#51
GodEngine
By Craig Hinton
Boring.
Well, why dress it up? Some of these novels are great and deserve to
be rediscovered. Some are
abominable. But there’s a hefty chunk of
fillery fan fiction that just sort of... exists. Books like GodEngine are what most people think of when you say you’re reading
a tie-in novel.
As just about any of his
reviewers will tell you, Craig Hinton coined the term “fanwank”. Perhaps the reason it keeps coming up is
that, despite nailing the perfectly disdainful term for it, he kept practising
it. GodEngine
isn’t as knowingly silly as The Crystal Bucephalus or as creative as Millennial Rites, so a lot of the continuity references just sit uselessly on top of the
text. You expect this from fans, but
you’d hope that published writers – fans or otherwise – would rise above it.
Setting your story alongside The
Dalek Invasion Of Earth? You’d better
have a random bit-part be related to one of its characters. Need a tragic back story? Room for references there! (“He
had lost his job as a psychometric assessor at IMC because he had become hooked
on vraxoin.”) Remember to chuck in
nods to Tereleptils, Nimons, Magnus Greel, Professor Kettlewell – anything so
that we don’t forget we’re reading Doctor
Who. Although if you can also elbow
Star Trek and, sod it, Die Hard then you might get some bonus points. (Let’s call them garyrussells.) And hey,
going back to Dalek Invasion Of Earth, why not retcon that story’s central
(admittedly very silly) plot device into something of your own? It’s lazier than making up your own thing
wholesale, but everyone loves that story so... maybe that’ll rub off somehow?
It’s surprisingly not the first
New Adventure to skirt around The Dalek Invasion Of Earth (Lucifer Rising did
it better), but at least this one has some added novelty value. Holy crap, there are Daleks in this?! Er... sort of. Numerous books have alluded to or even shown
them a bit before, but I suspect GodEngine
goes as far as Virgin’s permissions will allow.
The Daleks are after the titular thingumabob; their ships blow up a moon
some of our character are sitting on; a Dalek communicates via hologram; and
the resident humans still don’t know what Daleks are. This keeps them in the
shadows, and the actual word count of “Dalek” is kept to a minimum. (Do the Nation Estate count words? I wouldn’t rule it out.) The New Adventures more than survived without
a licence to exterminate, but it’s still exciting to glimpse the
pepperpots. The new series and Big
Finish have a tendency to overdo them, so the restraint here is
refreshing. But it’s probably the only
example of restraint in the novel, and I think Hinton oversteps the mark by
changing their motivation in that earlier story. That’s not adding to a previous script,
that’s rewriting it.
As for what he’s rewriting it with... whatever you think the GodEngine
is, it’s probably more interesting than what he comes up with. The book endlessly oohs and ahhs over its big
scary namesake – and yes, “GodEngine” is
a lazy “Ooh isn’t this epic” name for a Big Bad – and eventually bursts the
balloon with... a death ray. A big-ass
death ray, make no mistake, but 200 pages is still an awfully long wait for “I
dunno, the thing from Star Wars or whatever?”
Still, I’m undecided whether that
is the dampest squib here. How about the
destruction of the TARDIS? Heavy,
laboured sigh… no reader is going to
buy that for a nanosecond, and any story or characterisation built on such an
obvious fake-out – for instance, the Doctor suddenly turning into a moody, xenophobic
jerk – is entirely redundant. But GodEngine soldiers on, handing you the
ultimate blowy-uppiness of the TARDIS in deadly earnest and honestly expecting
you to take that as read. It’s a naff,
obvious shock, and one of many decisions that make me surprised this is Craig
Hinton’s third book, and not his first go at fan-fiction that fell down the
back of his hard drive.
Of course there are other indicators,
such as the prose, which wobbles between ghastly and laughable. Hinton was already over-fond of chopping and
changing in The Crystal Bucephalus, but he’s absolutely mad about it here. We initially leap between 1) the Doctor, Roz
and some colonists on Mars, 2) Chris and some scientists on Charon, 3) a group
of Ice Warriors and 4) another group of Ice Warriors, but they soon mix it up a
bit so we can follow Chris on his own, some of the scientists, various
internecine Ice Warrior struggles and more.
For me, nothing stops ongoing tension like changing the setting every
half a page. Nothing builds. But then,
wherever we are we’re stuck with wooden characters, and that includes the
regulars.
They’re not helped by the prose or
the dialogue, which are creaky even on a technical level. Hinton can’t distinguish between interesting
details and technobabble, so you end up with turgid claptrap like “it was an optical illusion caused by the
universe’s interaction with the primary subspace meniscus”, or endless
dramatic moments hinging on a “subspace infarction”, or just fantasy gloop like
“Thanks to the Fississ-cal-oon, Aklaar,
Cleece, Esstar and Sstaal had reached Ikk-ett-Saleth.” Jesus, imagine it as an audiobook! Most of the book is a trek through the
innards of Mars, but it never feels very important that anyone gets anywhere,
and none of the locations or perils stand out.
Hinton is obsessed with putting
the other character’s name into every line, so it’s “But wait, Doctor,” then “What
is it, Roz”, even when there’s only two characters in the room. Some names get said three or four times per
page – it’s like the characters can’t understand who is speaking unless there’s
a formal invitation. Heartfelt moments
are often signified by a touch on the arm – or in one not-meant-to-be-hilarious
moment, two separate arm-touches on the same guy – and sometimes you get a bit
of both. “Sstaal squeezed McGuire’s hand. ‘I
can only [forgive you] once you have forgiven yourself. And that, Antony, is going to be the hardest
thing of all.’” As for how Hinton
handles the Ice Warriors, that was one speaking, so yeah, they sound just as
clumsily melodramatic as everyone else here.
We do find out that their hand-clamps are just wildly impractical
gloves, and there’s a bit where one of them gets his genitals out, so that’s like, two garyrussells right there,
probably?
Meanwhile, back-story is
unspooled like we’re using it to put out fires.
One angry character dislikes Martians, as well as people who like
Martians: “Bleeding heart liberal! McGuire’s wife and children were dead because
the Martians had acted first.” / “McGuire
blamed the Ice Warriors for the death of his wife and children; discovering
that one of the party was preparing to give birth to a new generation of
Martians probably wasn’t the best news that he could have received.” The prose is always happy to wade in and
point out the obvious, or better yet ask an inane rhetorical question. “[She]
began to wonder about this mysterious Michael. He had obviously influenced Rachel’s feelings
towards Martians, but how, why?”
/ “Had the destruction of the TARDIS been the final straw; was he cracking
up on them?” / “‘Is
that important?’ Obviously it was, but
given the Doctor’s current reticence to engage in conversation, such questions
were necessary, just to keep him talking.”
/ “‘Any good ideas?’ Because she
certainly didn’t have any.” / “‘Professor
Anders? The head of the ill-fated Charon
research project?’ She nodded. Who was this odd-looking man? ‘And you?’” GodEngine’s
characters sound like absolute idiots, mentally narrating a film trailer from
the ’50s and prefacing or underlining every thought. I was willing the death ray to explode.
So we come to the regulars, and…
oh dear. It seems safe to assume that
Hinton intended Bernice to be in this one, as 1) it’s a novel primarily about
Mars and Ice Warriors, and 2) the novel never
shuts up about the fact that Bernice isn’t in it, even ending with a
Martian symbolically giving Roz a book of Martian lore… to give to Benny at
some point, even though he hasn’t met her.
Roz is somewhat out of sorts here, making occasional efforts towards
flippancy and getting teary-eyed at the sight of the TARDIS (oh shoot, spoiler
alert?), and generally feeling like a dodgy Bernice substitute. (But we do get some Rozzy signifiers with
typical GodEngine grace: “But xenophobia’s my province, isn’t it?”) Chris spends most of his time away from the
Doctor, believing – as the Doctor and Roz do of him – that his friends are
dead. This is as compelling as when
Hinton “killed off” Tegan and Turlough in Bucephalus.
There are two varyingly unfriendly groups of Martians in this, and Chris has run-ins with the worst of them, eventually going on a one-man terrorist spree to distract them, using tools given to him by the Doctor. He’s really chuffed with this, and so is the Doctor: “That was a very nice bit of terrorism.” At one point it’s confirmed that 200 Martians died because of it. Very nice work, indeed. For good measure, Roz becomes suspicious of one of the humans, who it turns out committed several murders during their journey. They bond, her motivation turns out to be sort of for the good of mankind, and then Roz and co. just sort of forget about the murdering bit. Charming. Still, we shouldn’t be asking the Doctor any moral questions, as he thinks the TARDIS has been destroyed, which apparently gives him cart blanche to make xenophobic assumptions about Martians, long past the point when it’s demonstrated again that their society has facets just like anybody else’s. Who. Are. These. People?
There are two varyingly unfriendly groups of Martians in this, and Chris has run-ins with the worst of them, eventually going on a one-man terrorist spree to distract them, using tools given to him by the Doctor. He’s really chuffed with this, and so is the Doctor: “That was a very nice bit of terrorism.” At one point it’s confirmed that 200 Martians died because of it. Very nice work, indeed. For good measure, Roz becomes suspicious of one of the humans, who it turns out committed several murders during their journey. They bond, her motivation turns out to be sort of for the good of mankind, and then Roz and co. just sort of forget about the murdering bit. Charming. Still, we shouldn’t be asking the Doctor any moral questions, as he thinks the TARDIS has been destroyed, which apparently gives him cart blanche to make xenophobic assumptions about Martians, long past the point when it’s demonstrated again that their society has facets just like anybody else’s. Who. Are. These. People?
It’s obvious from the afterword
that Craig Hinton wanted to do the Ice Warriors proud, but for whatever reason,
a good novel was not the result. All his
worst writerly habits have a field day – there’s no grasp of the characters,
new or established, no compelling drive to the story, but significant time is given to fanwank. Viewing it charitably, it’s bland and
by-the-numbers, you’ve read worse.
But viewing it now, having just spent what felt like 58 years on a load of
thankless dreck, I’m annoyed they let it escape.
3/10
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