Doctor Who: The Missing Adventures
#25
The Shadow Of Weng-Chiang
By David A. McIntee
NB 1: I’m reading this one out of order. Cold Fusion was published here,
but it was set before The Death Of Art and had a small impact on that book,
whereas The Shadow Of Weng-Chiang –
published there – is a random one-off that could go anywhere. I’m sure Mr Sin
won’t mind me swapping them.
NB 2: I also reviewed this years ago, back when I wasn't reading all of these and the reviews weren't quite so exhausting. If you'd like a shorter version from way back, here you go!
Well, you can’t fault his
ambition.
The Virgin novels have kept
returning baddies to a minimum, perhaps inspired by the complete unavailability
of Daleks. Where we do get sequels they’re offbeat, like The Sands Of Time
focusing on a time conundrum instead of on Sutekh, or Twilight Of The Gods
largely ignoring the aliens from The Web Planet in favour of even more boring
ones.
At several points, David A.
McIntee’s latest tries to do things unexpectedly. The Shadow Of Weng-Chiang sequelises probably a Top 5 story for most Who fans, but sets it in a different century (thus ruling out Jago and
Litefoot), uses a different location and keeps the titular Chinese false god
absent. It’s a sequel in the sense that the earlier story set these events in
motion, but the iconography of The Talons Of Weng-Chiang – Victoriana, darkly
comic dialogue, Gothic horror – isn’t part of the deal. It’s certainly a clever
title, highlighting and possibly begrudging the expectations set by the earlier
story. “The Baggage Of Weng-Chiang” would also have worked.
By making his story so different
it becomes a bit irrelevant to say, for example, that it’s not as horrifying or as
funny as Talons, but nonetheless that’s the case. Shadow ditches horror for pulpy ’30s adventure, with car chases,
robberies, international unrest and a vigilante literally inspired by The
Shadow. (Oh god, is the title a pun?) That’s not necessarily worse, it’s just
different. One of McIntee’s writerly habits is indulging in action and, if you
like that, there’s plenty of it here, such as the opening raid on a
theatre/museum, a violent robbery ambushed by police, a sneak attack by the
villain involving Mr Sin and an air vent, and K9 dangling out of a crashing
plane while tied to the Doctor’s scarf. (!)
Speaking of Peking Homunculi, Mr
Sin shows up occasionally to cause stabby havoc, mostly in a school uniform. (I
take it back, that might be creepier than anything in Talons.) He’s used as a
garnish and, frankly, the plot doesn’t need him much. Sin is the only element
directly carried over from the previous story; so much of what made it good was
atmosphere, there isn’t much else you could re-use without just making more of
it. He’s one of those monsters that worked incredibly well (and only appeared)
once, but put him in a novel and it quickly becomes apparent that he’s not exactly a
gift to writers, being mute and wanting to kill people absolutely 100% of the
time. (Because of his pig brain – pigs being notably homicidal?) He at least
provides some irony for the villain, Hsien-Ko, who can’t have children but does
have a monstrous lackey dressed as one.
She’s a major part of Shadow not quite being what you’d
expect. Her link to The Talons Of Weng-Chiang is kept secret for a while, and
though it’s fair to assume she’s the antagonist, McIntee keeps her allegiance
and feelings towards Weng-Chiang and the Doctor ambiguous. She has nothing much
against the Doctor and doesn’t want to kill him; she’d rather have his help.
Confronted by his not wanting to do so (because duh), she’s happy enough to
dump him on a distant island (using the teleportation of Dragon Paths, a key
plot ingredient) and let him make his own way back, knowing he’d be too late by
then. Even the Doctor is surprised to be up against a downright amenable bad
guy: it “makes a nice change.”
Elsewhere she is genuinely disappointed at having to kill someone not necessary
to the plan, and a key motivator is her love affair with Kwok, a lieutenant,
which in turn makes her sad because a quirk of time means she will far outlive
him. Together they occasionally use the Dragon Paths to go to an unspecified
tropical paradise just to have a peaceful five minutes – an entirely pragmatic
use of teleportation and a humanising one for a “bad guy”. Throughout the book,
I was pleasantly surprised by her.
McIntee’s choice of Doctor and
companion is slightly unusual, pairing the Fourth Doctor with the first Romana
during their search for the Key To Time. That’s not a sequence of stories you
could easily cram something else into; he gets away with it by making Hsien-Ko
and the Dragon Paths give off a signal that is a lot like the Key To Time. Hsien-Ko
is surprised that his companion isn’t Leela. (Given Virgin canon’s almost
complete ignorance of the noble savage, I am not. Alas.) Both characters are
written fittingly as if they’re being script edited by Douglas Adams, with the
Doctor having fits of whimsy and eccentricity like putting his hand up to his
eyes and then “realising” that he left his telescope in the TARDIS. There’s
some amusing one-upmanship with K9, who has a quiet sense of superiority that’s
funny without being implausible. (Yet more subverted expectations come when K9
finally meets Mr Sin. It’s over rather quickly, but by then you’re a bit sick
of the stabby git, and K9’s quiet triumph is adorable.)
Romana is the only part that
falls down, not because she’s poorly written or because Mary Tamm didn’t play
the character well, but because in one year that version of the character
didn’t develop much beyond haughty and smart, and McIntee sticks loyally to that
characterisation. Tom and Mary didn’t have much of a rapport at the time –
certainly nothing that compares to the Pygmalion quality with Louise Jameson –
and the strange absence of something is noticeable here. The Doctor and Romana
seem to exist quite independently, as they haven’t got the firey chemistry that
came with Lalla Ward; as they’re both superior Time Lords at the peak of their
confidence, there’s never any feeling that they’re in peril. When they’re with
Hsien-Ko, she’s so accommodating that there isn’t a lot of tension. When
they’re taken into police custody, McIntee writes “It was as if [Romana] were going along purely as a favour,” which
pretty much describes their entire journey through the novel.
Taken on its own, an indomitable
Doctor and/or companion can be a thrilling change of pace. Terrance Dicks wrote
the Seventh Doctor that way in Exodus, and it was a tonic. Similarly, writing a
villain with technically positive ambitions who really quite likes the Doctor,
and will go to some lengths to keep him safe, is a twist on the good guy/bad
guy dynamic that is so often easy and stale. I’m all for both of these things,
but the combination doesn’t quite work. Shadow
has the odd feeling of a bunch of people who can come and go as they like,
harmlessly moving from place to place until their plans finally become
impassable. Despite McIntee’s signature action, it becomes a chore.
Sadly there are other McIntee
habits on display, not all of them good. It wouldn’t be one of his books
without a historical setting and attendant rubbing-your-nose-in-it. Writing a
story in a historical period? Good, those are fascinating. Providing lots of
detail so it sounds authentic? Great. But you can get distracted by that, and
he does, often describing locales and objects in nearly tedious detail, pausing
the flow of the story to make really super-duper-mega sure you know he knows
what he’s talking about. I get it – you do. “The Doctor’s police box stood just inside the gate, on a wide promenade
that looked out eastwards over on the vibrant green depressions between the
three main peaks and their attendant promontories, all of which had temples or
inns built upon them.” Uh huh. Sometimes his embedded enthusiasm sounds like that
of a tourism board. “The pine-scented
fresh breeze that blew through the gardens would undoubtedly be as refreshing
to anyone in the pavilions as would the shade provided by the pointed golden
roofs.” Oooh! And sometimes it seems to have little to do with history and more
to do with presumably drawing things out first and then wanting to prove it. “The parking area was in front of a large
three-storey French-style mansion. The front of the house was graced with a
wide patio from which two staircases descended to the gravel.” Fascinating.
It’s becoming clearer with each
book that this writer loves detail and information – which isn’t a bad thing, but is perhaps more suited to scriptwriting than prose. There are scenes
where characters list different makes and models of weaponry, or recount the
complicated political situation of Shanghai at that time, and numerous scenes
with an aircraft that refer to it as “the CNAC Stinson Trimotor.” Ohh, that aircraft!
Thanks for clarifying!
Even the character writing falls
into the too-much-information trap. We learn vital (and to be fair, often
interesting) back story about Hsien-Ko, her lover Kwok, the Shadow-inspired Woo
who also runs a night club, and cop-with-an-agenda Li by the slightly
cumbersome method of them pausing what they’re doing to have a bloody good
remember. Sometimes when they’re under attack. There’s a moment when, aptly
enough, Romana is observing a landscape and we get this: “Romana had nothing against admiring beautiful scenery, but there was a
time for everything.” Too bloody right there is.
Some of the difficulty I had in
getting through this one may be that I’ve read it before, as you don’t
necessarily have that urge to find out what happens next the second time.
Mostly though, I think it’s the writing style. Now, there are some genuinely
creative choices made with the characters, the style of “villainy” they’re up
against, and the resistance to more obvious call-backs where it’s a sequel. (We
still get continuity, some of it quite unexpected and arguably welcome, as it’s from the books: Hsien-Ko’s plan ties into
Invasion Of The Cat-People, and there’s a significant cameo by a character from
the first Decalog collection, of all things.) There are some random beats
include the Doctor comparing somebody to Chow Yun Fat, suggesting he watches a
lot of Chinese action movies from the ’90s, and a bizarre conversion with Romana about
political correctness, as well as all those odd travel brochure bits where we
marvel at the sights. But the book’s problem is more endemic, being so aloof
with its heroes and villains and so excited about period detail (and detail in
general) that it’s difficult to invest. Once we’re into the climax it just goes
on endlessly in an actiony, detaily haze.
I can see why you’d admire The Shadow Of Weng-Chiang, and I like
what it tried to do. If you are going to read it, though, I suggest
one-and-done.
6/10
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