Edited by Andy Lane and Justin Richards
Time for more short stories, mostly by new writers, which is exciting. The theme here is consequences, and we’re leaning back towards the linked story format of Decalog 1: “Ten stories. Seven Doctors. One chain of events.” Interesting to see how the authors handle it, and whether anybody takes it literally and coughs up Revenge Of The Sensorites.
Let’s find out...
*
...And Eternity In An Hour
By Stephen Bowkett
We’re off to a dramatic start as
the Third Doctor and Jo are sent on a mission by the Time Lords. They must halt the spread of a colossal time
rift which is causing (among other things) horrific deaths on Alrakis. There are ideas aplenty, such as the TARDIS
having “intuition circuits”, which explains why it always arrives at pivotal
moments. (Fair enough, but personally I
like the New Who version: “I always took
you where you needed to go.”)
Plot-wise this feels like a full
story heavily condensed. The Doctor and
Jo are immediately separated when they arrive on Alrakis and promptly given
info-dumps by the people they meet. They
then march straight to the story’s climax.
(Jo does this by convincing the TARDIS to fly itself. Hmmmm.) It has a very busy and bleak ending
which would be even harder to swallow if we spent any time with the
characters. Stepping back and letting
the Alrakians sort it out / blow themselves up is novel, I guess, but it doesn’t suit these two, or quite tie off the
mission they’re on.
The writing is flowery and often
very evocative, particularly in describing the effects of the temporal disaster
and the Doctor explaining it all to Jo with dominoes. It’s a pleasure to read in places. But elsewhere the Doctor witters on a bit too
much even for Pertwee, and Jo has a philosophical nous that has simply come
from nowhere. (“Or was it, [Jo] wondered,
just making meaning out of chaos? Could it all be simply self-delusion, the
presence of prescience in a purposeful void?” And we are all together,
coo-coo-cachoo...)
It’s still quite nice to read a
mature and contemplative Jo, even if I don’t buy it. Same goes for the story.
*
Moving On
By Peter Anghelides
Well this is brilliant. I sort of wish it was a full Missing
Adventure, more out of enjoyment than there being anything lacking.
Sarah Jane Smith interviews an
unpleasant tech genius interested in Virtual Reality, sees him die in a traffic
accident, and then has a fairly odd time afterwards. (I know what you’re thinking, and to head off
any eye-rolls: it’s not that exactly.)
The story mostly concerns Sarah’s
life after the Doctor, struggling to make her career as a novelist and deal
with the gulf in understanding caused by travelling in the TARDIS for a few
years. K9 seems to be breaking down with
no hope of repair and no Doctor around to help him – or her. Wisps of her past crop up in creative ways,
and a sinister figure inadvertently allows her to get closure on the Doctor.
Just because Sarah is not happy
with him for letting her go does not mean she can’t have a life, and following
her blistering rebuke against a man that isn’t really there we jump to a Ten
Years Later epilogue. We find her
stronger, happier and putting the Doctor properly behind her. It’s bittersweet and brave, particularly the
extraordinary bit of writing that closes out the story, paralleling the fate of
K9 with Sarah’s old dog, Rab.
Peter Anghelides cares not for
spin-offs; everything has its time and everything dies. That sentiment, and therefore the story is
probably not for everyone, but it is definitely for Sarah.
NB: The villain turns out to be a
direct continuation from the first story, although the plot is
self-contained. A bit of a tightrope
walk in terms of theme; I’ve no idea how everybody else will approach it.
NB(2?): In the “Ten Years Later”
bit, Sarah’s new book is published by Virgin.
Aw.
*
Tarnished Image
By Guy Clapperton
This could technically be the
least eventful story in Doctor Who history. It features the First Doctor and Dodo doing
some reading in the TARDIS. The “story”
has been resolved already, so they read news correspondence about it and pick apart
the inaccuracies. Buckle up!
Actually it’s not a bad approach,
as we still have to find all the stuff out.
Plus it’s refreshing to come at a story from another perspective. The earlier events concern a planet ruled by
the Azmec Company and a series of ritualistic murders. The Doctor has theories on what caused them
and a possible conspiracy involving the Company. He and Dodo have been mistaken for actors
taking part in recent celebrations, but they are secretly investigating.
The Doctor and Dodo are well
written, although Guy Clapperton leans a bit hard on Dodo’s accent and the
Doctor’s mannerisms. (Sort of
understandable when you’re only here for 30-odd pages.) There is an enjoyable
oddness in chopping between the reports of what happened and the Doctor
disagreeing with or correcting them. The
main issue for me was the reporting itself, which isn’t supposed to be
brilliant – the Doctor bemoans how sensationalist and vague it is – but is
nonetheless so busy and full of interjection that I had difficulty following
it. I’m still not sure how the faked
holovid dénouement went down or if I’m supposed to recognise the Azmec Company
from something else. I initially missed the
link to the previous story, but the Disco Guide helped me out there. (It has to do with the holovid, so no wonder
I was befuddled.)
So yeah, it’s creative and it
more or less works, but the writing could have been tighter.
*
Past Reckoning
By Jackie Marshall
In another understated one, the
Fifth Doctor and Nyssa visit Trentillys Castle so he can see how some advice he
once gave has panned out. It turns out
not well, and the young man he met spent his inheritance and now the castle is
open to the public. Whoops.
This is at the same time a very
accurate Fifth Doctor, revelling in the role of blandly pleasant museum guide
for Nyssa, and also a rather ill-fitting one.
His determination not to visit Tegan – because she chose to leave and
that’s that – goes against his usual amiability, especially when adding in
Tom’s portentous line about walking in eternity. He shows an odd lack of regret for how his
advice took effect, and when said advice claims a second victim he cheerily
insists that he and Nyssa leave the corpse to be found by someone else. Pragmatic, yes, given how often he is
mistaken for a murderer due to bad timing, but it’s still unusually cold. He even gets in a bit more busy-bodying,
telling the soon-to-be-victim how to live her life. What a jerk.
It’s all very low-key as strolls
around country homes tend to be, but there are some apt bits of writing
describing a rather unhappy family’s day out.
The prose is generally delightful; I particularly liked the description
of a lake, “as sleek and placid as a
pampered cat.” There are some poignant moments, especially a woman’s
furious response to the Doctor’s meddling.
(Is a lot of Decalog 3 going to be people shouting at him?) However a
quick reminder of Nyssa’s tragic past just underlines how weirdly
under-utilised that bit of dramatic fodder has been. Such indifference suits the Doctor in this
story: a callous interior added uncomfortably to our usually milquetoast Boy
Scout.
NB: An item directly links this
to the previous story.
*
UNITed We Fall
By Keith R. A. DeCandido
Let’s just hurry past the title,
shall we? “You Knitted, We Fall”?
Half a decade into his
retirement, the Brigadier is still having to justify UNIT’s expenses. An apparent stroke of luck brings the Doctor
(avec scarf) to New York where he can testify that UNIT needed the funding way
back when, but he’s early so he slinks off to take in some museums.
The real reason for his summons
is a man whose life took a downward turn in the last story, all because of the
Doctor. He has manipulated the UNIT
hearing together, recalled the TARDIS and
built a bomb with the Doctor’s own equipment, hoping to take the Time Lord
out. He’s not to know that he has an
earlier incarnation of the Doctor, and wouldn’t care if he did.
Things promptly escalate to the
man panicking and trying to shoot the Doctor dead. Having survived through the usual mix of
being light on his feet and knowing how to stall, the Doctor rushes back to the
UN to defuse the bomb, sending the (considerable) explosion ahead in time and
knowing it will have consequences there.
That’s two stories in a row that make a slightly laborious point of
stressing that there are consequences; a bit clunky.
There’s not a lot to say about
this one – a quick, action-driven story that directly follows Past Reckoning
and leaves things open for the next story.
It’s as spirited as the Doctor haring through New York amid gunshots,
and it works, but aside from the wronged villain and a few amusing insights
into the Brigadier as he adjusts to retirement – his sense of humour coming
more into focus – there’s no particular substance.
*
Aliens And Predators
By Colin Brake
Am I clutching at straws, or is
that a highly unimaginative pseudonym?
Anyway, another not-exactly-deep
story places the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe on a ship harbouring the last
remains of humanity, in data and DNA form.
The Hope is under attack from
the Other. (Nothing to do with the
Doctor’s shady New Adventures past.) They’re bigged up as basically the worst
life form in the universe, the Doctor even saying they’ve evolved evil (!) and
there’s no turning back for them, and in the scant page-count we can’t really
back any of that up. The supporting cast
of tell-don’t-show bad guys and ostensibly good androids aren’t terribly
interesting, nor are the space battles.
Also the links to previous / future stories are too obscure. The humans assume the Doctor is his Seventh
incarnation, and the artwork he leaves behind in a gallery is presumably for a
future story. The explanation for the
TARDIS signal that brought him here – presumably the one from UNITed We Fall –
is somewhat bungled and unclear.
There’s the germ of something
emotional here, as the Other represent a different path for humanity and the Hope is pretty much doomed, with
humanity’s custodian androids choosing oblivion to resolve the conflict. But there’s no time to reflect on any of that
in a short story, which makes it all a bit of a wasted effort.
The Doctor, Jamie and Zoe acquit
themselves, but the prose isn’t brilliant (spotted an apostrophe error, deary
me) and it’s a bit late in the “chain” to be so wilfully vague. It didn’t do much for me.
*
Fegovy
By Gareth Roberts
Good old Gareth Roberts. His style of snippy comedic writing suits the
Sixth Doctor very well, and this little jaunt concerning an auction of –
wouldn’t you know it – thoroughly unlikeable people makes for a fun 30 pages.
Numerous alien races have come to
bid for the painting the Doctor was given at the end of Aliens And
Predators. (I’m not entirely clear if he
placed it in this story’s past or future; probably the former.) Fegovy, the
computer intelligence hosting the auction, naturally has other plans. The thoroughly beastly Miss Monodine will
probably let her temper scupper the whole thing.
Roberts writes a note-perfect
Sixth Doctor, indulgently verbose and brashly confident. “His
eyes glazed over, which [Mel] recognised as a bad sign. ‘Did I say breakthrough? Too meek a
word. No, our work will be a positive
confutation to the sceptics. A bold
charge through the flummery, a vital strike against the purist hordes!’ Mel sniffed.”
(He would do it again, with Clayton Hickman, in the sublime The One Doctor.)
Mel gets kidnapped, talks her way out of it and otherwise handles the Doctor’s
hot air with aplomb. She’s not as
annoying as usual, thank heaven.
The supporting cast are typical
Roberts, so a bunch of back-biting low lives including some Chelonians. He does this sort of thing brilliantly, it's just that (as in the case of Zamper) it can result in diminishing returns when stretched
to a novel. He’s always good for
scrumptious prose and frothy dialogue: the Doctor notes that the New
Alexandrians have displayed “some
leanings to learnings”, and at one point a door breaks down into “buttery gobbets”. Yum.
The whole thing fits the short
story remit very nicely, neatly using an element from a previous story
(although still not explaining how it had a TARDIS signal embedded, or some
such – I’m probably being thick). It
doesn’t exactly leave the door open for the next story, but it’s excellent all
the same.
*
Continuity Errors
By Steven Moffat
Wow, obviously.
As a really cool Doctor Who fan who knows where it’s at,
I’ve talked a lot of smack about Steven Moffat.
He’s written an awful lot of Doctor
Who, including a measurable amount of awful Doctor Who, but on a good day his interpretation of the character
and what he means to those around him is thought-provoking. It puts the show in a new light, like how you
feel about towels after reading Douglas Adams.
Again, that’s on a good day – these ideas have had a lot of airtime over his years as
scriptwriter and showrunner for Who,
so not every one’s a winner, or can be indefinitely. Consequently some of the shine might have
disappeared from this, his first (?) published Who story, now that I’ve got around to it.*
Yeah, nope. Continuity Errors explores some of the themes
he’d come back to later**, in particular the Doctor’s relative omnipotence when
it comes to time and the moral ambiguity of his doing terrible things for good
reasons, or wonderful things for selfish reasons. There is a running thread of lecture notes
concerning, in that fourth-wall-bothering way Moffat made seven years of telly
out of, the Doctor and his various facets.
Is he our friend? Do any of his friends think it’s odd that everyone in
the universe speaks English? Does he just discard them when he gets bored? But
even this, the closest Continuity Errors comes to over-egging it and having me
reach, with a smug grin, for the “Con” column, is ultimately not as simple as
it seems and is put to smart use.
The whole thing revolves around
the New Alexandrian Library (mooted in Fegovy) where the Doctor cannot get a
librarian to lend him a particular book.
She is written at first very much in Bernice’s vein, all smart-alec
observations (oh good GOD do I miss her smart-alec observations, and oh hi
Bernice as well, welcome back, stay!), but there is a thunderous misanthropy
which will be very important later. Of
course it’s also biting and hilarious. “You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I haven’t
memorised the entire stock, consisting, as it does, of every word ever written
by a sentient being. I had yesterday
off.” Her inner gripes do not feel like gimmicks even though they are the
meat of the story’s machinations.
The Doctor is written
beautifully, forgoing the obvious Oncoming Storm ominousness that, to be
honest, would befit his actions in this story, for a more Season 24 portrayal. At first.
He has “the gap-toothed smile –
no, grin – of a seven-year-old
delightedly showing his mother some worms he’d found in the garden.” He “seemed likely to suggest they bunk off
school together and raid an orchard.” He’s friendly and unassuming, until
she figures out who/what he is and says no, flat out. Then he sneaks off and suddenly little things
we’ve already taken on board about the librarian begin to shift, from her
thoughts on Bernice’s earrings to the number of people she’s disliked today to
her relationships and, in a passage that made my head spin in a good way, a
memory that alters in real time as she’s remembering it. I.
Still. Have. Goosebumps.
The librarian is impressively resilient and the Doctor is
relentless. The tug of war is earned,
thrilling and deliciously creative. The
whole thing veers between dark and hilarious.
All through this we have Bernice
wandering in and out, charmingly up to no good as well, and able to observe the
shenanigans from the outside. (Time
traveller’s privilege, I guess.) She’s note-perfect too, from the diary
post-its to the quest for a minibar to, best of all, a resigned and even
affectionate understanding of what the Doctor is. She’s done her time being mad at him. All of which adds up to me wishing Moffat had
done a full New Adventure for them both.
Let’s face it, the ideas expounded here would fit right in. But as with an earlier very enjoyable story
in Decalog 3, that’s not because this short story is missing anything. Continuity Errors fills its space exactly,
says its piece and vanishes triumphant.
It’s perfect. Keep forever.
* A recent Big Finish story,
Asking For A Friend, maybe took some of the shine away as it has a suspiciously
similar premise. But I generally like
James Goss and the story – which has some important differences, namely the
Doctor’s motivation – is also brilliant, so I’m going with unconscious
plagiarism.
** Though not all of them. I still think of The Curse Of Fatal Death as
the Moffat era’s Rosetta Stone: the nudge-wink jokes and the show-off time
travel one-upsmanship are unmistakeable.
(So I guess Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey is the real Rosetta Stone?)
*
Timevault
By Ben Jeapes
This isn’t half bad, but the
goalposts have moved a bit in recent pages.
The Doctor and K9 are aboard the
cargo ship Collateral Security, the Doctor having bought himself passage by making
some repairs and improvements. He quite
enjoys the voyage and admires his efficient hosts, the Lorq – who will store
anything, for anyone, so long as it’s paid for.
But then a virulent disease breaks out, followed by something worse: a
life-form the Time Lords knew long ago, which can be transmitted in the cure.
The Crialans are perhaps not the
most original idea, and they’re the second Big Bad alien in this collection,
but they have more going for them than the Other. A race who only exist as bacteria, members of
which are created wholesale when the bacteria is spread and take control of
their hosts, they have a pretty good grievance with the Time Lords: they got
Continuity Errored, so now there are only two left. For the Doctor to get rid of any Crialans he
essentially has to kill them, which he does to a newborn to save a young Lorq
he’s befriended. It’s a dark
observation, but they helpfully don’t leave him a lot of options, making it
clear they 1) take people over against their will and 2) will not accept
anything less than the universe under their command. It lets the air out of a moral dilemma
somewhat when you stack the deck, but a truly cruel attack wouldn’t suit the
Fourth Doctor anyway, especially in a story where he is otherwise his affable,
jelly-baby-sharing self. He’s well
written here, and his relationship with the young boy is charming.
I mean, this is absolutely
fine. No complaints. The story holds together and it doesn’t feel
too small for what it is. There’s just not
a lot that’s remarkable about it. The
Time Lord meddling referred to here is executed far more literally and
interestingly in the preceding story, and although there is an overall theme of
consequences – being the Time Lord war, I guess – there’s nothing much linking
it to the rest of Decalog 3. (There is a
reference to an Institute which references Continuity Errors, but I had to look
that up.) It would work better in less prestigious company.
*
Zeitgeist
By Craig Hinton
We ride out Decalog 3 with a bit
of technobabble. The Fifth Doctor and
Turlough arrive on Heracletus seemingly at the behest of the Time Lords, only
to get separated in time; the much talked about Spline, a form of time machine that
will allow the Heracletans to benefit from their own future, is surely
responsible.
This works quite neatly, dividing
its time (ahem) between the two versions of the planet and leaving us to guess
what has happened there. There’s an
enjoyable symmetry to the Doctor and Turlough both investigating the same
building in different times, but reality gets decidedly complicated towards the
end. As you’ll likely guess, it’s a
self-fulfilling-prophecy kind of deal, and the “consequences” here partly rest
on the Doctor turning up at all. There is also an unhappy epilogue to the Doctor’s new friendship in Timevault,
which he never actually clocks.
The Doctor is well written, but
Turlough gets more opportunities to shine, bringing his patented brand of
exasperation to a people that don’t appear to make sense. He is neatly described as being a mixture of
cowardice and bravery. It all ends
unsurprisingly on a bleak note, far from the collection’s first.
It’s another one that does its
job well, but isn’t going to set the world alight. Decent sci-fi fodder.
*
And that’s Decalog 3, apart from
a cheeky Afterword from Steven Moffat that adds another Christmas decoration to
the Continuity Errors tree. (It comes a
bit closer to over-egging it, but then he’d come a lot closer by pretending he
was going to reveal the Doctor’s name decades later, so eh.)
This is ostensibly the last one,
or the last in this format: there will be no more Decalogs featuring the
Doctors. I think the format went out on
a high, finding a middle ground between a bunch of stories that are tied to a
central one (Decalog) and just having a linking theme (Decalog 2). That said, this is often more about
continuity than consequences; some of the links are a bit obscure, and there’s
really no overall domino effect at work.
I don’t mind. The stories are
generally of a good standard, and there are several real standouts. It’s worth seeking out, with a touch of
essential reading.
8/10
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