Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #56 – Zamper by Gareth Roberts

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#41
Zamper
By Gareth Roberts

And we’re back to normality.  We’ve had an unusually good run with Human Nature, Original Sin and Sky Pirates!, and to be fair to Zamper, somebody had to buck the trend.

I’ve been picking away at it for over a week.  Zamper isn’t ghastly, and it has most of the hallmarks of a Gareth Roberts book: comedic tone, whiff of satire, whimsical prose, Chelonians.  But all of that’s saddled to a story that takes more than half its page-count to get going.

The Doctor and co. experience a TARDIS malfunction (imagine that!) and arrive on Zamper, a difficult-to-reach planet that manufactures out-of-this-world spaceships.  (Given Roberts’ influences, let’s just say “Magrathea, again?” and leave it at that.)  Zamper is a bit odd, though even that feels like a stretch: half a dozen people live there, and all the work is done underground by the mysterious, telekinetic “Zamps”.  They can literally create spaceships using thoughts, which has the Doctor intrigued.  All of this is overseen by The Management, a strangely anthropomorphic computer system experiencing unexplained power failures.  The few people working there, mostly against their will, either long to get away or have agendas not related to their jobs.  A couple of Chelonians are there to purchase a ship that will revive their ailing war effort – seems a bit optimistic, but it’s a really good ship I suppose – and must tolerate working with “parasites” rather than enthusiastically murdering them.  A quiet level of intrigue is had all around.

And… so?  That’s a collection of mildly diverting things happening in a dull place, but it’s not much of a plot.  And Zamper is dull: the “complex” includes a gaming facility where you can play Bingo, some offices and bedrooms, but if this were on TV we’d just be seeing the same corridor from a few different angles.  As for the underground bit, imagine a cave, any cave, and you’re there.  Never mind the staff, I nearly got cabin fever.

Zamper might have an unusual secret, but aside from vague curiosity about it there’s no particular need for the Doctor to investigate right now.  Yes, it’s the sort of thing that would catch his eye, and yes it ultimately turns out something alarming is going on, but there’s no driving sense of mystery behind it.  The Zamps are odd; okay.  But that’s not sufficient to still be asking “How does all this work, then?” after 100 pages.  I really didn’t care that much.

Meanwhile The Management keeps going awry.  Who’s that going to inconvenience besides half a dozen typically Roberts-esque jerks?  I can’t be the only one noticing a pattern among his characters: his need for satire lends them a certain misanthropic edge, leading to unsympathetic people you won’t miss when something horrible (inevitably) happens to them.  While it’s probably deliberate, because comedy, it’s nonetheless odd that the Chelonians – war-obsessed tortoises who would literally kill you as soon as look at you – engender more sympathy and interest than their victims.  The elderly Hezzka spends a portion of the book with Bernice, and consequently softens his attitude towards “parasites”; their scenes are easily the high points.

There’s literally not much else to write home about.  The Doctor potters through caves with a zoologist named Smith (bit unfortunate so soon after Human Nature, but oh well), raising questions about Zamps and then in due course, answering them.  Bernice doesn’t find her feet until she stumbles across Hezzka, wounded by a devious Zamper worker.  Roz and Chris fall squarely into “that other one” territory, especially Chris – seen comically in his pants, or resembling an enthusiastic dog, or a small boy, the sum total of him is a quite affable hat-stand that moves.  Roz displays the hard-nosed unsociability of a Dragnet cop and little of the wit.  There’s something rather sad about her, as this capable and no-nonsense woman struggles to find her place within the TARDIS team.  Some of which is deliberate and all of which I know we’re going to have to like or lump in these post-Original Sin books, as the authors try to find a use for them.  Let’s just be grateful Chris and Roz aren’t competing for the job.

All this pottering about and vaguely wondering why the lights keep flicking on and off does culminate in A Bad Thing That Must Be Stopped, thank goodness, i.e. the evolution of the Zamps into something malevolent – but there’s a note of just shrugging and doing what’s expected here, as it turns out the Doctor was wrong to look for the best in this emergent species, and the villainous “loops” (difficult not to picture a lot of snarling lassoes) talk in the time-honoured manner of a really insufferable “hilarious” bad guy.  (It’s all “nincompoop” this and “toodle-oo” that, combined with bloody rampaging, because unexplored-realms-of-space-and-time.)  A moment where the Doctor appears ready to sacrifice himself and an entire Chelonian fleet is almost dramatic, until it’s undercut by the strange observation that “in the universal scheme of things he was important, and owed it to others as well as to himself to stay alive”.  (That’s how the reader and, I suppose, Doctor Who feels on the subject, but him?)  It doesn’t feel so much like nodding towards the Doctor’s Machiavellian schemes as saying “that Doctor guy sure is a weasel, apparently!”

Once again I sound more miffed now than I was when I read it.  I almost longed to be really, properly annoyed – anything to get those pages turning faster.  I don’t know what’s more of an issue: the way Zamper can’t rouse a care for anyone it’s about, suggesting the cold and overpopulated nadir of the Eric Saward era, or the dandelion-picking pace.  They make an unfortunate combination, holding Zamper back from the jolly romp its short-and-silly name suggests, and making me grateful that Roberts is sticking to Missing Adventures from here on.

5/10