#17
Lords Of The Storm
By David A. McIntee
And now for something… slightly different.
In his own words, David A.
McIntee needed a change. Sanctuary was
one of his most David A. Mcintee-ey books thus far: a pure historical with lots
of action sequences, it indulged his main interests of historical detail and
action… detail. It’s not exactly an
upbeat book, although I think his suggestion here of a “grim ending” is a bit
harsh. It ends on a note of hope, or at the
very least some Schrödinger uncertainty – besides which, nobody reading the
ongoing New Adventures would expect Bernice to suddenly get a long term
boyfriend, so it can hardly be a surprise when Guy de Carnac doesn’t come
with. (Let’s face it, the moment an
unscheduled character says “I can’t wait to join the team!” they’re either
going to change their mind or die. Godspeed, Lynda-with-a-Y.)
Onto his brave new novel, which
the author describes as “more your old-fashioned space opera with shootouts,
spaceships and lots of corridors,” and “not exactly mind-expanding”, but at
least “more upbeat and fun than Sanctuary.”
(Jeez, Dave. Who’s writing this
review?) He’s fairly accurate on all
counts, although his apparent ennui with historicals doesn’t prevent him
dipping a toe in history. Hindu culture
figures prominently in Lords Of The
Storm, sufficiently to require a glossary at the back, which isn’t such a
different context from Haiti in White Darkness or the UFO craze in First Frontier. But there is a pronounced
difference between this and his other books so far.
Simply being a Missing Adventure makes Lords Of The Storm a less “heavy” book, as it doesn’t have to carry
any major continuity (actually, hold that thought!) and it can come and go
without frightening the horses. Also the
story he has chosen plays more to Classic Who
than I’ve come to expect with the Missing Adventures; aside from some
impossible-to-realise visuals and at least one swearword, you could drop it
into the show’s back catalogue without creating ripples. Whether it’s an especially brilliant Classic Who story is another matter, but either
way there is a grateful audience for meat-and-potatoes Doctor Who.
We all like different things, but
there are aspects of McIntee’s writing that make my teeth itch, and while they do feature in Lords Of The Storm they are largely restrained. The Prelude and the Prologue (and now you
mention it, I do find it a bit annoying when books can’t just get on with it)
are, for me, like that scene in Clockwork Orange with the eye-clamps. Establishing sentences ramble on with as much
detail as possible, inviting the reader to pause the book and make a damn
diagram of what’s going on and what it all looks like: “The faintly misty ribbon of stars that was draped across the infinite
darkness like a fur stole slipped past to the left as Loxx switched over to the
sublight drive and wheeled his ungainly gunship around in search of the source
of the signal which had alerted his squadron.” Sometimes he’s like a kid in a candy store,
only the candy is adjectives: “It was
like looking out on a jagged sea, lit by the fiery glow of a sluggish river of
molten rock…” In past novels he has
favoured frequent paragraph breaks, which come in handy as he likes to spring
new settings and characters on you, and the Prologue has this on all counts,
jamming in the first hints of Hindu culture whilst simultaneously introducing
disparate characters, often sticking to his old habit of telling us what their
hair looks like, or stapling a descriptive signifier between lines of dialogue. (“Noonian
grinned through his beard.”) It’s
like eating several dinners at once. The
jury is out on whether any of it is bad writing – although I’d be willing to
argue the case against those adjectives – but it is largely contained to the first
twenty-odd pages, surely a conscious decision.
What follows is a surprisingly measured,
almost sedately paced plot that has several things to do – what’s going on on Raghi,
what are the Sontarans up to on Agni – and follows them up at an efficient
clip. Which is a monumentally boring way
of saying the book moves through its plot without jumping all over the bloody
place, or lingering too obsessively on the details, which I found rather
refreshing. This is its
Classic Who vibe: none of it’s in a
terrible hurry but it’s not exactly boring either. After the uphill hike of the Prologue, I
found it an easy read.
Equally Classic (if not, I would
argue, classic) is the emphasis on plot, with characterisation as a bonus. No one is terribly written, but there’s
nothing too memorable about the people here.
Nur is a compelling new friend for the Doctor: a young woman treated
like royalty who would much rather not be, her piloting skills are neatly underlined
by a family tragedy, and she has a personal stake in the spread of disease on
her home-world. When it comes to
confronting her father about his involvement, what should be a pretty heated
change in the status quo is entirely matter of fact; the consequences wait
politely for the end of the book. The
head of a local hospital, Jahangir, finds himself colluding with Sontarans and
feels a palpable guilt over it, which makes him far more compelling than the
average cloth-eyed collaborator. It
later transpires he was hypnotised the whole time, which is less interesting
than being coerced, and his subsequent character arc of revenge and sacrifice
could not be more obvious. The climax of
this goes strangely unseen, as does (or almost) the oh-yeah-I-forgot death of a
programmer Turlough briefly meets.
Several moments are weirdly nipped in the bud, like Jahangir freeing his
hypnotised comrades from Sontaran control, which goes from “I might do this” to
“Phew, finished” in close succession.
The book just isn’t that interested in dwelling on things, which might
be another conscious effort from McIntee.
Despite making a big thing of Hindu castes and their parallels with the Sontarans,
which is relevant to their plan, Lords
will not teach you anything major about Hindu people; it jumps through some
fairly obvious hoops about karma and the wheel of life and then pretty much
calls it a day. (Still, maybe I am so
used to overkill from his previous books that I inadvertently miss it here! In which case I am impossible to please…)
The Sontarans, at least, are
treated as thinking people, albeit distinctly Sontaran ones who are obsessed
with war and can hardly tell humans apart.
One of my favourite observations was that countless human deaths don’t really
matter, because they probably reproduce as quickly and efficiently as the
Sontarans do. (I.e., cloning.) That utter disinterest mixed with
rationalisation gives them a thoughtful and alien approach. There are clearly differentiated ranks and
castes of Sontarans, which explains why the clone race looks different every
time they’re on screen. McIntee
amusingly highlights what some think of others, not shying away from their general
lack of subtlety but also crediting some of them with considerable intelligence.
He is, I think, less successful in
physically telling them apart: he makes an admirable effort each time but it
always sounds to me like variations on “a brown potato”. Which I suppose they are, but it’s still
difficult to know which one he means.
The Rutans inevitably feature. While this isn’t a given in Sontaran stories,
although they do often talk about
their gelatinous nemesis, the book makes it clear that these events form a
prequel to Shakedown. And thar be
Rutans. Or Rutan, as McIntee insists on pluralising them. (It’s worth it for the glossary. “Rutan:
the plural of Rutan. See below. Rutan: the singular of Rutan. See above.”) Just as much consideration goes into them, with
a similarly chilling disinterest in their enemies and, in sequences told from
their point of view, an unnervingly liquid view of time. It’s only disappointing that they are kept
back until the end of the book. A
gestalt mind – which has always been a canny parallel of the general sameness
of Sontarans – the Doctor makes light of them and calls one of them “Fred”,
which is then picked up into the plural “Freds”. Best of all is a Rutan working undercover,
who is so entrenched that he (they) gets his (their) tenses mixed up: “There would be time enough to resume a
normal life later, if he survived. If we
survive, he reminded himself – themselves – more forcefully.”
Said Rutan spy forms the main
link between Shakedown and Lords Of The
Storm, and I often wondered if it was even needed. Could the villain in Terrance Dicks’s book have
got by without this specific back-story?
But perhaps I’m just grouchy because our knowing the character’s name
makes it a very long wait for what otherwise would have been a decent twist. I half expected a lot of nudges towards the
fact that you may have already seen or read Shakedown, but it’s written
straight, and offers surprisingly little to tip the wink. When the reveal comes it’s still pretty
exciting, and it’s a very neat note to end on, give or take the corny final
sentence.
Fortunately there is an entire
novel besides the link to Shakedown, and indeed McIntee came up with this before
Shakedown even appeared on video. The plot
could easily survive without a link to anything else: the Sontarans just want
to lure the Rutan into a trap and then wipe a lot of them out, and the caste
system on Raghi makes it easier to trick them into thinking this is a planet
full of Sontarans. (I did wonder, given
how quickly Sontarans “reproduce” and how little they regard their “offspring”,
including as potential target practice, whether it would have been easier just
to breed a bunch of Sontarans and leave them there. It wouldn’t be cricket, I suppose, but
weighed against the number of Rutan killed?
I think they’d consider it.)
There isn’t a great deal of mystery to be had, hence the fairly patient
meting out of information as opposed to a series of shocking twists and
turns. The Doctor doesn’t twig that the
Sontarans are even involved until almost the halfway point, and then he just
nods and gets on with it. Similarly, the
disease raging through Raghi is an obvious consequence of their plan, and it
won’t be a problem for long. The various
interpersonal issues – Nur losing faith in her father, and struggling to
forgive a hypnotised collaborator who is also her arranged spouse – get swept
away as neatly as possible. McIntee’s
description of Lords as “not exactly
mind-expanding” is certainly accurate, but I wish it hadn’t been his mission
statement.
The Doctor and Turlough are in an
interesting place, i.e. the only Tegan-less existence they’ve ever known, but
despite a few references (and a poignantly half-hearted “Brave heart”) it’s
pretty much an ordinary day out for them.
The Doctor is proactive and useful, which for Five is something of a
relief. I liked the sympathetic
description of his having “that slightly
saddened air of one who’s seen too much suffering, regardless of his obvious
youth.” Turlough is charmingly close
to amoral in this, noting that “the
choice between possible hurt to others and certain hurt to himself was an easy
one to make.” There’s a degree of
overkill in so repeatedly telling us how dimly he views humankind and how
quickly he’d leave them to rot, and he skirts a little too tenuously on the
edges of the story. But there are also
enough references to his regal home life to suggest a subtle decline towards
the next televised story. A reference to
Kamelion does much the same thing, whilst also eyebrow-raisingly reminding me
that I tend to forget he exists. (For
the second time in the Missing Adventures, I find it odd that the book range
doesn’t do more to give this technologically challenged character some fresh
air. After all, they’re his only hope.)
I often wondered if this was my
Proverbial Good David A. McIntee Book, but that’s disingenuous. I haven’t hated anything he’s written, I just
tend to remember the irritating scaffolding surrounding the good bits. And there are always good bits, though they
tend to be one evocative action scene out of many: the crashing ship in White
Darkness, a plane falling out of the sky in First Frontier, a surprise attack
in Sanctuary. I’m not sure I could pick
a comparable highlight here, although the Prologue nearly throws its back out
in the attempt. Lords Of The Storm is a more streamlined effort, often literally,
as McIntee proves he’s entirely capable of describing things wittily and
concisely: “The planet was not alone in
its orbit; a necklace of sparkling jewellery encircled it and its tiny moon.” / “It was as if they were flying through a
universe of smoke, ready to leap at the source and fan the flames.” / “There was an uneasy silence, whose gradually
increasing length started the sergeant visualizing his opponent in the duelling
pit.” Lords does not have a cast of thousands or a need to change
channels all the time, so it’s an easier read than some of his other books. I’m not sure I would call it “upbeat and fun”
– a description largely based on his last book not being those things – but it’s steadily enjoyable.
All the same, the pervading sense
of casualness doesn’t add up to much.
The Doctor and Turlough aren’t wiser for having had this experience, and
neither am I; even it its best I couldn’t see myself reading it a second time. It’s a personal preference, and I know it’s
slightly unfair when you’re reading not just Doctor Who books but era one-shots, but I just don’t have a lot of
room on my shelf for stories that are happy just to get on with it and go home.
6/10
Next up: 66–70, starting with Just War by Lance Parkin...
Next up: 66–70, starting with Just War by Lance Parkin...
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