#57
Bad Therapy
By Matthew Jones
There’s something unfortunate about this one. Bad Therapy is the first post-Roz novel, but thanks to the So Vile A Sin debacle it ended up sort of being her exit as well. It opens with an awkward apology for the inconvenience and contains many references to the Doctor and Chris trying to cope without her, but there’s nothing too specific about what actually happened to her. I suspect it had an unreal quality at the time; if you weren’t clued up you might hope that they were just Doing A Thing and Roz would show up at the end.
If you were reading the New Adventures as they came out then this one followed Damaged Goods. That almost seems deliberate, as Bad Therapy inhabits a similar urban space. Set in London, 1958 – a slightly unconventional/unfamous period to visit, as was 1987 – it opens with a young gay man encountering what appears to be racial violence and intervening to help someone. He then finds himself facing the TARDIS (which blocks his escape) and pleads for help from the police, but no one’s home, and he gets mortally wounded. Later his boyfriend, Jack, is hounded by a blackmailer over his relationship. Private sexualities, urban crime and the fallibility of the Doctor were fodder for Russell T Davies. Matthew Jones explores similar territory here.
There’s something sadly apt about the team’s failure to be there for Eddy, almost as if the absence of Roz takes a vital cog out of the machine. (The Doctor finds Eddy and takes him to a hospital, but it’s still not enough to save him.) Things definitely aren’t okay between the time travellers, who spend most of the book apart. The Doctor and Chris have been travelling but hardly communicating: “Over the last month they had fallen into the habit of leaving messages taped to the control console. Sometimes it was easier than talking.” / “[It was] like an estranged father weekending with his son.”
I was concerned about the choice of a first time novelist for this particular book – not because first time novelists are automatically bad (see Damaged Goods) or because Matthew Jones isn’t good (see his Decalog 2 story), but because it’s so crucial to understand these characters and where they’re at right now that you might expect it to go to an old hand instead. Happily Matthew Jones was a good fit, especially when it comes to the character writing. The Doctor has changed a lot over these books, earning a rep as a morally grey game player but latterly becoming more relatable and sympathetic. After the loss of Roz it makes sense to lean into the more vulnerable, human side of him, which Bad Therapy does with aplomb. “Roz used to say that the Doctor was a one-thousand-year-old toddler. Constantly enchanted and surprised by the universe as he encountered it. Despite being envious of such an innocent view of the world, they both knew that this was only half the picture. The other half was only rarely glimpsed and, like a mountain seen through mist, could never be wholly comprehended.” / “He was a gentler man now, softer, more… human.”
Jones has a knack for the Doctor’s fun peculiarities as well, which reminded me of Jim Mortimore and Andy Lane. “The Doctor leapt to his feet and hurried over, stopping only to throw the book into a nearby dustbin and tuck the apple core carefully away into his pocket.” / “The Doctor was in the passenger seat wrestling with an Ordnance Survey map, which flapped wildly around him, like a panic-stricken swan. For some inexplicable reason, his hat appeared to be entirely wind-resistant.” / “…rolling his R’s with more enthusiasm than skill.” His ease at making new friends is firmly on display when he bonds with Jack Bartlett, who the book goes to some lengths to suggest as a possible companion, starting with saving the Doctor’s life. He also gradually wins over Chief Inspector Harris, a policeman with good reason to suspect the Doctor of being up to no good.
More heartening though is the Doctor’s sense of justice, which gets plenty of exercise in an atmosphere of ’50s homophobia. One quintessentially Seventh Doctor scene has him rebutting a gangster’s vision of Britain: “England for the English. Until all the faces are white and there’s no one different from you at all. No queers, no yids, no darkies.’ The Doctor seemed to consider Gordy’s dream for a moment. ‘I don’t think so.’” (This scene is only slightly ruined by the exchange “‘You gonna stop me?’ ‘Oh yes.’ ‘You and who’s army?’ ‘That’s right.’” Cringe – it’s even spelled wrong to make the gag work!) Not all of the Doctor’s decisions ring true exactly, which we’ll get to; good as the writing is, the book is imperfect.
Chris is on a more pronounced journey here, since of the two TARDIS travellers he’s less used to losing people. He misses Roz deeply and a new relationship, Patsy, allows him to revive his complicated feelings for her. I was impressed to see the romantic overture from Return Of The Living Dad brought up again – making it less of a random blip, if nothing else – but this, and some of Chris’s general feelings about Roz, isn’t always handled with subtlety. (For instance it’s a bit sad, if probably accurate, that “closure” for Chris means being able to have sex again without feeling weird about it. Oh woe is him, it’s been weeks.) Chris, along with other characters, has a tendency to pause what he’s doing and reminisce; not all of it is as rich as the stuff about the Doctor. (“...playing wide-eyed rookie to her cynical street cop”, well, ya think?) Chris also suffers from the dreaded telling-rather-than-showing. “I feel so... so humiliated.” / “I don’t want your support, thank you very much. I’m too angry with you for that.” There’s probably a decent joke about projecting your feelings in a book about therapy lifeforms that literally do that for you, but I guess it’s not that kind of book.
Which brings us to the plot (and it’s a good sign when you can witter on about the writing before even getting to that). The murders are targeting a group of escaped something-or-others from a mental hospital in Healey. Chris suspects, or is lead to believe that they are aliens, and Jones plays with that assumption, tossing in a possible hint of telepathy for all you Psi-Powers fans. (Don’t panic.) The truth is weirder: these are artificial people who, through an extreme form of empathy, become the thing(s) another person needs. Ostensibly this is a treatment for people who struggle to connect, but there’s a more villainous reason behind it which we’ll find out later. The real issue, regardless of the slightly typical baddie in the last act (who literally pretends to be the Devil for some of it – I dunno, do you think he’s secretly really nice?) is whether the “Toys” are in fact alive. It’s a worthwhile concept / argument, and Jones invests enough in the characters to make them indistinguishable from the humans. Tilda, head of a local club that takes all kinds, feels like somebody he’s written about before, lived-in and world-weary. Eddy makes a memorable impression in his brief time at the start, described by the thoughts of his boss more than by actually interacting with people, then through the hole he leaves in Jack’s life. Patsy has a little less to do than Tilda, being a more literal mirror of what Chris is feeling and ultimately of Roz herself, but her longing to exist seems to decide the argument once and for all.
But then it’s more complicated than simply being artificial and alive, as the Toys (frustratingly they don’t get a “proper” name) need another person’s feelings in order to exist, and in the long term they need the person. Chris is outraged by being “tricked” into his feelings for Patsy and the Doctor, with surprising ease, agrees that it would be wrong to “trick” other people into essentially mating for life with their (fake) perfect partner. This seems like a satisfying switcheroo until the book simply changes the subject, having the baddies show up again to make a mess before we can get into it. And they should be adding to the moral complexity, as there are “blank” Toys with instructions to kill – but why don’t they ever long for something more?
Sadly, the villains let the side down. Local criminals Gordy and Carl Scraton have some internal bitterness and jealousy going for them, but otherwise they’re transparent thugs. Moriah, the man having all the Toys killed, is out to recreate his lost wife who hated him; there’s some complexity in the fact that even when presented with a perfect copy who loves him, his own issues mean he expects her to hate him and so she does. But he’s a monotonous presence otherwise, gleeful about killing others to the point where it’s a bit odd that he’s managed to run a mental hospital and convince the staff of his good intentions. And as for the Doctor’s plan to stop him – creating the perfect wife he’s been after, then mentally forcing her to love him long enough to get them both away somewhere – firstly, what’s to stop him coming back when it wears off? Secondly, uh, what? Are these beings alive or not? Where does the need for another person end and consent begin? It doesn’t work, thank goodness, but by then you’re already frowning heavily at the Doctor. I’m all for writing him as a fallible character, but they don’t call him out nearly enough on this, and it’s hardly a story that brings his cold manipulations to the fore. (If anything it’s the opposite, at one point highlighting his refusal to execute a plan against his friend’s wishes. They let him when they realise he cares.)
If you like judgement of the Doctor, you’ll love the subplot. There’s a returning character in Bad Therapy with a pretty justifiable reason to be mad at him; Big Finish would later explore the same topic, with mixed results. While the character’s feelings make sense, and it’s nice to see them again, there’s a lot going on here already. (I haven’t even mentioned the killer taxi cabs that zoom around London devouring people whole.) Again it serves to underline how fallible and vulnerable the Doctor is, coming to a head in a similar way to Mel’s return in Head Games. Things aren’t so irrevocably ruined this time (thanks again, Steve) and there are some lovely moments between the two of them, along with a really cool piece of writing when you figure out who the character is. (Quicker folks than me might guess it from the planet they’re on and, oh all right, their name.) Honestly though, I’m struggling to justify their inclusion in this book. You could easily have the same plot occurring without that ingredient, and similarly you could mine a lot more book out of this reunion if you really wanted to. It probably feeds into the longing for Roz, but Chris is doing that rather literally, and the blossoming (but ultimately unfulfilled) companionship of Jack seem to do that as well.
There are some frustrating drawbacks to Bad Therapy. Most of the writing is thoughtful and it’s enjoyable to plough through, but there are some less artful moments. Irritating as it is to point them out, there are quite a few typos. (It’s mostly missing words and wrong apostrophes, like “Julia looked at ‘Tilda’. Really looked her.” / “You’re entire being is affected by my will.” / Sometimes words are repeated a few too many times in a sentence, and there’s a train-of-thought bit about Gordy that I’m about 90% sure is about Carl.) Some of the characters’ choices don’t quite add up, and the action ping-pongs too often between the club and the institute. (I kept thinking of that line in Hitchhiker’s Guide about commuters, who once and for all ought to figure out just where the hell they want to be.) That returning character is probably over-egging things, as is the explanation for the Notting Hill Riots – something else the book could have got more out of if it wanted to.
None of that spoils what is, on the whole, a promising first novel. Matthew Jones imbues most of the characters with life and colour, and handles the two regulars and their grief with care. He manages fan-pleasing moments mostly without seeming too pleased with himself, like the gorgeous bit about the constantly changing TARDIS wardrobe. (This includes "an elderly bespectacled shop assistant. When Chris had asked the Doctor if he knew that there was a tailor aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor had replied, absently, that he’d been wondering who’d been sneaking into his bedroom and darning his socks.") The story is driven by ideas, although their complexities occasionally get the better of it. I was reminded of another race whose motivations are interesting but make you uncomfortable, and then remembered pleasantly that he wrote The Impossible Planet as well. It’s nice to know he got more out of his theme.
7/10
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