Doctor Who: The BBC Books #86 – Bunker Soldiers by Martin Day

Doctor Who: The Past Doctor Adventures

#39

Bunker Soldiers

By Martin Day

Following The King Of Terror we’re now seeing the other side of the Topping/Day solo divide. That’s not entirely fair of course, since Day’s first novel (The Menagerie) was all his own work, but he’s co-written a few things since then and has presumably learned a lot.

It’s a funny old bibliography. I wasn’t very impressed by The Menagerie, an imaginative but rough-around-the-edges first novel, and his co-written Bernice Summerfield book (Another Girl, Another Planet) was some of that range’s least distinct work. But his two PDAs with Topping bear thinking about: The Devil Goblins Of Neptune and The Hollow Men are both violent yet interesting exercises, each with its own voice. All of this brings us to Bunker Soldiers, a book that I wasn’t excited about due to that previous uneven track record but which I can now say is the best thing Day has written.

It’s a pseudo-historical about the Mongol invasion of Kiev [sic] in 1240, adding an alien menace into the mix — but keeping the emphasis on the historical elements. Pseudo-historicals became the default way for Doctor Who to visit the past not long after Hartnell exited the series; I’ve always found them slightly disappointing, as they feel like a concession to impatient viewers that won’t recognise it as Doctor Who unless there’s a bug-eyed monster somewhere. Bunker Soldiers does indeed have an extra-terrestrial lurking about, but it’s there to reflect the nightmares going on in real life. In all honesty the book could probably still work as a pure historical, but I’m not unhappy with what we got instead.

You’ll notice there are no continuity links on the back cover. (This appears to be a change to the PDAs as a whole, no doubt to tone down the fanwank. I’ll bear it in mind the next time we get a Quantum Archangel.) Day is nevertheless specific about what period of the show he’s using: this isn’t set long after The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew’s Eve, what with Steven “remembering our earlier argument after our escape from Paris … the debate had never really ended, and I didn’t want the Doctor to think that the passing of time meant I now agreed with him.” That specific argument has cropped up in the PDAs before, with Salvation set directly in its aftermath, but Bunker Soldiers finds more to say on the subject.

At first things are very clear cut. You know how the Doctor feels about changing history from watching The Aztecs, or more nuanced explorations such as The Witch Hunters. He boils it down succinctly here: “‘We must do something.’ ‘We must do absolutely nothing!’” Awful as it is, the Mongols are going to invade and the Russians [sic] are going to be massacred. Typically, the Doctor and co are separated from the TARDIS, barred from re-entry by a desperate governor who knows a miracle when he sees one and won’t pass up another. The Doctor digs his heels in and refuses to share his secrets, which right away gives the novel a doomy atmosphere: the only alternative to helping is simply waiting to die together.

But there’s another problem. One of Kiev’s advisers, Yehven, has unleashed a secret weapon in the city’s catacombs, a “dark angel” that can assume different guises and kills with ease. He hopes to turn it on the Mongols. (He is apparently blithe about its initial target practice in Kiev.) The Doctor cannot let an already dangerous army get their hands on an alien weapon.

Suddenly the “not one line” guard rails aren’t good enough: to do nothing might be what changes history. The urge to keep time on track is still the important thing, but the addition of a sci-fi problem changes the Doctor’s entire approach. All of a sudden the Doctor has some justification for trying to reason with the Mongols and avert the invasion altogether — after all, what’s the greater crisis? Kiev getting an easier ride or the Mongols getting a super weapon? The Doctor’s usual certainties erode even further as the novel progresses and things get nastier, giving him a more casual attitude towards sharing future information. Why worry about it when most of these people aren’t going to make it?

The story often challenges preconceived notions. Perhaps the biggest one is the Mongol threat. They are perceived as demons and monsters by the Russians. Day doesn’t suggest that this is outright wrong, indeed he frequently demonstrates their scant regard for human life. They execute all but two of the Doctor’s negotiating party, and the last we see of Mykola — a previously treacherous man whom the Doctor has come to respect, so another example of preconceptions challenged — is the sound of Batu Khan having him tortured, presumably to death.

We are given a florid account of what Mongol invasion means to the conquered people, which includes the drastic reduction of their numbers — but then, only if they don’t surrender, and what happens to them after invasion is more or less normal society, perhaps it’s even improved. They have culture and they prize comforts. Their envoys are often captured men, and likeable ones at that; when two of them are rashly executed by the governor of Kiev there’s no doubt in the reader’s mind that this is a gross tragedy. When the Doctor (spoiler?) stands with the reigning warlords overlooking a mostly dead Kiev, he notes that “the wind tugged at the Mongols’ beards and hair and, perhaps, irritated their eyes. Only that could explain their tearful gaze as they, too, looked over the city.” They believe in what they’re doing, up to and including atrocities, but they can also be more than that.

The same is true of the conquered. Yehven is a slippery vizier in the grand tradition of Tlotoxl in The Aztecs: he is generally disliked and has designs of power, and of course he makes enemies of the TARDIS crew. He’s also busy trying to get rid of Isaac, an impassioned Jew looking to translate ancient texts. Yehven eventually finds himself in power, but only at a point when everything’s gone horribly wrong; he opines that “whatever I have done in the past, the pain I have caused — it has been with a greater purpose in mind,” and then in a less genial moment, “what do I govern? A terrified city, riddled with pestilence and soon to be attacked by a great army. This is not what I had in mind!” There’s a fantastic motif around doors, first having him lock Steven in a room with the alien to die, then later locking a number of people out so that he can face danger instead. Sadly, Yehven isn’t quite done twisting and turning at this point, as he was actually attempting to use these people as bait for a Mongol trap. Somewhere underneath all that, however, is a broken family man who means well for his people and his faith.

The rest of them are mostly virtuous, some committing terrible actions for what they thought were the right reasons. Mykola frames Steven for murder to throw suspicion away from the alien; Yehven orders a guard to kill Isaac and destroy his work; Steven meets Olexander, an old man as instantly loveable as Binro the Heretic, but he’s revealed to have been lead astray, much good it does him. Then we have the governor, Dmitri: a good man who seems uncommonly able (for a character of this archetype) to believe the time travellers and support their suggestions — that is, until he loses his mind and instigates a strategy that will doom Kiev. We leave the door open for possible alien influence on Dmitri, plus there’s a cholera outbreak that might be affecting his wits. Nonetheless the possibility remains that a good man under impossible pressure can do monstrous things. In the end he is pitied, but we can’t truly understand his actions. Perhaps he can’t either.

It’s debatable whether you needed an alien threat in amongst all that, but Day makes a good selection all the same. The nameless creature/soldier/machine is a shape changer with a few hallmarks of vampirism, plus the habits of a succubus and/or incubus. It feels suitably superstitious that it could take part in these events without anyone needing to guess what planet it came from, which helps bolster the “historical” part of pseudo-historical. Day’s descriptions are often murky, but that feels deliberate: when it hasn’t settled on a shape people simply don’t know what the hell they’re looking at. The creature’s lack of personality could have made it boring, but Day manages to land on unfathomable and creepy instead, particularly when it plies its trade and the prose gets to work: “As her husband brought his head downwards, his mouth was full of needles.” Ultimately the whole concept of a creature that could be anyone is an inspired one for a story about people that contain dark, unpleasant multitudes.

You would hope that the recurring characters bear examination too, and happily that’s the case. We’ve already gone over the Doctor’s thought processes, and how they challenge his normal attitudes, but Day makes a point of letting the characters sit with what’s happened at the end: despite everything the Doctor feels more resolute about history’s certain course, he’s just had to accept that his involvement might be necessary sometimes. The Doctor is a fierce presence in Bunker Soldiers, quietly pruned of any funny Billy fluffs; he relies on his past experience with Kublai Khan to talk to his ancestor and he does so fearlessly. When the time comes to be with the doomed people of Kiev, any airs and graces have gone and he can be frank with them. When the Mongols try to stop him working against the alien he finds a way to outfox them, and when it’s all over he can somewhat see eye to eye with them. It’s a great reading of the character.

It is though, to a significant event, Steven’s book; he is afforded chapters in first person, and it’s Steven who has to shoulder much of the story. It’s the force of Steven’s personality, not just the Doctor’s, that wins Dmitri around. (Although we must also credit Day for simply not being so dull as to do the usual “imperious type locks up the time travellers so we can squeeze out another episode” structure — well, not beyond a certain point anyway.) Steven has to do most of the legwork when it comes to the alien and his bond with Isaac is a large part of why the travellers are (relatively) so well thought of here. He still never dials down that incredulity that makes the character so dynamic, not shying away from telling Yehven what he thinks of him (and, well, to just get out) despite him trying to offer reassurance in return. Steven, like us, cannot truly see the Doctor’s point of view of history being inevitable and many of its people being uniquely “intimate with death”; if he’s not at last in agreement with the Doctor’s rebuke at the end of Massacre, though, he’s at least accepting of it.

If Bunker Soldiers has a bum note it’s probably Dodo, but not because she’s poorly written. Day lets her off the leash when we see her, she is fiercely and almost ferally Dodo in this. She refuses to “posh up” in a historical setting and says things like this to a love-struck girl: “It all makes sense now. I noticed you staring at him the other day. I thought he had his flies undone or something.” She also joins Steven in tearing strips off Yehven, utterly undaunted in supporting his long-suffering daughter Lesia. The issue is that there isn’t much for her to do — I suspect because Day wanted to write about this Doctor and Steven, specifically after the Massacre, and Dodo comes with that package deal. At least we can count this as a novel in which something personally horrible doesn’t happen to Dodo (murder, STD and sexual assault so far), but then again Day does make it so that maybe she was indirectly responsible for the Black Death? So um, yeah, that is going on the list actually.

It’s worth acknowledging the depth of history here, which is rich enough to involve you even if you didn’t know anything about it. Some of it is both creditably real and genuinely shocking, particularly the bit about the church roof. I think I’m right in saying though that Dmitri’s plan, which Dodo thinks she may have inspired, did not really happen? Which seems at least a little bit tasteless as real people are involved. (On the plus side, if that is the case then that rather argues that Dodo didn’t affect the plague. Every cloud!)

There are other things to like. Bunker Soldiers is at the stronger end of prose for a Doctor Who book, Day perhaps being spurred on by the historical setting and some of those acclaimed Hartnell stories. It starts in media res, which often makes things more exciting. The format is interesting too, juggling Steven’s first person narrative, the rest of it in third and interludes from the alien’s point of view that don’t make sense until you’re near the end. (Potentially irritating, but this had the effect of keeping me intrigued.) Ultimately it just felt like a strong argument for going back to the (mostly) historical well: the past is full of stories and also attitudes, including ones from established characters, which still have room to move. It’s all worth exploring.

8/10

Doctor Who: The BBC Books #21 – The Hollow Men by Keith Topping and Martin Day

Doctor Who: The Past Doctor Adventures
#10
The Hollow Men
By Keith Topping & Martin Day

This one caught me off guard.

The ingredients are all fairly typical. You’ve got a creepy village with some even creepier scarecrows, some none-too-wholesome villagers in between. All very “British horror movie”, with an eventual link to a Classic Who story to calm the fans. But The Hollow Men feels more rounded than the jolly genre exercise I expected. It is also, for the people excited by the mere mention of horror, a good deal nastier.

The Doctor has been intrigued by Hexen Bridge for some time. This is a mild retcon, but it wouldn’t be the first time this particular Doctor has revealed a body-hopping interest in a place or a thing. Besides, I like the idea that we’re not privy to all of his adventures, and the suggestion that he’s been intrigued by a town very near Devil’s End ever since Jon Pertwee’s Favourite Story (TM), but has been unable to put his finger on exactly why, puts him at a curious disadvantage.

That wrong-footed feeling stays with the Doctor for most of The Hollow Men, despite his efforts. And we see some of them, such as his visits to the town throughout its history. He was on the school board some years ago, in a couple of different guises it seems, and several of the villagers remember him to some degree. This is a level of familiarity you don’t normally see around the Doctor — especially this Doctor — and there’s a vulnerability in that, because the people who remember him are not as awed by him as newcomers tend to be.

Well, he’s waited long enough, and it’s time for answers. But before he can get any he comes across some particularly nefarious locals (one of whom knew him at school) and they bundle him into a car and off to Liverpool for seeing too much. Again, you sort of expect the Seventh Doctor to wheedle his way out of something like this — it’s a car full of normal people, for goodness sake! — and there might be something to be said here about misreading the character. But I think he’s deliberately written out of sorts. He’s confused by the behaviour of these townspeople he sort of, kinda likes. He’s not one step ahead of what’s happening in Hexen Bridge. Why shouldn’t that mess up his routine?

(Just to be clear, I know this was originally intended as an Eighth Doctor novel, so some of that behaviour probably wasn’t meant to juxtapose against the great chess player of Doctor Who. But it’s his book now, and I think it juxtaposes nicely, so if you don’t mind I’ll behave like all humans according to the Eighth Doctor and see patterns that aren’t there.)

Something is definitely iffy about Hexen Bridge, and some of it is just the sort of thing you’d expect. We open with a horrific flashback to not long after the Civil War, with a mad judge executing all the men in the village — clearly a precursor to some very bad things. Later there are glimpses of nightmarish rituals involving people in hoods (well obviously, you gotta have hoods) and what about all those scarecrows hanging about? But there’s an atmosphere here that goes beyond all that. The people aren’t quite right.

A good example of this is Rebecca, a schoolteacher and daughter of the local vicar, whom Ace quickly befriends. Rebecca stands up for the younger girl against the fairly awful pub landlord, and you can tell they’ve hit it off. But when looking at the creepily identical handwriting of some local kids, Ace notices Rebecca’s is just the same. Later, she turns out to be sleeping with the extremely toxic Matthew Hatch, a young politician of some standing with grand evil plans just out of sight. (Think Roger ap William in 73 Yards.) How much a part of Hexen Bridge is she?

That’s a question asked throughout the book, and of course, there’s no easy answer, as the people seem to go back and forth. Something is poisoning the villagers’ minds and ensuring their cooperation. (It is also ensuring a degree of population control — see, rituals and hoods.) This manifests locally in a level of mistrust and violence, mostly aimed at strangers. The Chens moved here to open a restaurant, and the local publican keeps making racist attacks against them. To be fair (well, not fair, he’s a racist) his wife is sleeping with one of them. But even his relationship with his wife seems on-again-off-again, love-hate in a way that’s not quite right, even with the infidelity. Why does she stay with him? How much does she want Steven Chen? Is that Hexen Bridge, or are some people just a bit inexplicable?

Further afield, this strangeness manifests in the schemes of Matthew Hatch, as well as the crimes of his less charming classmate Shanks. It’s mainly these crimes that ensnare the Doctor, forcing him to enter a club strapped with explosives so he’ll plant drugs on an unsuspecting policeman’s daughter, or else. (I expected a clever bit of sleight of hand would get him out of this, but although he does use his smarts while his captors aren’t looking, it doesn’t work. This results in a grimly funny moment where he tries to defuse the bomb by remembering what Ace has taught him about explosives, which is another unexpected moment of vulnerability, him needing her like that.) This whole Liverpool section seems an unusual fit at first, and maybe it is, but the earthy violence of it and the general atmosphere of crime and urban horror — not to mention the laboratory revulsion of Hatch’s plans — made me strangely nostalgic for the New Adventures, so I didn’t mind.

Back in the village, Ace is exercising her social justice muscles to defend the Chens. This is all very Ace, although it amuses me that it was presumably almost Sam. (I think Ace is her closest on-screen equivalent, and likely a major inspiration, hence a certain ease in swapping them out.) There’s a certain I-don’t-give-a-damn experience to Ace in this, which makes sense after the fairly traumatic TV stories set before this one. She seems indomitable in a way many companions aren’t in the absence of the Doctor, even sort of deputising Steven Chen as a companion for a bit. She seems to win people over in that Doctor-y way. Ace does some investigating in his absence — she knows him well enough not to panic when he seems to have just wandered off — and she gets to more closely observe the scarecrows. Lucky her, eh?

It’s surprising really that there aren’t more creepy scarecrows in Doctor Who. The ones in The Hollow Men are nightmarish indeed, being (spoiler?) converted villagers, slaves to the force underneath Hexen Bridge. Like a lot of great monsters there is a sadness to them, as they seem at least dimly aware of what they used to be. Topping and Day don’t make a very big thing of them, despite what the front cover suggests. (Never bet on the front cover.) This sort of heightens the horror when they do appear, and keeps them from feeling overplayed. Besides, the real horror of The Hollow Men is the effect the town has on its people. It’s predominantly not a “monster” story. (Good. I thought the weakest part of The Devil Goblins From Neptune was the goblins. Maybe the authors felt the same way and deliberately shifted the focus away from the monsters? Or maybe not. You know humans, patterns and all that.)

When the violence really kicks off, which it does increasingly through the second half and then like mad near the end, it’s horribly indiscriminate. Some quite nice people end up dying, and at least one certified bastard doesn’t. This seems to speak to the authors’ interest in the murkiness of people, which is also enhanced by the relative absence of aliens and monsters.

The finale is another thing that (probably by accident) made me nostalgic for the New Adventures, since it is (forgive me) all a bit metaphysical and weird. The Doctor confronts the malevolent force in a strange representation of Hexen Bridge found through a mirror, while in the real world scarecrows battle other supernatural manifestations for the souls of the villagers, who are themselves going mad with random violence. (RTD voice: “Marvellous!” Seriously, if you told me this one was written five years earlier I wouldn’t blink.) But it ends on a genuinely sombre note, even apart from the locals living in the wake of chaos, as we see that the Doctor still doesn’t understand these people. It’s not that he was outplayed by a master chess player — the alien intelligence isn’t that intelligent. It’s just that too many humans can make things harder to predict. (Possibly. That’s my reading anyway. Patterns etc.)

For me it’s a good sign to finish a book and still want to turn it over in my mind. The nature of villainy and the apparent difficulty the Doctor faces made The Hollow Men an interesting experience. If I can climb over the (imagined?) 90s-ness of it that I so enjoyed, however, it is a bit messy. Pulling the action apart across the country feels a smidge random, and the finale (for all its earned, “here’s what you paid to see” excess) does go on a bit. The characters are also a bit thin, but maybe that’s a deliberate thing and they’re supposed to be a bit weird and unknowable? It’s a story with unease hanging in the air, even when it’s just me wondering how many people in Hexen Bridge know the Doctor in a dull way like as an old half-forgotten teacher (because how weird is that), so even when it doesn’t entirely work I still want to look at it and wonder what that’s about. Before running away, obviously, from those bloody scarecrows.

7/10

Doctor Who: The BBC Books #2 — The Devil Goblins From Neptune by Keith Topping and Martin Day

Doctor Who: The Past Doctor Adventures
#1
The Devil Goblins From Neptune
By Keith Topping and Martin Day

The Past Doctor Adventures, then. It ought to go without saying that if you’re doing a book range about the current Doctor then you should also do one about the rest, but you know what? That wasn’t a thing until Virgin did it with the New and Missing Adventures, so pour one out for the MAs. The BBC took their lunch money.

That said, the Missing Adventures never quite figured out what to do with themselves. Replicate the style of a TV script? Too derivative. Get experimental or dark? That’s what the New Adventures are for. They tended to oscillate between these extremes, with only occasional gems like The Empire Of Glass grasping that you can just tell a good story in an era.

I mention the MAs because, well, the comparison is inevitable, but also because there seems to be some crossover here. The Devil Goblins From Neptune (I’ll say it, goofy title) was co-written by Martin Day, who got his start with Virgin’s The Menagerie. (Many of the BBC Books writers cut their teeth with Virgin, which is sort of nice. And it’s good sense, because you don’t want to rely on a procession of first time novelists. You could try established higher-profile writers, but they may not flock to your TV tie-in range – no offence.)

On a character level, too, an argument can be made that Goblins is in keeping with the MAs. It’s set between Seasons Seven and Eight on telly: a sea change occurred there, with Liz Shaw disappearing without a peep and Mike Yates materialising as if we’d always known him. Despite sitting in this gap, Goblins does not have Mike arrive on the scene for the first time – so The Eye Of The Giant might still stand. And despite being the first thing that comes to mind when looking at that continuity gap, this is not The Proverbial Liz Shaw Leaving Story either. (Although there’s an epilogue set eight months after she left UNIT.) Is that a case of simply not writing that story right now, or are they politely letting The Scales Of Injustice stay where it is? I guess we’ll see. (Quick reminder here that Virgin sent Liz on her way twice, the first time in the first Decalog. So it wouldn’t exactly be crime of the century if Topping and Day did it again here. But they didn’t.)

I’m probably being unfair to Goblins by starting off with such a lot of fanwank, because it’s not that kind of book. So let’s get back on track. Season Seven strikes me as a good setting for a Doctor Who novel. The stories were longer than usual in the first place, with plenty of characters and subplots and okay, a generous amount of padding. Crucially it was also a time of change for the Doctor, in that suddenly he was part of a team. Yes, he’s always the most interesting one, but crucially he’s not the only one driving the action. Goblins flies with this, allowing the focus to follow the Doctor, Liz, Mike Yates, the Brigadier, Sgt. Benton and visiting Russian UNIT officer Shuskin as needed. There’s enough going on that you’re always fairly engaged – so it doesn’t have to be the Doctor all the time, and the fact that none of the rest of them truly know or understand him anyway gives the authors license to let him hang back and work in an ensemble. (They arguably push this a bit far by having him slip into a coma twice, but again – plenty going on elsewhere.)

Season Seven was also a murkier, nastier kind of storytelling than viewers were used to. Spearhead From Space hints at bodysnatching paranoia. The Silurians features an out of control plague and a morally grey ending that borders on genocide; The Ambassadors Of Death suggests that people are the real problem. And in Inferno we really push the boat out, with the world turning to outright fascism and then ending in lava and screams. (But it’s not our world, so phew I guess.) The season is a good setting for murky allegiances, violence with consequences and unexpected changes of setting: all grist to the mill for a book running about twice the length of a Target novelisation.

So in Goblins, it’s not just a case of aliens invading London and the Doctor leading the charge against them. Shadowy forces are working against UNIT and we follow their agent: Thomas Bruce, suave American and all round, 24-carat a-hole. The aliens have help from humanity – bad apples, of course – so we occasionally dip into the world of Viscount Rose, a part of the English gentry who reckons Armageddon will work in his favour. (Guess how that works out.) There are hippies more or less on board with this, the “Venus people”, led by Rose’s son Arlo, and we occasionally meet them or people on similar drugs. And of course the goblins of the title are out there killing people, so we occasionally cut away to those events, meeting people ever so briefly before, y’know.

A lot of this feels reflective of those long seven parters, particularly the sheer necessity of action scenes. (“Action by HAVOC” appears at the start. Accurate.) Shuskin’s initial mission to recruit the Doctor leads to three failed kidnap attempts, all of which are nominally pointless because she just wants his help but UNIT kept blowing her off, and then actually pointless because the whole “go and investigate happenings in Russia” plot is a massive, insidious red herring. Not that I’m exactly complaining: it’s written with maximum excitement in mind, bullets flying everywhere and the Doctor jauntily eluding danger at all turns. Marvellous. But I know when a certain degree of chain yanking is occurring and – apologies to Thomas Bruce and friends – here be yanks.

Perhaps the most enjoyable part of this (in all honesty, quite sprawling) plot is the stuff with the Brigadier. Realising that Shuskin’s experiences indicate rot at a high level, he departs for Geneva to see what’s what. (This smartly ensures that the red herring plot doesn’t go to waste.) The Brigadier often seemed a bit of a buffoon on screen, particularly as the years went on, but he flourishes here, responding to dangerous changes of circumstance with intelligence and taking command of soldiers so that any consequences are off their shoulders. I was never entirely sure what the authors were driving at with where this is all going – the “rot” goes very high up and it must be addressed, but that doesn’t obviously reflect anything in Season Eight and beyond, so are other authors going to pick this up? – but each cut away to his one-man spy movie was enjoyable.

There’s also solid character work happening for the rest of the gang. Mike Yates seems to be having crises of confidence, first when he’s placed in charge and then when it’s taken away – again not entirely sure if that ties into anything, but it fleshes him out. Benton gets partially blown up by a stray bomb, but then adorably rushes back to work and tries to infiltrate the Venus People, which goes surprisingly well until the goblins turn up. And Liz, while not making a point of leaving this time, feels like a person in her own right with skills and interests that just don’t naturally align with UNIT. (She much prefers academia.) Her mentor, Bernard Trainor, turns out to be in cahoots with Viscount Rose, although he soon regrets it. Shortly after she finds out (and after he has changed sides again) he dies of a heart attack, and we see a broken Liz: “Why did you have to go now? Why did you have to go when I hate you?” Leaving now or not, the events of the novel certainly feel like they’re going in Liz’s “cons” column for UNIT, not the “pros”. It may not be her leaving story, which is quite bold in itself, but it contributes meaningfully to that event.

That death is one of several examples that feel a little less throwaway than you’d expect in a monster invasion story. There is certainly more violence than you’d see on television or in a Target novelisation – enough that, combined with the spy shenanigans and the loving detail of all the military hardware involved, I wondered if kids would enjoy reading this at all. (Indeed, I didn’t stick with it as a twelve year old.) But most of it feels consequential and felt. Notably, the Brigadier contends with possibly having to take a life for the first time – a thoughtful character beat, albeit one the Doctor would laugh into silence after some of the orders he’s given recently. (Has he really not done it before?) That said, the Doctor calmly engineers the death of an entire species here, reasoning (albeit not happily) that they “have only themselves to blame.” I think it’s sufficient to say I don’t buy that, and if the Doctor had been any higher in the novel’s mix and thus under more conscious scrutiny from the authors I don’t think he would either.

I’ve gone a long time without talking about those goblins, haven’t I? And with some reason: the Waro (not to be confused with any nefarious yellow-clad plumbers) are murderous aliens who hate everything else in the universe because, basically, they’re the worst and that’s all there is to it. Huh. They have no real voice in the novel (though at one point the Doctor mind melds, aka “soul catches” with one) but they do have a vague environmental disaster back story. And honestly, they’re more of a thing that occasionally happens than a character you’d have any cause to think about. They’re the weakest link in the novel, but I suppose you could argue they’re meant to only be a part of it, like the Doctor; they are stitched into the betrayals and confusions that drive the action, but the real interest comes from the big picture. Spurious reasoning, I know, but I enjoyed the book despite finding the threat boring and the eventual action-packed relocation to a certain UFO site in Nevada also, as it happens, spurious.

In amongst all this is the Doctor, occasionally protesting about wanting to get off Earth, as is his way. I think he protests too much. In a passage that for once does give way to the ol’ fanwank a little, he catches up with Trainor about recent UNIT exploits, and the pair briefly discuss Ian Chesterton, whom the Doctor has met up with offscreen. (!) The sheer domesticity of this leapt off the page at me – the idea that he and Ian occupy the same world now as casual acquaintances. (Ian has a son with Barbara, FYI.) Shortly afterwards the Doctor resumes his membership at the swanky, rather dubious Progressive Men’s Club, in that way that seems quintessential to this Doctor. Later there is a somewhat on-the-nose reference to UNIT being “like a family,” and there are enough hints that the Doctor has settled into it without even noticing, which provides another nicely subtle bridge between the two seasons and a pleasing snapshot of this time and place, in what is otherwise a sprawling, bloodthirsty, giddily globetrotting and sometimes oddly thoughtful ride of a novel.

7/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #117 – Another Girl, Another Planet by Martin Day and Len Beech

The New Adventures
#15
Another Girl, Another Planet
By Martin Day and Len Beech

Sort of a prophetic title, really. Another Girl, Another Planet. This latest Bernice Summerfield New Adventure is definitely… another one.

I only know Martin Day from The Menagerie, which had some astute character writing embedded in some generic fantasy mulch. It was his first novel; since then he’s landed the inaugural Past Doctor Adventure with BBC Books, plus a further entry in that range. Both were co-written, so he’s no doubt gained a few experience points there. With him this time is Len Beech, aka Stephen Bowkett, whose only Who work so far appears to be in Decalog 3; however, he is a seasoned author. (The blurb says this is his twentieth novel.) Between them, I had no idea what to expect, but I think with a combined back catalogue of 23 novels it ought to be pretty good.

It doesn’t have the most auspicious start. Bernice is “getting tired of Dellah, resentful of the grinding routine of seminars and tutorials.” And I mean – really? That’s perhaps a reasonable view in itself, but at this point it really ought to be held in the context of the series, which is notably not named Bernice Summerfield: Exam Marker. The last three books alone have seen her dice with death, lose new but meaningful friends and then actually die herself – twice! – one time on yer actual crucifixion cross. It would give you an unusual perspective on the monotony of academia, would it not? I appreciate that the communication wasn’t perfect between these disparate authors and the range editors (although given how long Virgin had been publishing books at this point, why is that?) but it too often feels like a novelist (or duo) turns up and acts like this is Benny’s first exciting trip off world. Such inattention to Benny’s ongoing life makes it feel like an elastic band that will always snap back. We’re 15 books in. Are we building something or not?*

Sorry – it’s a bit irrational to be pissed off about something that is, if I’m honest, endemic of the series as a whole and not the fault of messrs Day or Beech. (Jim Mortimore has also said that nobody told him the continuity ins and outs, which is probably why The Sword Of Forever is an acid trip.) But I’m reviewing the series as well as the books here, and it adds to that “another” feeling right from the get go: here is a book that isn’t going to buck trends.

Bernice is enticed off world by a note of alarm from a friend. Lizbeth Fulgate is really more of a pen pal/archaeology acquaintance, despite Benny being her emergency contact, and of course this is the first we’re hearing of her. The authors never quite nail the incongruity there, as Bernice herself notes that she hardly knows Lizbeth, yet Lizbeth feels very close to Bernice and even “loves” her, hence – presumably – trusting her with this. As a series reader it’s hard to suddenly invest in an ongoing friendship. (See the long lost heartbreak in Sword Of Forever.) Perhaps the wobbly friendship level is the authors trying to convince us, but not fully comparing each other’s notes first.

Lizbeth, herself, hardly seems worth the effort. Bernice makes occasional note of her attractiveness and thinks she has the gumption of a younger Benny, but in practice she’s a wet lettuce. Lizbeth doesn’t have a lot of agency: her thoughts mostly seem to revolve around her ex, and latterly she commits the awful trope of dating a villain and, when his honour is questioned by her dearest friends, siding with the new beau. Oh, Lizzy, no.

The authors (and Bernice) seem much more interested in her ex. Alex Mphahlele is a striking, attractive, seemingly-good-at-everything sort of chap and is soon chaperoning Bernice on her investigations. A romance is hinted at between the two, and of course there’s still the question of reconciliation with Lizbeth, but none of that is resolved. (Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind – I’m not normally one for seeking out romance in novels – but if you’re going to bang on about it, even to the extent of a mildly racist comment on the size of his manhood, then you’ve obviously got it on the brain so might as well reach some conclusion with it.)

Alex, or Mphahlele, or Alex Mphahlele – the prose is annoyingly inconsistent on what to call him, as if there are lots of Alexes running about on this alien world, and it’s not helped by a frankly amateurish reliance on characters repeating the name of the person they’re speaking to just like nobody does in real life – is at least more of a presence than Lizbeth, but he’s similarly thin on dimensions. Even his longing for Lizbeth isn’t terribly convincing, with such heart-rending dialogue as “The bitch was always headstrong” and “That’s twice I’ve tried to save your beautiful ass in as many hours.” Aww! But the really important thing here is how smokin’ hot the guy is, although you’ll have to squint to pick up on it in subtle lines like “[he] scanned the distance, looking tall and strong, like some magnificent antelope gazing over the plains.”

The investigation is the crux of the novel, not that dizzy Lizbeth has noticed, so what about that? Well, Lizbeth is on a dig on the planet Dimetos and she’s being stalked. Not, you might think, something a pen pal can do much about, but on arrival it turns out the dig is in trouble too: Lizbeth is receiving threats about accidents. Pretty soon somebody literally fills in the dig, burying the digging machines. Something sinister is afoot in Dimetos all right.

We don’t have much basis for comparison. The authors seem fascinated by Dimetos, particularly all the hover cars, but there’s nothing here you haven’t come across in the Roz and Chris novels (Original Sin) or the Benny ones (Mean Streets). A mix of glamour and squalor, some of it futuristic and some not, dodgy government types and shady business dealings. Mean Streets was one of the few Bernice books Martin Day had read and you can tell, what with the streets – though sadly not the parody – bleeding through here. There isn’t enough actual intrigue to make hanging around in Dimetos worth the page count, with the default level of excitement being: that hover car is chasing us! (What, another one?)

As for what’s going on, I had to read page 147 twice to be sure I’d read correctly: some land is being built on, but it’s actually unsafe and improperly catalogued; however some crooked types really want that development dollah so they’re hushing it up. I mean, it’s not much is it? Smacks of a daytime detective mystery, with your Poirot of choice being brought in when people start to die on a seemingly unassuming golf course.

There’s a bit more to it – a shapeshifting character with confused race memories is part of a weapons deal, and what’s underground is evidence of a heinous crime the dodgy types would also like to keep quiet – but by the time these bits are clarified, you’ve already spent too much book traipsing around a dreary land scandal that’s arguably less notable than Benny’s term papers.

Which brings us to Bernice, the linchpin. On the surface they do a good job here, with plenty of diary entries and some withering sarcasm. Tick! However, I’m not altogether convinced. That is-she-or-isn’t-she bond with Lizbeth sets the whole thing off on a wobbly footing; the diary entries often seem arbitrary and interchangeable with the third person prose; and the writing is of a generally flat standard which doesn’t bring out her best. One critical flashback is followed by “The symbolism of her memory had dropped like a jigsaw puzzle piece with uncanny precision into the current events of her life.” Oof. She is gifted with natty, definitely-Benny-ish-I-swear thoughts like “she was pleased to be able to agree unequivocally. It helped salve the effects of her earlier musings.” And quite often her feelings – and those of others – come out in great lumpy lists: “Bernice felt dreadfully sorry for all this … She was saddened by the fact that her own assistance had been anything but effective.” Eugh. Needs more zing, and needs a lot less of the rest of it. (If you’ve read this far, you’ve unlocked a bonus gripe: Benny continuity! There’s a surprising callback to her Nazi torturer in Just War, but the direct comparison drawn between that incident and being chased by some heavies here is downright laughable. Really, this is the worst thing that’s happened to her since then? Come on. If you’re going to pull triggers like that, you’d better not miss.)

You’ll have no difficulty following the action, at least. Once again Bernice gets sick of marking, answers a distress call, is embroiled in a sinister plot, gets in a few car chases and goes home. I might not mind a less funny retread of Mean Streets if it was at least well executed, but this is altogether fizzle-free stuff. It would be unlikely to hook a visiting reader. Regulars, at least, know (or may be unsurprised by) what they’re getting: another book, another runaround.

4/10

*Disclaimer: there are hints in the epilogue towards an over-arching threat that I believe we’ll see in future books. But I know this because I read about Another Girl, Another Planet afterwards – in context, it seems self-contained.

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #50 – The Menagerie by Martin Day

Doctor Who: The Missing Adventures
#10
The Menagerie
By Martin Day

Ah, sweet completeness.  Better late than never, the Missing Adventures have added the Second Doctor to their ranks.  If I can be a box-ticking, list-making nerdlinger for a moment (quiet, you), it’s nice to have got a book in for every Doctor just as this marathon reaches its halfway point.  That’s everyone now.  Ahhh.

Martin Day’s first novel (yes, it’s obvious) does a good job with this Doctor, which isn’t something to take for granted.  He often takes the time to inject a bit of fussiness or irreverence, both integral to Patrick Troughton’s take on the character.  At one point he is contrasted (perhaps too literally) against the First Doctor, as he lacks that immediate sense of authority, though he generally makes up for it later.  There’s a scruffy anti-establishment quality to him that’s just delightful; my favourite bit was the Doctor’s theory on convincing people that you have already paid for your drinks.  When he tries putting this into practice to convince a guard he has paid his fine (with perhaps what he imagines is the authoritative clout of a Jedi mind trick), it goes belly up instantly.  Few Doctors fail quite so charmingly as this one.

Day is also adept and thoughtful when writing Jamie.  Finding himself in a technologically primitive age, Jamie feels in his element for once.  The unnamed city is “like real life” to him, with dull-witted guards reminding him of Redcoats; conversely his wealth of experience with the Doctor allows him to think a few steps ahead.  Another perfectly apt moment is when Jamie accompanies Zoe in a hover vehicle, nodding and agreeing matter-of-factly as she explains things he can’t possibly grasp, and delighting in the responsibility of pressing a button.  That refusal to be outwitted by different technologies, even when he’s just pretending not to be, is one of the reasons the character is so popular.  Doctor Who often (unwittingly?) takes the stance that people from the past are intrinsically thicker than us; it’s something Rose is rightly derided for in The Unquiet Dead, but that’s generally the way it goes, with Jamie being a smart, inquisitive exception.  Leela is another.  (There are no Missing Adventures with Leela.  For shame!)

Zoe is the least impressive of the three, perhaps because putting her in a primitive context doesn’t create the opportunities for her that it does for Jamie.  There are just fewer ways for her to put her brain into action, although she is able to trick a dangerous alien and save a few lives.  Once the story stumbles onto some higher technology, then it’s effectively Zoe Time; her photographic memory makes a return appearance.  Overall this is the colder, more analytical side of Zoe, with her more ebullient side (perhaps best evidenced when she talks a computer to death in The Invasion) a no-show.  You would think The Menagerie could provide some emotional stuff for her, as she finds herself being sold into slavery, but she remains utterly pragmatic about it and circumstances get her out of it anyway.  Besides which, this isn’t a very emotional book.

It’s not a new thing to use sci-fi as an excuse to write a fantasy novel, and that’s effectively what The Mengerie does.  Martin Day creates an interesting setting at least, swirling his primitive (nameless) town in fog and drizzle, adding a few dashes of technology (aka a power plant) and something dangerous underneath (the menagerie of the title); I didn’t have trouble picturing it, but the underlying conflict of technology vs fear of progress never amounts to more than some people wailing doomfully about the evils of science, over and over.  You can be sure they’ll shut up or get over it by the book’s end.  Besides which, finding high technology in an otherwise primitive society is not going to win points for originality.  It’d be a turn up for the books if there wasn’t any.

The story gets off to a perfunctory start, splitting the TARDIS trio up more or less at random when a pub is raided by the “Knights of Kuabris”, technology-fearing rulers of the place.  The Doctor and Jamie both fall into an investigation of the menagerie beneath the town, but there isn’t much driving them to it besides circumstance and vague curiosity.  As for Zoe’s aforementioned slavery, dumb luck strikes again.  She ends up working in a travelling freak show (and not, praise be, as a prostitute) before an attack by a ravening monster forces the survivors back where they started, including her.  There are a few examples of business occurring just to make it all last a bit longer, like a dangerous encounter for Jamie followed by some memory loss.  Why does he forget?  So he can remember it later on, I guess.  The story rumbles on, with some action set-pieces especially near the end, but there’s little wind in its sails.

The book’s greatest strength is the regular characters, and by a considerable distance.  Nowhere else is the studied nuance of the Doctor spending a few moments fumbling through his pockets before finding something useful, or Jamie nodding thoughtfully at some technobabble.  The rest of the cast don’t have an idiosyncrasy between them.  Defrabax is an old wizard with secrets; Cosmae is his impressionable ward; Kaquaan is Cosmae’s would-be girlfriend, and local prostitute; Zaitabor is the leader of the Knights, a ranting fanatic at the centre of the trouble; Himesor, Araboam and Oiquaquil are other Knights; Diseaeda runs a travelling freakshow (and owns Zoe briefly); Reisaz and Raitak are conjoined twins that work there; there’s also a golem-esque homunculus and various Web Planet-esque races living beneath the town, all with equally weird names.  Reading tedious and difficult lines like “I want you to warn the Dugraqs and the Rocarbies about the Mecrim”, I wondered if Day comes up with names by attacking his keyboard at random.  Repeating the names all the time does nothing to breed familiarity, or add colour.  Everyone just seems very fond of reciting them.

As is often the case with first novels, there’s little authorial voice here.  Day’s denizens sound like generic fantasy archetypes, with some unnecessary attention given to the prostitute side of things (with one of the guards giving Kaquaan’s breasts a thorough groping, and numerous others calling her “slut” and suchlike).  It adds determination to the headstrong young woman, but combined with some occasionally broad language, I wondered how much the Virgin editors were bothered that kids read these books.  Certainly this stuff wouldn’t find its way into 1960s Doctor Who.  When the time comes to let his monsters have at one another, Day then falls into the habit of turning the gore up to 11, simply because he can: limbs and viscera fly, yet again pushing the Missing Adventure remit awkwardly to one side.  It’s not as if I want books that are identical to the TV stories, or I wouldn’t bother reading them; I’ve got videos and DVDs for that.  But it stretches disbelief that all the sex and swearwords just happened to occur between episodes.  And why beat around the bush: hitting the Sex And Violence button at all where it wouldn’t ordinarily be hit is schlocky.  At least Dancing The Code made a point of it.

The Menagerie is mostly just indifferent and dull, failing to make its various alien/monster races worth the effort of distinguishing them.  Some have quirks, like one bunch that doesn’t use individual names, or another with an odd speech pattern, but it’s work to add this stuff up.  The plot progresses mostly with a lot of thankless question/answer “dialogue” no matter who’s talking.  It more or less holds together, but by the end it runs the risk of ruining one of the good things about the book: the Doctor’s plan involves murdering a (dangerous) species wholesale, just as Zoe earlier rescued some people by (inadvertently?) sacrificing a harmless animal.  A more seasoned writer might comment on this seemingly befuddled Doctor apparently having a cold heart, but this is all just random action stapled to otherwise pleasant characters.

The Menagerie is fan writing.  Yes, these books all are to an extent, but there’s a difference between recreating familiar things and creating new people, worlds and stories for them, and this book clearly doesn’t have the skill for both.

5/10

NB:  Another blog-week bites the dust.  See you again for 51-55, beginning with Andy Lane’s Original Sin...