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

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

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

*

Vortex Of Fear

by Gareth Roberts

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

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

*

The Crimson Dawn

by Tim Robins

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

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

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

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

*

Where The Heart Is

by Andy Lane

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

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

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

*

The Trials Of Tara

by Paul Cornell

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

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

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

*

Housewarming

by David A. McIntee

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

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

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

*

The Nine-Day Queen

by Matthew Jones

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

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

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

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

*

Lonely Days

by Daniel Blythe

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

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

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

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

*

People Of The Trees

by Pam Baddeley

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

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

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

*

Timeshare

by Vanessa Bishop

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

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

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

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

*

Question Mark Pyjamas

by Robert Perry and Mike Tucker

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

7/10

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

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #25 – Decalog edited by Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker

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

With the Virgin Doctor Who range a success, and its editors casting their eyes at writing past Doctor books as well, it seems – if this was indeed its purpose – a neat way to test the waters, giving them a bunch of short stories first.  Or maybe they just fancied seeing old Doctors again because the anniversary had arrived, and short stories were quicker to produce. 

Whatever the reason, we have Decalog: a bundle of ten stories with a linking theme (sort of), courtesy of some of the voices of the New Adventures, not to mention of the wider Virgin book world as well.  (Messrs Howe, Stammers and Walker all contribute; they basically taught me everything I know about Classic Who via the Doctors’ Handbooks.  Great reads, if you’ve somehow missed them.)  So, Decalog being all about the short stories, let’s get to ’em.

*

Fallen Angel
by Andy Lane
This is a jolly romp.  The Second Doctor joins forces with a witty, somewhat conscientious art thief to battle some robots.  It’s straight out of a comic strip.  The Doctor is very much his scruffy, apparently clumsy self, at one point strapped helplessly to the top of a biplane (and screaming for help), at another delivering an ominous back-story in deadly seriousness.  His art thief pal (the titular Angel, according to his calling card) is an amusing, if improbable figure.  The robots are just a thing that needs sorting out.  I imagined the Krikkit robots from Hitchhiker’s.

There’s very little plot here – there isn’t time.  But Andy Lane stuffs it full of action, and finds room for a cheeky bit of Time Lord mythologizing without spoiling The War Games.  It’s fun, but it makes me rather dubious about this format.  Can you get very much done in thirty pages?  Then again, maybe that’s why it’s the first story.  It eases you in with a bit of thin, madcap fluff.

*

The Duke Of Dominoes
by Marc Platt
Meanwhile in Prohibition Chicago, the Master is trying to gain control of an ancient weapon, and having about as much success as usual.  There’s something inevitably sympathetic about him when you upgrade him to a main character.  Marc Platt writes a very Roger Delgado Master: a sharp-suited man of influence with, just underneath, a petulant need to be followed and admired.  There’s a bit when he’s down on his luck and starts working in a mission, and scorns any form of gratitude from the hungry tramps; he could just as well resent our own sudden interest in him.  He has an apparently doe-eyed “companion” whom he just can’t seem to hypnotise, and there’s a moment when a malevolent force controls him.  Things never seem to come up trumps for the Master.  Despite yourself, you want him to do better.

We get more insight into the mischievous bearded one than we’re used to here, including his personal view of the difference between himself and the Doctor.  The Master plans and works at his goals, whereas the Doctor just turns up and causes chaos.  (True to form, the Doctor shows up and helps put the world to rights without even noticing!)  The story’s gangland atmosphere errs on the corny side – with a Guys & Dolls moll and some rather suspect dialect – but this is still a well-paced look at how the other half lives, boasting bonkers imagery (such as a rampaging statue of Abe Lincoln) and a few well-judged little moments.  It’s memorable, and worth your time.

*

The Straw That Broke The Camel’s Back
by Vanessa Bishop
Taking place shortly after The Silurians, this one finds the Third Doctor and the Brigadier at loggerheads.  The Doctor is doing his best to resolve a potentially dangerous alien situation as quietly as possible; naturally he’s concerned that the Brigadier will intervene and blow it up.  The Brigadier, conversely, has no idea if he can trust the Doctor any more.  Liz Shaw tries to build a bridge between them, but neither of them is co-operating fully.  Picking up towards the end of an adventure, rather than blustering through or neatly summarising it as with the previous two tales, this gives us a succinct snapshot of the Doctor’s emotional state.  It’s a poignant little piece of UNIT Family tension, and it’s not especially interested in happy endings.  It made me suddenly aware of just how often that seemed to happen in the Pertwee years: he often seemed so disappointed.

It builds to a compelling moment and cuts off there.  For better or worse, it left me wanting more.

*

Scarab Of Death
by Mark Stammers
Throwing the lever the other way, this is a rollicking adventure that could probably fill a book, or at least four episodes on the telly, if all the filler material hadn’t been marched out of sight at gunpoint.  It’s a breathless pseudo-sequel to Pyramids Of Mars, jammed with murder, villainy, espionage and potential inter-galactic conquest.  It’s spectacular and fun, boasting some difficult-to-achieve-on-screen special effects as well as a pleasantly corny moment where the Doctor escapes a gangster’s lair inside a dinner trolley.  (The washer-woman’s outfit was presumably being cleaned.)

There’s not a lot to say about it from a character point of view, although Tom and Lis are convincingly brought to life.  It’s the best indication yet that we could be reading full-length Past Doctor books as well as New Adventures (what might have been, eh?), and while it’s probably not a very interesting story so much as an exciting one, Scarab Of Death is still just what a lot of fans are looking for.  I enjoyed it.

*

The Book Of Shadows
by Jim Mortimore
At a stately fifty pages, Jim Mortimore’s addition to Decalog has the most room to work.  But don’t expect a leisurely stroll: The Book Of Shadows is as jam-packed with story as anything else here.  An ambitious pseudo-historical set around the Library of Alexandria, giving (inevitably) an account of its demise, it’s foremost an emotional story for Barbara, beginning as a sort of echo of her interference in The Aztecs but… no spoilers… taking that idea in a new and exciting direction.  She goes through a lot – and although this stuff’s twenty years old, I really don’t want to spoil it.  Also, I can’t help it: this is one of my favourite eras of Doctor Who, so I was having a good time right away.  The Doctor is fabulously crotchety, and has a whale of a time observing famous scholars bickering.  Ian ends up in a fight.  It all fits the characters and settings we know, despite pushing everything in a more sci-fi direction than this era went on screen.

It shows neat restraint in its use of the characters (no Susan, scarcely a word out of Ian) and darts skilfully between time-periods to tell its story, but it’s really Barbara’s tale, and literature suits her.  Altogether the sort of thing you could adapt into a thrilling Companion Chronicle – indeed, there’s already a Big Finish play about the Library at Alexandria, which is also excellent.  My only complaint here is there isn’t more of it.  Easily the highlight so far.

*

Fascination
by David J.  Howe
Yikes.  This one is on shaky ground with me from the start, as it involves the Fifth Doctor and Peri – not a pairing with a lot of mileage and my least favourite Doctor to boot.  It sends the twosome to a hot medieval village.  There are magical spells everywhere (there’s even a pentagram under the Doctor’s bedroom carpet), all barked about with little to no explanation in order to advance the plot.  That’s not the real problem, however: the gist of Fascination is one guy using his magic powers to woo Peri.  And he’s completely successful at it, reducing her to his simpering and yes, bedded girlfriend in no time.  Ick.

The short story format is particularly brutal in Fascination, frogmarching Peri into what should be emotional turmoil but is presented like a crass faux pas.  A guy uses magic to rape her a couple of times, and his punishment (besides an inevitable slap) is a few flimsy “Expelliarmus!”-isms from the Doctor and Peri, and a promise of fewer magic powers from his elders in future.  Justice is served?  At the end, as the Doctor and Peri stride towards the TARDIS, his ditzy young companion contemplates how if he were a bit younger, she might fancy the Doctor.  Teeny bit too soon, maybe?

It’s far too reliant on magic gubbins that we know little about, but the added horror of well-of-course-it’s-all-about-sex-I-mean-come-on-it’s-Peri pushes this into hideously creepy fan territory.  Flimsy and regrettable; bin it at once.

*

The Golden Door
by David Auger
Multi-Doctor alert!  Sort of.  The Golden Door juggles the First Doctor, Steven and Dodo, the Sixth Doctor and a duplicate Steven and Dodo, as well as a shape-shifting murderer and a bunch of obsessively bureaucratic aliens.  It sounds like it should be loadsa fun, but it’s not quite got the wherewithal.  It’s often unclear and it’s too long, which isn’t surprising as the prose is so florid at times.  Then again, this almost suits the Sixth Doctor, the Vogons-if-they-were-bloody-boring Bukolians, and even the waspish First Doctor.  Chucking in exclamations marks doesn’t magically liven it up, however, and at the end of the day we’re still dealing with the slightly toxic combo of Steven-and-Dodo-and-Sixie, hence a lot of pointless loquaciousness and bickering.  The First Doctor seems oddly moot for much of it; no, it doesn’t make use of having two Doctors.  David Auger writes Hartnell quite pleasantly when he’s got something to do.

It’s ultimately a rather worthy tale about ethnic cleansing, with another token dollop of Time Lord mythology added at the finish.  Looking back, all the mistaken identities and bureaucratic processes were just an inefficient way to kill forty pages.

*

Prisoners Of The Sun
by Tim Robins
Here’s another short story that badly wants to be a book.  And come to think of it, one book in particular: showing us the Third Doctor’s world gone all to hell, and a Doctor out of time trying to save it, you’ve got to wonder if Decalog’s editors sent back the first draft with “Blood Heat 2?” jotted on it.

Still, you could rightly argue that it’s what you do with an idea that’s important, and Prisoners Of The Sun is crammed with quite interesting stuff about the (exiled) Doctor’s impact on Earth, the Time Lords’ double standards regarding interference, and the untapped potential of Liz Shaw.  There’s a ruined London quite unlike Jim Mortimore’s, but there isn’t time for the horror to set in.  Ditto most of its big ideas: brought up far too quickly, and discarded just the same is another piece of Time Lord mythos that feels significant, but is just a necessary pit-stop of explanation, and then it’s gone.  (I think there are also too many continuity references, but then some people love that sort of thing.)  The same happens to Liz Shaw’s leaving scene: a genuinely important piece of Doctor Who footage-not-found, it’s bundled away in the story’s last gasp, and takes the rather odd form of a telling off from the Doctor.  It’s a shame they didn’t save the idea for a Missing Adventure.  (Okay, they did that as well.  Let’s wait and see how Gary Russell handles it.  Hold your breath, everyone!)

As for Liz, her ambitions don’t have time to take on three dimensions, but it's nice that both Third Doctor stories decided to spend time with her, as opposed to the two-brain-cells-to-rub-together Jo, or the really-Tom's-companion Sarah.  The Doctor is himself enough, apart from an odd moment where he abruptly analyses his personality and costume, suggesting the uncomfortable idea that each newly regenerated Doctor has to have a little think about what kind of Doctor he’ll be.

It’s entertaining, but simultaneously too big and too small.  Another awkward baby-step for the Doctor Who short story.

*

Lackaday Express
by Paul Cornell
Chopping between the first-person adventures of somebody lost in time, and the Fifth Doctor’s attempts to figure out what’s going on and rescue her, Lackaday Express is a nicely focussed little piece.  It’s got a decent theme about the importance of the past weighed against the future, and it’s very evocative and human.  Also complicated.  There are elements here that must have appealed to Steven Moffat: being complicated, tumbling through a person’s time-stream, love being the pivotal event in a person’s life, and the Doctor being seen as an imaginary friend.  It also features old cricket-features using a machine gun, which is probably the oddest image in this book.

Once again in Decalog, I felt like this could have been a bit longer and perhaps landed more firmly.  Everyone involved moves on a smidge too fast, particularly the Doctor and Tegan who return in an instant to a recurring conversation about the fate of Adric.  (It’s less poignant than it is eye-rolling, although it does fit the story’s theme.)  So it’s not quite the perfectly-formed gem it could have been, but it’s clever and sweet, and suits the format better than most.

*

Playback
by Stephen James Walker
Okay, so this is technically the first story of the bunch, but then it’s also all of the middle bits and, more importantly, the end of Decalog itself, so I’m doing it last.

A first-person tale of a private detective meeting a strange amnesiac man with capacious pockets (guess who), this is little more than a framing device for those other stories.  And okay, it’s not a bad framing device.  It reads just like a first-person private eye story ought to: the guy’s a healthily suspicious American wiseass, and the Doctor is an apparently unsolvable mystery.  Not knowing where else to start, he takes the Doctor to a psychometrist and has him “read” the objects in his pocket.  Each object has a story to tell, and presto, Decalog.  Two major points to pick on here, I suppose:

1) Walker’s portion of the story has a few arresting scenes, in particular an eerily out-of-character moment where the Doctor goes to bludgeon a man with a rock.  There’s a certain atmosphere to the psychometrist’s home.  And putting all the Playback bits in bold type is a neat way to tell the stories apart.  But it’s filler, no getting away from that, with all those in-between bits being especially flimsy.  They’re the narrative equivalent of getting up to change discs.  In the end, when it turns out one of those bits heralded a clue, I went back and read it again to make sure I hadn’t missed it.  Turns out it was pretty low-key after all, but even so, it’s difficult to engage with one-and-a-bit pages stuffed between obviously unconnected stories.

2) They are unconnected.  I’m guessing each writer had a brief of “Write a story with an object in it,” but that’s as far as the link goes, with the object often being the most forgettable aspect.  So when the ending rolls around, and it does reprise some ideas from earlier – spoiler alert, none of my favourites – it still doesn’t pay off the rigmarole of telling a bunch of stories about the Doctor.  Only one of stories was relevant, and goodie, it was the ethnic cleansing one.  (Spoiler – oh, dang it.  But I guess I don’t mind spoiling bad bits.  “The Holocaust Was Aliens” is an embarrassingly silly kind of revisionism, especially when you rush it like this.)

Playback is fine for what it is: the somewhat thankless job of getting us from A to B.  As for Decalog, it’s an experiment, and it’s neither entirely successful nor a failure.  The stories are mostly enjoyable (with the notable exception of Fascination – too late to send it back?), although they tend to struggle with the format.  It must be hard to go from writing full-length novels to cramming this stuff into a fraction of one, and it would perhaps be unfair to expect them all to land on their feet first time.  I’d still recommend Duke Of Dominoes, Scarab Of Death, Book Of Shadows and Lackaday Express to varying degrees, and I’ll approach the next batch with optimism.  This could work.

6/10