#16
The Empire Of Glass
By Andy Lane
I’m almost halfway through the
Missing Adventures, and I still wonder what I want from them. A story you could (in some parallel universe)
have seen on television seems the obvious answer, but that’s setting the bar
rather low. The Target novelizations recreated the telly stuff verbatim, and yet many of them also tried to broaden the
scope and embrace the novel format. The
Missing Adventures were bolder from the outset, getting away with stuff you’d
never see in the TV show – or what’s a different medium for?
Assuming you don’t mind these non-exact
replicas, there’s still a downside: the MAs can’t follow a long-running
narrative like the New Adventures, what with each book diving into its own era,
so there’s no build-up to anything. In
terms of character it’s a case of taking whatever you can get, and even then you’re stuck with the TV show
having done all the heavy lifting beforehand.
But lucky for us, Classic Who
didn’t like to dwell on things emotionally, so there’s still some gold to be
found in between episodes.
With all of that in mind, the
best case scenario would be a book that feels like an old episode but puts a
bit more icing on top. Let your hair
down, you’ve got a whole book to yourself!
It would be great if they could meaningfully address some character
points, though not in a way that affects the next story too much, and a little continuity
between books would be beneficial. Satisfying
plot is a must, but it can be quite small so long as it holds together. (The Also People, though it’s in a very
different range, showed that there is more to life.) Oh, and since it’s a one-and-done it might as
well be a lot of fun.
So The Empire Of Glass, pretty much.
Andy Lane is one of those names
that elicits a sigh of relief, having co-written the shimmering Lucifer Rising
and solo-penned the rollicking All-Consuming Fire and the awesome Original Sin. His fourth book doesn’t buck the trend. It’s a historical-with-sci-fi-bits, and while
it is annoying that we couldn’t have
a pure historical – because dagnammit, they can be as good or bad as anything
sci-fi – the historical bits have more than enough Hartnell-era flavour.
The Doctor is invited to Venice
in 1609 for reasons he has forgotten.
(We’ll get to why.) Strange
things are already afoot, somehow linking the disappearance of the Roanoake
colony, the attempted poisoning of Galileo and said astronomer spotting what
appear to be spaceships on the moon.
Lane brings the history to life by focusing on average people, and he weaves
a marvellous Venice without getting bogged down in detail, touching on the
strange ways of the locals (who love to argue but will always offer directions)
and the delightful oddity of a town built on wood and water. He does a good job making recognisable people
out of historical figures, in particular Galileo, the rather boozy and pompous
(but basically quite amiable) genius. He’s
a little less sure in the book’s sci-fi realm, the island of Laputa; it’s
mostly a plot point and he doesn’t dwell on its weirdness. Venice is undoubtedly where it’s at, and it’s
where the book indulges in something quite common to that era of the show:
mistaken identity.
On arrival in Venice, the Doctor
is mistaken for Cardinal Bellarmine.
When those that summoned him come to collect him, they dismiss him as
the Cardinal and come for Bellarmine instead, who then must assume the Doctor’s
role in an unusual peace conference – which he, bewildered, believes to be
Heaven. Steven befriends Galileo, only
to be mistaken for the man himself and fall afoul of his enemies; he then
befriends another man (living under a false identity) who ends up sharing the
guise of Galileo with Steven. Eventually
William Shakespeare appears – leading a double life! – ostensibly to spy for
King James but in all likelihood showing up because the sheer weight of
disguise and misunderstanding drew him here like a moth to a Bat-signal.
There’s a lot going on, and yet Empire Of Glass has one of the smaller
plots I’ve come across. Simply, the
Doctor has an alien peace conference to go to, he can’t remember why so he
doesn’t go directly there, and somebody is planning to ruin it. All of which is very neatly done, but the
book’s real delight is in the details.
Steven is new to the TARDIS, and he
still doesn’t have any great trust in the Doctor. Lane doesn’t do anything as obvious as have
him spend a load of time watching and learning from the Doctor – instead, his
friendship with Galileo (and even more so Giovanni Chigi, a mysterious
Englishman who quite obviously fancies him) gives him time to think about his
past and get accustomed to his strange new life. Vicki does something similar, at one point
remembering the death of her pet Sandy.
(Just in case you’d forgiven Barbara.)
Lane draws a parallel so obvious I can’t believe I’ve never spotted it:
both she and Steven were living in captivity when the Doctor showed up. More interestingly, they didn’t feel the same
way about it, with Steven raging against his captors and not officially being
rescued at all (forgotten about in a blaze, he stowed away), whereas Vicki
lived an idyllic life with no idea her only companion murdered her family and
stranded her there. (Mind you, the novelisation of The Rescue doesn’t make it sound at all idyllic.) Both of them have
reasons to be a little dubious of the Doctor, and reasons to be thankful for
him. Following him on an errand even he doesn’t
understand won’t exactly help. Lane
doesn’t tear into any of this, instead having worries and doubts bubble on the
periphery. It’s a jolly book, after all,
not a brutal re-examination of why these people are friends. I was glad to get any of it.
It’s here (in the Doctor’s
unremembered errand) that the book indulges another love: continuity. I’m always wary of this in Doctor Who, but I think Lane approaches
it creatively. The Doctor has just come
back from the events of The Three Doctors, during which time he was invited to
this conference with the full approval of the Time Lords. His memory was then wiped because the Time
Lords are officious idiots. It’s a
definite era no-no to show the First Doctor making nice with his own people,
not to mention making this a sequel to a story made almost a decade later, but those
things sort of cancel each other out and that’s so insane I quite like it.
And it means we get a piece of book
continuity: Irving Braxiatel, who has not yet established his Braxiatel Collection
(a.k.a. the lovely backdrop to Theatre Of War), is trying his hand at
intergalactic peace. An interesting
character the last time we saw him, Braxiatel is clearly worth revisiting. Clever and funny yet apparently quite
dispassionate, at least where humans and history are concerned, he makes a few
decisions that suggest typical Time Lord pomposity with a personable
twist. He hosts his conference above
Venice circa 1609 because of Galileo’s accomplishments, yet he interferes with his
telescope so he won’t spot spaceships coming and going, potentially scuppering
history in the process; he invites the Doctor, who cannot normally pilot his own
ship, directly to Venice yet somehow doesn’t check whether it is the Doctor he
is picking up via flying saucer; and he blithely suggests Cardinal Bellarmine
be killed to alleviate any confusion with the Doctor, later on he still not
realising it was the Doctor he wanted
dead. He has no apparent love for the
Doctor, which puts him in the same boat as most Time Lords, observing that many
of the universe’s most dangerous foes agreed to have him host the negotiations
because they hate him equally! And yet, he
always seems to have good intentions at heart, and hints are dropped – we’re
talking hints with a capital Anvil – that he is related to the Doctor in some
way. By the end of the book he has more
than endeared himself to the TARDIS crew, before going off to establish the
Library of St. John the Beheaded, because come on, it’s an Andy Lane book. A beautiful post-script has him visit an
older Shakespeare, for reasons equally philanthropic and greedy. I hope we see more of him.
Other dollops of continuity
include some amusingly bitchy broadsides at Francis Pearson, a seriously
tenuous nod to when the Fourth Doctor met Shakespeare, various monster cameos
and a bit where a winged creature kidnaps someone straight out of a
window. (Because come on, it’s an Andy
Lane book? Hey, he knows what he likes!) But it’s by no means a fanwank novel; these
bits are sprinkled over a very inventive book, as the Doctor gets into various
scrapes with Galileo, Braxiatel grows more exasperated at not being able to
find him, and Steven spends more time with his lascivious friend. Honestly it’s a little disappointing that the
Doctor, Steven and Vicki don’t spend more time together – Vicki in particular,
though well characterised, seems apart from most of the action. But the Doctor and Steven are wonderfully
written. Having recently seen Hartnell’s
Doctor badly mischaracterised by New Who,
it’s a relief to see him given his due: he might misspeak on occasion, but he
can also zip around “like a monkey” and just as effortlessly outthink Braxiatel
as to what’s going on in his conference.
A moment near the end has him improbably sharing a stage with Shakespeare,
and he coaches Vicki through an ad-libbed Macbeth, which feels like a lovely
tip of the hat to the prolific actor who helped make the Doctor what he is. (Conversely, despite a few lovely moments I’m
not convinced Lane ever really justifies having Shakespeare in the book. One of his contemporaries makes a greater impact,
rendering him slightly moot.)
There’s a charm and a zest to The Empire Of Glass, and despite (or
maybe because of) its economical plot the thing zooms excitedly along. And there is depth to be found. Vicki and particularly Steven have a lot to
think about, the latter seeming genuinely changed by his experience. (I’m not sure if he returned his new friend’s
feelings or if I’m reading too much into that, but then again Steven is far
from sure what it all meant.) Lane stops
short of taking a doubting Steven and making him entirely happy to be here, but
rightly so as that wouldn’t be true to Steven.
The character work is pretty much what the Missing Adventures ordered:
small but significant. (Like Jo’s
growing determination in Dancing The Code, or the emotional fallout over Susan
in Venusian Lullaby.)
If this was the only Doctor Who novel I ever read, I’d
consider it a complete success. As one
of a series I’m little more reticent, as there’s still a nagging feeling that
there could be more characterisation,
but perhaps that’s just the Missing Adventures for you, having to cut and run after
every book. I had a great time reading
it, which ought to be enough.
8/10
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