Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #55 – Decalog 2: Lost Property edited by Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker

Doctor Who: Decalog 2: Lost Property
Edited by Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker

It’s that time again!  Collecting a gaggle of authors, some you’ll know from the New and Missing Adventures, others who for whatever reason only show up for the short stories, Decalog 2: Lost Property differs from its predecessor in one obvious way: there’s no linking story.  And hooray, since the first Decalog had an almighty task stringing tales together with another one on top, only to end up adding useless links between them.  This time, it’s just a theme of the Doctor’s home.  That seems like a good enough excuse to collect a bunch of short stories, and it could lead to some interesting places.  Such as…

*

Vortex Of Fear

by Gareth Roberts

As with the first Decalog, we begin with the Second Doctor.  Gareth Roberts delivers a surprisingly dark vignette about a hotel suspended in the time vortex, where you can exist just long enough to evade certain tax laws.  The TARDIS bumps into it and the Doctor and co. get out to investigate, only to find a complicated paradox playing out ad infinitum.  It doesn’t exactly dwell on the subject of home; a reference to the vortex being where the Doctor belongs is sufficiently throwaway that it could have been added later.

This works really well as a short piece, as the premise is something that is naturally going to repeat itself and so probably shouldn’t outstay its welcome.  Roberts has an immediate handle on the characters, from the Doctor’s scruffy busy-bodying to Jamie’s keenness not to be shown up.  Zoe is developed nicely, with her photographic memory and logical mind troubled by the shifting world they find themselves in.  When the Doctor determines there’s no real hope for these people as it’s a closed, deteriorating loop, he just leaves them to it.  As a commentary on this seemingly bewildered Doctor’s darker side, it’s a lot more effective than The Menagerie, where he just causes deaths through befuddlement; it’s still surprisingly callous, even if he is affronted at people mucking about with the time vortex, or by the general air of decadence pervading the hotel.  (Darker still, Zoe figures out that since this is a paradox loop a version of them will always be there.  Yikes.)  For good measure, the nefarious sniping between the guests is written with colour and bile, the characterisation of the main trio is enjoyably apt, and Roberts gets in a jolly good Pat-and-Frazer double entendre at the start.

*

The Crimson Dawn

by Tim Robins

Well you can’t fault his ambition.  This has a fight for Ice Warrior rights on Mars, a sinister agenda to undermine it, a traitor, a monstrous lab-grown figurehead whose entire life has been a delusion based on The War Of The Worlds, a huge revelation about Ice Warrior history/a plot resolution bundled onto the last page and heaps of satire on commercialism.  (Also, rather originally, barely any Ice Warriors.)  I’ll bet this was an idea for a full novel; you could certainly stagger it out a bit.  All of which happened the last time we saw Tim Robins.  Just commission the dude and be done with it.

Thanks to the time constraint, it’s all a bit frantic and farcical – sometimes deliberately, as the Doctor and K9 zoom away from armed guards, the robot dog blasting away at them as he reverses at full speed.  The action is in technicolour, and the tone (looking at you, War Of The Worlds bit) rather goofy.  For something allegedly out of Season 14 or 15, it’s a bit too silly.  I wonder if Robins was really thinking of the Douglas Adams era: “My arms!  My legs!  My everything!”  And speaking of eras, there are probably too many continuity references; big fans of Mire Beasts will give a little cheer.  All two of them.

But never mind all that: it’s only ruddy Leela!  In what is, for all I know, her only appearance in a Virgin book, she displays all the obvious violence and lack of civilisation you’d expect, but little of the questing intelligence that makes her really special.  I suspect we needed a Leela renaissance when Big Finish came along, if she was once looked down on by fandom.  That might explain her absence from these books; there’s a note of parody about her, of “Can you believe this was once the companion?!”  And K9, who showed up considerably after Leela, is referred to as the Doctor’s best friend!

The satire is a little heavy-handed, as we tour the commercialised regions of Mars including a Mars Bar (oof!), a dessert called an Achocalypse Now, and the sad revelation that Peladon has undergone a financial crisis that “forced the Pels to turn their monarchy into a toiletry franchise”.  That stuff’s not a million miles from the quirks of Transit, so there’s a precedent, but Robins still must have been in an odd mood when he wrote this.  Oh, and the Doctor’s “home” in this is a flying houseboat.  Not so much exploring a theme there as picking a noun out of a hat.  (It’s all about the Martians’ home, I suppose, but if so doesn’t that get the theme slightly wrong?)  Altogether it’s an odd, madcap jumble.

*

Where The Heart Is

by Andy Lane

Few Doctors are as concerned with their home as the Third, who would hate to admit he belonged on Earth.  Andy Lane attacks this sideways, never outright saying the Doctor belongs here but focusing on the home of the UNIT Family instead, which he helped build and which, of course, belongs to him.  It also plugs a continuity gap that has never occurred to me: how UNIT suddenly ended up with a country house for its headquarters.  But don’t worry about it disappearing into fanwank, despite the plethora of references.

Lane puts the Brigadier in a tight spot when UNIT’s funding dries up and the government threatens to hand the whole thing over to the Marines.  The Doctor and Jo have captured a flamboyant alien masquerading as a doctor (draw your own inference!), and despite its murderous crimes it may be able to help.  The writing is sublimely character-based, particularly as the Brigadier stares an uncertain future in the face and the Doctor (in a testy mood) tries to get one over on him by capturing the alien as easily as possible.  Both characters are fleshed out more convincingly in 20 pages than The Ghosts Of N-Space managed in an entire novel.  Jo’s determination and shortcomings are also brought spiritedly to life.

This is short, sweet and does a clever job with the theme.  A highlight.

*

The Trials Of Tara

by Paul Cornell

“I want to do a sequel to The Androids Of Tara,” said Paul Cornell at one time, presumably.  “In iambic pentameter.  Guest starring the Kandyman.”  Well if you’re not hooked already, what else can I say?

Mind you, I can barely tell iambic pentameter from balsamic vinegar, and I have a naturally sulky dislike for all things Shakespeare, so when I saw that The Trials Of Tara really was going to be like that for all of its fifty pages I groaned in horror.  But I soon forgot any objections as Paul Cornell indulged in Shakespeare references even I get, as well as some delightfully nerdy in-jokes about Holmesian double-acts, a jaunty plot that doesn’t just repeat the original story and – of course – Bernice Summerfield absolutely knocking it out of the park.  One moment where she realises she’s cocked up her delivery and it completely implodes in a single stanza made me hoot.  That, and the Kandyman frustratedly brushing off a bewitched lover.

It’s one of those where you could spend so long listing fun little moments, you just end up reading the thing out.  In summary, it’s easily as demented as it sounds.   Despite its poetic leanings it feels like an outlet for Paul Cornell’s love of panto – bawdy jokes and all – and that’s no bad thing if you’re in the right mood.  It zooms along, every bit as sugary as the Kandyman and just as brilliantly odd.

*

Housewarming

by David A. McIntee

Meh.  Housewarming ought to drum up a bit of atmosphere at least, being set in an apparently haunted house over a short time.  David A. McIntee drops in as many gnarly adjectives as he can find, as ever, but he makes the odd decision to overpopulate it and frequently chop between his characters.  It’s consequently difficult to build anything up and none of the guest characters stand out.

Sarah and K9 are a welcome addition to the book world – I’m not sure I needed a sequel to K9 & Company, or K9 & Company for that matter, but you could at least improve on it.  Alas, it stars Mike Yates.  Has he ever been very interesting?   They’re all reasonably characterised, apart from a slightly too excited Pertwee-ish sword-fight that frantically tries to liven things up at the end.  It nevertheless finishes with a damp squib and makes the villain (spoilers) look a bit small potatoes, although that’s not a new experience for them.  Of ghostly terror, there is none.

The plot’s small and simple and it holds together, but while I really ought to go “Ooh!” at the surprise reveal, it’s not enough of a surprise to warrant it.

*

The Nine-Day Queen

by Matthew Jones

I only know Matthew Jones from his New Who story The Impossible Planet, but it’s an open secret that Russell T Davies wrote most of the finished product, so I guess this is a first.  Based on The Nine-Day Queen he’s got a knack for characters, and the ending is something else, but overall it falls into some familiar traps.

First, this is a bigger story than just 30 pages: an important first scene aboard the TARDIS is summarised, and months fly by like turned pages.  The pace is absolutely crazy for a Hartnell story in particular, with things like the reader’s knowledge of history being expediently assumed.  Second, following on from that, this type of story – a historical period beset by a special effects-y alien influence – is quite unlike the Hartnell era.  You’d never have got this particular kind of sci-fi/history mash up, the more roundabout Time Meddler notwithstanding.

Still, Jones makes it sound just about right.  The destructive Vrij is affecting history, which could mean Jane Grey lives longer than history allows, but will spell disaster for the future; this leads to some very traditional worrying about what all that means.  (Then again, the idea that it can happen goes against what that era said and even underlined – that it cannot happen!)  Barbara’s knowledge and concern shine through, and the Doctor’s complicated and irascible nature are ultimately betrayed by his sympathy for Jane, all of which rings true.  (See Cameca and the brooch.)  Ian imitates the Doctor in a fun scene, winning over a couple of guards with sheer confidence, though admittedly he doesn’t do a lot else.  And the unseen TARDIS bit might sound completely batty – Barbara losing her mind and strangling Ian – but it’s something we’ve more or less seen in The Edge Of Destruction.  (As for the rather odd bit where the Doctor insists CPR might do him fatal harm, uh, I guess we didn’t know one way or the other back then?)

There are numerous good bits, but the story is at its best on the final page when (spoiler) the Doctor helps Jane achieve some dignity in death.  That’s a heart and a darkness you’d expect from McCoy, which effortlessly works for Hartnell.  On the flip side, apart from another throwaway use of the theme, i.e. the Doctor owned a house once (gee, really pushing the boat out!), there’s that frenzied short-story-in-name-only approach.  This is possibly best evidenced at the start, in the by-line beneath the epigraph: Barbara Chesterton.

*

Lonely Days

by Daniel Blythe

This one at least feels like a short story, as it has a much smaller focus.   The TARDIS drops in on an asteroid/planet the Doctor owns (Daniel Blythe interchanges the two words – annoying!), where it finds a lonely worker going slightly mad, and a planet (let’s stick with that) undergoing changes.  There’s also a hint of a ghost story to do with the hologram of a woman he (Sebastian) once knew.

The writing is at its best when Sebastian is pottering about on his little world, thinking he’s seeing things.  As the plot progresses his moods and actions get weirder, all of which is somewhat nullified when it turns out there’s just been a breakdown in communication.  Still, you can believe it wouldn’t take much to push this man to randomly pull a gun on strangers.

The regulars are more problematic.   Nyssa is mostly fine, apart from an odd bit where she seems eager to mess with time in order to test the laws of gambling.  (?)  The Fifth Doctor is way off.  Somewhat irreverent, at one point apologising individually to some plants, namedropping the death of Adric just to make a trivial point and coming out with general bursts of eccentricity, this just isn’t him.  (Although I could forgive Blythe for wanting to liven him up a bit.)  The whole concept of him owning a planet is rather bizarre, but then Craig Hinton wrote a novel about him owning a restaurant, which made about as much sense.

Latterly there’s an attempt to underscore it all with Nyssa’s loneliness after her father’s death, but that seems like an afterthought.  Despite that and a melancholy ending where two lonely souls learn to co-exist, it’s a bit of a non-event.

*

People Of The Trees

by Pam Baddeley

Well look at that – Bonus Leela!  Newcomer Pam Baddeley is another one taking the “home” theme literally, as the Doctor revisits some land he once bought (in order to protect the indigenous people) which is under threat again.  The theft of ancient statues is putting the “People” in danger, but the Doctor will soon need to barter the remaining statue for Leela’s life.

The idea of a civilisation that revolves completely around acquiring and protecting land is a good one for the theme, and it adds an unusual motive to the Dascarians, who don’t give a fig about the tree-dwelling primitives they’re endangering.  The plot is the right sort of size and the writing is quietly clever, adapting equally well to the People and the Dascarians.  The Fourth Doctor is in a more pensive, respectful mood than his earlier story, and Leela... well, I’m still not convinced the writers of the time knew what to do with her other than act like an overbearing bodyguard with a pocket full of Janis thorns, but she’s less a figure of fun here, and she’s in good company with the trusting tree folk.

It’s not spectacular, but I liked it well enough.

*

Timeshare

by Vanessa Bishop

Over at Big Finish, the Sixth Doctor didn’t so much evolve as hire a drastic new PR guy.  “Old Sixie” is the cuddly uncle of Doctors, his Peri-strangling days buried beneath wistful monologues and Evelyn’s chocolate cakes.  If you’ve got used to all that, Timeshare might be a bit bracing.  This is original, unsweetened Doctor Six; about as gentle as a lorry reversing in the middle of Swan Lake.

Discovering a mysterious set of coordinates and refusing to believe Peri has read them correctly, the TARDIS arrives by a timeshare flat – only it’s a time-travelling arrangement outlawed by the Time Lords.  It begins to malfunction, in a way weirdly reminiscent of the earlier Homecoming, due to the Doctor putting too much money in the meter.  It’s a bit of a farce, which somewhat suits this Doctor’s blustery nature.

Even so, there are a few issues with this.  The Sixth Doctor giving both barrels at Peri is an acquired taste – you begin to wonder what she’s getting out of it – and the two of them can get annoying.  The comedy is a little much, particularly when another Time Lord appears with a small collection of random idiosyncrasies, just to dole out some exposition.  Despite generous amounts of effort, I never fully understood how the timeshare worked.  And the story’s a little long, especially when time “echoes” start to repeat and repeat.

But the writing occasionally suggests that Peri does find her companion endearing, and his flaws – such as trying a little too hard to catch his own reflection – do ring true to the era.  It’s probably a good idea for a story, unknowingly mixing Vortex Of Fear with Homecoming, but it could maybe have been shorter and clearer.  It’s all about a fun getaway being dragged out for too long and then becoming a mess, and well, now that you mention it...

*

Question Mark Pyjamas

by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker

If you made it all the way through the last nine stories thinking “This is all well and good, but what about the House on Allen Road?”, you’re in luck.  In a surprising and canny move, that’s the “home” to round off this collection.   Back we go to another time, when it was the Doctor, Benny and Ace.  (I get a kick out of that being in the past, as ripe for a revisit as any old Doctor.)  They find the Doctor’s residence on an asteroid, in a “Heritage Centre” of stolen homes that strangely mirrors the book’s overall theme.  That’s nice work.

Quite soon the Doctor and co. are unwilling exhibits, living out a strange domestic life in “Allen Road” with Bernice and Ace as his wife and daughter.  They plot an escape and it plays out somewhat amusingly, with perhaps a few too many references sprinkled on top, not all relevant.

It’s fun to be nostalgic about the New Adventures, and sure enough Ace takes a moment to remember some of the upsetting things that have happened to her, including helpfully placing this after No Future.   (PS: did you know she has mummy issues?)   That’s pretty much all it sets out to do, but the humour is winningly strange – Russell T Davies would love the bit about “We only had the atmosphere fitted a few days ago” – and there’s a lovely observation that aboard the TARDIS, every morning feels like a lie-in

My only real gripe is almost an achievement: could Robert Perry and Mike Tucker be the first writers not to get the appeal of Bernice Summerfield?   She likes archaeology and wine, but only in a dry, tick-things-off-a-list way.  Her effervescent wit, the thing that makes her jump off the page, just isn’t happening for once.  It’s hardly a new experience for Bernice to get nothing to do, especially with Ace around, but the contrast has never been quite so black and white.

Apart from that it’s a colourful trip to the recent past, and a nice send off for Decalog 2.

*

My main gripes about Decalog were writers not knowing a short story from a novel summary, and the awkward linking theme.  Decalog 2 still has lapses on the first front; I kind of wish they’d get Tim Robins to do something full length just to see if it helps.  But these stories are mostly well suited to the quicker pace, and some – Trials in particular – really make it count.  As for the theme, while there’s nothing as unwieldy as a running plot, it’s a little uncanny how many writers took it literally or just tossed it in there as a garnish.  But I suppose it’s a hard theme to tackle, as they’re dealing with a lifelong nomad.  (Odd that nobody wrote about the TARDIS, the obvious winner.)

It’s best to remember the theme is just an excuse for ten stories.  As a collection, it’s a colourful improvement.

7/10

See you again for 56–60, beginning with Zamper by Gareth Roberts...

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #45 – Infinite Requiem by Daniel Blythe

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#36
Infinite Requiem
By Daniel Blythe

The New Adventures are going somewhere new again.  Ace is gone!  Properly gone this time, although for all I know there’s a cameo waiting to happen.  (Hush.)

So we’ve got Doctor Who starring the Doctor and Bernice Summerfield.  Good.  Now, I wouldn’t put Daniel Blythe’s name forward as the obvious inaugural writer of The New Doctor And Bernice Adventures (it’ll catch on), but he did a good job with her in his first novel, The Dimension Riders, so why not?  It wasn’t a very accomplished book, even among these humble Who stories – it dealt too much in cliché – but there were times when it sparked.  Roughly all of those times were when Bernice had something to do.

I might as well burst that bubble up front.  The Doctor is in it, Bernice is in it, and that’s about as exciting as they get.  Blythe is far too interested in his own characters to dwell on these two, or even put the two of them together.  But hey, at least you’ve got loads of interesting new characters to focus on… and I might as well burst that one as well.  Big fat nope.  Infinite Requiem seems in a constant rush to point out how many people and things and places it covers, but it rarely provides a reason to be captivated by any of them.  This is a sprawling, thin piece of work.

Fair’s fair, as it got on the wrong side of me immediately, maybe I wasn’t very receptive.  Infinite Requiem is an eye-roller of a pretentious title, and the book begins with yet another mystifying prologue.  Just what is with all the damn prologues, anyway?  I’ve taken them for granted most of my life, and I’m only now wondering if they’re an especially Doctor Who obsession.  As if 200+ pages aren’t enough to instil a bit of mystery, many of these authors feel the need to fanny about with some metaphysical what-the-effery first.  (If it’s not a mysterious figure being sinister in the dark, then it’ll be someone or something going “Light!  Dark!  There is pain, only there isn’t!  I am one, many, nothing!  Wait, what?” usually in the first person, maybe present tense.)  I tend to re-read these things desperately trying to figure them out, but it’s always pointless.  If they have any relevance it’ll come so much later that you won’t recall them anyway.  And once you get past that you’re rewarded with yet more epigraphs, in all their “Well done me, I read a book once” glory.  And then the book is divided into four named parts, so… it’ll be more like the telly?  And the fourth part is called DARK TRINITY ASCENDANT.  There are so many earnestly snooty bells and whistles in this, and they all give off a whiff of “Take me seriously, I beg of you!”  I mean, bless, but stop it.

We then launch into a battle on Gadrell Major, which highlights another problem: lots of (not terribly deep) characters, lots of things happening, all crammed into too few pages.  Who are these people?  No time, off we go again.  And if we’re not chopping over to somebody new, the character is pausing to indulge in a flashback.  It takes some of the excitement away from, you know, a warzone when the characters we’ve just met are standing about wishing they were somewhere else, and gradually trying to figure out how they got there.  Let alone how boringly obvious it is to pause the action so the characters can join those dots for us.  I actually missed St. Anthony’s Fire reading this, even though the war-torn characters there did a lot of reminiscing as well.  Mark Gatiss just handled it with a bit more patience.  I still remember the sight of a weary general getting a moment to himself, and pulling his knees up slowly to his chin.  He had more humanity than this lot, and he was a lizard.

Speaking of the past, it might help to remember how Blythe handled different settings in The Dimension Riders.  These worked out roughly as 1) sort-of-sequel to Shada set in Oxford, 2) sort-of-Star Trek stuff on a spaceship where the bad guy is.  The Shada stuff was much more enjoyable.  Even the prose bounced off the page a little more, seeming sharper and funnier, whereas the spaceship stuff was forgettable, with stock space characters going about their duties (I’m guessing, since I had forgotten most of it by the end of that book) and a Big Bad ranting and raving like they all do.  Well, Infinite Requiem is like The Dimension Riders if you took out all the Oxford stuff.  The occasionally witty prose is AWOL.  I can only assume it was just a fleeting bit of Adams mimicry.  (In its place is an occasional random bit of wit, like a character saying they can’t wait to devour a good book, then eating one; also there’s a chapter entitled “Womb Service”.  Nobody said it was consistent.)  The characters have a few painful back stories, but none of those translate into interesting people.  One of them turned out, to my horror, to be a recurring character from Blythe’s other book.  Since I didn’t recall Darius Cheynor at all, it will come as little surprise that he made no impression on me here.  Every time we cut back to Gadrell Major, and the wooden Cheynor trying to resolve a conflict with the peculiar Phractons over a wrecked planet, it was a fight to keep ploughing through pages.

To the extent that the book comes alive, it is in the 1997 part of events, when the Doctor meets Tilusha Meswani, a pregnant woman with a psychic foetus.  (Yep.)  Her abusive love story, with her family turning their backs on her, carries pathos.  Her story also informs the battle against Shanstra (head of a psychic triumvirate, blah blah Big Bad) later on.  There’s a quite exciting moment when an ambulance crashes with her and the Doctor in it.  Tilusha is the closest Infinite Requiem gets to a real person, and (inevitably?) she isn’t in it very long.  As for her baby, mingled with another mind from the triumvirate and quickly grown into an adult, Blythe bundles him/her into the TARDIS for most of the book, where he/she can wait for the final confrontation with Shanstra.  Once it’s all over, Sanjay is left as a one-day-old adult alone in the universe.  The book doesn’t begin to ponder that, or how much he’s lost, relegating him to the usual panto walk-down of goodbyes at the end.  If it isn’t our old friend, the reasonably interesting yet unexplored idea.  (And seriously, what an absolutely appalling start he’s had!  His mother’s gone, his family pre-emptively hate him, he won’t get back there anyway, and his lifespan comes up about 20 years short.  So long, good luck etc.)

Meanwhile, we do (sort of) explore the idea of psychics, or at least provide four whole groups of them.  There are the dangerous Sensopaths; invading (but broadly not-evil) Phractons; the Pridka, who are another group of psychics in this apparently (oh wait, fins, they have fins!); and there are some telepathic humans as well.  And yet, for the word-count devoted to them, Infinite Requiem doesn’t really say anything about telepaths.  The Sensopaths, or two out of three, are miserably predictable bad guys, excusing brutal murders because they’re “beautiful” and greeting our heroes with naff lines like “‘Have you come to play?’”  The Phractons are globes with psychic jelly in them, and they have a whole linked society, but it never comes to much; they’re just part of the war scenery.  The Pridka inhabit the book’s weakest and least developed setting, the Dream Centre, where the other still-not-as-bad-as-the-main-one member of the triumvirate is causing problems.  This is so without interest that it barely registered, and ditto the Pridka, a bunch of thingummies milling around there.  The psychic humans are indistinguishable from the rest, apart from occasionally pointing out that they’re psychic.  Really, I wonder why the book is so obsessed with this topic if it doesn’t have anything interesting to say about it.

If I seem a little disjointed in tackling this one, perhaps it’s because I rarely sat down and read it in one sitting.  On top of a simply unengaging story and a lot of sketchy characters, the book’s structure works against getting the reader involved.  Blythe writes almost entirely in short bursts, which means there’s never any hope of momentum building.  Now, this device can work very well at doing precisely that: if your story is reaching a critical point, keeping it short-but-sweet can create a certain excitement.  But it doesn’t work like that when it’s the entire bloody book.  Nothing in Infinite Requiem ever seems like a big deal because we’re always off somewhere else – no worlds build, no characters breathe.  Every time we return to Gadrell Major, for example, it’s just the same bloody boring slag-heap full of tanks as when we last saw it.  And that writing style backfires all over again when we reach the action-packed finale – when, of course, a staggered pace might ordinarily have helped, now it’s so par for the course that it doesn’t add anything.  Shanstra’s inevitable demise reads like the rest of it; i.e., totally underwhelming.

The writing that comprises these short sections is not exactly distinguished.  Blythe seems as obsessed with similes as he is with cutting away.  Like any device they’re perfectly fine in moderation, but he sprinkles the damn things everywhere, from the banal (“landing neatly on all fours like a cat”) to the awkwardly odd (“‘Rain,’ the Doctor said softly, watching it lash like angry monsters against the ambulance”).  There’s also an inconsistent habit of using characters’ full names, as if we might run into more than one Darius, Phil or Tilusha ’round these parts.  And while I can understand this might seem like no big deal, there’s a pretty embarrassing collection of Doctor Who references on display.

These came somewhat naturally to The Dimension Riders, since it was more or less a sequel, but what reason is there now for the Doctor to bring up the Key To Time, point out that characters remind him of the Brigadier and Sarah Jane (they wish), admit that his fourth incarnation was a hoot at parties but his sixth was “stranger” (shots fired – or more likely, another reference), or quote a Venusian lullaby?  And it’s not just him: in a tediously typical display of forced “character development”, Sanjay (whilst inhabited by a psychic force) starts picking apart his character arc for him, including the early juggling-and-spoon-playing era, his later tendency to behave like a “chess player”, and various events that have happened during the New Adventures.  I like continuity when it informs the characters or the story – it worked for Set Piece – but this is just a back-slapping display of “I know stuff about Doctor Who.”  To the extent that it is saying anything, it’s obvious.  And with all due respect, more than 30 books into the series and after a whole sub-set of past Doctor books has begun, the average reader and fan is unlikely to be impressed by a cameo from the Monoids.

But there is a flicker of usefulness to continuity.  In the early chapters, Bernice and the Doctor are still reeling from Ace’s departure.  Bernice is wondering what it’ll be like when it’s just the two of them (you and me both…), while the Doctor – naturally wondering if Bernice will bugger off too when he isn’t looking – is still so exhausted from Set Piece, he catches himself longing to regenerate.  It’s difficult for me to get too excited about character development derived from Ace, since I’m desperate for these books to forge a life away from her, but it’s an interesting place to find our characters.  Aaaand then there’s a story that doesn’t do very much with either of them.  Bernice gets bundled off with a holographic Doctor, who seems to exist to provide a distraction in two crucial scenes where a handful of glitter might have done, and the Doctor (in a not atypical dark mood) manipulates people.  The book ends on a sour note as two characters are consigned to tragic deaths in history.  The Doctor’s, and ultimately Bernice’s acceptance of this really ought to give bittersweet pause, but this bit of climax is just as rushed as the rest of it.  (And the characters in question are of such miniscule fascination that it is, at best, mildly surprising that they’ve died.)  Two books to go, just-the-Doctor-and-Bernice.  Step it ruddy well up.

I usually enjoy eviscerating really bad books, but Infinite Requiem doesn’t even have the gusto to stink.  It’s not as diabolical as something like The Ghosts Of N-Space, which makes reviewing it a bit harder.  There’s a dull, but basically serviceable story in here, and a variety of stock ideas, which some people will like.  But it’s an utter chore to wade through, testing your patience by hitting Pause every half-a-page, pouring misery into its characters’ lives but never really bringing them to life, and juggling a solid variety of stuff with a frustratingly docile imagination.  I think I’m past giving these books the benefit of the doubt, certainly on an author’s second go.  I’m too fed up after all that: following it was a misery, remembering it isn’t terribly easy.  Still though, every cloud.

3/10

NB: And that’s the end of this Blog Week.  Stay tuned for reviews 46–50, starting with Steve Lyons’s Time Of Your Life.

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #21 – The Dimension Riders by Daniel Blythe

Doctor Who: The New Adventures

#20

The Dimension Riders

By Daniel Blythe

A mysterious foe manipulating events.  A dark Time Lord presence.  A spaceship in the future.  An old English university.  Monsters.  To quote an elderly Biff Tannen, there's something very familiar about all this.

But then, it's too easy to say The Dimension Riders nicks its ideas from Shada.  Daniel Blythe more-or-less acquits himself of outright plagiarism, offering knowing nods ("I should have known there were other Time Lords lurking in those ancient colleges") as well as direct references (The Worshipful And Ancient Law Of Gallifrey appears; "that business with Skagra" is recalled).  I've even seen this referred to as a Shada sequel.

Anyway, it's not just Shada that'll trigger your spider-sense.  Ancient horrors from beyond the universe practically jostle for space in the Doctor's memoirs.  Time being fatally sped up is, if you'll pardon the expression, as old as the hills. (Time Destructor much?)  As for the army of faceless zombie things, the time paradox at the heart of events, and the metaphysical race through the TARDIS at the end... how long have you got?  Any astute Doctor Who fan and New Adventures reader would blot his Bingo card into an inky mess.  It even ends with the companion(s) doubting the Doctor and going off in a big, who-are-you huff, just like, oh what am I thinking of, ah yes, the previous novel.

Gloves back on: Blythe isn't naïve, or at least not entirely.  The prose is unshabby, even quite witty at times. "Bernice was not to know that St. Catherine's College had been founded in the 1960s, and was a glorious example of what should not be done with glass and concrete."  /  "Her voice was like unpolished silver."  /  "'This Doctor fellow – qualified, is he?'  'Suitably,' she answered, with ice and lemon."  The characters enjoy occasional blobs of backstory, like a spaceship captain's strict adherence to The Peter Principle, or the subtle twinge of romance between two doomed lovers.  ("It sounded as clear as if she were whispering close in his ear.  As clear as the time when she had, in fact.")  And there's a keen awareness of cliché, particularly when we hear from the villain of the week.  (Or the one manipulating the Big Bad Of The Week, secretly at the behest of a something under the control of another Big Bad.  Keep up!)

But when your novel is as all-round familiar and, when you get down to it, unspectacular as The Dimension Riders, cracking wise doesn't make that much of a difference.  Take the ostentatious baddie.  A weak-sauce replacement for the Master, the Rani or what have you, he's only as good as his evil scheme, and that rests on the assumption that the Big Bad will cut him a fair piece of the action, and won't – like every other bad guy's scary boss – simply chuck him in the bin.  I mean, duh, dude!  Watch a movie some time!  Then there is said Big Bad, the Garvond.  (Which sounds to me like the sort of embarrassing first name a baddie is deathly afraid his mother will yell, followed by orders to clean his room.  "Garvonnnnnd!  Where do you think you're going?!")  Not-so-metaphorically set up as an oogly-boogly from Time Lord lore, he/it proceeds to do exactly what the spooky prologue promised, with just the kind of booming voice, evil throne and army of faceless drones you'd expect.  There is talk of raiding the entire universe and then much killing of random folks on a spaceship, which is all a bit... Tuesday afternoon, Doctor Who-wise.

And there are times when Blythe's snappy style deserts him.  One crewman barks her entire horrible history at the Doctor, much to the weirded-out surprise of both of them.  There are some inevitably pretentious epigraphs, including such get-me-I've-read-a-book lah-de-dahs as Milton – but it's not a constant, so it just looks like a random quirk.  And while this is personal taste, I don't think the author has much of an ear for names.  I've already complained about Garvond ("You've not even ironed your shirt!  Wait 'til your father gets home!"), but then there's the not-exactly-evocative Time Soldiers, the not-exactly-anything Time Focus, and a gaggle of characters with pseudo-science-fictiony monikers like Vaik, Quallem and Romulus Terran.  Much of the book's forgettable middle is them, asking questions and getting bumped off. I've forgotten much of this sub-Star Trek stuff already.

The book moves at a relatively spry clip, apart from some of that drab stuff that's gone walkabouts in under 24 hours.  (I try to review these things immediately on finishing.  Clearly I should stick to that!)  The setup ping-pongs from portentous bad guys in the dark (which is all very The Five Doctors or The Deadly Assassin) to a super-efficient lady assassin who kills people with a magic briefcase (which is... wait, what?) to the cosy world of Oxford, and Bernice enjoying herself while the Doctor and Ace stick their noses in some trouble.  Pretty soon we're bouncing to the future as well, at two separate points, and things get pleasingly complex.  Still a bit dull, if I'm honest, what with one future setting being much like the other, and the Garvond and the repeated trick of ageing you to death, but you've got to admire the I-used-diagrams cleverness of it all.  (Also, the ageing gag doesn't entirely wear out its welcome.  The fate of a pregnant crewman is one of the few things I wish I had forgotten.)

The Oxford stuff is probably the highlight.  Some of that may be leftover Shada/Dirk Gently/Unseen University nostalgia.  Much of it is Bernice.  I promise I'm not trying to damn a dozen authors with faint praise here, but she seems genuinely easy to write for; her dry humour and honest curiosity practically bounce off the page.  I'm still amazed more isn't made of her.  ("Patience," said the vast array of Bernice fiction that came later.)  Meanwhile, poor old Ace fights, sulks, broods and comes back for more, ever ready with her list of Nasty Stuff What's Happened To Me Before.  She even has a pseudo-romance into the bargain.  (Yep, it's definitely Tuesday.)  The plot holds together well, but there's a hell of a lot of technobabble in the finale.  And as for the Doctor and Ace's climactic, metaphysical journey through trust issues, not to mention their trek through the tumultuous TARDIS, I just rolled my eyes.  We've done this, haven't we?  I wonder if the Doctor is getting over-familiar too.  It would explain why he's in such a foul mood throughout.

Hey, it's not a bad book.  If you're less familiar with Who canon, and crucially aren't reading all the New Adventures in a row like a damn lunatic (ahem), you'll probably find much to recommend.  It is pretty clever and there are good ideas and images.  (The TARDIS depositing a spaceship in one of its rooms is pretty natty, excepting its materialisation around an entire planet one book previously.)  But I'm stuck looking at the bigger picture: not only a story made up of very well-worn bits, but an arc that shows up at the end to shrug and point out the Doctor "was never meant to lose".  Oh.  The best case scenario there is a villain lamely protecting his pride.  The result is the same even if he is: 240 pages rendered inconsequential.  Or at least, more so.

6/10