#46
Just War
By Lance Parkin
Doctor Who novels, meet Lance Parkin. The soon to be ubiquitous writer arrives with
the satisfying crump of a grenade in Just War; along with The Also People
(and in a sane world, Sky Pirates!) it isn’t so much “Love it or hate it” among
fans as “Love it or what’s wrong with you?”
Even trying to keep my objective hat on, it’s difficult to believe this
is his first novel.
What’s so good about it? Well as morbid as this sounds, setting it in
the Second World War has the odd effect of whispering “This is going to be good” before you’ve even started. Just
War begins “Once upon a time, when
the world was black and white”, and where could the stakes of good and evil
be clearer? That iconography is part of Doctor Who, thanks to certain shrieking
pepper-despots who live to exterminate their inferiors. One of their (best) stories is a resounding
echo of the Blitz. Also one of the earliest
New Adventures, Terrance Dicks’s Exodus, melds the old “What if Hitler won the
war?” gag into a thrilling Back To
The Future II riff. War is hell, but
it makes good copy. You just know where
you are with this stuff.
But then, is any of it new? Just
War is set during the war for the express reason that the Germans will apparently
win, and the Doctor and co. must find out how that happened. Isn’t that a bit too close to Exodus? I approached it with some trepidation over
that, but in the end Parkin handles the subject differently. There is no Nazi-ravaged (or worse,
Nazi-but-not-that-bad) future to shock us into action. In what is now the time honoured structure of
Doctor-Benny-Roz-Chris books (and I am in no hurry to complain), they are
already in the thick of it, carefully living through the past with the
uncomfortable knowledge that soon it will all go wrong – or at least more wrong, it being WW2. They don’t know how, where or exactly
why. The book takes its time circling
back to there even being an alternate
future we need to avoid, for the most part simply playing out its war story on
several fronts. I occasionally thought,
well it’s all very good, but are we sure
it needed the Doctor and co. at all?
Also, Nazis, evil: yup. Did we really
need another memo to confirm that?
One of the book’s strengths is
that Parkin seems fully aware of the stories you’ve already heard, and he came
prepared. Hitler doesn’t feature at
all. Most of the action occurs in the
small, oddly critical island of Guernsey.
When it comes to the Nazis they will obviously act like Nazis, but
they’re also going to provide reasoned debate as to why they do what they do; quite
a lot of words are spent on it. And the
heroes will do questionable or downright awful things. Yes, this includes the Doctor – pretty much
mandatory, isn’t it? – but for once there’s plenty of blame to share. It’s altogether more thoughtful than just a
mission to put history on its correct course.
The here and now matters, probably more so.
Bernice is living in Guernsey
under an assumed name. (This won’t hide
her effervescent personality from the reader, and in any case it doesn’t last,
so this probably isn’t a spoiler.) The
first chapter is a seasoned atmosphere-builder about life in that time, and
it’s full of pregnant looks and things unsaid, as German soldiers act like they
own the place and life tries awkwardly to go on around them. I assumed the book would linger there, as
does Bernice, but things quickly escalate: a retrieval attempt from the Doctor
goes badly wrong, and Bernice kills a young Nazi. She does this for good reasons, wanting to
protect the identities of the women who have sheltered her, and she does it
almost without thinking – it’s shockingly quick. Soon she’s so appalled by what she’s done
that when the time comes for the Nazis to retaliate, gunning down civilians at
random to clarify the pecking order, she crumbles and surrenders.
Her interrogation goes almost
exactly as you would expect, humiliation and torture in quick succession, but
Parkin uses it to examine her character.
She is ordered to strip naked; she does so much easier than they would expect,
even offering pithy commentary at her different social mores. All the time she is afraid and her resolve
wobbles. Later, sleep-deprived and
wounded, having told her real life story a bunch of times to no avail, she is
so beaten down and delirious that she thinks “If this Doctor existed, he would have rescued [me] by now.” The bravado is a front, as readers know by now, but more importantly
a survival instinct. The layers of
sneering cleverness are (of course) like the post-it note revisions plastered
over her diary: false, but also intrinsically who she is. I’ve wanted her to shed a few of those snarky
layers for ages – perhaps not this literally! – and admit a little
more frailty than she’d rather. Just War gives her both barrels. (I’m not surprised Big Finish felt confident
enough to adapt it without any Doctor Who
rights. It’s quintessential Benny.)
We get all of that without taking
the most obvious route, all but destroying her.
Bernice hates herself for Gerhard’s death, but it was what she had to
do. She is broken by her torturers, but is
also more than able to get away under her own steam; we don’t even dwell on how
she does it, her confident pre-summary being more than sufficient. She traps her “nurse” in a morgue drawer,
uncertain of whether there’s enough air inside, because guilt over a murder
isn’t the end of this fight and she has every right to retaliate. Bernice isn’t perfect and she doesn’t always
do nice things. As noted in The Also
People, it’s a commonality with the Doctor that is becoming more apparent.
Their relationship (in general,
but pointedly here) also doesn’t take the obvious route. The Doctor ostensibly betrays her by letting
Wolff torture her, leaving her to get away on her own. The obvious thing would be to put another
brick in the wall of “I shouldn’t trust you and I’ll be going soon”, ala Ace,
but Bernice has always seen the Doctor a bit more clearly. When he apologises it is enough for her
(although she won’t tell him right away!), and soon after her ordeal she writes a
very sweet note asking him to come and rescue her, leaving it safely stowed for
the future, Doc Brown style. (Who had
The House At Allen Road? New Adventures
Bingo!) The thing is, he tried – but the TARDIS overshot. When the inevitable telling off arrives, because she did wind up tortured by Nazis after all, there’s nothing he could realistically have done better. (And even if he wanted to, the note confirms that she made it to Allen Road on her own; he’d be messing with time if he got her out of Guernsey prematurely. Come to think of it, maybe that’s why he missed?) All of which is probably why, once he isn’t looking, Bernice quietly lets him off the hook.
Parkin has plenty of time for the
other regulars, most notably Roz. She
has a practical wit that marks her out from Benny, noting that a pretty ’40s
roadster is “Great. But trust me, it’ll never get off the ground.” The dreaded
romance-that-surely-will-not-work-out lands on her, as she begins a gentle love
affair with a young British soldier.
Again, the author knows you’re
all expecting him to get blown up or torn away, so Roz goes into this clarifying
that she won’t be here long. Their
scenes are genuinely intimate and the attraction has legs. Her prickly exterior soon feels as necessary
and callused as Bernice’s frivolity, and just as much not the only thing about
her.
For one thing, her ingrained racism
is an odd theme the books are commendably sticking with, and it had to come to
the fore in this. Bernice acknowledges
it offhand: “Perhaps she was turning into
a racist. Or alienist. Whatever Roz was.” There is a knowingly awkward reference to Roz
being “pure”, unlike the cosmetic-surgery addicts of her time. She is as proud of her direct lineage –
however badly she feels she has let down her family – as certain other characters
wearing different uniforms. When it
comes to violence and killing, she hasn’t the remorse of Bernice, or even
(you’d hope) an Adjudicator. Corruption and
violence were everyday in Original Sin, which is why she and Chris left the
Overcity, so why is she so ready to put a man’s eye out? (The man is a particularly cruel Nazi and if anyone had it coming... but even he has
an inner moment of regret at torturing Bernice, admitting only to himself that
she doesn’t deserve it.) Roz is one of
the good guys, but she’s very far from perfect.
Although to add even more
complexity, in what is rapidly looking like moral ping-pong, Roz doesn’t know
that people in the twentieth century can’t regrow eyes…
Chris, meanwhile, throws himself
into the adventure, and he’s the only one thinking of it in those terms. (As Roz notes hilariously: “Cwej, of course, thinks that the ‘costumes’
are wonderful.”) He merrily breaks a
Nazi’s neck because, apart from getting rid of him, it’ll impress a girl. All this provides interesting context to Roz
and Bernice, but I’m beginning to worry that Chris won’t develop at all. Yes, he’s enjoyable, but how many times can
we hit the “Loveable handsome idiot” note?
Parkin isn’t terrible for doing the same thing as everyone else here,
but somebody has to take the damn plunge some day. At any rate, the Doctor is the only one here
that doesn’t directly murder anybody. Wolff is correct when he expresses concern
about the so-called heroic people of the future, the ones on the “right” side
of all this. (Speaking of which, this
being war an utter atrocity happens in the book, and it’s the Allies that did it.) Ultimately the divisions of good and evil are
what they are – the Doctor is unequivocal about who is in the right,
successfully talking a Nazi into suicide by ticking off the failures of fascism
– but Parkin doesn’t make it easy.
There is a careful, practiced quality
to the book, which makes it very readable and often surprising. I had to admire the skill at dropping in
something of relatively no import, like the Doctor’s disappointment at having
his pockets emptied of dog biscuits – on the face of it, simply adding to his
funny little ways – only to turn it into something plot-relevant later on. And without wishing to spoil the thing completely, the
history-altering problem at the heart of Just
War is not the devious chess game of doom you’re expecting, nor the
unimaginable alien superweapon it’s built up as, but a significantly improved
war machine created by a wrong thing said in front of the right person. The Doctor is someone who could change history
with a well-chosen phrase, and it’s absolutely fair game to show the worst case
scenario of that. Despite that power he is not the
terrible, dark Doctor he’s built up as: sometimes he makes mistakes, hence Bernice’s harrowing run-in with Wolff. Isn’t that more interesting than just harping
on about how nasty people are? (It’s
here, in particular the book’s torture scenes, that I think of the novels that
get this so wrong. It’s easy to pile on
the violence and the misery and say “Look at this, isn’t it awful.” It’s interesting to pick all that apart and
show the other side.)
Indeed, Parkin has time for
light, whimsical touches. I loved the
bit(s) about dog biscuits, and the observation that the Doctor doesn’t leave
footprints in the sand, plus his seemingly magical reflection. I dislike mythologizing the Doctor (looking
at you, New Who) but gently blurring
the line between a sci-fi genius and a figure of unknowable oddity is all to
the good, done well. He also pulls a few
loveably silly faces – which Roz amusingly thinks of when the Doctor is
mistaken for a criminal mastermind – and disguises himself as a nun at one
point, and gets away with it. (I don’t want to say anyone is wrong for
thinking the Doctor stays in the habit for the rest of the book, what with
Parkin never explicitly removing it, but I think context makes it fairly clear
he isn’t making with the Sister Act the whole time. It would certainly put the Russian Roulette scene
in a new light.) There are several
fourth-wall-prodding references to the Brigadier’s favourite anecdote, and the
Doctor’s nom de plume literally being “Doctor Who” in a different language, which
he has used on screen. It’s a heavy
story about war and the things people to do survive and win it, but it’s not a
grim or depressing book. Bernice gets
tortured, sure. But she gets away, recovers
and sees her friends again. It’s a
succinct book, not morbidly dwelling on anything.
Perfect? Well, even after all that a part of me finds
it tiresome to again point the finger
of moral terribleness at the Doctor, however thoughtfully Parkin does it. And the book collects quite a few typos towards
the end, with occasionally missing bits, a speech mark replaced with a semi-colon
and in one whoops-hilarious moment, calling Chris “Christ”. I could understand this stuff in the early
days of the range, but they’ve been at it years now and this sort of thing is
preventable. But let’s face it, the buck
doesn’t entirely stop with the author, and it makes as much sense to penalise
the novel for that as for a dodgy front cover.
Eye on the prize, then: Just War
is a straight-out-of-the-gate winner, doing a host of familiar things in new
and interesting ways. The prose is
lovely, the plot is extremely neat and most of the characters are more interesting for
the experience. Pass the rubber stamp we
reserve for special occasions.
9/10
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