#61
The Infinity Race
By Simon Messingham
Expectation strikes again.
Picture the scene. You’ve just finished Time Zero, a book that ends in (and some would argue is written entirely in support of) a big change to the status quo. The timelines are in such a mess that Anji can’t go home — there’s an actual reason for it this time! — and the gang needs Sabbath’s help to fix it. It’s one of the more “oh no, now what!” cliffhangers in the range. In the same literary breath Justin Richards keys up The Infinity Race, Sabbath’s next port of call and ditto the TARDIS. The two things must be connected. Right?
Wrong. The Infinity Race includes a bit of lip service to the Time Zero situation, with Anji half-heartedly wondering if “the shake-up [at the end of this story] had got reality back on the right track,” but otherwise the only forward motion in this arc is the Doctor telling Sabbath about the latest mess he’s got everybody into. The Infinity Race is its own thing — which isn’t technically a problem, but then Time Zero really made it sound like there was some urgency to this crisis, only for us to immediately be told no, apparently it can be put on ice for a while. It’s a frustrating editorial choice.
In fairness that’s probably what it was. Simon Messingham could easily have written an EDA to slot in anywhere, needing only the core trio, Sabbath and yet another batty plan of his to control the timelines. It certainly reads like some arc references were sprinkled in later. We’re better off viewing it as entirely its own thing, or at least as its own Sabbath-era EDA that has no other particular place to be.
The story has some promise, or at least the setting does. Selonart is a planet almost entirely comprised of water. The only sign of life or culture on it (apart from some apparently indigenous people of dubious origin) is a regatta held every five years. Local society seems to exist mostly to support that, with many colourful and in all likelihood dangerous parties coming to Selonart just to compete. Into this mix comes the TARDIS crew finding a mostly abandoned boat, dead bodies, some sort of wraith, a friendly if monosyllabic native called Bloom and some inexplicable ice that makes you very ill to touch it. The Doctor and co. barely survive the boat exploding, but they lose the TARDIS and get blamed for all the destruction and deaths on board.
Now, about that promise — which obviously doesn’t include losing the TARDIS or getting falsely accused of murder, good lord not those again. I think there’s something to a (probably awful) cruise ship culture and a (no doubt dangerous) boat race full of wild characters, but The Infinity Race doesn’t do much with either. The race is a complete wash, happening mostly off-screen with interchangeable crews only to get curtailed for plot reasons anyway. We never get a firm sense of the business-as-usual on Selonart either before that all goes apocalyptically pear-shaped. The only people we meet there are lacking in the personality department: the best we get are a pompous governor, a cruel recruiter who press-gangs Fitz and later somewhat improbably becomes his love interest, and a vaguely mysterious officer with a mission that involves the Doctor and Sabbath, which would be very interesting if anyone bothered to talk about it at length. None of them are missed in the end, and the rest are just screams in a crowd. Who cares? There’s no sense of what is at stake here or if there’s any reason to be bothered about losing Selonart in its current configuration — certainly not compared to Storm Harvest, which already did the “decadent human culture imprints on a mostly-water planet at their peril” thing, even down to the mysterious indigenous people.
The indigenous people should probably be where The Infinity Race sets itself apart, but as for that, oh dear. The idea isn’t bad, especially where it ends up going, and the initial germ even recalls the beleaguered Tharils from Warriors’ Gate: beings with a unique link to their environment that are enslaved by humans to aid their guidance systems. It’s considerably less developed than in that TV story, however, with only a cursory demonstration of their mistreatment on boats followed by wholesale racism once society breaks down. Bloom isn’t the only one we meet but he might as well be for all the flavours of personality on display, although to be fair this sort of becomes plot relevant. The writing for Bloom though is all grunty, monosyllabic English — think Robin the caveman in Ghosts — until his high evolution ending when, quite apart from all the plot stuff happening to him, his English improves. Hmm. Not great, is it?
Simon Messingham can do complex space cultures (see Zeta Major) and he can get in the heads of his characters. I’m not sure what happened this time, as all of that seems to backfire. His use of first person narration, which worked so brilliantly in Tomb Of Valdemar, falls over here. It’s inconsistent, only giving us Anji, Fitz and Bloom’s perspectives, defaulting to third person elsewhere, but also sometimes for Bloom as well. The third person stuff seems to have some personality bleed-through from the other bits, with odd little declarations like “We return to the Governor to find him much more relaxed than of late” and “For those interested in such things, Bloom’s effect on the race was instantaneous.” To whom is anyone, omniscient or Anji etc, telling this story? Sometimes the characters are trying so hard for casual real-person-ness that the actual information starts drying up: “I remember Fitz’s torch and him shouting something.” “As far as I recall…” / “I was lying on a mattress or something…” / “Someone had pressed a switch or something.” Or what? Why are we asking you if you don’t know?
There is a general insouciance to the narration, whoever’s doing it, that suggests this vagueness is all deliberate and The Infinity Race is a comedy. Trouble is, there aren’t any jokes: the whole thing is just a wee bit irreverent in a slightly irritating way, with lots of lines like “The Captain thought for a minute. A very long minute (and I’ve known some long minutes in my time),” “I was itching to get out. I would have said dying but that was what we were trying to avoid” and “‘Yeah, you’re losing me now.’ I am nothing if not honest.” Fitz comes in handy here, greeting us (who are “we”?) with an occasional “Hi folks” but also sometimes lampshading the inadequacies of the plot: “I can hear you. Hear you sighing as you think: not again, how many times? One boat to another, cells, backwards and forwards all over the place. It’s wearing a bit thin, isn’t it?” Nyurgh. Really?
There are also — and I’m getting proper picky now, sorry — some rather “red pen” bits that compromise the whole thing further. “One of the head-setted technicians, Ingham, suddenly looked up sharply from his display.” / “We found the first body in the first room.” / “I would definitely have gladly gone back there now.” Some of this is in first person, so you could say that the narrator was a bit redundant on purpose. But it’s still part of the book.
The real problem though is the character writing. None of the voices are quite right. The Doctor fares the best, despite an occasionally too awed perspective on Sabbath that goes against the (recent) grain (“a man of many parts. To be honest, I don’t know how many parts. Extraordinary fellow” ???) and a conveniently functional memory for alien cultures. (I thought info dumps were why we got rid of all that in the first place?) He has an impressive moment in the epilogue, facing off against a city of wraiths, and he essentially kills Sabbath at one point (though of course he recovers), which you could argue is a natural progression from the last few books. He also gets inarguably the best scene in The Infinity Race, manipulating time with the help of Bloom to replay the same scene thrice over, including walking it back to become less omnipotent.
Fitz mostly suffers from context. There is no sign of the adventuring he did so recently in Time Zero (this story takes place immediately afterwards) or any effect that might have had on his personality: he’s just the same happy-go-lucky yutz Sam met all those years ago, complete with a now somewhat rare love interest, a woman who has vowed to kill him. It’s all surface level stuff, a step back from the last few books.
Anji is worse. Messingham recognises some aspects of her personality — the annoyance with Fitz, the pragmatism — but he otherwise casts her as an irritating smarm, plaguing the Doctor with questions and interjecting all the time. She shoulders most of the “funny” comments in this. Again we miss important context from prior novels, lightly referencing her eighteen months back at her old job and decision to leave the TARDIS but not really reckoning with how it feels to be back in the thick of it anyway. Or really recognising the fact that she likes the Doctor and Fitz now. The rapport is another big step back: I found her so annoying that I couldn’t grasp the Doctor’s patience and affection for her. It all just feels like Standard Anji, with continuity links used instead of earned character growth.
And then there’s Sabbath. Structurally this is all the usual stuff, effectively doing for Control The Timeline plans what the Master was doing for random power grabs in Season 8, aka always having another one to run off to next week. This makes him and his plans seem more trivial in the moment — especially his pointless reliance on pseudonyms and disguises, seriously who is all that for — but again, that’s just his default editorial setting and not Messingham’s fault. The voice, though. Sabbath is a somewhat taciturn fellow, by no means dull but not someone who can be bothered to waste energy humouring people. He doesn’t make friends easily. Cut to The Infinity Race and it’s like he’s hosting a tea party! All of a sudden he’s avuncular and cheerful, coming out with things like “Doctor, please do get up off the floor. You’ll do yourself a mischief” and “Anji? Put the kettle on, would you my darling?” At one point he introduces himself by paraphrasing a song from The Wizard Of Oz. If you wanted to do a double rug-pull and reveal that Suspicious Large Gentleman is actually Sabbath, then reveal that he’s someone else entirely, this would be the way.
He’s not putting on a great showing with the plot stuff either, mystifyingly expecting the Doctor to go along with his mad plan of the week and then defaulting to the usual stroppy anti-moral grandstanding when he’s denied. When things kick off Messingham takes some delight in knocking him down a peg, which is something I’ve enjoyed about recent EDAs, but it’s done a bit clumsily here with Sabbath begging for his life, offering up other people as sacrifices and generally “[screaming] like a woman.” Embarrassing in several ways. Something tells me he’ll be back to his less sugar-high self the next time we see him in, oh, one book’s time probably.
The Infinity Race has a decent idea to do with Bloom and his people, which conceptually echoes what’s happening back on Earth. This link might be a coincidence for all its actual relevance here but the concept is still neat. (As for the “happy ending” of the remaining Selonart denizens being brought into Bloom’s way of being, agree to disagree. It sounds a bit like hell and it certainly wasn’t consensual.) The book seems uncertain of its tone otherwise, aiming for a light-hearted romp but forgetting to fill the space with anyone we’d actually enjoy hearing from, defaulting to the companions and (however inexplicably) Sabbath in that regard. It feels like a fusion of Messingham’s earlier approaches that doesn’t quite come off, not helped by its place in a newly developed arc that makes it feel even more maddeningly inconsequential.
5/10
PS: Props for remembering that Sabbath’s ship is crewed by apes. The boys are back in town! Until they’re swept overboard. (I’m sure they’re fine.)
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