's Ace 2.0.  Older and wiser, doesn't seem to say "toe-rag" or "bilge-breath" as much (never again, pretty please?), but still maintains a cheery and rebellious attitude.  And phew for that: I thought she'd be a humourless space marine.  She's recognisably Ace, only a bit more balanced.  It's just a pity she spends so long marching through endless action scenes.  Now, I've more than once heard that Deceit devolves into little more than an action sequence as it goes on, and that's not entirely true; there is, believe me, plenty of tedious walking down corridors and sitting in rooms as well.  But the action is there, and it's simply monotonous.  Lines like this only serve to suggest even Darvill-Evans knows it's filler: "'You could let them land here.'  'Don't worry, Doctor.  We intend to. Although I think I'll play a few games with them.  I don't want them to have an uneventful journey.'"  Jeez.  Are "uneventful" and "tediously repetitive" our only choices?  What’s to stop the baddies simply beaming them up if they're so keen to have them?  Is it intrinsically more interesting to zap a bunch of androids first?  (Going back to that quote, there are other moments of possible self-reflection dotted about.  Take "'Do you know,' the Doctor said, 'I rather think we're getting somewhere at last'", or "It seemed like hours since she had slipped away to find Ace, but nothing had changed much. "  It's like the book knows it's swaddled in padding, which – surprise! – only makes it worse that it is.)

Unfortunately, while Darvill-Evans demonstrates a good ear for the regulars, his supporting cast are dead weight.  Arcadia is medieval-yet-alien, so a bog-standard Tara, then.  You've seen and heard it before, and the whole "You die when you reach 30" dilemma reeks of Logan's Run – not to mention Timewyrm: Apocalypse, plus the countless things that inspired Nigel Robinson in that.  We scarcely meet any Arcadians apart from Francis (cowardly and sleazy) and Elaine (small and vulnerable), so when their fate hangs in the balance, it is necessary to restrain a shrug.

And what of the military?  About 95% of Ace's compatriots die before they reach Arcadia, leaving Defries, a woman single-mindedly obsessed with bringing down those responsible, and Abslom Daak, a Doctor Who Magazine creation who's pretty much just single-minded.  "Daak was always the same: without reference to the creed, colour, gender or opinions of whoever happened to be around, he was rude, randy, rebellious and always ready for a fight. "  When even the narrative agrees that a character is "always the same", there can be little hope for them.  He amounts to nothing more than a watered-down Gilgamesh, including a lascivious intent towards Ace.  He's hardly even irritating, he's so bloody boring.

Perhaps the most interesting characters are Lacuna, the Sinister (with a capital s) interpreter for Pool, a group of minds responsible for the Arcadian dilemma.  And Britta: a wife stuck light years away from her husband, drawn into an abusive and servile relationship with Lacuna, whose monstrous feelings are Pool's only outlet.  I say "interesting" here – perhaps that's the wrong word.  Lacuna and Britta fall into a bizarre and troubling Stockholm Syndrome, and it is damn uncomfortable to read.  By the book's end, they are in each other's arms, presumably forever.  It's, uh... yeah.  I'm not sure what to make of that.  I'd say it was the weirdest bit by miles, if not for the scene where Daak makes his umpteenth rapey advance on Ace and she comes within a hair's breadth of actually going for it.  You, uh, only live once I guess?

The prose is solid and readable, and so an obvious improvement on The Pit, but it's not something that brims with personality.  I probably couldn't pick one of Peter Darvill-Evans's sentences out of a line-up.  But given a more layered and interesting story and, ironically, an editor, I'd probably read another of his books.  I can't recommend this one.

Deceit needs to exist only inasmuch as Ace (apparently) needed to return in one of the books.  If you're desperate to know what happens to her, as I was, here's the edited version: she joins the army, meets the Doctor and Bernice again and sticks with them.  If you're still bloody-mindedly determined to read it, and to hell with the negative reviews, it's best to think of it like lancing a boil: a necessary but unenjoyable task to be got out of the way.  There is absolutely no point in taking your time over it.

4/10