Doctor Who: The BBC Books #20 – Legacy Of The Daleks by John Peel

Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Adventures
#10
Legacy Of The Daleks
By John Peel

So. Daleks again.

That’s nice, obviously, and we are lucky to have got two novels featuring the most famous monsters in Doctor Who.

But… gratitude aside (and I promise, I’m grateful!) all that they’ve really achieved is to underline how Doctor Who print fiction was, if not better off, at least doing fine without them. Which is also sort of nice, when you think about it?

This is largely thanks to the Nation Estate, whose “punishing terms” (as per Stephen Cole) meant it wasn’t worth doing a lot with them, and meant that the best author for the job was John Peel. That’s not bad news in itself, as he has handled Daleks very well in print: his novelisations are good and his previous novel, War Of The Daleks, at times cleverly underlined the menace of these monsters by limiting their appearances. But Peel’s original fiction tends to be a bit rudderless, the writing set in a sort of grottier Terry Nation style, added to which is a strange need to tick continuity boxes. War Of The Daleks was a case of diminishing returns as the book went along, and sadly Legacy Of The Daleks is not an improvement.

It’s at least a very different setup for a story, which is something I appreciate. Rather than another space-faring adventure we’re checking in on Earth after the Dalek invasion. The Daleks are ostensibly wiped out, which again allows Peel to limit their appearances. (You do begin to wonder if the Nation Estate charges by the page.) The people are rebuilding, albeit slowly, and it’s in this crucible that the story is told. The Doctor receives a distress call from Susan; already on the lookout for Sam, he decides to kill two birds with one stone by visiting Earth.

A couple of nitpicks already with this setup. One: I’m not sure the dates line up for Sam to even be here post-Longest Day — all we’re told is “In Thannos time it had been 3177, so allowing for that…” — and a ravaged, decimated Earth seems like a very messy information point for a galactic search. Two: Susan’s message wasn’t from Earth. He’s deliberately going to see her before she left Earth and sent the message from somewhere else, partly so he can find out more (which, if she hasn’t sent it yet, he probably won’t…?) and partly to stop whatever it was from happening in the first place, reasoning “it would be tweaking the laws of Time, and he would no doubt get a slap on the wrist the next time he visited Gallifrey. But what did that matter, compared to all of the complaints they undoubtedly had against him already?” Which, I mean, I suppose he might come up with that excuse, but why is he fine with it now but not the many other times he didn’t want to change history, despite it being in his best interest? And of course, changing this would create an immediate and obvious paradox, with him now not needing to go back and change it. The character setup is a bit of a wash to put it mildly — no doubt because Peel wasn’t enamoured with the Where Is Sam? arc — but the rest of the book brushes it off anyway, so never mind, I guess?

Anyway, The Dalek Invasion Of Earth is a fan-favourite for a bunch of reasons, so it’s reasonable to assume this will be an interesting time and place to revisit. What does Earth look like now? The first chapter sets out its stall: a young girl growing up on a farm needs kittens to keep down the rat population, so she follows a friendly, pregnant stray to her hideout. She is soon ambushed by a leftover Slyther — everyone’s favourite rubbish monster on screen, which is luckily more menacing on paper — which is then defeated by a knight on horseback. Immediately we can see that there are some very unusual mixtures going on, almost with different eras combined. And even more offbeat, the knight is a woman named Donna. This is all good stuff, and it’s an effective start, the plucky adventure of Becca (perhaps a nod to one of Terry’s favourite names?) setting a likeable template.

The drop-off happens almost immediately. We don’t see Becca again for most of the book, following Donna instead. She’s a perpetually angry character, for good reason at least, and most of her dialogue is her lamely snapping at people. Besides her we follow the power struggles of Lord Haldoran. Already in control of one of Britain’s domains, he wants the rest of it courtesy of a defeated Lord London. Haldoran is a nasty piece of work, but not in an interesting way where there are layers to peel back; he’s just a vicious, brutal dictator, and he’s having a splendid time with all of that. (Some sadistic sexual habits are also hinted at for extra yuck points.) His lieutenants are variously terrible as well, with their own internecine squabbles and a general wish to depose Haldoran. When we briefly see Lord London and his lot they don’t seem much better. Haldoran, though, has the added bonus of a special adviser: Estro, a small mysterious man with a pointed beard, sunken eyes, a black suit, powers of hypnosis and a special gun that shrinks people to death. And that’s all the clues you’re getting.

Setting aside for a moment the elephant in the Nehru suit, these people just aren’t interesting. I longed for the relative moral complexity of War Of The Daleks, with its variously trustworthy and untrustworthy Thals. It could be argued that the lack of sympathetic characters in Legacy is a nod to its setting, but if so, it’s a far from perfect translation. The Dalek Invasion Of Earth showed a cross section of humanity. You had good people, but also a deluded resistance leader, some downright unhelpful resistance people, self-serving survivors living on the outskirts as well as outright collaborators. It was a believably fractured response to something as dreadful as a Dalek occupation with (impressively) no rose-tinted Blitz spirit to unite them. Now compare that to Legacy Of The Daleks in which every character is horrible or miserable or both. I just wanted to not be in their company. The incongruity of a future world with knights on horseback is certainly interesting, but it doesn’t get a chance to add anything beyond that, and the post-Dalek Invasion setting quickly stops mattering in a literal sense — we don’t see anything like the Slyther again. Was there really nothing else he could do with that landscape? All we’ve got, until things heat up later on (see: Nehru suit), are power struggles between awful people. They’re not even awful because of Daleks, which is normally the inspiration behind this sort of thing; most of them seem not to remember the pepperpots. They’re just awful because there happens to be a power vacuum, which makes it awkwardly possible to tell this story in places that aren’t specific to this time period. I was increasingly keen for some Daleks to turn up and kill everybody.

Donna is the most likeable one here, and she can generally be found biting the Doctor’s head off. We also have Susan and David, but they’re mostly pootling along in the background, in Susan’s case largely separate from everyone else. Susan at least automatically earns our sympathy because we know her, but she’s also having a worse time than you might have hoped. Her alien metabolism has meant she still looks eighteen while her husband ages normally, which is causing tension in both directions. Also, they can’t conceive. (Peel includes the suggestion that Susan dresses up in ways that capitalise on her young appearance in order to appease David sexually and, you know what John, we’re good, we maybe didn’t need that bit thanks.) Peel, in the Pieces Of Eighth podcast, seemed keen to pursue this doomed relationship as dramatic fodder. But it doesn’t really pay off, since his main insight into what would happen if Susan stayed in a relationship which has fundamental problems is, there would be fundamental problems. Where else is there to go? (He also says the characters “hadn’t thought it through” to begin with, but that seems a bit unfair since Time Lord metabolisms didn’t exist in 1964.)

It’s all a bit grim, but on the plus side there’s a reunion to look forward to. Right? That’s surely a major selling point of bringing her back. But, whether he deliberately chose to avoid the obvious or he just missed a trick, Peel holds back on that for most of the novel, with Susan and the Doctor separately investigating the Dalek artefact Lord Haldoran is after. This has the effect of making the reader go “Oh right, yeah” every time we cut back to Susan, which strikes me as a strange way to utilise her. But not as strange as the punchline: besides a violent crossfire that leaves Susan thinking he’s dead, there is no reunion. The Doctor then makes some very tenuous assumptions about Susan being fine after all and just leaves her to it. Susan, at least, is set up to have the book equivalent of a Big Finish spin-off. I have no idea if any authors ran with that, but given that she spends most of Legacy Of The Daleks either depressed, sneaking around behind a Dalek or being taken hostage, I wouldn’t expect much of a queue to form.

The Doctor isn’t having a great time either. Behaving a little strangely from the outset, viz “let’s change history, why not,” he’s then pre-emptively rude to Donna about her personal life, and nastily dismissive of the state of humanity. (He happens to be right about that one, but only because he has the author on his side.) His attitude to violence wobbles throughout, for instance making the usual “no guns” noises, then at one point tossing Donna a gun during a violent confrontation and then being surprised when she shoots their aggressor with it. Later he threatens Estro at gunpoint, and of course, Daleks are his free pass to just blow up the baddies. (You get the general impression Peel would rather he cut the pacifism and just get on with it.) Between a half-hearted search for Sam and a quickly second-tier quest for Susan he doesn’t have much motivation here besides, coo, them Daleks, eh? What a bunch of rotters! (Humans: got my eye on you. Don’t push your luck.)

Thanks to Estro’s misplaced ambitions the Daleks do eventually turn up. Sorry to spoil, but it’s called (something) Of The Daleks, and we all know how that goes. It did occur to me that you could write a story about their legacy and not actually invoke them, but a) that would probably be seen as a waste of the license and b) what we’ve got instead is utterly pedestrian, so bring ‘em on. The human characters are all flat and unpleasant, and their inner voices aren’t much better: everyone, the Doctor included, has this routine of blandly reciting what they’ve learned and then asking rhetorical questions about it. “But how?” “But why?” Etc. The dialogue is mostly just death threats dressed up with weak sarcasm, but there’s a lot of blunt exposition too, with Becca’s dad, Donna, Estro and even the bloody Daleks cheerfully pausing to explain what the world is like/what their evil plan is, muahaha. (This works well when it’s someone telling a story to lay the groundwork for the book, but then the book keeps doing it. Elegant it is not.) In amongst all that, the Daleks are fine, bordering on forgettable, which seems crazy when they’re such a rarity. They just want to do all the normal Dalek stuff, viz make more Daleks and use them to shoot more humans. Where’s the twist? Stephen Cole seemed keen to get to the heart of what makes them scary, and this book is extremely not that, devoting most if its energies to human infighting instead.

Well, not totally human. Is it a spoiler to say that Estro is the Master? Was Peel even going for a surprise reveal here, given that on Page 13 he has Estro say “You will obey me … I am the master [sic]”? The character is recognisably himself, but rather pettier than usual, ostensibly doing all this Evil Vizier stuff with Haldoran just to pass the time. (“I was forced to wait for the implementation of my main scheme, so I dabbled in local politics in the meantime.”) You might expect his reunion with the Doctor to be as worthwhile as the Doctor meeting Susan again, and these two do at least meet with dialogue and everything, but there’s nothing interesting about it besides the Doctor stage whispering that they’ve actually met out of sequence. Oh, how thrilling.

Between Haldoran, his lackeys, Donna, the Doctor and Susan it’s a somewhat cluttered book, and that’s before you bring in the Master. (And that’s before you bring in the Daleks.) You do sort of assume there will be a point to Ol’ Pointy Beard in this. So, about that: you know how the generally agreed upon worst bit of War Of The Daleks was the chapter tying together all the 70s and 80s Dalek stories into one big conspiracy theory? Well Peel’s back, baby, and he’s got a box to tick. Escaping with the Daleks’ secret weapon and a hostage (Susan), the Master goes to Terserus to try it out. But he underestimates his furious captive, who attacks him psychically and then shoots him and his Dalek weapon, scarring him horribly. Yes, we’re really doing “How did the Master end up scarred in The Deadly Assassin” at the end of a story about Daleks and the future of Susan. To call it a gratuitous add-on would be a whimsical understatement. (Yes, this sequence gives Susan something like an empowering end to her story. But what a shame that violence against a person she doesn’t know was the answer, and what a random piece of continuity to get out of mothballs to do it. The whole sequence just doesn’t speak to Susan at all.) 

There are good ideas in here. Well, okay, there are germs. Earth post-Dalek Invasion could be interesting. What Susan Did Next could be interesting. What Would Susan And The Doctor Say To Each Other could be interesting. At every turn, though, Legacy Of The Daleks either advances its ideas one faltering step or it just doesn’t do them at all. This was to be the last Dalek novel of the range, but if they were to continue being delivered by the grace of the Nation Estate’s ever tightening monkey’s paw — and by all accounts, they would have been — then that’s probably for the best.

4/10

Doctor Who: The BBC Books #9 – War Of The Daleks by John Peel

Doctor Who: The Eighth Doctor Adventures
#5
War Of The Daleks
By John Peel

Daleks! For real this time, sink plunger and everything, DALEKS!

Say what you will about this one, but this is a big deal and quite an exciting shot fired from BBC Books. Sure, they may have copied Virgin Publishing’s homework in general, but those guys never had the license for the most famous Doctor Who baddie of them all. While I would argue that they didn’t suffer for it (they were all about New things after all), sometimes it’s just plain nice to go Doctor Who = Daleks.

Of course, it’s one thing to wheedle a license out of the Nation estate. You’ve then got to actually do something with all those pepperpots. What does that look like in print? Daleks aren’t exactly famed conversationalists; often the worst bit of a Dalek story IS-WHEN-THEY-ARE-GI-VEN-TOO-MUCH-DI-A-LOGUE.

John Peel — known for, among other things, his Dalek Masterplan novelisations — makes some choices in this regard, and some of them are good. War Of The Daleks is not all Daleks, all the time. They are very much kept in the background for the first 150 pages or so, an implacable force of nature that the plot and characters must work around in order to survive. This might seem odd when not showing Daleks was already our default setting, but there’s a lot to be said for atmosphere. Look at the Borg: were they ever better than in The Best Of Both Worlds Part 1, which is mostly just the Enterprise crew bricking it?

Don’t panic, though, Dalek fans: they’re still here, just a bit off to the side. There are several interludes that show Dalek combat in various forms, and never from their POV. We see a Space Security Service agent working a bit of subterfuge against them on an aquatic world; Draconians in a death-or-glory fight in an asteroid belt; Mechonoids, forced to take a break from their daily routine, attempting to keep them away from their never-to-arrive human settlers. (Possibly my favourite bit in the book is a dying Mechonoid’s final report “to Central Computer, to inform it that another Mechon unit would have to be assigned to check on the insect infestation on the geraniums tomorrow.”) There’s good variety here, with some scenarios playing out how the “good guys” hoped, others going in the Daleks’ favour. It paints a picture of an entire way of life spent fighting these things, which can take as many forms as you care to list. As well as giving a good example to any readers who are (god forbid) unfamiliar with what Daleks are all about, it’s using Daleks as more of a narrative way in than as the whole narrative, and as you can see in stories like Power or Evil Of The Daleks (Peel novelised both) that approach can be a great starting point.

We open with probably the most interesting interlude featuring the oldest Dalek enemy, Thals, in the heat of battle. This is likely just what you want when you pick up a doggarn Dalek book at last: loads of action, new and different types of Dalek, even the first word of the book is “Exterminate!” More interesting still is what it says about the Thals: dropping a nuke to wipe out the nearest attack wave also obliterates a primitive settlement nearby, much to the chagrin of Ayaka, the soldier with the biggest conscience. Immediately after that the entire planet is destroyed; unbeknownst to Ayaka their mission was simply a trap to lure some Daleks to their deaths. The entire planetary population are just collateral damage. It’s genuinely a bit of a swing to open your Dalek novel by asking if we can trust the Thals.

Unfortunately, just as getting the Dalek license doesn’t do everything for you in one go, it’s one thing to set up a conflict — it’s another to make a satisfying story out of it. War Of The Daleks asks these questions about the Thals but then follows them to their most literal conclusions. Delani, their leader, has a plan to capture Davros and — rather than put him on trial or kill him — put him to work. Doing what, you ask? Why, genetically modifying the Thals, of course! Because in order to defeat Daleks, y’see, he is willing to turn his people into Daleks and oh god, the obviousness, it’s giving me a rash. This storyline doesn’t have anywhere else to go once we’ve gazed into Nietzsche’s abyss: it’s evil and wrong, we can see that. So things promptly change afterwards and the power is taken away from Delani, leaving the whole genetically-engineered-Thals thing a bit of an “aaaaaanyway.”

And yeah, Davros is here. That should probably be a spoiler since he’s not on the cover, but the blurb happily gives it away, and besides, did you think we could possibly avoid him? Ever since he first appeared, Daleks and Davros have been like a dinner party with Frasier and Niles: you get the one, you get that other one. Davros is an interesting character in his own right, but he tends to diminish the Daleks — and vice versa. Having him here just feels like we looked at the trajectory of Dalek stories in the 1980s, which all do it like this, and genuinely could not imagine a different approach for the next one.

In Peel’s defence, it matters that we’re picking up Davros’s story after we last saw him, and he is central to the plot. But this is a rather shaky defence because the further you stray into the plot, the more obsessed it is by continuity in place of actual storytelling. Now, to an extent, I think it makes sense to go over some key points about Daleks. Why not? There hadn’t been a TV story about them in nine years, and there were no novels featuring them (apart from novelisations). Some readers genuinely might not know much about Daleks, so having the Doctor, for example, recap the plot of their first adventure might help lay down the ground rules. Having Thals in the mix helps with that theme, continuing the original thread right up to the present. I mean it: not all continuity refs are bad. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

There are harmless little sprinkles here and there, such as references to Marc Cory, Varga plants, the Slyther and “that business with Reginald Styles”. You don’t need to have seen The Chase to enjoy the bit with the Mechonoids, for instance. But the main purpose of picking up the story of Davros, which after that little Nietzsche For Dummies bit with the Thals is all that War Of The Daleks is about, is to reshuffle his previous telly stories in a way that will undo Skaro getting blown up in Remembrance Of The Daleks. Which is… fine, if you happen to care deeply about that, and great if you are in the market for a random conspiracy theory re-reading of some unconnected telly episodes, but it’s not really serving an overall story, is it? Never mind those hypothetical “what are Daleks” readers. After a certain point it ceases to be a novel so much as a paddling pool for big fans of lists. It’s Dalek housekeeping. (And the novel seems aware of that: Sam says the info-dumps are “like Jackanory,” and “coming in at the middle of a film.” Which, I mean, nice lampshade and everything, but…? Maybe don’t do it then?)

War Of The Daleks at least lives up to its name. After the Dalek Prime laboriously fills the Doctor in about their crazy plan to avert the destruction of Skaro (trust me, it’s nuts) he engineers a civil war in order to smoke out Davros’s remaining supporters. And there is a lot of action, which certainly provides some bang for your buck re Daleks. I got a bit bored though, since the whole thing feels like a retread of Evil Of The Daleks anyway. More importantly, who cares? They’re Daleks. We keep cutting back to the fighting as if it intrinsically matters how this side or that side is getting on. Blow up or don’t, guys, just call me when you’re done. (Several of the Thal supporting characters get killed off as well, but most of them never got named in the first place.)

There’s not a lot else going on, since it’s all in service of continuity and the eventual civil war, but it’s worth mentioning that Ayaka is fairly compelling; she shoulders most of the “but at what cost?” war moralising, and does it in a more interesting way than her boss’s mad plan to breed Dalek Thals. It’s not her fault the story just stops finding this stuff interesting. Also good is Chayn, an engineer on the garbage ship that finds Davros’s escape pod. She’s fun, capable and instantly intrigued by the TARDIS, but she conveniently falls in love (more or less) so she won’t be joining the Doctor after all. Boo. She mostly seems to be here just to set off Sam’s jealousy, which is all rather unappealing but certainly on brand for her; where her feelings for the Doctor don’t entirely add up, I suppose we can write them off as belonging to a messy seventeen year old, but her possessiveness and over-eagerness are getting a bit old now. It’s a pity Peel couldn’t work in her guilt from Genocide, especially as there is a brief reference to the aliens from it. There are scenes here of Sam literally carrying a gun and wondering if she can pull the trigger, which practically jump up and down to continue that conversation. Ah well.

(Sidebar: I should probably mention the Doctor as well, so here I am, mentioning him. He’s fine. Bit naive at times, suitably grave at others. His characterisation is at least better than in either of Peel’s Virgin novels, it’s just not especially exciting. Both Doctor and companion are just sort of here, apart from some of Sam’s more annoying habits which are regrettably bang on.)

The final stretch is such an exploding onslaught that I started to forget the stuff I liked. And hey, I like stuff in here. It’s highly readable — genuinely, never something to sniff at. There is some creative context to establish why the Daleks are a big deal, and questions around the morality of fighting against them, which hint more towards one of Terry Nation’s other well known shows. I even empathise a bit with the impulse to write the next chapter in the 80s Davros chronology — since they all followed on from each other already, why break the habit of a lifetime? I just don’t think the answers and ideas he comes up with are as exciting as getting Daleks into a book in the first place, and by the end, despite early promise, this one’s just a lot of noise.

5/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #34 – Evolution by John Peel

Doctor Who: The Missing Adventures
#2
Evolution
By John Peel

With the Missing Adventures now officially underway, it's sort of unsurprising that John Peel would return.  He has said of his New Adventure, the inaugural Genesys, that he’d rather have written for the Fourth Doctor.  Well, here’s your chance – and in fairness, it (arguably) works out better than Genesys.  But that isn’t saying very much: Evolution is still another bad book.

Of course it would be reductive and a bit cheeky to compare this gothic horror Fourth Doctor story to a swords-and-sandals Seventh Doctor actioner, simply because the same guy penned it.  He’s written loads of other things, some of which I quite liked (i.e.  the ones based on other people’s scripts), but I can’t help it.  Evolution makes some of the same mistakes all over again, albeit in different ways.

There’s his way of painting history with as many stock clichés as will fit on a page.  Whereas his Mesopotamians sounded like the cast of an am-dram Game Of Thrones, all it-was-a-good-battle and taste-my-sword, his Victorians speak exclusively as if they are paid by the word.  (I think my favourite was “There may be evidence or clues aboard it that will aid in the investigation of this matter.”)  That’s just the posh ones, mind: there are some commoners thrown in as well, one of whom says things like “Bloomin’ Ada!” and “Stone the crows!” (on the same page), and improbably, “Impregna-blooming-ble”.  There’s a grubby urchin whose accent wanders jauntily all over the UK: “You really are looking for the missing ‘uns, aren’t ye?”  (Later, he says “Aye.”  Why not chuck in some Welsh?)  He’s extremely poor, I suppose; he may be leaving off random letters to save on ink.

There is also once again (and this is really frustrating given those earlier comments from Peel) a slippery handle on the main characters.  The Fourth Doctor might be at home in a Hammer Horror pastiche, with a deerstalker on his head and gruesome deaths all around, but there’s more to it than just getting the costume and body-count right.  The Doctor says a few things that stuck in my craw as aggressive or odd, even for him: “’You seem to be a reasonably decent sort of chappie.’” / “'Suck-up,’ the Doctor muttered.”  / “’And you’re an impudent wretch.’”  He seems to constantly pause his investigations to go and have dinner or call it a night, both rather human foibles he normally avoids.  There’s a lengthy scene where he pretends to be working for Scotland Yard in order to peruse a suspicious building – now that's a pretence he enjoyed in The Talons Of Weng-Chiang, but only up to a point.  His considerable personality did most of the legwork, whereas he absolutely hammers it to death here.  All I could think was “Put the psychic paper away!”

But worst of all, he’s developed a penchant for very violent threats – and stressing the bit where he’s going to absolutely bloody love what he’s going to do to you.  “’He's going to have some questions to answer when I catch up with him.  And I'll take great delight in beating the replies out of him.’” / "'Let me give you fair warning, Colonel: if you attempt to eradicate a single one of those merpeople he has somehow managed to create, I shall take great delight in feeding you to his seals piece by bloody piece.’" / “'If you touch one of those children,' the Doctor vowed, 'I shall personally take great pleasure in breaking every bone in your body.’”  Ugh – just stop.

Over on the Terminus Reviews blog, Peel piped up to defend this sort of thing as a call-back to The Brain Of Morbius, where sure enough the Doctor engineered a violent death with no apparent qualms.  Much can be said (and has been) about the Doctor’s hypocrisy around violence, and all those mealy-mouthed “You didn’t need to do that”s or “There should have been another way”s that always come too late.  This, however, is not a commentary on the Doctor’s violence.  He has rarely (if ever) expressed a desire to hurt others, or enjoyment in doing so.  His morality has conveniently given way to necessity, sure, and he sometimes has a grim sense of humour about it (especially in the Tom Baker/Philip Hinchcliffe years), but actual sadism is a drunken lurch in the wrong direction.  It made me want to post the book back to its author and request he whack himself on the nose with it.  There is personal opinion and then there is getting it absolutely bloody wrong. 

Meanwhile, Sarah Jane complains and carps like she’s off to a Tegan Jovanka convention.  Her relationship with the Doctor bounces between vague awareness that he’s there, active dislike for him and a girl-power need to solve everything herself.  (The Doctor, for his part, doesn’t seem to know if he’s proud of her head-strong blundering or annoyed by it.)  Their conversations aim for playful banter, they sometimes work, and otherwise they sail past the mark thanks to clichés or random oddities: “'There's a mystery here.  I can smell it.'  'That's just doggie doo-doo you can smell,' Sarah complained.’"  Are we sure this isn't a lost Robert Holmes script?

And don't worry, fans of random violent bits: Sarah gets to make a violent threat as well: “She examined her nails thoughtfully.  ‘I doubt you’d earn so much from even curious boys if you had scars down both cheeks.’"  Okay: granted, Sarah’s morality is a little less clear cut than the Doctor’s, since she was only in the show for a few years.  But couldn’t she wheedle information without threatening to claw somebody’s face off?  Isn’t her day job (journalist) sort of dependent on being good at that?  The Doctor’s apparently a psychopath at random intervals, but what’s her excuse?

Deep breaths.  The history may be as subtle as a foghorn, and this Doctor and companion (written, one presumes, with less obligation than his last two) might occasionally sound like psychotic impostors, but I've not said a word about the story yet.  And it’s difficult to know where to start, as there are a few major criticisms I could make about it and how it’s executed, all of which are intertwined.  So let’s launch into the big one.

I read Evolution unspoiled.  I hadn’t even glanced at the blurb, so I was surprised to learn the Doctor was taking Sarah Jane to meet Rudyard Kipling, about whom I know next to nothing.  This could go any which way, and it promptly does, as it turns out he’s currently a teenage boy who hangs around with a few other well-to-do delinquents.  He spends almost all of his time making advances on Sarah Jane.  I imagine a Kipling fan would regard this as an odd move; unexpected, yes, but then fashioning him into a mildly irritating teen just makes it completely random that it’s him.  Sarah happily orates about what a brilliant writer he’ll one day become during a climactic scene, but there’s nothing in the story to support that.

(Quick tangent: and that’s a bloody stupid scene.  Desperate to stop a madman from conducting his vile experiments, Sarah points out that she’s from the future, where Rudyard Kipling grew up to be a famous writer and Mad Scientist Guy is unheard of, so there’s no way he can succeed because that's not how history goes, right?  This backfires immediately – duh!  – and the Doctor has to explain to her that history can be changed, which he already did in Pyramids Of Mars just a couple of stories ago.  That's just sloppy.  Evolution happily piles on the continuity references to the preceding Brain Of Morbius, and even tips its hat to The Seeds Of Doom.  How did Peel forget one of the most famous bits of Tom Baker’s tenure from just a few episodes earlier?  Also, why is Sarah a moron?)

And then Arthur Conan Doyle turns up.  Which… yeah.  It’s hard to have a lot of faith in that going really well.

You know that old sci-fi cliché, when a time-traveller meets a historical figure and they reference a future work?  Quantum Leap did it (but kept it, and famous people in general to a merciful minimum until its later years); some of the cornier New Who episodes love doing it; we had it again recently via the Bootstrap Paradox; and Arthur Conan Doyle in Evolution doesn’t seem to do anything else.  “'An unearthly hound, eh?  Sounds like the perfect idea for a story.'” SUBTLE!  “'Billy, are there any of your irregular friends you can rouse?’” REFERENCE!  “'Elementary, my dear Doyle!’” INEVITABLE!  And, paying off an otherwise pointless stream of references to the Brigadier: “'A brigadier who means well...' he mused.”  (Plus there's the Doctor's newly-acquired deerstalker, which doesn't serve much purpose at all since, IIRC, that wasn't Doyle's invention anyway.)  As a character, he’s a mostly vacuous onlooker.  He loves whaling, he’s great at doctoring and he just can’t seem to crack this writing biz.  You’ll learn nothing else about him here which, as with Kipling, begs the question “Why bother?”

Rather surprisingly, any substantial Holmes references are kept to a minimum, discounting those unbearable nudge-winks – All-Consuming Fire this isn’t, more’s the pity.  Peel sticks to that book’s conceit (that there was a real Holmes and Watson and Doyle was their biographer of sorts), at least in the afterword, so the author can’t really go around inspiring Holmes, can he?  But it’s hard to fight the suspicion that he meant to evoke Holmes canon in particular, be it the social degradation (a factory filled with child-labourers) or the hound.  And it just doesn’t work.  This is a tale of aliens, mutants and mad scientists – scarcely any deduction is involved (although the Doctor does dazzle Doyle with a little bit of it, inevitably) and the only real resemblance to Holmes fiction I could figure was the one about the mad scientist who injects himself with monkey genes.  This was easily the worst Jeremy Brett episode, although now I’m worried I dreamed it: I remember getting to the end and thinking, really?  He’s part-monkey?  That’s supposed to be a thing?  Evolution does at least confirm that somebody liked that one.

The plot is probably meant to echo The Island Of Dr.  Moreau in an old-timey sci-fi way, but it’s really more like South Park’s Dr. Mephesto in execution: splicing random animals together because reasons.  Our mad scientist du jour once happened upon some restorative (magic) alien goo that conveniently doubles as a perfect gene-splicer – airtight, right?  – so he naturally wants to create an army of dolphin-people who can lay telegraph wires on the sea bed, because it’s more cost-effective than using boats.  He’s creating a race of super-people, and nothing can schtop him now, etc.!  And he’s got a business associate (the guy who wants those wires laid, because progress, etc.)  who has a total sociopathic disdain for, uh, everybody in the world I suppose.

I mean, what else can you say about all this, other than it’s a load of trite, thunderingly silly codswallop?  To shake things up, there are moments of fairly graphic violence (including a man getting his face bitten off, and that Baskervillian monster hound getting autopsied), plus some (kinda?) social commentary that they’re using kids off the street to do all this, but none of it quite justifies the loopy premise of man-animal hybrids, or Doyle and Kipling being here.  And any influence from the theory of evolution, let alone Darwin, is tenuous at best.  The title’s a stretch.

The last major issue, once you’ve knocked off the dodgy main duo, the smack-your-head-against-a-wall Famous Historical People and the B-movie plotting, is the way it’s written.  Remember Genesys, a book beset by typographical errors like I could hardly believe: they were everywhere.  The fact that it was the range’s first novel both rules out and totally explains why the editing would be a complete disaster (“It’s got to be perfect!” vs “Dear god, how do we actually do this?!”), but the finished book is what it is – a damned ugly mess.  Fast forward to Evolution and we’re mostly spared the typos (hey, even I can’t be bothered to make note of them any more), but the actual writing takes all sorts of wince-inducing turns, some of which should have been eliminated before reaching the printers.

In an early chapter, which follows the point of view of an unhappy hound-boy hybrid, certain phrases are repeated over and over.  “He had been human once” is practically a mantra, and he makes the same point about not wanting to kill actual people a bunch of times.  It’s an artistic device though, right?  Repetition because he’s going mad?  Nope: everybody thinks or speaks like that, stating things (usually the bleedin’ obvious) over and over: “It was impossible not to like the young woman … Sarah couldn’t help liking the young woman.”  / "'I'm a guard, not a messenger,' the man replied haughtily.  'I guard.  I don't carry messages.'" / "'We'd better lay low until this evening.' ...  'Until this evening, we'd better lay low.'" / "She had no energy left to fight it off … Sarah didn't have the strength to fight it off.”  / "Sarah didn't need any further encouragement … Sarah didn't waste time or breath arguing … The Doctor wasted no time or words, but simply kicked open the factory doors.”  / "He had called that creature of his a burglar!  It was obvious to her that Ross was here to steal something from the house.”  / “She felt angry.”  / “'I’m sorry,’ she apologised.”  / "’Billy does,' Sarah said, stressing the youngster's name.”  (Gee, thanks for explaining italics!)  If somebody okayed all of this, they must have been caught napping.

If the relentless broken-clock-dumbness of people doesn’t bother you, there’s also their weird fixation with (tedious) running commentary.  They do this seemingly to pass the time, and literally at one point when Sarah just feels like recounting the plot.  It’s like everybody has a ‘50s era trailer voice in their head, and they just need to reaffirm that they don’t know what’s going to happen next, dammit!  "What kind of a hold did the suave Colonel Ross have over Roger?  Friendship?  Money?  Blackmail?  She didn't know.”  / "She felt dreadful about searching [Ross's room], but what else could she do?  Perhaps something would be revealed that would resolve her quandary.”  / "Was she getting through to him at all?  … It would not be an easy matter for him to trust her, but had she made him realise that he had no other genuine option?” / "To pass the time, Sarah tried making sense of what they had discovered so far...”

Just to soapbox about writing for a second (who, me?), if a character doesn’t have anything interesting to say, maybe shut them up until they do.  And if they don’t know what’s going to happen next, firstly join the club, and secondly maybe that’s not actually an interesting thing to point out, so why bother?  “Would he enjoy the sandwich?  He simply didn’t know.  He picked up the sandwich and bit into it.  As it turned out, he did enjoy the sandwich.”

(Bonus bit of redundant guff: We occasionally cut to the plight of the mer-children, one of whom (Lucy) regales the others with her life story.  This includes violence and near-sexual abuse (someone get Peter Darvill-Evans’s Missing Adventures brief, we’re going wrong again!) and, totally pointlessly, the bit where she gets captured and turned into a mer-person.  Just like all of them did.  Why the hell do they need to hear that all over again?  Because we do.  Smoo-ooth.  As for why they’d want to hear about her getting brought up by an abusive psycho… god knows.  Lucy, they're kids.  Make something up.)

Most of this I could just about level at the book’s editors.  Repetition is irritating, by definition you don’t need it, so cut it out.  Inane observations are just that, we’re not idiots, so someone should have been all over them with a red pen.  But there are bits – like the Doctor’s ill-advised lust for violence, and the odd undercurrent of female weakness, from Alice the dippy fiancé to Jen the unscrupulous prostitute to Sarah’s bullish thoughtlessness – that simply point to bad ideas, and a bizarre overconfidence in said ideas, and (incredibly) a belief that any of this is being done in clever jest.

The mad scientist tells of his brilliant, miraculous discoveries (oh look, a UFO, cheers for the multi-purpose goo) in a rambling “Why not, I’m about to kill you anyway” monologue, just before the other unbearably hackneyed bad guy does exactly the same thing all over again!  Back on Terminus, Peel has said this is intended as a spoof; the trouble is, Evolution is neither clever nor (intentionally) funny enough to get away with that, and it’s stuffed with so much other hoary schlock that the “spoof” stuff looks suspiciously the same.  (Not to mention the same as Ishtar, his last by-the-numbers baddie.)  Some clever-clever mirth is had at the coincidence of Ross finding that UFO goo, which...  yeah, underlines how coincidental that is.  The Doctor chuckles heartily when a character comes to an obviously wrong deduction just to facilitate more plot, which...  yeah, makes that sort of worse, actually.  Lines like "'Can we drop the corny literary allusions?'" and "'You think they'd be more bleeding inventive, wouldn't you?'" are pretty much own goals in such bad company.  And as I read on, my patience withering, this dazzling exchange pretty much shaved a point off my final rating all at once: “'You scoundrel!’ exclaimed Doyle.  ‘Do you expect us to sympathise with you?’ ‘No, Doctor,’ Breckinridge answered.  ‘I expect you to die.’”

I just… he… really?!

And of course there's the general embarrassment that can come with writers inserting characters into history and “inspiring” other works: the quality of the story will dictate the degree of insult to the original artist.  For Evolution to go around saying this stuff could have inspired Arthur Conan Doyle, not to mention The Jungle Book (!), is downright cuckoo.

Probably the best thing I can say is that it’s undemanding.  The prose, aside from its iceberg-ish flaws, bobs along quickly; the book’s surprises tend to be revealed in massive info-dumps, so you don’t have to think much along the way; and like Genesys, the bar is pretty low to start with in terms of genre writing, so if you’re after a brain-set-to-OFF-position gothic horror with barmy sci-fi bits, you might well enjoy yourself.  But I’ve really got to squint to find the good in here.

The return of a Doctor and companion who don’t sound right.  A silly story that shrugs away its setting and personages.  Attempts to be witty that succeed about as well as Riverdancing in Wellingtons.  Oh aye: it's a worthy successor to Genesys.

3/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #1 – Timewyrm: Genesys by John Peel

Some background: in 1989, Doctor Who was cancelled.  I know, I know.  Let it out.

But this wasn't the end.  Virgin Publishing got the rights to make Doctor Who books, so they published a lot of them, which I promptly didn't read.  Well, they starred characters I wasn't too familiar with, in some cases had never even heard of, and they sounded weird.  Even the titles weren't very Doctor Who-ey; there was no "Attack Of The Terrifying Killer Thing" or "Thing Of The Daleks".  There were adult themes, and not one single Dalek.  Was it really even Doctor Who?

Then in 1996, after 61 New Adventures (concerning the then-Doctor, Sylvester McCoy), 33 Missing Adventures (featuring the rest) and some miscellaneous, Virgin lost the rights.  (Something to do with a TV movie.)  Doctor Who went back to the BBC and Virgin carried on making other, non-Doctor books.

And twenty years later I figured, what the hell, why not see what I was missing?  New Adventures, Missing Adventures and miscellaneous.  One by one I'll read them all...

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#1
Timewyrm: Genesys
By John Peel

Some time after the show's cancellation, someone had the bright idea to continue Doctor Who in book form.  But the New Adventures would not be the usual adventures in time and space.  As per the blurb, they were: "full-length science fiction novels; stories too broad and too deep for the small screen."  That's a bold mission statement, and one that would later ensnare the talents of some daring, out-of-the-box-writers – some of the most creative voices the show ever had.

So who do they get to write the inaugural entry?  This is the one book everyone's going to read – the one that, for some readers, may decide whether it's worth getting the rest.

Drumroll: it's John Peel.  (No, not that one.)  Official noveliser of many '60s-era Dalek stories, known for stitching together some decent (if episodic) scripts with somewhat clunky prose.  To me, that's an odd choice.  Was he known for having fresh, exciting ideas about the show?  Or being, well, good?  To paraphrase Father Ted: "What was it – collect twelve packets of crisps and write the first New Adventures novel?"  He was probably seen as a safe pair of hands, not one to frighten away uncertain readers and old fans who might balk at weird "new" Doctor Who, but there's a gulf between novelisations and actual novels, as we'll soon discover.

So: what does Genesys set out to do?  Firstly, re-introduce the world of Doctor Who to new readers, aka tell us who the Doctor and Ace are, what the TARDIS is, how this all works.  Circa 1991, the audience for these books were predominantly people who knew this stuff back to front already, but it's an admirable concession for newbies.

Unfortunately Peel is cut from the same cloth as Gary Russell (someone I'll be getting to later on) – there can never, ever be enough continuity references – and that's largely the route he takes here, dispensing reams of random information from the show's past.  Some of the not-really-asked-for stuff includes the concept of Time Lord regeneration (and what his fourth incarnation looked like); the names of all the companions who died in unfortunate circumstances (and how that happened); the plot of The Invasion Of Time; and the supporting cast of Ghost Light.  We just don't need it.  A reader unfamiliar with this stuff is likely to be mystified by its relevance.  Frankly, I know it backwards and I am, too.  Slavish adherence to continuity is a recipe for fan-fiction, and the New Adventures are (presumably, see blurb) striving to be more than that.  I've read a few of Peel's original novels, and they share this tedious addiction to references.  It's embarrassing – the kind of Doctor Who lit you wouldn't want non-fans to see.  It can be better than this.  Honest!

(The references reach a rather odd peak when the Doctor decides he can't solve a technical problem, so he mentally swaps places with another more gadgetty Doctor.  This suggests a rather awkward discomfort with the current Doctor, which is apparently accurate: Peel has said "If I'd had my choice, it would have been a Tom Baker story, but I was kind of stuck with the then-current Doctor."  Oh, the poor dear.  Anyway, don't expect to see that skill again.)

So, what else must it do?  Well, it's no secret that the Doctor of the NAs is altogether darker than he was on television, and that process might as well begin here.  The Doctor is a pretty unpleasant fellow in Genesys, in particular his casual disregard for the safety of Ace.  His thoughtlessness allows her memories to be temporarily erased, as an excuse to fill in the ephemera of Doctor Who (see: new readers, above).  Later he orders her to spend time with Gilgamesh, a brutish king with a famous lust and no impulse control.  Towards the end, ostensibly for her own good, he hits her in the stomach with his umbrella, punches her in the jaw to make her easier to carry, and slaps her awake in the TARDIS.  If this is intended to make us question how well we know the Doctor, it's too much, too soon – the Doctor, even the chess-playing manipulator of The Curse Of Fenric and Ghost Light, had more compassion than this.  If it's simply Peel's impression of the Seventh Doctor, well, it is a grotesque miscalculation.  Elsewhere he is only vaguely concerned with the safety of people, at one point wishing a devastated prostitute could be locked up in a different cell so he could think more clearly.  Where's that safe pair of hands now?  An old guard like Peel must know the Doctor isn't really like this.

Looking at Genesys more as a book than a New Adventures mission statement, it must tell its own story, despite being Book One of Four.  It concerns Mesopotamia, the "cradle of civilisation", and according to the generous foreword by Sophie Aldred, Peel relates the peoples and events in great colour.  She's being very generous.  The setting isn't poorly realised, but it falls short of any particular realism; Peel at least gives certain aspects, such as its carnage and sexual practices, his full and morbid attention.  It's all rather unpleasant.

Meanwhile, his ear for dialogue and knack for characterisation are somewhat lacking.  Certain ideas, like the Doctor and Ace's anachronistic speech being lost on the locals, don't quite work because much of their dialogue is equally, lazily modern.  Clichés abound: "I've got a bad feeling about this" and "It's quiet... too quiet" appear on the same page.  As for the villain, a computer-enhanced psychopath posing as the goddess Ishtar, Peel revels in the kind of archetypal scenery-chewing that made the Racnoss such a (hrmph) delight.  I got very, very bored of her confidence and apparent invulnerability, especially in the finale as characters variously got locked up, forced to listen to her rant, managed to free themselves, then got locked up and forced to listen again.  And goodie gum-drops, she's the Timewyrm, so there's three more books of her to come.  (Best of luck, Terrance Dicks, Nigel Robinson and Paul Cornell – you can hardly do worse.)

The writing is bog standard, the plot is a historical/sci-fi runaround, but that isn't what really irritated me about Genesys.  Was this proof-read at all?  One might reasonably expect a couple of typos in any publication – it’s just an occupational hazard, and it's not necessarily a reflection on the writer.  In Genesys, however (and while we're at it, yes, that is a silly title) the typos come thick and fast throughout the novel.  Here are a few examples...

"Who would built a ziggurat with a door like that? " p8

"She had never looked more brautiful. " p12

"She didn't think she as a prisoner." p19

"If Gilgamesh were to appear now and so much as look you at you..." p23

"You can't accuse the king of rapine." p24

"I trust you didn't tell you wife what we have planned?" p24

"Ace felt she could breath again." p84

And those are just the typos.  We also have sentences which are poorly constructed...

"These annoying little hints of wrongness were beginning to annoy him." p85

...plus a few that are simply, no-two-ways-about-it, stupid.

"'Back off, bitch!' Ace yelled, doing her best Sigourney Weaver impression." p197

As the work of an excited Doctor Who fan, offered in a fanzine or online, all of this might be acceptable enough.  Who cares?  But for a published novel people actually pay to read, not to mention the somewhat "important" first book in a new range, the lack of attention to detail is staggering.  Genesys isn't just a clumsy, pedestrian piece of work – it is also avoidably flawed.  (In fairness, this was their first book, so it's easy to imagine the editors not knowing what the hell they were doing.  Look at the first series of New Doctor Who: they were behind schedule before they even started.  But this sort of thing doesn't make the book any better, does it?)

There is more to loathe about this generally tacky and schlocky novel, such as the repetitive "humour" derived from Ace batting off the grotesque interests of Gilgamesh, but I should probably mention its strengths.  They're simple enough: when it comes to action, Genesys has a pulpy, workmanlike charm.  One can easily imagine Peel writing an entertaining (albeit brainless) B-movie, or something with swords and sandals that you'd watch on a Sunday afternoon.  There is, incredibly, a fun piece of dialogue here and there.  (Weary from typo-spotting, I didn't jot any of them down.)  And for all its faults, it has made me curious to hear the rest of the story, since it will be taken up by someone else.

But this is window-dressing.  Genesys sucks.  With any luck, I won't see its like again.

3/10