Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #104 – Beyond The Sun by Matthew Jones

The New Adventures
#3
Beyond The Sun
By Matthew Jones

Anyone up for a change of pace? After the efficient (if slightly empty) genre box-ticking of Dragons’ Wrath we come to Beyond The Sun, which is much more interested in laying out ideas and exploring characters than just getting to the explosive finale on time.

This approach has its ups and downs. I love a bit of characterisation, and I wouldn’t be reading sci-fi if I wasn’t in the market for thoughtful concepts. But take your time too much and you risk the reader wondering if there’s anything more important they could be doing right now. In other words I enjoyed Beyond The Sun, but it seemed to take forever.

We open with a spot of world-building that would make Paul Leonard sit up straight. On the cordoned-off world of Ursu people are not born like mammals or laid as eggs: they are grown in enormous crystalline Blooms, eight at a time. The Ursulans have no parents, are not always the same species, and are ushered into existence by caretakers like Kitzinger. (No one knows who built the Blooms.) One day she is confronted by mysterious, shaven-headed beings called the Sunless, who promptly murder one of her infants and whisk her and the Blooms off to a different world. Ursu is now under their control – and the Sunless carry on in the same vein, brutalising anyone who disobeys.

Meanwhile, Bernice is on an archaeological dig (fancy that) with a couple of slightly annoying students, Emile and Tameka. Matthew Jones goes to some pains to introduce these two, Emile glaring at his spotty complexion in a mirror, the Hispanic Tameka revelling in her “Vampire Chic” appearance and “yeah but no but yeah” speech patterns. (She’s… a lot.) Then into an otherwise unremarkable dig comes Jason, and after a night of I’ll-give-you-three-guesses-what with Bernice, he goes missing. Concerned for his welfare, and despite herself, Bernice goes in search of Jason. Her only clue is a figurine he left behind which points to Ursu. Emile and Tameka tag along.

An unhappy landing on Ursu leaves Errol, their pilot, fighting for his life; a surprising chunk of the novel is then spent trying to find help in the uncooperative Ursu cities. I didn’t mind this at all, as it allows you to get to know Emile and Tameka better, plus it allows for observations of Ursu, its strange multi-species people, the occupying Sunless and the collaborating Ursurians. There’s something charmingly offbeat about placing so much stock in the welfare of a minor character through the simple plot mechanism of the characters arriving where they need to be – badly. However, I think there is a tacit understanding here that such a lengthy digression will be worth it. If you spend all that time traipsing across a planet not achieving much in plot terms, and then (as a totally hypothetical example, you understand) the bugger dies anyway, I think you’ve got grounds to say that your time has been wasted. Just sayin’, don’t do that.

Ursu is at least interesting. I love that, wherever possible, Jones fills this story with aliens; it feels diverse and colourful. This also goes for the Ursurians and their relationships, which due to the unique birthing process are more equal and less focussed on one person (e.g. a parent or a partner). This makes them markedly different from Bernice and co., although it arguably makes them a bit dull as well, always being above everything and yet confounded by humanisms like asking what a person does for a living. (This feels like a very Star Trek gag; what is this thing you call, “the 9-to-5?”) Their sexual politics are a mixed bag: they’re open to pretty much anything, again because of how their society works, but the likes of Chris Cwej already act like that so it doesn’t feel like too much of a departure from the norm. Scenes of sexual awkwardness between Emile, who is gay but hasn’t come out, and the handsome Ursurian Scott are certainly reminiscent of Chris out gallivanting in Damaged Goods.

That said, I like the inclusion of a gay character and his internal struggles. This is obviously important to Jones, who did much the same thing with Jack in Bad Therapy. He has acknowledged (over on TERMINUS Reviews) that Jack and Emile are essentially author stand-ins, but that he didn’t realise that at the time of writing. Knowing this explains a few things, such as the ultimately small impact Emile has on the story, and it lends an almost Mary Sue-ish air to the bit where Emile and Scott finally broach the awkwardness and give it a go. (It’s hard not to think of very earnest stories about whirlwind holidays with handsome strangers.) At the end of the day though it’s still something you don’t see much in genre fiction, so even if it’s a little heavy-handed it added to the novel for me.

Bernice gets a little left out of all this, which is odd since it was her relationship with Jason that jump-started the plot. Ah yes, that guy. I know I’m on a hiding to nothing here, but can we just… not? Their marriage was a deliberate (if highly enjoyable) rush job that the reader just had to go along with in order for it to work. Not long after that, Eternity Weeps pistol-whipped the reader for being so silly as to think such a thing could work, and then said marriage imploded on the spot. It’s hard not to feel a little messed around. Now we’re back to the two of them being so attracted to each other they can’t not jump into bed, with Jason (somewhat improbably) making moon-eyes at Bernice in the end. Jason is almost completely absent from the book, which maybe explains why he’s so unconvincingly written here – to the extent that we know the guy, he is What If Chris Cwej Was More Of A Prick – but I’m a bit disappointed to see Bernice going weak at the knees so easily. Guys, I know human beings are flawed and contradictory and you can absolutely love and hate someone; of course you can still be in love with your ex. But this thing is a hot mess, it always has been, and I really wish they’d just pick a lane.

For the rest of it, Bernice mostly safeguards the two teens – whose dialogue, particularly Tameka’s, often tries too hard. (“Hey, I’m, like, sorry.” / “’S OK. Don’t worry ‘bout it.”) But despite sharing some of the climactic cleverness with Kitzinger, who we cut to occasionally throughout the novel, it’s Bernice’s smarts that ultimately round it all off. Earlier, a plan to locate Jason’s last known contact (and obviously, paramour) Iranda by crashing a collaborators’ party as a drag act is loads of fun, particularly the bit where Bernice tries to convince the locals that she is pro-Sunless: “‘Wear more grey!’ Bernice screamed. ‘Support your local coup!’” There’s plenty of good Bernice writing here, with hits including: “‘I’m afraid being shot at has become a bit of an occupational hazard.’ ‘I thought you said you were an archaeologist?’ ‘Yeah... well, academics can be the harshest critics.’” / “‘We are going to die,’ [Bernice] whispered to herself. But at least we are going to do it in sequins.”

She also makes some keen observations that get to the heart of the novel’s themes: “It was so much harder to keep a hold of who you were without the accessories of your identity. But that was what uniforms were for, after all: to whittle away your uniqueness and individuality. To mortify your personal self.” As in Bad Therapy, Jones seems interested in ersatz people. The Sunless don’t seem human, their collaborators trade in their identities when they suit up in grey overalls, and the Ursurians seem disconnected from any biological reality we recognise. But again, these things don’t necessarily make them monsters; the collaborators and even the Sunless may not be black-and-white villains. “‘I wonder what happened to them to make them like this. Sometimes colonies get cut off...’ ‘Does there have to be a single reason?’”

Admittedly the “villains might not be all bad” angle is a hard sell this time. The Sunless make a point of beating people to death without registering any emotion at all, so they can quite frankly eff off, and their collaborators – particularly Iranda and Nikolas – are the worst kind of one-note, moustache-twirling gits. On more than one occasion they threaten to harm Character A unless Character B co-operates, at which point they kill Character A anyway. Two of these occasions happen so close together I really wish Jones hadn’t repeated it. (We get it. These guys are horrible. Ho, ho.) The biggest effort in the “not evil” direction is the Sunless’s actual plan, which involves finding a power “beyond the sun”. There are dark hints about a weapon of incalculable power, but so little is actually said to back this up that you can’t help wondering what else could be going on here. I’ll simply say that we are dealing with baddies called the Sunless, and their planet’s sun is dying. Sooo, what might it be…? Really, if no one involved, including the power-mad collaborators, has connected these dots by now then god help them. (Even more incredible is the idea that, suddenly in possession of a constructive “power beyond the sun”, these guys won’t just continue battering people to death. What, are they really nice now? As if.)

In many ways, I liked Beyond The Sun. It takes its time, it’s thoughtful, it has good ideas. I still consider myself a fan of Jones and I wish he’d written more of these books. But ultimately this one doesn’t justify its lackadaisical pace (which again I’m fine with in theory) and the surprises in the plot don’t take too much guessing. The urge to revel in new characters often leaves Bernice looking like a chaperone in her own book, which suggests some more work is needed to get the balance right in this Doctor-less world.

6/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #90 – Bad Therapy by Matthew Jones

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#57
Bad Therapy
By Matthew Jones

There’s something unfortunate about this one. Bad Therapy is the first post-Roz novel, but thanks to the So Vile A Sin debacle it ended up sort of being her exit as well. It opens with an awkward apology for the inconvenience and contains many references to the Doctor and Chris trying to cope without her, but there’s nothing too specific about what actually happened to her. I suspect it had an unreal quality at the time; if you weren’t clued up you might hope that they were just Doing A Thing and Roz would show up at the end.

If you were reading the New Adventures as they came out then this one followed Damaged Goods. That almost seems deliberate, as Bad Therapy inhabits a similar urban space. Set in London, 1958 – a slightly unconventional/unfamous period to visit, as was 1987 – it opens with a young gay man encountering what appears to be racial violence and intervening to help someone. He then finds himself facing the TARDIS (which blocks his escape) and pleads for help from the police, but no one’s home, and he gets mortally wounded. Later his boyfriend, Jack, is hounded by a blackmailer over his relationship. Private sexualities, urban crime and the fallibility of the Doctor were fodder for Russell T Davies. Matthew Jones explores similar territory here.

There’s something sadly apt about the team’s failure to be there for Eddy, almost as if the absence of Roz takes a vital cog out of the machine. (The Doctor finds Eddy and takes him to a hospital, but it’s still not enough to save him.) Things definitely aren’t okay between the time travellers, who spend most of the book apart. The Doctor and Chris have been travelling but hardly communicating: “Over the last month they had fallen into the habit of leaving messages taped to the control console. Sometimes it was easier than talking.” / “[It was] like an estranged father weekending with his son.”

I was concerned about the choice of a first time novelist for this particular book – not because first time novelists are automatically bad (see Damaged Goods) or because Matthew Jones isn’t good (see his Decalog 2 story), but because it’s so crucial to understand these characters and where they’re at right now that you might expect it to go to an old hand instead. Happily Matthew Jones was a good fit, especially when it comes to the character writing. The Doctor has changed a lot over these books, earning a rep as a morally grey game player but latterly becoming more relatable and sympathetic. After the loss of Roz it makes sense to lean into the more vulnerable, human side of him, which Bad Therapy does with aplomb. “Roz used to say that the Doctor was a one-thousand-year-old toddler. Constantly enchanted and surprised by the universe as he encountered it. Despite being envious of such an innocent view of the world, they both knew that this was only half the picture. The other half was only rarely glimpsed and, like a mountain seen through mist, could never be wholly comprehended.” / “He was a gentler man now, softer, more… human.”

Jones has a knack for the Doctor’s fun peculiarities as well, which reminded me of Jim Mortimore and Andy Lane. “The Doctor leapt to his feet and hurried over, stopping only to throw the book into a nearby dustbin and tuck the apple core carefully away into his pocket.” / “The Doctor was in the passenger seat wrestling with an Ordnance Survey map, which flapped wildly around him, like a panic-stricken swan. For some inexplicable reason, his hat appeared to be entirely wind-resistant.” / “…rolling his R’s with more enthusiasm than skill.” His ease at making new friends is firmly on display when he bonds with Jack Bartlett, who the book goes to some lengths to suggest as a possible companion, starting with saving the Doctor’s life. He also gradually wins over Chief Inspector Harris, a policeman with good reason to suspect the Doctor of being up to no good.

More heartening though is the Doctor’s sense of justice, which gets plenty of exercise in an atmosphere of ’50s homophobia. One quintessentially Seventh Doctor scene has him rebutting a gangster’s vision of Britain: “England for the English. Until all the faces are white and there’s no one different from you at all. No queers, no yids, no darkies.’ The Doctor seemed to consider Gordy’s dream for a moment. ‘I don’t think so.’” (This scene is only slightly ruined by the exchange “‘You gonna stop me?’ ‘Oh yes.’ ‘You and who’s army?’ ‘That’s right.’” Cringe – it’s even spelled wrong to make the gag work!) Not all of the Doctor’s decisions ring true exactly, which we’ll get to; good as the writing is, the book is imperfect.

Chris is on a more pronounced journey here, since of the two TARDIS travellers he’s less used to losing people. He misses Roz deeply and a new relationship, Patsy, allows him to revive his complicated feelings for her. I was impressed to see the romantic overture from Return Of The Living Dad brought up again – making it less of a random blip, if nothing else – but this, and some of Chris’s general feelings about Roz, isn’t always handled with subtlety. (For instance it’s a bit sad, if probably accurate, that “closure” for Chris means being able to have sex again without feeling weird about it. Oh woe is him, it’s been weeks.) Chris, along with other characters, has a tendency to pause what he’s doing and reminisce; not all of it is as rich as the stuff about the Doctor. (“...playing wide-eyed rookie to her cynical street cop”, well, ya think?) Chris also suffers from the dreaded telling-rather-than-showing. “I feel so... so humiliated.” / “I don’t want your support, thank you very much. I’m too angry with you for that.” There’s probably a decent joke about projecting your feelings in a book about therapy lifeforms that literally do that for you, but I guess it’s not that kind of book.

Which brings us to the plot (and it’s a good sign when you can witter on about the writing before even getting to that). The murders are targeting a group of escaped something-or-others from a mental hospital in Healey. Chris suspects, or is lead to believe that they are aliens, and Jones plays with that assumption, tossing in a possible hint of telepathy for all you Psi-Powers fans. (Don’t panic.) The truth is weirder: these are artificial people who, through an extreme form of empathy, become the thing(s) another person needs. Ostensibly this is a treatment for people who struggle to connect, but there’s a more villainous reason behind it which we’ll find out later. The real issue, regardless of the slightly typical baddie in the last act (who literally pretends to be the Devil for some of it – I dunno, do you think he’s secretly really nice?) is whether the “Toys” are in fact alive. It’s a worthwhile concept / argument, and Jones invests enough in the characters to make them indistinguishable from the humans. Tilda, head of a local club that takes all kinds, feels like somebody he’s written about before, lived-in and world-weary. Eddy makes a memorable impression in his brief time at the start, described by the thoughts of his boss more than by actually interacting with people, then through the hole he leaves in Jack’s life. Patsy has a little less to do than Tilda, being a more literal mirror of what Chris is feeling and ultimately of Roz herself, but her longing to exist seems to decide the argument once and for all.

But then it’s more complicated than simply being artificial and alive, as the Toys (frustratingly they don’t get a “proper” name) need another person’s feelings in order to exist, and in the long term they need the person. Chris is outraged by being “tricked” into his feelings for Patsy and the Doctor, with surprising ease, agrees that it would be wrong to “trick” other people into essentially mating for life with their (fake) perfect partner. This seems like a satisfying switcheroo until the book simply changes the subject, having the baddies show up again to make a mess before we can get into it. And they should be adding to the moral complexity, as there are “blank” Toys with instructions to kill – but why don’t they ever long for something more?

Sadly, the villains let the side down. Local criminals Gordy and Carl Scraton have some internal bitterness and jealousy going for them, but otherwise they’re transparent thugs. Moriah, the man having all the Toys killed, is out to recreate his lost wife who hated him; there’s some complexity in the fact that even when presented with a perfect copy who loves him, his own issues mean he expects her to hate him and so she does. But he’s a monotonous presence otherwise, gleeful about killing others to the point where it’s a bit odd that he’s managed to run a mental hospital and convince the staff of his good intentions. And as for the Doctor’s plan to stop him – creating the perfect wife he’s been after, then mentally forcing her to love him long enough to get them both away somewhere – firstly, what’s to stop him coming back when it wears off? Secondly, uh, what? Are these beings alive or not? Where does the need for another person end and consent begin? It doesn’t work, thank goodness, but by then you’re already frowning heavily at the Doctor. I’m all for writing him as a fallible character, but they don’t call him out nearly enough on this, and it’s hardly a story that brings his cold manipulations to the fore. (If anything it’s the opposite, at one point highlighting his refusal to execute a plan against his friend’s wishes. They let him when they realise he cares.)

If you like judgement of the Doctor, you’ll love the subplot. There’s a returning character in Bad Therapy with a pretty justifiable reason to be mad at him; Big Finish would later explore the same topic, with mixed results. While the character’s feelings make sense, and it’s nice to see them again, there’s a lot going on here already. (I haven’t even mentioned the killer taxi cabs that zoom around London devouring people whole.) Again it serves to underline how fallible and vulnerable the Doctor is, coming to a head in a similar way to Mel’s return in Head Games. Things aren’t so irrevocably ruined this time (thanks again, Steve) and there are some lovely moments between the two of them, along with a really cool piece of writing when you figure out who the character is. (Quicker folks than me might guess it from the planet they’re on and, oh all right, their name.) Honestly though, I’m struggling to justify their inclusion in this book. You could easily have the same plot occurring without that ingredient, and similarly you could mine a lot more book out of this reunion if you really wanted to. It probably feeds into the longing for Roz, but Chris is doing that rather literally, and the blossoming (but ultimately unfulfilled) companionship of Jack seem to do that as well.

There are some frustrating drawbacks to Bad Therapy. Most of the writing is thoughtful and it’s enjoyable to plough through, but there are some less artful moments. Irritating as it is to point them out, there are quite a few typos. (It’s mostly missing words and wrong apostrophes, like “Julia looked at ‘Tilda’. Really looked her.” / “You’re entire being is affected by my will.” / Sometimes words are repeated a few too many times in a sentence, and there’s a train-of-thought bit about Gordy that I’m about 90% sure is about Carl.) Some of the characters’ choices don’t quite add up, and the action ping-pongs too often between the club and the institute. (I kept thinking of that line in Hitchhiker’s Guide about commuters, who once and for all ought to figure out just where the hell they want to be.) That returning character is probably over-egging things, as is the explanation for the Notting Hill Riots – something else the book could have got more out of if it wanted to.

None of that spoils what is, on the whole, a promising first novel. Matthew Jones imbues most of the characters with life and colour, and handles the two regulars and their grief with care. He manages fan-pleasing moments mostly without seeming too pleased with himself, like the gorgeous bit about the constantly changing TARDIS wardrobe. (This includes "an elderly bespectacled shop assistant. When Chris had asked the Doctor if he knew that there was a tailor aboard the TARDIS, the Doctor had replied, absently, that he’d been wondering who’d been sneaking into his bedroom and darning his socks.") The story is driven by ideas, although their complexities occasionally get the better of it. I was reminded of another race whose motivations are interesting but make you uncomfortable, and then remembered pleasantly that he wrote The Impossible Planet as well. It’s nice to know he got more out of his theme.

7/10