Doctor Who: The BBC Books #63 – Tomb Of Valdemar by Simon Messingham

Doctor Who: The Past Doctor Adventures

#29

Tomb of Valdemar

By Simon Messingham

One thing I like about these daft old Doctor Who novels is that the writers sometimes treat them as novels. That’s a rather pretentious statement, I know, since by definition they are all exactly that, but I sometimes get the impression that writers are transcribing imaginary scripts rather than building books from the ground up. See any that constantly change the scene, as if to deter channel-hoppers.

You can see this more novelist attitude in books like The Roundheads, a Boy’s Own adventure that surely belongs in prose; anything by Paul Magrs, who seemingly lives for the particular craziness you only get outside of a visual medium; and the fruitsome Eye Of Heaven, which places great store in who is telling the story and how it is told.

Simon Messingham made similar inroads in Zeta Major, a space opera that occasionally switched away from traditional “he said/she said” prose in favour of news reports and journals. It added a dimension to that story, but I didn’t feel at the time that it was entirely essential. The Face-Eater, a much more conventional Doctor Who book, also dabbled in story perspectives, even using second person for the monster bits. Messingham has now returned to that area wholeheartedly. This time it definitely needs to be there.

Tomb Of Valdemar is a story that relishes being a book. It’s full of choices, which it knows might catch you out. I’m thinking particularly of the use of present tense, which a character nitpicks: “And the way you tell it, all this ‘He says… she says,’ it ain’t right. It should be ‘He said… she said.’ Like proper stories.” (I’m tempted to include the title as An Interesting Choice as it kept wrong-footing me — why isn’t it The Tomb Of Valdemar, which arguably scans better? Was it just more interesting to ditch the definite article? — but then, it is actually called that on the title page. So: was the cover a typo, or the page, or was it all deliberate? *shakes fist* Messinghammm!)

The main reason for that use of present tense is that this story is being told, in the text, to somebody else. This allows for some very human, narrator-led moments such as telling us that a transformed person is chasing them (before telling us the transformation has occurred), or noticing something about a person before they’re described as being in the room, or diving back suddenly to back-fill the reason for telling us something else in the first place. The style is sort of, carefully messy.

A mysterious woman arrives on a fairly harsh world and, for reasons that will come along in good time, tells her story to Ponch: an unassuming fur trapper. My first thought here was that the present tense was creating a sense of danger that you don’t quite get in hindsight — implicitly if you are telling me about it afterwards, then you survived those events — but Tomb Of Valdemar plays a rather cheeky game with the woman’s identity, which throws that off. The tense is mostly a stylistic choice, then; one of a few that the narrator (and presumably author) simply liked best. “Do you think I’m doing this just to be pretentious?” / “Fair enough, Mr Redfearn. Perhaps he is a little incongruous, but I like him. You’ll just have to accept it.”

The story itself concerns, as you’ve probably guessed, a tomb. You might be able to guess much of the rest: this tomb is a gateway to Bad Things and efforts must be made to prevent it from being opened. It’s one of those books where the ideas somewhat edge out the plot, which isn’t to say it’s weak — rather that I just felt I’d been on this sort of archaeological raid before. (Heck, there’s already a famous telly Who story about not mucking about in a tomb, and it also has “tomb” in the title.)

Making things more interesting is the world-building, something Zeta Major also excelled at. There’s a kind of death cult surrounding Valdemar — a shadowy historical figure, supposedly lying dormant — and this cult is mainly there because of a classist revolution that has swept through human society. The disarmingly normal-named Paul Neville leads the cult, and with the help of frustrated novelist Miranda Pelham (who wrote about Valdemar, largely inspiring Neville’s quest) they have located the tomb on what can best be described as a Hell planet. Neville believes Valdemar will grant him all the usual madman accoutrements, but really all he wants is to get one over on Hopkins — the hairless lunatic puritan leading the purge of the old human elite. Both leaders are violent and awful, with poor unsettled Miranda stuck in the middle.

Following Neville are a band of insufferable rich drips, the mysterious and seemingly teenaged Huvan (also insufferable) and the misleadingly-named butler Kampp, who masks with an effete exterior a keen interest in torture devices. Into this mess arrive the Fourth Doctor and Romana, diverted from their quest for the Key To Time by an early attempt to open the tomb. The Doctor must prevent its opening and get back to the business of preventing universal catastrophe — although as it turns out, these goals have a lot in common.

It’s Messingham’s first novel with this Doctor, and it’s a strong showing, with Tom Baker’s unique irreverence blustering through every interaction. (I really enjoyed “He is a charismatic, handsome man, the Doctor supposes,” which nods towards “You’re a beautiful woman, probably.” Also a big fan of: “The Doctor sees a large bank of impressive-looking computer consoles and feels the hum of power beneath his feet. ‘Don’t tell me, the kitchen?’”) There’s a thrilling fusion of his confidence and intelligence with an occasional scruffy underestimation of what’s going on, leading to a lot of very educated winging-it. (Such as his high-born use of telepathy to turn out the lights at a crucial moment, or — inevitably! — the use of his scarf to survive a deadly showdown.)

The placement early in Season Sixteen is no mistake, as his friendship with Romana is still at a formative stage. He more than once bemoans that she is not like his usual companions, and he rather unwisely leaves her at the mercy of a suitor, perhaps assuming that her apparent confidence will prevent any malfeasance and perhaps (on a more bleak note) simply not being that invested in her safety. I think the only Doctor note that didn’t entirely ring true was his seeming insistence on getting back to the Key To Time, a task he mostly found an annoying encumbrance on screen; however I think the question of flawed narrators naturally covers this, as well as layering some external suggestion into his attitude towards his companion.

Romana shines. Perhaps the less popular incarnation when it comes to tie-in fiction, since you’ve inevitably got to work around the Key To Time story as well, her fresh-out-of-the-academy attitude comes into play quite a lot, especially during a few clever references to The Invasion Of Time. (A recent Gallifrey story she wasn’t featured in, it would canonically be fresh on her mind.) Mary Tamm’s somewhat regal bearing makes her a natural, if unhappy fit among Neville’s ghastly acolytes, and it’s difficult to dispute the effect she would have on a confused teenage boy who writes a lot of awful poetry. Despite the very deliberate comedic awkwardness of that pairing, their story manages to affect Romana in more ways than I was expecting. I’m not entirely sure I believe where we leave the two of them, but that’s a great rug-pull nonetheless. (Take note, EDA President Romana.)

There is a degree of archetype about the rest of the cast, with Kampp and Hopkins tending to blur together in their shared sadism, and Neville being a maniacal bore even from the perspective of the other characters. Hopkins’ crew and some of Neville’s guards seem more balanced, but they hardly get a look in. Miranda though is wonderfully well-drawn: a flawed and susceptible creative who essentially just wants to make it out of wherever she’s found herself, deep down she also yearns to make a name for herself. She makes a great pairing with the Doctor (Romana, unfortunately, being stuck with Romeo), with her scatty vulnerability working well against the Doctor’s unpredictable energy. In another life she could have made a great recurring character.

I have criticised the plot, but it’s enjoyable to watch it unfold, with Neville’s adoptive citadel (linked to Valdemar’s tomb) gradually driving its inhabitants mad — and ultimately transforming them. Grotesque transformation seems to interest Messingham, being a The Thing-ish impetus for The Face-Eater. See also the antimatter monsters in Zeta Major, and of course the fantasy/body horror of Strange England, which weirdly might be the closest analogue for this story: Valdemar, without giving too much away, will bring unimaginable chaos to the universe if released. Even before the climax he inspires seemingly random violence and upheaval. (The presence of a couple of sadists also reminded me, somewhat unhappily, of a certain era of Virgin books. At least those guys aren’t driving the plot this time.)

There is a lot of talk of Old Ones, which I suppose might tickle your spider-sense if you like Lovecraft. (As ever I’m taking that as read, since I haven’t read any.) The general speculation on the state of the universe in relation to Valdemar, and how it all links to ideas like telepathy, is all pleasantly mind-expanding without being incomprehensible; no previous Lovecraft-lore is required. The question of “who or what is Valdemar?” kept me guessing and it lands on something that works — not always a given in mysteries — much like the riddle of who’s telling this story and why. Messingham also manages to layer in the idea of storytelling in a way that complements his choice of narrative style, which lends more credence to the mechanics of Tomb Of Valdemar being important rather than just there on a whim.

Tomb Of Valdemar seems confident and comfortable having its narrator (and the Doctor) wing it at times, and it never seemed particularly indulgent to me. Even the rare moments of lamp-shading, like that bit about he said/she said, tell us something about the people complaining. Some of the character writing could be a bit more fleshed out, but at the risk of expanding the benefit of the doubt to breaking point, perhaps the narrator just didn’t get to know everybody?

It’s not perfect, and it can feel a bit off-kilter at times, but the latter mostly just serves to mark it out from the rest. For me, it’s one of the range’s swings that also hits.

8/10

Doctor Who: The BBC Books #59 – Corpse Marker by Chris Boucher

Doctor Who: The Past Doctor Adventures

#27

Corpse Marker

By Chris Boucher

It’s sequel time! I’m still finding it somewhat novel when BBC Books do these, as they’ve resisted the urge to make them a regular thing. Zeta Major and Divided Loyalties are the closest things so far to picking up where a TV story left off; otherwise it tends to be just returning elements, or revisited books.

If you are dubious about sequels then this one might win you over from the outset. Not only are we returning to The Robots Of Death, a prized Season 14 story, but Chris Boucher is back to write it. My only note of caution was that I didn’t enjoy his previous novel; I found Last Man Running a muddle of action over story. Not to worry though: whether Boucher was inspired by the link to his telly work or he’s just warmed to the theme of his second book, Corpse Marker is much more assured.

The Doctor and Leela are back on Kaldor. (The Doctor notes that “this looks disappointingly familiar”, which may or may not be authorial discomfort about sequels. Boucher also sets out a theme of being surprised by your surroundings, so I don’t think he’s just being cheeky here.) Uvanov, Toos and Poul are still around, and perhaps inevitably so are concerns about robots. There are assassin robots that look like people. There’s a prototype robot, somewhere, that’s so advanced it can share its programming with any other robot nearby. There is an Anti-Robot Front attacking robot factories, confusingly following the teachings of “Taren Capel”. (The maniacally pro-robot figure who died in the TV story.)

Much of this might be happening — just as lessons have not been learned — because the killer robot incident from the TV story was never publicised. That’s part of the general atmosphere on Kaldor, a world with information control and a severe wealth disparity between ruling families and slums. (This disparity, one character reminds us, is the work of the people and not the robots.) I suspect one of the reasons Boucher came back to this was the richness of Kaldor as a setting. We previously only knew it via the characters (and costumes!) on the Sandminer, but we get to expand on that here by spending time with the various groups, particularly the ARF. It’s clearly a subject that would continue to interest Boucher as he contributed to the Kaldor City audio series, which carried over some characters originated in this book.

Whilst it is satisfying to delve into the world of Kaldor, it’s perhaps more gratifying to revisit the old characters. Poul, originally played by David Collings (who narrates the audiobook) is in an even worse state than before. His robophobia is all-consuming, and so it should be given the circumstances. He no longer has a friendly robot for support — come to think of it, there are no almost-sentient “good guy” robots to be found here. (D84, you were too pure for this world.) Poul probably fares the least well of the old “Robots” gang, with his heightened mania giving way rather suddenly near the end to a more blissful amnesia; it’s a sort of inverse of his trajectory in the TV story. He provides a good example though of what Kaldor’s problems can drive people to.

Uvanov, played before with pompous grandeur by Russell Hunter (and then again in the audio series) absolutely lives up to his TV persona as he manipulates events, keeps secrets and grasps for power. Much of the plot ends up spinning around Uvanov, and fortunately he’s dynamic to be around. He makes an unusual scene partner with the Doctor, as Uvanov is familiar with him, doesn’t necessarily like him but still aids him where he can. (Whilst plotting to steal his TARDIS, of course.) It’s through Uvanov that we get our clearest look at how Kaldor’s First Families operate.

Then there’s Toos, who has evolved the most from her TV appearance. Apparently gone is her tendency to panic, perhaps because of what she has been through. She’s virtually unflappable now, whilst leaning even more into a sense of decadence and style that feels recognisably like Pamela Salem. She demonstrates for us the sort of casual dreadfulness of the Kaldor rich, referring to herself at one point as “too beautiful and far too rich to care.” (This is at least partly a front: during a power outage we’re privy to her thoughts, which immediately head for doom. “She could hear them coming and she could feel them reaching and she could feel them closing round and she wanted to die immediately, now before it could happen, now before it would happen.” This repetition-as-a-sign-of-instability is something Boucher plays on throughout the book, especially with poor Poul: “That could never happen now. Once but never again. It could never happen again.”)

It’s a sign of how well drawn and well cast these characters were that they can so easily come alive in print. This certainly helps, as a fair chunk of the novel is spent following one of them instead of the Doctor or Leela. Never one to waste something useful, Boucher also pulls in a Blake’s 7 character: Carnell, the “psycho-strategist” with the piercing blue eyes who fancied Servalan. (He’s another one who returns in the Kaldor City series.) If it feels like Boucher is raiding his idea cupboard, just be glad he’s sticking to the good ones.

Rest assured though, the Doctor and Leela get plenty to do. The Doctor has some hair-raising encounters with dozens of freshly made cyborgs who follow him around, as well as a Terminatore-esque fight with one of them later, a helicopter crash and a one-on-one with the dangerous robot at the centre of it all. Boucher is quick to have the Doctor highlight the easily-led quality of robots, and he echoes this in a thought about warriors, extrapolating nicely the dangers of control and groupthink: “When he emerged again no one had moved an inch as far as he could tell. He made a mental note to be careful what he told these people to do and not to do.” / “That was one of the arguments he had against narrowly specific training; it tended to make behaviour narrowly specific.” / “When he had realised that he must be careful of what he said to those newly formed robots he had met in the hatchling dome, he thought, he should have made a mental note to be careful when speaking to the humans as well.” The Doctor here is reassuringly witty and only a little bit condescending about Leela. (“There was no sign either of the fighting [Leela] claimed to have heard, and the uncharitable thought struck the Doctor that she was probably running around the place trying to start some.”)

Perhaps unsurprisingly (although I mustn’t take it for granted), Leela shines. Following the gauntlet that was Last Man Running, we find the warrior companion more cautious this time, actively trying to avoid fighting when she knows she will win (“They were stupid and disgusting but was that reason enough to kill them?”) and encouraging a fellow fighter not to use lethal force if possible. That doesn’t mean she’s a pacifist — circumstances push her to violence several times, and she’s unashamedly proficient at it, particularly when fighting off cannibals in a slum. But you sense thoughtfulness in her approach, as well as a commitment to the still-present gulf between her understanding of the world and the Doctor’s. (“Was it possible that the TARDIS had miraculously brought them back to a time before the death of Taren Capel? No. Her every instinct told her it was not possible. When they fought him they did not know him for what he was. If this was before then how would they not have known? She must ask the Doctor about this.”) She feels like a character still growing, which makes sense as the novel is specifically placed after Last Man Running.

I’ve seen some comments on the overall writing in Corpse Marker being more like that of a novelisation. I think that’s rather uncharitable. There are plenty of occasions where Boucher uses prose to subtly hint at the mental state of a character, like those strange little repetitions (“That must be what it was. He was losing his mind — that must be what it was”), and there are some neatly omniscient hints at what’s really going on or of things to come, which make the story feel like it’s happening on a bigger canvas. (“No one other than Captain Lish Toos herself must be allowed to know that her assassin was not human.”) There’s some unashamedly poetic description too (on a robot killing spree: “killing like murderous children, murderous like parents killing”) and even a bit of that distinctly Boucher-esque weirdness viz a world-building hint that Kaldor is in a cycle of robot uprisings that they’ve all just forgotten about.

Not to lift one book up just by putting down another, but I’d say there’s a general improvement here over Last Man Running. The earlier book had some ideas that might have worked better on screen, such as a jungle segueing into a forest, and both of those being eerily quiet. There’s a great bit here with Leela examining her surroundings whilst pretending to be asleep, which is something that really works best in prose. Then after she catches her captors unaware and breaks one of their arms, we cut away, and when we return they’re all eating together — which immediately demonstrates the respect she’s earned without having to laboriously point it out. I don’t think Boucher is ever noticeably just transcribing action.

Perhaps the only bum note for me was the ending, which seems in too much of a hurry and doesn’t fully satisfy. The immediate trouble with the robots is over, but there’s such a mess already that it seems optimistic to rule out more of it. The ARF is exposed as something of a sham, but not in such a way that any of them actually learn from it. Uvanov and Carnell respectively win and lose at their manipulations, but you get the sense that the problems of Kaldor haven’t even blinked, so has a great deal of this even mattered? Perhaps that’s why there was room to create further (audio) stories. I definitely felt as though Boucher was quite happy diving into and expanding this world, but then maybe someone said “don’t forget it’s only 280 pages” so he quickly fashioned a stopping point rather than truly rounding it off.

If you liked The Robots Of Death then there’s a lot to like here, although Corpse Marker is not the same kind of Agatha Christie-ish thriller as before. Boucher is like a kid in a candy store with the setting and characters, and the plot is complex, but admittedly without time to process its conclusions it does leave a bit to be desired. It has a little of that Boucher-esque lack of clarity in places, but otherwise it feels like a leap forward for the author. It’s a good example of the range, and I’m glad it’s among the (too few) BBC and Virgin books that got a flashy reprint in recent years.

7/10

Doctor Who: The BBC Books #47 – Millennium Shock by Justin Richards

Doctor Who: The Past Doctor Adventures
#22

Millennium Shock

By Justin Richards

Justin Richards is famed for his reliability as a writer. There can be few greater examples of this than Millennium Shock, written at short notice to fill a gap and reportedly turned around in a matter of weeks. He makes this sort of thing look bafflingly easy, first doing this and then putting out a critical Bernice novel the following month, a BBC Book only 2 months prior, and later the same year pulling another quick turnaround to fill a gap for Virgin. At some point we must face the possibility that there was simply two of him all along.

Of course, a quick turnaround is all very nice — especially for the publisher! — but all that matters to the reader is whether the book is any good. There are reasons to suspect that Millennium Shock won’t be. There’s the aforementioned turnaround, although the reader shouldn’t be aware of that. And there’s the fact that it’s a sequel — a surprisingly rare commodity in Doctor Who noveldom, unless you count multi-book arcs or linked books such as Blood Harvest/Goth Opera and Shakedown/Lords Of The Storm. It’s even rarer for bridging Virgin and BBC Books — see also Business Unusual, at least, which revisits baddies but with a different Doctor.

Millennium Shock is more your sort of direct sequel. And by direct I mean it literally begins with the last scene of System Shock, albeit slightly expanded. The main action takes place immediately after that, making this arguably just the next 280 pages of System Shock. The entire plot that follows revolves around a pen that happened to be mentioned on that final page.

If all of this sounds like a desperate Hail Mary just to squeeze another book out of something, anything, well to be honest it probably was. But Millennium Shock doesn’t seem particularly bothered by that, picking up the gauntlet of “what happened next” and running with it at full pelt. The pace is crazy, but in a good way: the story stays on track and there isn’t so much of the author’s occasional chopping and changing of scenes and characters. I suspect there wasn’t time to spin that many plates in this one.

Richards, a noted programming enthusiast, would inevitably have been inspired by millennium angst. He uses that to power his latest plot for the Voracians, the semi-cybernetic snake people from System Shock. Still fixated on the ruling power of technology and still keen to release their all-powerful program Voractyll, they are now working within the government to circumvent efforts to fix the millennium bug, which will naturally create a chaotic vacuum they can fill. Said bug is a real gift to the novel — the baddies hardly even need their own weapon since they can just ensure that a problem already happening will run its course. This is a very fun way to incorporate real history into a story. (Or rather, given the publication date, current events. There’s an element of catastrophising in painting such a gloomy what if about the millennium, but that must have been irresistible at the time.)

Millennium Shock has a similar, if not quite as uncanny sense of timing to System Shock: the prior book placed its 70s characters in a fictional 1998, which at the time was 3 years in the future. We’ve still got a 70s character in this one (the Fourth Doctor, travelling solo this time) but he’s in what at time of publication was the present day. There’s still a novelty to that, just as there would be from having him show up in 2025. (The “modern day” for a TARDIS crew is always when they were filming, for obvious reasons.) Of course he manages to fit in easily among the technology of the day, at once being innocently perplexed by energy-saving dimmer switches and running rings around modern programmers.

Richards wrote very well for this Doctor in System Shock and there’s more of that here, such as a scene where he goes “undercover” (“He was in disguise, of course, hat in pocket and scarf tucked away inside his coat”), various moments of winning verbal playfulness (“‘Now,’ [the Doctor] said, ‘tell me, are you one of the people who’s breaking in, or are you as surprised at what’s going on as I am?’”) and in a great pratfall making use of sound in a way Richards would later revisit in The Joy Device. “Behind him the door rocked precariously near the edge of the stair. ‘Well done, Doctor,’ he congratulated himself as he passed the fifth floor. ‘No one will ever guess you were here.’ … ‘What was that?’ Bardell demanded. They had all heard the noise. Clark shook his head and shrugged. ‘It sounded like something heavy falling down a flight of stairs.’”

The Doctor wins people over with his (for want of a less hokey word) bohemian charm, aided by what can only be described as a book that isn’t remotely interested in messing about. There’s very little obstinacy among the government officials who aren’t Voracians, with one noting re the Doctor’s tall tales that “It actually makes no odds. Whether we believe the Doctor’s story or not, we are faced with the same problems, so I suggest we leave the question of alien invasion for now and concentrate on the things we can believe and agree on.” It’s such a relief just to let the plot fly without all that usual time-wasting “do you honestly expect me to believe this” guff. Millennium Shock only occasionally threatens to trip over its own feet in the rush: there’s a sequence where a government official is murdered in a way that will frame Harry Sullivan, but it only seems to matter for a chapter or two and then the open-minded good guys sweep it away so quickly it almost wasn’t worth doing. Ah well.

Speaking of Harry, he’s on companion duty this time, only it’s “modern day” MI5 Harry. I found it quietly touching to visit an older Ian Marter in System Shock and that is still the case here, with more insight into his rather Spartan home life and the regrets that come with his line of work. The action really does tear along to the extent that we’re not exactly having long character conversations, but his easy rapport with the Doctor is a treat — there’s a marked maturity compared to his more chauvinistic youth, and it’s so far not been possible to pair the two of them without Sarah in tow, so that’s its own kind of treat.

Richards manages to build a little pathos into his characters who more often than not come to tragic ends. Harry’s young cleaner becomes somewhat pivotal to his story when she becomes a target, and the Doctor’s interactions with a converted programmer end up being decisive for victory, as well as rather sad because a man’s identity has disappeared. There’s a general pathos to the Voracians, even though they are plainly a piss-take of mindless corporate bureaucracy: it’s reliably funny to hear these megalomaniac cyborgs calmly spout bobbins like “If matters do seem to be exceeding control parameters then you are authorised to issue a termination notice” or “‘We do have a containment strategy for your approval.’ Cutter nodded, evidently pleased with this. ‘Then present it, Mr Bardell. You won’t get unwarranted pushback from me.’ ‘Very well, Mr Cutter. I won’t speak to charts, if that is all right.’ ‘Verbals are fine.’” Yet underneath all that, there is a sadness about these quasi-organic beings who can no longer access what they once were, who now are repulsed by basic things like food and water. It’s sort of an obvious avenue for a semi-artificial villain race, I suppose, and yet it’s distinct from how others like the Cybermen are written, focussing on that specific sense of distaste. Good work, although there’s a chance we’re covering similar (if not exactly the same) ground as System Shock with all this.

The prior book was 4 years old and well out of print when Millennium Shock came along, and it’s been even longer since I last read it, so I can perhaps forgive Richards for playing the hits. And he has other things to draw from, now he has more books under his belt, additionally fitting in another nuclear missile crisis after writing one in Option Lock. (While this one is a bit less heart-stopping, I thought it was far more convincingly woven into the plot.) I do think the timely story makes a case for this being truly its own book, and in any case I thought the pace of it worked better than the first go around, blowing all the dust out at every opportunity and maintaining a real sense of spy-novel fun throughout. How much of the frantic excitement of Millennium Shock is truly down to the time crunch I doubt we’ll ever know, but I like to think that Richards turned a (millennium) bug into a feature.

7/10

Doctor Who: The BBC Books #43 – More Short Trips edited by Stephen Cole

Doctor Who

More Short Trips

Edited by Stephen Cole

Right, that’s enough novels. Back down the short story mines with you.

There doesn’t seem to be a linking theme this time, although Stephen Cole — clearly amused by the less than imaginative title of More Short Trips, going by the introduction and blurb — suggests that the simple fact of an increased number of stories ought to cover it. Maybe themes are overrated?

He also mentions being the outgoing editor of Doctor Who for BBC Books, which is surprising to me as he still had roughly 30 more books to go at this point. Were they really working that far in advance or did the plans change?

Anyway. Short trips. More of them.

*

Totem

By Tara Samms

Ah yes, Tara Samms, finalist in the 1998 Steve Cole Lookalike Contest. (I’m suddenly wondering how many of this collection’s “new voices” are Cole.)

This one features the Eighth Doctor working for a widow in Portugal, bringing her somewhat out of her shell and inadvertently romancing her. According to Wikipedia he’s making amends for something the Seventh Doctor did, but the story’s so short I didn’t pick up on that. Anyway, it’s an evocative moment.

*

Scientific Adviser

By Ian Atkins

The Second Doctor gets some work on a film set recreating The Invasion. (I very much appreciated the line “Having problems with the invasion, then?”) He’s ostensibly there to ensure a lack of historical accuracy and thus keep UNIT’s secrets safe. However, another plot is percolating.

Ian Atkins does a marvellous job of evoking the odd charm of this Doctor, particularly around children, and it’s an amusingly subversive way into a Doctor Who story — it’s surprising, really, that more stories aren’t told in-universe about known alien invasions, but I suppose that’s the whole reason for UNIT’s actions here. This is an instant hit, although I can feel my brain wrinkling when I try to fit it into continuity.

*

Missing, Part One: Business as Usual

By Gary Russell

Mel’s back home! I’ve got no idea about the logistics of this (wasn’t she last seen leaving Iceworld on Glitz’s spaceship, presumably in the future?) but the character beats seem more important here. Mel has apparently not enjoyed her time with the Doctor, or not enough to consider it worthwhile, which is a somewhat sour take when the author’s Business Unusual (heavily referenced here) was also concerned with keeping Mel from her destiny. It’s not really how she was the last time she was with the Doctor, which frustratingly leaves a gap that we’re not filling. We’ll see what Part Two looks like, but for now this is a quick and rather moody check-in.

*

Moon Graffiti

By Dave Stone

A characteristically funny piece from Dave Stone featuring a moon covered in graffiti and a tiny spaceship full of irritable and sarcastic aliens. This does a pretty good job of world-building for an Earth gone temporarily to hell thanks to some marauding spiders. (The aforementioned graffiti artists.) It has tons of ideas, including an in-universe explanation for Peri’s sometimes questionable wardrobe choices. In his rather pitiable status quo for humanity Stone inadvertently hits on imagery that would be used in The Matrix. (No, not the Doctor Who one.) The Sixth Doctor, needless to say, feasts upon Stone’s verbiage.

*

One Bad Apple

By Simon Forward

Here’s a name we’ll be seeing on novels at some point, and One Bad Apple is an excellent first impression. The Fourth Doctor and Leela are on a jungle world inhabited by large plate-covered animals while a platoon of Cyber-enhanced soldiers skulk about. The story posits an interesting future for those who have been partially converted into Cybermen, and it does clever things with biblical allusions such as knowledge from apples. The characters seem to ring with hidden intelligence. I’m keen to hear more from this writer.

*

64 Carlysle Street

By Gary Russell

Gary Russell gets creative here, telling a story from various viewpoints, all of them working in a country house. The First Doctor, Steven and Dodo have ingratiated themselves in order to investigate and deal with an alien visitor. They’re all well captured and the story ticks along nicely, quietly (for Gary Russell anyway) sequelising an obscure piece of lore.

*

The Eternity Contract

By Steve Lyons

A bit of metaphysical Gothic horror awaits the Fifth Doctor and Nyssa as they fight to escape a house that seemingly serves as a gateway to the afterlife. This is creepy stuff and it plays confidently with the level of the supernatural involved. It also constructs a likeable side-character, Patricia, in whom I invested pretty quickly. I tend to think this sort of thing suits the Fifth Doctor, a character with the sort of good-boy puritanical streak you’d expect to get the vapours when a vampire shows up. (Indeed, see Goth Opera.)

*

The Sow in Rut

By Robert Perry and Mike Tucker

We’re straight back to the supernatural with this one: Sarah Jane’s stay in a cottage is cut short by what appears to be a spectral force. Perry and Tucker have their cake and eat it with both kinds of explanation catered for in the end. For better or worse, this is something that would fit neatly into an ongoing series of K9 & Company.

*

Special Weapons

By Paul Leonard

This would be a great idea for a TV episode or even a novel: during the Second World War some German troops have got hold of an alien being that can separate a place from its surroundings, cutting off all light and eventually killing everything inside. They have done this to a small English village and they naturally have plans to expand — but the Seventh Doctor, here with Mel, knows this will backfire and kill the planet, to say nothing of the creature.

Apart from the terrifying image of unnatural night, this is a dark (ahem) piece with the requisite Paul Leonard-ish moral toing and froing of supposedly bad characters, here one of the German officers, and a supposedly good one named Oliver. The Doctor and Mel display unusual grit for Season 24 (the adventure happens not long after Paradise Towers) but this kind of gung ho action suits Mel surprisingly well. Excellent stuff.

*

Honest Living

By Jason Loborik

An offbeat sequel to Day Of The Daleks featuring some more time travelling guerrillas with a resulting mess of paradoxes. There’s some pathos in the bookended story of a man who should have died, and there’s an unusually anthropomorphic approach to time taking its revenge against paradoxes. However this one suffers from the problem stories about the mechanics of time travel usually face, in that it’s hard to understand so it needs explaining. I think the general pathos just about carries it.

*

Dead Time

By Andrew Miller

This is a rather excitable and talky bit of fan service with the Eighth Doctor trapped in a mental prison, for a while talking to a future (still McGann) version of himself, then having to battle through all his past lives. It’s one of those stories that needs to constantly explain itself, and although the idea of the Forgotten (beings that “time travel” back through someone’s life) is quite good, we don’t really get any mileage out of it here. Sam features and is not exactly a joy to be around, so at least that’s accurate.

*

Romans Cutaway

By David A. McIntee

I’ve ended up reading this at the perfect time, as I’m currently halfway through a rewatch of The Romans. McIntee — RIP — seizes on the gap in the story between the TARDIS crash landing and the gang all relaxing in the Roman villa; he relates how they found out about its original occupants and he puts Ian and Barbara in a life or death situation. (Their first of several during their stay.) The latter leads to a bit of soul searching from the pair. It’s a nice little pause within a generally restful story, with Ian reacting thoughtfully to his defensive act of violence towards the end.

*

Return of the Spiders

By Gareth Roberts

A romp (what else) from Gareth Roberts featuring (who else) the Fourth Doctor and Romana, here encountering giant spiders in High Wycombe. Roberts is as fond as ever of the banter between these characters and of satirising British society, and although it gets a little too arch for its own good in places it’s still a decently amusing jaunt.

*

Hot Ice

By Christopher Bulis

We’re back with the Fifth Doctor and Peri for the first time since The Ultimate Treasure, so it’s little surprise who wrote this one. It’s a pretty good tale of thieves chasing thieves and then ensnaring the TARDIS crew. I’m not completely convinced by the Fifth Doctor in this — he seems unusually clinical — but various parties do manage to hoodwink him, so it’s pretty close.

*

uPVC

By Paul Farnsworth

This one is in two parts and it has two distinct tones. First we find the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe noticing a strange knock from outside the TARDIS, only to end up facing a double glazing salesman who somehow travels in the vortex. It’s an absurd bit of farce, but when he expounds on his services the Doctor is suddenly interested. We then jump ahead to the Seventh Doctor and Ace for a more melancholy moment concerning the window that was built, and what it means to the Doctor.

It’s a lot to pack into a short story (set entirely within the TARDIS) and it’s inevitably a bit discordant, but it’s an interesting one, drawing a line between these very different Doctors and where they were in their lives.

*

Good Companions

By Peter Anghelides

Ooh. This one features a future Doctor (with ginger hair, I mean can you imagine?!) running into a much older Tegan. Sadly Tegan’s life took a turn after she left the TARDIS and her adventures have now been designated as a mental breakdown; she doesn’t believe in or fully remember them, or the Doctor for that matter. Bumping into “Dr Smith” and his companion Anna leads to an encounter with a strange theatre troupe. Everything that happens is more organised than it first appears, and Anghelides’ future Doctor is a lot more invested than he seems. This is deeply melancholy by the end, but — as much as I wish we’d avoid saying that characters’ lives took nasty turns, and in any case Tegan clearly did find some happiness too — I think this approaches its ideas with sensitivity. I’m guessing it’s the story people talked about most in this collection.

*

Missing, Part Two: Message in a Bottle

By Robert Perry and Mike Tucker

At two pages long this is the shortest thing in More Short Trips, pipping Part One to the post. It describes, briefly, a message Mel left floating in space hoping that the Doctor would get it. (Paying off the last thing she said to him on screen.) But he didn’t and now he won’t, and we don’t actually know what the message was. It’s all quite melancholy.

I’m a bit at a loss with these Missing vignettes. Mel was broadly unhappy about her travels apparently (gee, thanks) and wishes she could say something to the Doctor (so perhaps it wasn’t all bad?), but these bits are so brief that they don’t really earn it. As I’ve said before, I don’t object on principle to companions having downbeat lives post-Doctor Who, although I do consider it the most obvious route to go down if we’re seeing them again. I just want it to be something. I was just saying how much effort Peter Anghelides had put into Tegan’s troubled future. The presence of both invites the comparison and it leaves this one wanting. What’s going on with Mel? Why ask if you won’t tell?

*

Femme Fatale

By Paul Magrs

Magrs is in typical madcap mode here with the Eighth Doctor, Sam and Iris orbiting Andy Warhol at the time of his attempted assassination. The Doctor’s feelings about Iris’ plagiarism of his life, multiple time zones with different written perspectives, at least one section that seems to repeat word for word presumably for reasons and a running Avengers parody all occupy the same lift in this jolly, if rather overcooked follow-up to The Scarlet Empress. My poor brain wishes that the most complicated one wasn’t last in the set, but characteristically for Magrs there’s plenty of fun to pick up even if just by osmosis.

*

And that’s More Short Trips. Cole’s theme-but-not-a-theme seems a decent enough excuse for authors simply to have at it, and quite frankly it doesn’t hurt the book at all. There are brilliant ideas in here and only a few swings and misses — with the increased story count, the odds tend to improve. Melancholy seems quite popular among the authors but there’s also a focus on creativity and fun. A breadth of scope is what you want here and the result is worth seeking out.

8/10

Doctor Who: The BBC Books #31 – Last Man Running by Chris Boucher

Doctor Who: The Past Doctor Adventures
#15
Last Man Running
By Chris Boucher

I was excited to read this one for a couple of (pretty obvious) reasons.

More Leela is always a good thing. After being criminally ignored in the Missing Adventures she crops up fairly often in BBC Books, shaking things up with her unique perspective and the equally offbeat Doctor/companion relationship that surrounds her. Here she is in her second book already. Marvellous.

And who should be the writer this time but Chris Boucher — originator of Leela. What a coup! He’s written several celebrated Doctor Who scripts and was the power behind much of Blake’s 7. Even when he swings and misses, which happened on both shows, it tends to be at least interesting.

The premise isn’t bad. The Doctor and Leela arrive on a strangely ersatz world that looks deserted, apart from a couple of predators very keen on killing anything that moves, and a team of people on the hunt for a fugitive. There’s shades of The Android Invasion (a place with no wildlife where even the plant life isn’t real), with the exciting addition of everything that is there wanting to kill you. The whole fugitive thing seems promising too — how dangerous is the fugitive? And how trustworthy are the people hunting them? Good ideas here.

I’m highlighting this early sense of promise because in execution these ideas fall completely flat.

The world they’re on has shades of interest about it — particularly good are the random different climates, such as jungle suddenly segueing into forest, but nothing is really done with that besides creating a general sense of oddity when it happens to come up. It’s the sort of thing that might work better in a visual medium where the differences can be more apparent than saying “these trees aren’t like those trees”. (You could probably make the prose dig into what makes it like a forest vs what makes it like a jungle, but we generally don’t.) The same goes for the general lack of wildlife and activity — it worked for The Android Invasion because you could draw our attention to it with production values, but in a novel if you say “forest” or “jungle” I’m already relying on my imagination for birds or cicadas to be busying away, so their implied absence is somewhat abstract. (Given that it eventually turns out the planet is a sort of weapons training facility, where things hunting you is the whole point, you might think a bit of background hubbub would be useful. What’s the point training in conditions that you won’t find anywhere else?)

The setting is unfortunately the least of our problems. For about half the page count Last Man Running is a survival drama, aka an action movie. Sounds exciting, right? Making it a Leela story tips the balance, presumably making it more exciting, like watching Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando: you almost feel bad for anybody getting in his way but it’s fun to watch it play out. Here, not so much. Leela is a match for the various snakes and multi-legged worms and flying things and underwater things and random-bipeds-with-sticks on this planet, and that’s never really in question. So far, so Arnie, but the individual threats are all animals (apart from the bipeds who might as well be), so there’s no outwitting, no sense of foiling something insidious, just the hard graft of chasing and killing things before they kill the Doctor or somebody else. This can take pages at a time to pull off, and then it’s just happening one time after another. Critically, no story is progressing between these attacks — we’re just rummaging around to find another thing she can disembowel. It’s monotonous action in search of a story.

It’s easy to forget that there are other characters since Leela for sure is the biggest moving part. It doesn’t help though that the supporting characters aren’t doing anything of significance. They’re here to find a fugitive, but they aren’t really looking for him; their main preoccupation is finding their ship (which has vanished) and then not getting killed. They mostly just bicker, or in one case flirt, and also their leader has some neuroses about not being good enough and not having a good enough team. In general they’re a deeply unlikeable bunch and — since their leader brought it up — they’re pretty bad at this, actually, so it’s hard to be invested in their success or survival. When one of them stupidly gets himself ensnared by a giant amphibian, you do sort of want it to hurry up and eat him.

The team are all from a species (human, human-ish?) with a number of odd tics. These all hint at world-building, which could be interesting, but none of it really is; it’s just added detail. They call each other “firsters” or “toodies” depending on if they were settled on their first or second planet; they have a thing about weight, with “skinny” being derogatory, so most of them are rather portly; they observe an odd naming convention where the first syllable is its own separate thing, which means they think the Doctor’s first name is “The” for almost the whole book even though they are all well aware of, and correctly use the word “the”; and they have a religious fascination with Shakespeare, but appear not to know who he is, which seems redundant but perhaps hand-waves towards the sheer age of their society. It might be worth remembering the Sevateem and the Tesh in Boucher’s The Face Of Evil, as their names and terminology changed over generations. I’d also point to The Robots Of Death, which contained another bunch of unlikeable drips as the supporting cast. In their case, though, being in an Agatha Christie pastiche, we were invited to wait for the next body to drop. Here we just have a bunch of pompous twerps stumbling into death traps to keep Leela busy. They disappear for a significant chunk near the end, perhaps to see if we’d even notice.

Around the two thirds mark the story shifts underground to the lair of the fugitive/runner of the title (although “last man running” coincidentally refers to something else here). It’s good to finally put a face to the name, so to speak; the Fourth Doctor is at his best when he has someone to run rings around, and this band of hopeless fugitive-hunters don’t cut it. (Incidentally, why he insists on humouring them with the “The” name and lies about his and Leela’s origins, I don’t know. Why should he care how they react to the truth? This Doctor especially. Very odd.) The fugitive is, unfortunately, not a fascinating guy either, and also seems rather a pipsqueak against this Doctor. It’s not really clear what his skills are — he’s a “weapons tech” but since he’s stumbled on the greatest and most intuitive weapons facility ever, he doesn’t really have to work for it. His plan has somewhat far reaching consequences for his people, but our brief forays into their society (hanging out with that useless gang notwithstanding) don’t give us much of a reason to care how that turns out. A major figure in this world is called Dikero Drew, “known to his subordinates as Skinny-dick,” which is just one example of this civilisation’s ehhh-inducing teenage sense of humour. Go to war, guys, seriously. I’m not bothered.

The underground section is suitably trippy, as people see other versions of themselves and wander along corridors to nowhere. It’s here that the book more directly starts to say something about Leela, as it becomes apparent that the fugitive’s plan hinges on her fighting skills. By the book’s end it’s clear that this was meant to be a learning, softening experience for her, but I didn’t really see that. Granted, I was very bored for a lot of it — corridors are corridors, never mind how weird they are — but Last Man Running mostly seems to reinforce Leela’s killer instincts, or just present them. Leela’s hall of mirrors sequence ought to thrum with meaning for her, but in practice it just feels like some more action.

It’s a phenomenon among Chris Boucher’s scripts that sometimes I just don’t see what he’s getting at, and Leela’s character arc in Last Man Running is probably another example. The writing is pretty good for her — you would expect nothing less, let’s face it — with plenty of that simple and direct thought process unique to her character. The Doctor fares less well, his actions (such as abandoning Leela to the TARDIS at the start) not always making sense. He has a real propensity here for philosophical meandering which eclipses his usual wit. (Though again, it’s hard to be witty with morons.) The story mainly being here to reinforce how indispensable Leela is, or so I’m guessing, it often leaves the Doctor up a figurative (and at one point literal) tree awaiting rescue. All a bit unfortunate, really, but I liked the bit about his dress sense being an apparently sincere effort to seem more normal.

It’s a frustrating read. Mainly a tedious one, yes, wading through chunks of Leela-fights-monsters this and idiots-flirt-or-complain-at-each-other that in search of a plot, but you get whiffs of something bigger and better. A mysterious world that can make anything — a memorial to a dead race. (So we find out in an egregious and late info-dump from the Doctor.) A society that has this peculiar relationship with Shakespeare. Leela, not just fighting lots but growing because of it. Could work, probably? Whether the perfect redraft just for some reason never happened, or whether he’s just more comfortable with scripts than novels, the end result is a clanging miss from Boucher. We’ll be seeing more from him and Leela later. I hope the next one’s better.

3/10

Doctor Who: The BBC Books #19 – Short Trips edited by Stephen Cole

Doctor Who
Short Trips
Edited by Stephen Cole

Just when you thought Virgin Publishing had been relieved of all their lunch money, BBC Books goes and finds another couple of quid round the back. Short stories with different Doctors seem a perfectly obvious thing for a Doctor Who publishing company to do, but who knows if they would still have done them without the leg up? For what it’s worth, Virgin — who had not long ago concluded the Decalogs with a volume of pure, license-free sci-fi — warrant this oblique little nod from Stephen Cole: “Linking the stories thematically had traditionally proven successful in this area of Doctor Who publishing.” Naming no names…

Short Trips follows that tradition with its own linking theme, albeit not one featured on the front cover: freedom. I like it — it’s nebulous enough that it seems more likely to inspire storytelling than create a nagging obligation for each story to fill.

Cole also mentions in his introduction that the writers were encouraged to write to the length they needed, hence this is the longest BBC Book yet at 340 pages. Will the stories benefit from all that breathing room? We’ll see.

And away we go…

*

Model Train Set
By Jonathan Blum

Jonathan Blum flies solo in this charming vignette about the Doctor’s train set. He uses this for some colourful insight into previous Doctors, such as the thought that the Sixth would rather be a colourful and noisy train that build a train set, and “No matter what else you said about [the Seventh], he made the trains run on time.” As with Vampire Science, this makes some clear statements about the guy with the brown curls, who once again tries to step away from his predecessor’s controlling nature but struggles to get the balance right. The final image of him just trying to save his little wooden people a bit of effort is some quintessential Doctoring.

For continuity enthusiasts, there is no sign of Sam, so this could easily be the Doctor’s next adventure after Longest Day.

*

Old Flames
By Paul Magrs

A couple of very significant firsts happen in this one: the first published Doctor Who story by Paul Magrs, who has continued contributing to this day, and the first appearance of Iris Wildthyme, the Doctor’s scraggly half-cut mirror image. The Fourth Doctor and Sarah find themselves at an 18th century ball attended by wayward time traveller Iris and her slightly befuddled companion, Captain Turner. They are soon all investigating a mysterious big cat on the grounds.

Magrs makes quite an impression here, with derring do and striking imagery such as the Doctor being rescued from drowning, or perhaps more notably Iris’s same-size-on-the-inside TARDIS in the shape of a double decker bus. Magrs’s uninhibited sense of humour twists the prose quite jauntily and he keeps the plot tight. This one’s a keeper.

*

War Crimes
By Simon Bucher-Jones

An evocative sideways step during the finale of The War Games, as one of the many unseen non-human experiments of the War Lords is sent (still augmented) back to its homeworld, where it tries to avoid its new programming. It then encounters the Second Doctor, Jamie and Zoe, still making their last desperate escape attempt. This one ends rather abruptly, but not before relating the creature’s agonies to the story it’s sitting next to. This is good stuff — I can imagine these ideas splintering off into their own book. I’m not sure if it really satisfies as a short story though.

*

The Last Days
By Evan Pritchard

A First Doctor story about not changing history featuring Ian, Barbara and Susan might seem an unfortunate thing to publish in the same month as The Witch Hunters, but The Last Days finds another angle. Evan Pritchard makes this Ian’s (rather than Susan’s) dilemma, and offers a chilling new perspective on letting history take its course: at the siege of Masada, when the Jewish rebels are about to be captured by Romans, Barbara explains that their mass suicide is the best course of action for them in the here and now. Incredibly it gets darker from there, with Ian forced to perform a pivotal role in their last defiance, then make a symbolic statement that throws his struggle almost into mockery.

This is The Romans as seen through a very different lens. The Doctor and Ian are figuratively and literally opposed, so much so that it’s hard to imagine how Ian ever had a spring in his step after this. Barbara believably uses her knowledge of Roman slavery to back up her views, but while I was reading it I wrongly assumed she meant her literal experience in The Romans — before remembering that Susan is still here, so that hasn’t happened yet. (The Last Days makes for a very odd prequel to that adventure, considering their misery here and their later high spirits.)

Possible continuity wobble aside, it’s powerful stuff, and proof that you can revisit the same sort of story and get a different result. If only that were true of history.

*

Stop The Pigeon
By Robert Perry and Mike Tucker

As you can probably guess from the byline, the Seventh Doctor and Ace feature in this one. It’s a madcap story about a bogus anti-ageing process featuring time anomalies and a talking pigeon. There are plenty of fun moments, such as an aggrieved Ace threatening to bend the Doctor’s spoons, and the aforementioned pigeon puffing a joint. (!) The plot just barely hangs together, and the authors throw in fan favourite ideas in a way that doesn’t feel entirely justified. I’m mainly looking at the Master here, chronologically in his first outing since Survival; as well as the writing being something of a poor relation (the Doctor’s pleas not to give in to his animal self simply recall “If we fight like animals, we die like animals”, only windier), it’s not even the first person-into-animal transformation in this collection (thanks to Old Flames) which lessens his impact. It’s good zany fun, if a little misconceived.

*

Freedom
By Steve Lyons

Perhaps the most literal use of the “freedom” theme comes from the writer who suggested it to Stephen Cole. The Third Doctor and Jo fall into one of the (still captive) Master’s traps, and the Brigadier is forced to ask their nemesis for help in retrieving them. The Master’s freedom is at stake, as is the Doctor’s. (For good measure the Master has also set up a company called Freedom. What was that theme again?)

It was an odd choice to sequence two Master stories right next to each other. This one inevitably echoes The Face Of The Enemy, almost word for word in the Brigadier’s attempted interrogation scene; there is also a sequence at the end that somewhat retreads the Third Doctor’s segment from The Eight Doctors, with him once again willing to hang everyone else out to dry if it gets him out of exile. I can understand this take on the character, indeed we’ve seen it on screen, but it sticks in my craw when it’s drummed up within the tight confines of a short story. It just seems a bit flippant that way. Elsewhere, the Doctor’s “future echoes” are a nifty touch, and the scenes of Jo contemplating her eternal captivity stick out in an otherwise rather familiar tale.

*

Glass
By Tara Samms

Ah, Tara Samms. Much like Michael Collier, she has mysteriously never been seen in the same room as Stephen Cole. Authorities remain baffled.

Glass is from the perspective of a regular person who suddenly finds a disembodied face staring at her through glass surfaces. The Fourth Doctor and Romana II arrive to take care of it — a remnant of Shada — and then they’re off again, leaving our poor narrator a traumatised wreck. It’s the sort of perspective you can easily believe, especially with a TARDIS team this confident and (to most humans) this unrelatable. I’m not sure it’s a perspective you’d really want to see very often, as it suggests a rather unhappy world on the periphery of Doctor Who. As a one-off though it’s rather neat, not unlike a Big Finish one-parter.

*

Mondas Passing
By Paul Grice

Um, so apparently this is Stephen Cole as well? I’m beginning to wonder if he’s ever paid for a subscription service in his life. This is definitely a man experienced in free trials.

This is another downbeat one, but it’s interesting, looking in on Ben and Polly as they reunite briefly on New Year’s Eve, 1986. Reminiscing about their adventures (one of which must have just happened over at the North Pole), they all but acknowledge a shared attraction that never got off the ground. They’re both with someone now and, as you might expect, neither of them has an outlet to discuss their bizarre adventures. This is probably true of most companions after they leave, but it seems especially sad here, with the added tacit admission that this will be their last reunion.

It’s a worthwhile little bite; short and sour. Do we think Stephen Cole was feeling okay when he worked on this book?

*

There Are Fairies At The Bottom Of The Garden
By Sam Lester

As far as I can tell Sam Lester is a real person and not another variant of Stephen Cole. Just FYI. But it’s hard to be sure, isn’t it? I look in the mirror now and wonder if I’m secretly Stephen Cole.

This is a short, evocative piece with the First Doctor and Dodo visiting a smelly world of flowers — and surprisingly, fairies. Dodo’s preconceptions are somewhat challenged, while the Doctor demonstrates an appreciation for beauty that goes beyond the obvious. It’s more expressionistic than anything else.

*

Mother’s Little Helper
By Matthew Jones

I’m always game for more writing from Matthew Jones, so this was a nice surprise. “Nice” is of course relative, as Jones seems drawn to explorations of emotional and physical violence, and this story continues that trend. A young girl named Nanci crosses paths with a boy who seems able to take away people’s pain, as well as a severe woman controlling him. The Second Doctor is in pursuit. (No companion is mentioned so I dunno when this is set.) Nanci is inexorably drawn to help him.

It’s one of those stories with interesting ideas but not enough time to delve into them. It’s good and it works, but it feels a bit like a summary of a story.

*

The Parliament Of Rats
By Daniel O’Mahony

A strange bit of swashbuckling from the author of the divisive Falls The Shadow, this shares with that novel some wide and interesting ideas that speak to the Doctor and Gallifrey, along with a certain bewildering dreamlike execution. I don’t entirely recognise the angrily dour Fifth Doctor in this, although Nyssa gives him a bit of analysis to show that a lot of thought has gone into it. It could probably benefit from a second read. Right now, I’d definitely call it interesting, but it’s perhaps not my cup of tea.

*

Rights
By Paul Grice

Okay, break’s over, it’s Stephen Cole time again.

We return to the Fourth Doctor and Sarah in a rather heated situation involving a non-bipedal species faced with environmental disaster. (Inevitable shades of Venusian Lullaby there.) The main avenue of research against this seems, for some reason, to require foetus harvesting, which understandably is causing disagreements. It’s a contentious story idea, perhaps with its roots in stem cell research, and the way it’s handled leaves a bit to be desired, at times reaching into black comedy. There is some good reflection here on the Doctor’s limits when interfering in other cultures, and Sarah gets to think like a journalist and weigh up the good and bad of this situation even beyond the foetus science. But no two ways about it, this is an odd duck.

*

Wish You Were Here
By Guy Clapperton

The Sixth Doctor! And it seems not a moment too soon…

This one would slot neatly into Colin’s era. (There’s no companion so if you had to place it, it’s probably some time after Trial?) Visiting a holiday resort run by robots, where naturally things have gone awry, the Doctor encounters a young female operative sent from the company. They have very different ways of investigating.

The reason things are going wrong is a neat one, very pleasingly childlike in its logic. The ending works nicely around the Doctor’s compassion for all forms of life, even artificial ones, and the very ending brings us back to the kind of black comedy that a malfunctioning holiday resort naturally suggests. It’s a fun, clever story that makes good use of this particular Doctor.

The only niggle for me is the continuing insistence on highlighting the Sixth Doctor’s waistline. His voice breaks through very believably, which is what matters, but there’s something unfortunate about having to preface his adventures with “Make way for fatty!”

*

Ace Of Hearts
By Robert Perry and Mike Tucker

Putting the “short” into “short story” (5 pages), Perry and Tucker return for a sweet vignette: the Seventh Doctor goes to a party attended by three generations of Dudmans, ostensibly so he can take a moment to apologise to baby Ace for his later manipulations. I don’t know whether this sort of time transgression is more or less likely given it’s this particular Doctor, but it juxtaposes nicely against his cheery pratfalls at the party. There’s not much to say about it other than it’s a little drive-by poignancy, very rewarding for fans of this era. (So, cool people who know where it’s at.)

*

The People’s Temple
By Paul Leonard

We end on a high note with the Eighth Doctor and Sam — so technically with a Past Doctor Adventure, if you like. Sam wants to see the early days of Stonehenge and the Doctor obliges, landing them in the middle of a very heated power struggle between the slightly mad leader Coyn and the tribe, run by his best friend, enslaved to his purpose. In typical Paul Leonard style the good and the bad refuse to sit still; Sam’s urge to help the repressed tribe ends up backfiring and Coyn might have some humanity in him after all. It’s long enough to warrant a prologue and an epilogue, and it’s a very satisfying piece to go out on.

*

15 stories is good value for money (or was, pre-eBay), and the majority of these are hits. Old Flames is essential reading; The Last Days and Wish You Were Here really jumped out at me; Glass and Mondas Passing provide unusual perspectives; Perry and Tucker display real range; you get a rare sighting of Matthew Jones; Paul Leonard rarely misses. The standard is quite high. Even Stephen Cole’s various aliases manage a distinct variety of storytelling.

As for the theme, it went how I’d hoped: unobtrusively, so you might never know there was a theme at all. It’s a good approach, encouraging writers to really come up with their own ideas. I’m curious what the other volumes will end up going with.

All in all, I remain more of a fan of novels than short stories, but I think we’re better off having Decalogs and Short Trips in the mix as well. I’m glad BBC Books had the same idea.

7/10

Doctor Who: The BBC Books #16 – Eye Of Heaven by Jim Mortimore

Doctor Who: The Past Doctor Adventures
#8
Eye Of Heaven
By Jim Mortimore

Mortimore alert! Stand by for strangeness.

I would not have laid odds that Jim Mortimore’s first BBC Book would be a Past Doctor Adventure. Wouldn’t it be more enticing for him — a well known experimental Who writer — to jump into something new instead? That is, of course, assuming that all PDAs will feel a bit like a lost telly episode, and that is, of course, entirely wrong in this case.

Eye Of Heaven feels new. For starters, after 33 fruitless Missing Adventures my prayers have been answered: Leeeelaaaaa! Now, it might be sheer coincidence that she never got a whole novel to herself at Virgin, but I tend to assume her popularity was at a low ebb at that time and nobody asked for one. Out of all the companions it could be said that she has the most unusual background and most identifiable narrative voice, which might have made her seem like an outlier? Eye Of Heaven clearly views this as a feature and not a bug, however, as it’s an entirely first person novel — which means we’re not only getting lashings of Leela, but Leela as-told-by-Leela. If you’re anything like me this is like several missed Christmases showing up at once.

Mortimore captures her voice well. She is a hunter, always assessing situations from a point of attack. She is blunt and to the point. (“My name is not ‘gel’. It’s Leela. Use it or do not speak to me.”) She lacks the context to understand civilisation’s foibles but does not lack intelligence; in 2024 this reads a bit like neurodivergence. Perhaps that’s just me, but regardless, it makes for an unusual and fun method of teasing out information as Leela interprets it all in her own way. (“The holy marks meant, The Times, London, 21 August 1872. The Doctor had told me this cloth was a sheet from something called a newspaper. He said there was a different newspaper every day. I thought this was good: the cloth was so flimsy I could poke a hole in it with my fingers. I did so now to prove how strong I was. The hole joined others beside different marks, ones I had been told meant, Noted Archaeologist Seeks Sponsorship for Expedition to South Seas.”) There’s also a good deal of comedy to be had here, as social mores pass her by: “Stockwood groped in his pocket and pulled out some breadcrumbs, which he threw at the birds. They began to fight over them. Clever. Provoke them to fight and then kill the survivors. Twice as much food for the tribe. I held my hand out for some bread.”

As if to make up for lost time, there are bits of back story around Leela’s family and the Sevateem way of life. This serves as a handy refresher for a character that hasn’t exactly been over-saturated in print, and it allows Mortimore to indulge in some visceral and highly visual moments. He’s good at those: the trippy first person account of the death of Leela’s younger sister is not likely to leave my brain, joining the likes of the perilous star-bridge crossing in Lucifer Rising. (Which was co-written, I know, but experience suggests that this bit was mostly Jim.)

Perhaps for the same reason, this is Leela at her most Leela, with the Doctor’s personal influence appearing somewhat minimal. She is fiercely superstitious throughout, convinced that various characters are agents of Cryuni, the Sevateem spectre of death. (The Doctor attempts to right her on this but it mostly just amounts to helpless eye-rolling.) She is also unapologetically violent, at first somewhat cautious about the Doctor’s no-killing rule, then eventually leading a wholesale war against a gang of pirates, killing many and “gutting” at least one. She justifies this quite understandably with “We were at war. To lose was to die.” Do I have any better ideas? No. But it is perhaps unfortunate that the Doctor has no opportunity to take her to task for this; it feels like a not insignificant step backwards from where she was in the series at the time. (This is way beyond a Janis thorn against an assassin, last deployed in The Talons Of Weng-Chiang.) All that said, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mortimore simply wanted to showcase what is different about the character in this instance, and if so he is successful.

It is not, however, an entirely Leela-driven novel. We toggle narrators as we go along, a list that eyebrow-raisingly includes the Doctor. This is another rare treat (added to Leela, and first person in general) and Mortimore carries it off with breezy confidence. The Fourth Doctor is a difficult character to crack, but the voice here straddles the line between whimsy and depth. Even in the other characters’ segments he leaps off the page as fun (“The Doctor took out a pocket watch and flipped open the lid. ‘Eighteen seventy-two… half past August’”) and mysterious (Leela, who is able to perceive honesty through body language, notes that “The Doctor’s expression told me nothing. His body also told me nothing — beyond his interest in Stockwood’s tale”). In his own passages he regards the human world with affection and occasional surprise, and we get occasional peeks behind the proverbial curtain, such as his use of transcendental meditation to cure a bullet wound. (Featuring, casual as you like, the back story to his acquiring the Holy Ghanta before The Abominable Snowmen.)

It’s also worth saying that, although I think Leela gorges on her impulses in Eye Of Heaven, when the Doctor takes an interest it rings very true: “‘I am a hunter. There is nothing here to hunt. Except fish.’ The Doctor smiled. ‘If the mind is willing there is always something to hunt.’ ‘I do not understand.’ ‘Then hunt that. Hunt understanding. Make it your enemy and track it to its lair. Grapple with it. Take it and make it your slave. Your tool. Use it. Feast upon it. Grow fat on it.’ ‘That is silly. Understanding is not an animal. It cannot fight.’ ‘Galileo wouldn't agree with you.’” I very much agree that “hunting understanding” is how Leela approaches the world around her. Big Finish makes for good further reading here. (As, I hope, will BBC Books.)

The Doctor isn’t in it much — quite right, as you wouldn’t want to overdo the first person bits with him, but even so Leela is mostly fending for herself here. This allows for a few more narrators. To list them all would verge on spoilers for the story he’s telling, so suffice to say the main one is Horace Stockwood: a fifty-something anthropologist who visited, and fled Easter Island decades ago, leaving a friend to die for fear of the natives (angry at his theft of a sacred tablet) and some apparently, terrifyingly mobile stone heads. Stockwood’s initial prologue is another of those “in the moment” Mortimore passages, all the better for being in first person. The juggling of narrators means taking a moment to orient yourself at the start of each chapter (do they mention Janis thorns, or refer to the TARDIS as “old thing”?), but it all helps to paint an interesting picture with the story, probably more so than if we’d just had one narrator. (That is, provided you don’t find this whole setup a bit annoying. I get the sense that some do, but that’s just the nature of taking a swing.)

But wait — there’s more. As well as being a first person novel, told by rare-book-companion Leela, but also told by the Doctor, and other characters as well, Eye Of Heaven also happens out of sequence. Not bewilderingly so, it must be said: we are for the most part either following the sea voyage back to Easter Island (so Stockwood can make things right — fulfilling what has become his life’s obsession) or the lead up to it in London. It’s quite binary. But as we go on, things juggle around more enthusiastically, with more narrators added into the mix. There is a whiff of a plot reason for this (see Chapter 23), but that comes and goes somewhat in isolation from the rest of the book, leaving the stronger impression that this was simply an interesting way to tell the story. If so, well — it is interesting! But I never quite felt the last-act-of-Memento zipping up of perspectives that I hoped was coming. For what it’s worth.

The blender of viewpoints only has minor casualties, such as a critical piece of Leela’s story only being related to us later by Stockwood after she told him about it. (You would think “how I escaped from inside a whale carcass caught inside a tornado” would be worthy of its own chapter, but BBC Books are pretty rigid on page counts, so maybe that bit had to go.) There is also a major character reveal that happens in the earlier portion of the story (pre-voyage) but is related to us in the later portion, entirely without ceremony because at that point the characters already know who it is, which seemed an odd choice. Nonetheless, I didn’t have too much trouble following it, and the vast majority of the story is there. (NB: If you’re struggling to keep it all together, as I was occasionally due to sheer attention span vs excessive chopping and changing, it might help your concentration if you try and figure out the correct order of events. This only occurred to me late on and all of a sudden I raced through it!)

You could be forgiven for thinking Eye Of Heaven was a pure historical, what with so much time being spent on London malfeasance and treachery at sea. It certainly reads like a kind of genre pastiche, not unlike Mark Gatiss’s approach in The Roundheads or Andy Lane’s in All-Consuming Fire. (Another first person-er!) There are shades of Robert Louis Stevenson here, and perhaps some H. Rider Haggard. But the story is bookended with horror and sci-fi, and when the time comes to tie it all up, there’s no doubt that we’re in Doctor Who territory. The secret of the stones is a satisfyingly brain-bending one, full of dazzling visuals and huge implications. It’s a pity this is only the icing on the cake, but again, I suspect BBC Books’s 280-pages-or-bust style guide had something to do with that. (The existence of Mortimore’s Director’s Cuts suggests there’s always more book somewhere.) For good measure, the Doctor does mention the Ogri, which perhaps subtly reminds us that there are only so many “stones moving about” stories you can tell in Doctor Who before you’re on the same ground. Maybe it avoids repetition if we keep them more as a spooky suggestion.

Eye Of Heaven takes some swings. Narratively, it’s an unusual thing sprinkled with different flavours and wrapped in another unusual thing, but I’ve seen criticism levelled at it for not having enough actual plot. Is there something to that? Well, what we have is comfortably secondary to the way it’s told; I think it’s fair to say there is more artifice here than is strictly needed. But in an ongoing book series, finding interesting ways to tell stories is vital, and frankly, it’s more fun that way. I doubt this particular approach is for everybody, but I lapped it up. The characters, despite all the first person, are not the most rounded individuals outside of Leela, but there’s still a definite poignancy to Stockwood’s life story, and latterly his part in the wider sci-fi meaning. Ultimately I’m glad we passed the narrative parcel.

It’s a deceptively straightforward story for Mortimore, at least at first glance, but the narrative complexity and commitment to intensity in its action sequences made it one that fizzed around my brain after reading it. I think it justifies its choices and I think it’s one I’ll read again.

8/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #100 – The Well-Mannered War by Gareth Roberts

Doctor Who: The Missing Adventures

#33

The Well-Mannered War

By Gareth Roberts

In all the excitement and sadness of the New Adventures ending you could almost forget that another range was going away forever. Unfortunately I feel about the Missing Adventures the way Arthur Dent did when he met prehistoric cavemen who would soon be wiped out by hairdressers. “It’s all been a bit of a waste of time for you, hasn’t it?”

That’s not to say there aren’t any good MAs – only that by design, they were all over the place. They were a series of one-offs set at random times in the show’s history, so of course they had no overall direction or momentum. You were meant to enjoy them as treats, like Doctor Who’s highly erratic video releases – but the actual show wasn’t made like that, with a different production team turning up each week to frantically busk a different era. Conversely, the shared themes and ideas of the New Adventures were among the series’ key strengths. It’s no coincidence that the NAs got better and more consistent as they went along. What you got with the MAs was more like speed dating, where the only question was “What do YOU think would make a good Missing Adventure?” And well, nobody knew.

One of the few taking a bloody good stab at it anyway was Gareth Roberts. “What If TV Episode, But Book” is the most obvious route you can take with these, and The Romance Of Crime did Season 17 verbatim, but it also remembered to be massively entertaining. The English Way Of Death pushed more into Wodehouse territory than Douglas Adams – which depending on your view is much the same thing anyway – and it was subsequently more like a novel, less like a missing Target novelisation. Then The Plotters came along and showed that, with or without Tom Baker, Roberts could capture an era, structure like mad AND keep up the laughs. Conclusion: if someone has to close out this wobbly series of whatevers then Roberts has the best CV for it.

First, I should declare an interest. Although I’d never read The Well-Mannered War, I have heard the Big Finish adaptation. (I loved it, then forced myself not to listen to it again until I’d read the book; it’s been a while.) So I knew the main plot beats already, which took away much of the surprise. However, you come to a Gareth Roberts book mostly for the prose, which doesn’t translate to a script anyway, and The Well-Mannered War doesn’t disappoint there.

The setup* lends itself to the author’s favourite thing, British awkwardness. Two races are at war over a planet no one could conceivably want, except the war hasn’t officially started yet (in over 100 years) so all they’re doing is going through the motions and being terribly nice about it. Few of them actually want to start a fight (including the Chelonians, a race of bloodthirsty tortoises), but there are pathetic little displays of aggression anyway like haphazard missile launches, and a ritual where the leaders of the two camps attempt shoddily to assassinate each other, usually after a cordial lunch and before going back to their bases to give everybody presents. It’s as protracted as it is gloriously pointless. “The summit was dissolved after only four hours when it became clear that the parties could not agree on the wording of the initial clause of the discussion document.” / “‘I’m not expected to, er, well, you know...’ He mimed a shooting gesture. Even that level of violence made him feel giddy. ‘Oh hell.’” / “The atmosphere was rather like that at a party when the host goes to check the dinner leaving a room full of unacquainted guests.” / “There was an uncomfortable silence. Dolne regarded Jafrid as a friend of the kind one mixes well with in a crowd. When there was only the two of them conversation was hard. They just didn’t have enough in common. The big screen stayed blank. Both of them made disapproving noises to cover the embarrassing lapse.”

(*It’s marginally similar to another MA just two books ago, A Device Of Death. I’m curious whether there were any crossed words about this at the time, but there’s certainly no fatigue in this second, stronger take on the idea.)

The two commanders, Dolne (a prissy admiral who has to mentally remind himself that he wears a uniform, not an outfit) and Jafrid (a relatively nice Chelonian) have a delightful friendship, which is worth highlighting as it’s a Gareth Roberts book and those are usually full of people who hate each other. (This can lead to lots of amusingly bitchy dialogue, but it becomes wearying after a while.) Depicting war as a silly routine is a clever way to parody the politics surrounding it, and not one I’ve seen a million times before, for which I’m very grateful.

But characters can’t be terribly nice and do nothing all the time, so things must escalate, notably during a scene with a broken down copier that at first sounds like it fell out of Roberts’ pile of sketch ideas. Much merriment is had about an error message that doesn’t make any sense, until this turns into “PREPARE TO BE ABSORBED BY DARKNESS” and that character is horribly killed and absorbed by an alien intelligence. (The automaton-spouting-a-demonic-message gag would crop up again via the Ood.) There’s a genuine sadness about this, as the character still has a vestige of himself afterwards and feels quite sad about being dead; also, the “Darkness” occasionally loosen their mental grip on him, apparently out of mercy. We’re right back to tragedy when he passes it onto another character you’ll have grown to like, who should probably have known better than to contemplate an early retirement just before answering the door.

Roberts invests his characters with enough little quirks to make their deaths really matter, like one guy’s love of dull grey uniforms and his subsequent hope not to be promoted into a nicer one. I’ve complained at length about unnecessary physical description, and Roberts indulges in it only where it expands your understanding of the character. That a man’s hair is greying tells us he’s been here for a while and is perhaps easily stressed; that a politician’s corpulence prevents him from easily getting out of a chair tells us he spends most of his time sitting comfortably, and so on. The Well-Mannered War is not a short book, but it doesn’t fill the time doing busywork with words, which separates it from a lot of MAs.

The Doctor, Romana and K9 find themselves on the dull rock Barclow due to an apparent series of coincidences. This is a theme throughout the book, which culminates in a much more satisfying explanation than Roberts’ last coincidence-themed book, The Highest Science. (That coincidentally (?) also featured an apparently dull planet being warred over by Chelonians and useless humans. Douglas Adams wrote reams about convenient things happening for no real reason, which is clearly not a coincidence.) Their misadventures certainly feel in keeping with the Adams era, with bit part characters espousing their woes such as a tea lady in no man’s land, a revolutionary running an anti-authoritarian press by himself in a cave, and Menlove Stokes, a returning nuisance from The Romance Of Crime. The vainglorious artist and imbecile perhaps works better when performed (by Michael Troughton in Big Finish’s Romance and War adaptations), as putting him on the page surrounded by people who loathe him, without the benefit of spirited inflection, just lays bare the joke that powers him and risks making him monotonous. But he’s not as bad as the revolutionary Fritchoff, who (like Spiggot, the nauseating cop in Romance) only exists to parody a certain outlook and method of speaking, here have-a-go fight-the-power nitwits who say “bourgeoisie” a lot. We get it, as does everyone he meets, over and over and over again. Folks, beware writing deliberately irritating characters because of that universal truth: Irritating Characters Are Irritating.

Fortunately we have the Doctor, Romana and K9 to anchor it all, who are all very entertaining in this, though they are in slightly sniffy moods. The English Way Of Death wobbled the Doctor-companion relationship between wanting to kiss and wanting to kill each other, and The Well-Mannered War places its bets on the latter, with nuggets like “Romana sighed. ‘Do you answer the question or do I employ physical violence?’” She spends most of her time with Stokes, so she’s irritated for almost the entire book with or without the Doctor. Still, this can work: “‘I specified to be woken [from cryosleep] only when my work was re-evaluated and properly appreciated.’ There was an unpleasant silence. ‘Stokes, we’re getting close to the very end of the universe.’”

K9 is distracted by the loveable subplot about suddenly becoming a political candidate (“What do we want? A K9 administration! When do we want it? As soon as possible!”), but Roberts indulges an apparent love of the character by making it clear he still has some very human, or at least rather emotional thoughts and just expresses them like a machine. “‘Come here.’ [K9] crossed the room and [Romana] bent down and stroked his sides. ‘Misunderstanding of the functional nature of this unit,’ said K9. ‘Petting unnecessary.’ But he didn’t pull away.” K9 is instrumental to much of the plot; the Doctor not-so-coincidentally chides him for becoming too useful.

The Doctor spends most of it on his own or meeting the smaller bit-parts, and he’s in a foul mood for some of it (again because of company, such as Fritchoff who goes irritatingly back and forth over rescuing him from certain death – because he’s really annoying, you see). But he also leans into the whimsies of Season 17, such as putting a full cup of tea in his pocket and later retrieving it unspilled, or finding himself under attack by rockets and hurriedly thumbing through a booklet called So You’re Caught in a Rocket Attack. (There’s also a crafty sub-sub-subplot about his coat getting ripped and tattered, which helps explain why he switched to a different one the following year.) The writing is undoubtedly on point for Tom Baker, but there’s a certain feeling about him of being sick of it all. Maybe this ties into the Season 17 arc of evading the Black Guardian (who irritatingly doesn’t turn up to justify it), but it could also be a nod to Tom’s advancing years in the role. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it and Roberts just enjoys a snippy Doctor.

One of the reasons I’m a bit iffy about the main characters in this is also one of the book’s strengths: the plot is excellent, a sort of Rube Goldberg device full of layers. It’s very satisfying watching it all click into place. But, as the Doctor eventually realises, he doesn’t have much agency here, someone else is manipulating events. This is satisfying in terms of construction, not so much in terms of the main character(s) driving the action, which is sort of a necessity. The war is a sham (which we know from the outset), the creatures arranging it are themselves being manipulated, and the people leading them into a trap have been manipulated as well. It goes click, click, click wonderfully, but it makes the main trio slightly surplus to requirements. (Even K9’s candidacy is written off not too convincingly as “It amused [the villain] to bring out the superiority that has always bubbled beneath that servile shell.” So for a laugh, then?) It’s debateable whether this matters, and even I’m not sure it does. But it’s odd.

Still, look what it achieves. In pulling all the coincidences and manipulations together, Roberts creates the Season 17 finale we never knew we needed. Forget Shada! Wouldn’t it have been better if, after setting up the whole “run away at random to evade the Black Guardian” plot, they didn’t just get bored of it and never mention it again? Finally it’s addressed, ending infamously with the Doctor and co. flying out of the known universe, where previously he ended up in the Land of Fiction. It’s a deliberate cliff-hanger, what with these books ending and no one being able to write a direct sequel, but it’s still satisfying. This explains how they shook their pursuer and carried on having normal adventures afterwards. We only miss the bit in the middle where they were in the Land of Fiction, or whatever realm it turned out to be. In all honesty that book would have been an absolute sod to write, and you may have been better off just imagining it even if they did carry on. It’s also quite sweet to leave us wanting more, imagining the next Missing Adventure ourselves.

The real takeaway here is that once again, Virgin went out on their own terms. The Doctor and Romana press the button that takes them away from all this, not some poxy BBC Books man. For symbolic good measure there’s a reason why they must not land on Dellah, the planet where the Bernice New Adventures are set. (And it’s not just that Stokes is going there which, strewth, why didn’t you warn me?! Props to Roberts for specifying he would “most definitely, never so much as think about the Doctor and company ever again”, saving everyone else the bother of an explanation.) For a series without any overall continuity it ties up nicely, including the Guardian name-checking earlier books as proof that he’s been observing all the while. (Gifting us the Doctor’s retort, “You’re dabbling with the forces of continuity”!) The Well-Mannered War is a finale in several respects, and even if I’m still uncertain whether this represents the best sort of Missing Adventure you could get, at least we ended on one that mostly works.

8/10