#19
The Taint
By Michael Collier
Things are about to change for the Eighth Doctor and Sam, and you know what that means: range editor Stephen Cole must don his fake moustache and unplaceable accent to become the mysterious Michael Collier. Between them they will introduce the next companion, Fitz Kreiner. So let’s start there.
Much has been said about the inadequacies of Sam as a character, or to put it more charitably, the difficulties authors had in finding that character. This far into the series nothing had consistently worked. Something had to change.
That feeling seems to bubble under the surface of Collier/Cole’s second book. There are moments when the Doctor takes stock of his increasing reliance on the TARDIS as a solution to his problems. He laments the number of scrapes Sam seems to get into because of him, just as Sam herself notes that she has “seemingly done little but recuperate lately; after Janus Prime, Belannia, Proxima II.” I don’t think it’s controversial to say that the range was, if not in a rut, at least rut-adjacent at this point. Especially with the range editor all but saying so.
Enter a new companion to (hopefully) shake things up a bit. A lesson has been learned since The Eight Doctors, however, so Fitz isn’t hanging around in a B-plot waiting for the Doctor to finish the main action and get back to him. He’s a primary character in The Taint, tied to the plot and making the main duo’s acquaintance early. We get a strong impression of who he is and what he’s like, rather than just a shopping list of his attributes.
Fitz — as in the person, not the character writing — is a bit of a mess, and is unsuccessful in most of his endeavours. Residing in a thoroughly dank flat with a grotty mattress and a suspicious “relaxation lightbulb,” he presents an altogether unimpressive figure to Sam, but this doesn’t detract from his confidence in openly lusting after her. He’s a musician (accounts vary as to whether he’s talented or dreadful; he does all right at an open mic night) and a cynic. The cynicism mostly comes from years of unpleasant post-war reactions to his German heritage. (Fitz was born in the 30s; The Taint is set in 1963.) Perhaps as a consequence he doesn’t seem to particularly like or care about people, at one point faking a French accent out of boredom while talking to customers, at another observing almost casually as a man is beaten to death, reasoning that death is better than the alternative in this case.
There are choices here that strike me as odd. Not inherently bad, just surprising for a new companion. Fitz seems to be the furthest thing from an aspirational character, which I suppose gives him somewhere to go. The misanthropy in particular, since an interest in helping people is usually a prerequisite for travelling in the TARDIS — make him too aloof and what use is he going to be? But I need to be careful here not to wear New Series Goggles(TM), and remember that people used to just end up as companions sometimes. That is very much the case with Fitz, whose already tenuous world has collapsed by the end of The Taint, leaving him to surmise that “the Doctor had offered him a way out and he’d taken it.” Incredibly we skip the moment where this is actually said, which has the odd effect of making Fitz’s introduction as an ongoing concern — and it was always going to be ongoing — look almost like an afterthought.
Viewing The Taint as effectively his job interview for companionship, there’s not a lot here. He’s involved in the action because one of the people in danger is his mum. He’s not especially enamoured with the Doctor, tending to agree with some more antagonistic characters that his actions seem dangerously unregulated; his last really active moment in the story is him trying to stop the Doctor from carrying out his world-saving plan, which seems like an unusual note given where this is going. This is admittedly after giving the Doctor somewhere to hide from danger, which is a plus, and there’s much to be said for the kind of instant bickering that occurs between the two, albeit more as a germ for friendship than as a sign of a brilliant TARDIS crewman to be. All in all, you get the sense that he will prove his mettle once he’s fully divorced from his surroundings, which is fair enough, just not how this sort of thing usually goes.
It’s also worth considering how he will fit into the existing dynamic, that being the thing that needed fixing. Bluntly, he doesn’t get the chance: by the time he’s really partaking in the plot The Taint has become yet another novel where Sam ends up the worse for wear and so sits a chunk of it out, so there isn’t an opportunity to say “how will these three handle the crisis?” This really does strike me as an odd choice, although perhaps it speaks to a kind of baked-in ennui with Sam that it isn’t even worth the effort to spin three plates instead of the usual two. Oh well, not ideal but I guess the other writers can sort it out.
What we do get of Sam and Fitz together is inauspicious at best. His defining trait here is that he’s a lech, and she’s (understandably) not receptive to it. This is another “give him somewhere to go” thing I suppose, as well as a way to clarify that he is a person from a different time to Sam. Differing attitudes to sex are a good way to contrast the 60s and the 90s in particular, but that’s not a dynamic I’m really keen to explore since most female companions already ran into outdated views on sex without necessarily needing to meet someone from the 60s. (Peri had these sorts of conversations with, among others, the costume department.) Besides, if Fitz’s closing thoughts are anything to go by — “I am Fitz, from beyond the stars. On my planet, it is customary to shag by way of civilised greeting” — we’re intended to find it charming, at least for the time being. Contrary to any long term learn-and-grow mission statement about sex, there’s something to be said here for 1999 being as much a historical period as 1963, specifically the little pocket occupied by male Doctor Who fans of a certain age, whom Fitz is often said to resemble. While there’s nothing actually abhorrent about a character who’s keen to get his end away and is also a bit pathetic, it says something that this was the guy parachuted in to win over the readership.
Anyway, that’s enough attempted psychoanalysis. Onto the plot which concerns… well a bit of psychoanalysis, as it happens. Half a dozen people with mental health issues are under the care of Dr Charles Roley. They have very individual problems but also a shared psychosis involving an ancient cave. Their problems are getting worse. Meanwhile a couple of peculiar gentlemen, one of whom appears to be a psychic robot, are stalking the periphery. This all has something to do with invisible leeches. The Doctor and Sam can’t help investigating. Fitz’s mum is one of the patients, so neither can he.
The Taint is often talked about in the context of horror, and there are certainly aspects of that here, with people losing their minds, a spooky cave and the inherent body horror of being covered in things that you can’t see. The addition of robots, mind-reading, generational alien visits and superhuman powers has the effect of making it feel like a grab bag of ideas rather than a specific vision of, for instance, terror. I didn’t find there was enough momentum to really build an atmosphere of creepiness. The cave aspect doesn’t amount to enough, as the actual therapy of the patients doesn’t feature very much. By the time we get to explanations for how the robot, leeches, cave and mental patients all link to each other, I was at a point of rereading passages and then giving up. It’s frankly a bit of a mess, with the question of “who is the real antagonist” left all too vague until late in the proceedings.
The answer is not one that I think really works. Twisted by a combination of alien influences, Roley’s patients find themselves suddenly powerful and wanting to wreak havoc on a world that has mistreated them. This could have a lot of pathos — things like shell-shock and domestic abuse would be powerful, if somewhat tasteless triggers for the villainous trauma here — but the characters revel in their powers, joyful at the chance for revenge, with little apparent inner conflict about any of it. They are not, the book seems to suggest, characters we should pity; boo and hiss at, more likely.
The plot suggests they’re not really themselves any more, which perhaps helps to salve any inadvertent stigmatising of the mentally ill, but it doesn’t really clarify what they are beyond a sort of alien-exacerbated mess. (The Doctor for example doesn’t believe Fitz’s mother is herself when she appeals to him.) Whether or not they have agency is quite important in grounding how we should feel about them. If they really are just a bunch of human-shaped monsters, I don’t think that’s very interesting, as it doesn’t particularly speak to who they were. If they really are damaged people who can’t handle this new destructive power, that’s horrifying and sad, but there isn’t a lot here to interrogate that, and we skip the part afterwards where it might have been unpacked. What’s left is a grisly battle to the death with some shrieking self-professedly “mad” people, then a swift exit from the corpse-strewn finale. Sensitive it ain’t.
That mean spirit is then compounded by a post-script where Dr Roley, damaged but left by the Doctor to hopefully recuperate, ends up arrested for what looks like multiple murders. (Hey, he’s no innocent, but if the Doctor thinks he ought to have some degree of peace then presumably so should we.) I wasn’t really sure what, if anything, to take from that.
Just about everything here is in some degree of a mess, either deliberately (Fitz’s screwball charms) or otherwise (the plot, the meaning). The presence of a good, or even a few good ideas combined with the absence of a really unifying effect of said ideas feels like a carry-over from Longest Day. Some of it though is a noticeable improvement — I’m thinking mainly of the Doctor, whose influence and personality feel a bit more convincing in The Taint, and Sam, who if still not given a great deal to actually do is at least written consistently this time. The range editor more than anyone should have their eye on continuity, and there are several nods to where she’s at at this stage, including the ongoing question of Sam’s semi-hypothetical other self. (A concept that I find a bit muddy as written, since Actual Sam always seems so bitingly miserable about her lot; the idea of a more boring Earthbound version mostly serves to tell her to shaddap and be grateful.) It’s a pity Cole couldn’t quite muster the idea of how the Doctor, Sam and Fitz will work together, but individually they are well crafted.
Despite a few creative, if occasionally ill-advised ideas, The Taint leaves an impression of something slightly cobbled together to get the new guy on the payroll. It’s not his worst, but all the same it might be nice to see Cole work on something that doesn’t have to change the paradigm for once, and see if that benefits the story.
5/10
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