Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #19 – Blood Heat by Jim Mortimore

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#19
Blood Heat
By Jim Mortimore

Doctor Who and the Silurians.  The show's writers seem inexorably drawn to that subject, and quite literally that plot, and it's almost always the same: Silurians want the Earth back, man won't share, tragic consequences, regretful comment from the Doctor, credits.  There are variations on the theme – sometimes it's Sea Devils instead of Silurians, and Chris Chibnall ducked the tragic finale by, uh, not bothering to resolve it at all – but it's always an imitation of Malcolm Hulke's original, rather grown-up story.  It was Doctor Who of a different sort, and we were clearly impressed.

Blood Heat represents, if still not an all-new story for the Silurians, at least a new spin on Hulke.  What if the Silurians had succeeded in wiping out most of humanity?  What if the Brigadier didn't bomb Wenley Moor at the end?  What if the Doctor died and what was left of humanity had to fend for itself?  Absent the restrictions of an ongoing television programme, where even sci-fi can't rock the boat that much (or not for long), Jim Mortimore has the chance to craft a world where this is the norm: where this abominable future can still be made into something good, and is worth fighting for in its own right.  Blood Heat still can't resist underlining that there's a main universe and an aberrant one, and that Universe B's days are numbered, but it comes pretty close to escaping the let's-just-get-out-of-here trap of most parallel universe stories.

The Silurians' world is like a Doctor Who Unbound story tinged with Day Of The Triffids, Planet Of The Apes and Jurassic Park.  (Speaking of Unbound, it's quite specifically like Sympathy For The Devil, which is set in a world where Jon Pertwee's Doctor never turned up to help UNIT.)  If I'd read this when I was a bit younger, it'd be absolute mana: there's something weirdly satisfying about seeing a familiar world gone to hell, and consequences for characters we recognise.  The world itself is splendidly haunting: all of humanity's progress is rusted and useless, and apart from the Silurians' brutal control of the climate and of the hodge-podge of dinosaur species roaming the wild, even the more familiar animal life has got it in for us.  There's a grimly spectacular scene involving a pack of ravenous dogs, and it's by no means the only example of bloody horror here.  Dinosaurs feast or get ripped apart; Silurians murder or get the same in kind; even humans (inevitably) turn on one another, for a variety of reasons.  The body count is a bit like watching a clock in a time travel montage.

Probably the strongest example of "Universe B" is its alternate characters.  Let's face it, that's usually the highlight of parallel universe stories – a surprising rarity in Doctor Who, we've at least seen a world of dictators and eye-patches, where Nick Courtney got to be The Bad Brigadier.  He's not quite so clear cut "evil" here: still the recognisable military mind of Series Seven, except the warmth of the UNIT Family was never lit, so he's determined to protect humanity at any cost.  He doesn't especially like the new Doctor (who is even more unpredictable than Pertwee), and he has no qualms in asking Liz Shaw to do terrible deeds.

She's amazing, too: utterly world-weary but still buggering on, her characterisation here is the closest to what we knew on-screen, and it made me realise we wuz robbed with just four Liz stories.  She's the conscience of the new, beaten-down humanity.  And she is very alone.  Then there's Benton, stripped of all the cuddly warmth you'd find on TV: a coldly efficient killer, loyal to the Brig but driven by a hatred of the "reps", this is not someone who would kindly offer a mutant maggot its din-dins.  And finally there's Jo Grant.  Little more than a haunting what-if, poor Jo has lost her mind – and a baby.  A feral mess, she's an acute reminder to the Doctor of what's been lost.

The established characters fare better than the new ones.  The way the narrative moves, in hurried chops between the Doctor and Liz over here, Ace and Benton over there, Bernice over in... somewhere... doing something, there isn't really time to build anyone new.  Even the Silurians benefit from familiarity, as their leader turns out to be a reformed Morka (aka the mutinous Young Silurian), and one of their cruellest lieutenants is Ichtar (who hasn't changed a wink).  Conversely, there are plenty of people working in UNIT's Cheddar Base, and a bunch of Nut Hatch-esque land-dwellers who just didn't leave an impression on me.  That choppy narrative style is the root of a few problems, if I'm honest; it occasionally feels as if we're missing some plot point or moment, be it the Doctor's discovery of the human HQ, or an initial conversation with Liz about parallel universes, or any kind of grounding for the Doctor's eventual, barmy-even-by-his-standards plan to save the day.  It reaches a head as the finale thunders towards us, which is fair enough as jumping from one bit to another is a way to wring tension, but a lot of the novel felt like that.  It was hard to settle, or for people and settings to breathe.

There are still great, evocative moments like seeing the ruined cities, and quaint little ones, like when Ace is hungry and the Doctor pulls sandwiches and a hot thermos from his pockets.  And there are brilliantly disturbing ideas aplenty: we get a first-person view of the alt-Doctor's death, and Ace finds his corpse, complete with rusted sonic screwdriver.  Nothing says "New Adventures" quite like murdering the old ones!  For good measure, the Doctor adopts his predecessor's TARDIS – a somewhat head-spinning switcheroo that, thanks to spoilerriffic Wikipedia (grr!), I now know will be with us for quite some time.

In all the parallel universe excitement and twisted old characters, you could almost overlook the "New" aspects.  An intriguing arc has begun about the Doctor's timeline being manipulated by someone – I'm dead curious who, although it's difficult to think of really more than three suspects.  (Or one, if a certain synonym for "interference" means anything.)  The original TARDIS is having as bad a time of it as ever: sunk in tar on a soon-to-be forgotten world, it deserves a rest after the continual falling apart and blowing up that the New Adventures throw at it.  The Doctor himself is still contemplating hanging up his hat (yeah right, Doc), but can't resist taking another roll of the Silurian dice.  Mortimore poignantly articulates his dilemma wherever possible.  "I should think the edmontonia's got at least as much right to live as either of us, wouldn't you?"  /  "I'm not the Brigadier, you know."  /  "The Silurians aren't monsters, are they?"  /  "You can begin by helping me."  The Doctor said quietly, "To restore Mankind to its position of supremacy on this planet?"  "That's correct."  "And the Silurians?"  "They can be–"  There was an urgent knock at the door.

Ace and Bernice fare less well.  Once again, it wasn't clear if Bernice was even in this until late in the writing process, and sadly it shows: not only is she absent, but it scarcely occurs to the Doctor or Ace to go looking for her.  Consequently she was barely on my mind.  When she finally shows up (p.160) she's as rich and funny as ever, but it's a shame she's still in the bizarre what-to-do-with-you world of, to pick one example, Transit.  Aren't we past that?  I wonder how there was still so much uncertainty around her, since Lucifer Rising (co-written by Mortimore) was apparently written, complete with Benny, before Blood Heat.  Then again, for all I know, maybe Blood Heat was waiting on Jim Mortimore's hard drive beforehand.

As for Ace, I'm wondering if there's much you can realistically do with her any more.  She's got her badass space training and her smart-bombs, and she more or less trusts the Doctor these days, but then again she's still haunted by Manisha (which at least she can do something about here in Universe B) and, by the book's end, we're right back to not trusting the Doctor again.  The constant ping-pong of are-Ace-and-the-Doctor-okay cannot help making her look like an indecisive kid, which surely – following her Love And War time-out – she is not.

Blood Heat is a big, satisfying action story that offers a genuinely different resolution to The Only Silurian Story Ever Told.  You know throughout the book that you don't know how this is going to turn out, and that lends an extra sense of excitement to it all.  Nonetheless, there's an odd feeling of summary to the narrative, which seems logical given the existence of a new Director's Cut.  Despite the spectacular bangs and splats that pepper the story, there isn't a particular dense plot, or any characters that I felt greatly concerned for.  Although people are the most important thing here, that term thoughtfully applying to human and Silurian alike, it's still a case of savouring the vistas and enjoying the set-pieces more than pondering the lives involved.   Sign me up for the longer cut; what's printed here is a cool parallel universe What If, but not a great deal more.

7/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #18 – Iceberg by David Banks

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#18
Iceberg
By David Banks

If there is a purpose to the New Adventures, besides simply putting more Doctor Who out there, it may be to add weight to certain elements of the show.  The Doctor and Ace are both deeper and richer prospects on the page, or can be in the right hands, and there are aliens and "monsters" that could benefit from the same treatment.  If you're going to write a New Adventures novel about Cybermen, for example, it wouldn't do to trot out the things we've seen before.  You have an opportunity to explore and expand them, possibly improve on them.

Iceberg sort of does and doesn't do that.  David Banks, of playing-the-Cyber-Leader-throughout-the-'80s fame, invokes the history and the threat of the Cybermen with real flair, taking them back to their creepy roots and away from the bland "Ex-cellent" stormtroopers of the '80s.  He knows his onions, and the Cybermen are a palpable menace (for the first time in years) as a result.  But they are still essentially up to their old tricks again, so the novel as a whole isn't very impressive.

It gets off to a strong start, taking us through the events of The Invasion and The Tenth Planet (in chronological order!) from a more human perspective.  A young woman, Jacqui, is innocently preparing for her exams when the Cybermen march through London in The Invasion; her husband, Philip, is later struck down in a motorcycle accident while the First Doctor discovers Mondas in The Tenth Planet.  If you're going to revisit and revise continuity, this is an offbeat way to do it.  These events impact people's lives, albeit indirectly: Jacqui and Philip have a daughter, Ruby, whose life will be touched once more by Cybermen, and General Cutler – the military curmudgeon who once faced off against the First Doctor – has a daughter, also a general, eager to know what happened to him.  Iceberg is a sometimes thoughtful book, positing the emotional world of people against the cold logic of Cybermen.  For good measure, during their greatest hits we are also treated to a Cyber-POV: a stilted running commentary of events collapsing after the betrayal of Tobias Vaughan.  It's a neat contrast that sums up the book.

And yeah, about those Cybermen.  Banks plunges into the body horror aspect that seemed all too muted in the televised series.  With no watershed to worry about, we witness the torn-apart bodies of prospective Cybermen, watch as they are dissected and stuck back together, listen as they impassively decide who will be converted and who will be recycled.  They're a frightening force, all the better for lacking a stereotypical sense of evil.  Iceberg is a good example of their belief that they are helping anyone they convert.  That's a chilling (ahem) and canny assessment of the Cybermen, tinged with the occasional murmurings of memory and emotion that only serve to torture them and push them further away from what they were.  (This aspect perhaps should have been played up even further, but oh well, I'm glad it's there at all.)  There are also some more conventional dollops of Cyber-continuity, such as background on the Cyber-Controller and the Cybermats, which will no doubt satisfy the list-keeping contingent of Who fans.

My main issue with Iceberg is the amount of time it takes for things to happen.  Not just the Cybermen, whose slow reveal could be a nod to creepy tension-builders like The Moonbase if they weren't sign-posted from the beginning.  (And on the cover!)  I mean the plot as a whole.  The Cybermen are interfering with the FLIPback project – an Arctic research station that aims to reverse an environmental disaster.  They also have a vested interest in the SS Elysium, a cruise liner heading for the South Pole.  The Doctor, having sent Ace and Bernice on their way to the events of Birthright, uses a back-up TARDIS to go and help out.  There's not a lot going on here (including yet another attempt to invade Earth via a Base Under Siege), and the book is relentlessly padded until well over halfway.  Simple inciting incidents like FLIPback scientists going missing and the Doctor arriving take ages to occur.  Meanwhile?  Pages happen.

Specifically: General Cutler (junior) tries to whip the FLIPback team into shape; Ruby enjoys the Elysium and writes an article about the trip; and the Doctor stumbles slowly through the TARDIS.  He doesn't achieve anything or meet anyone for almost 150 pages.  We just cut back to him every so often pottering through corridors, vaguely reflecting on how he needs to get away from it all.  It's an utterly bizarre choice right after the nearly Doctor-less Birthright – indeed, it takes place simultaneously.  I often wondered if Banks knew he wasn't writing a Doctor-lite.

The main thrust of the novel seems to be Ruby investigating odd goings-on below decks, but even she spends most of her time socialising with a couple of actors, learning an ancient form of relaxation from a friend and reading Lao Tze.  (The latter in particular.  A lot.)  In fairness, she's quite an interesting character: following her parents adds a certain groundwork, her journalistic instincts are endearing and when she comes close to joining the TARDIS crew at the end, it's not entirely unwelcome.  (Although seriously, enough with the possible-companions.  The Doctor even mistakes her for Kadiatu!)  But she's not strong enough to justify a lot of narratively flaccid sitting-around-on-a-cruise-liner – which, it eventually transpires, has sod all to do with the plot.  She's also not the brightest bulb, marching into obvious danger more than once and all-too-easily believing the Doctor has sold her out.  Thanks all the same, but I'll keep Bernice.

At least Ruby's story has an ending, frustratingly doomed TARDIS trip notwithstanding.  General Cutler's "closure" comes via a madly rushed and largely off-the-page conversation where the Doctor instantly convinces her he's telling the truth re Cybermen, regenerations, etc.  We don't hear much from her afterwards, apart from some base-wide Cyber-hypnosis.  What a joy to know all the time we spent with her and the FLIPback team butting heads and bonding was, er, well actually I don't know why Banks bothered, to be honest.  It goes nowhere.  The Doctor doesn't fare much better, apparently seeking some sort of renewal (hence the Tenth Planet echoes) but going through the motions like it's any old Doctor Who episode.  Admittedly he's quite jolly and sporting for the duration, but he's utterly unfazed when Ruby fails to get aboard the TARDIS.  The image of him returning at the end of Birthright, nonchalantly brushing snow from his shoulders, pretty much sums up his emotional investment in Iceberg.

David Banks is a generally good writer, especially when he has a handle on the characters.  Those early twists on continuity and the latter unashamed grisliness of the Cybermen make obvious highlights.  But so much of Iceberg is just stuff.  Ruby ponders and reflects, either on the state of the environment or Lao Tze or (obsessively!) The Wizard Of Oz, and there comes a point where she (as well as the narrative) is just inwardly rambling.  (The "mistreat the environment" theme had more room to breathe, and worked a lot better, in Warhead.  Also: please tell me the whole Wizard Of Oz thing wasn't just because Tin Man = Cyberman.)  Some of the organic-vs.-mechanic stuff is insightful, but some is just a bit odd, like this introspective moment over a ship's engine: "It felt no compunction dismembering a Cyberman.  It owed no allegiance to the Cyber race.  It had one job to do.  To power the ship.  To drive forward.  That was its goal.  Implacable.  If anything got in its way, man or machine, it was a struggle for supremacy.  Might was right, as the Cyberman knew well.  The strongest always won." (...said the ship's engine.  WTF?)

Perhaps it's the simplistic nature of the plot – once it finally hauls ass and gets going – but the more action-oriented bits can be repetitive and dull.  They usually involve a Cyberman chasing somebody or somebody shooting a Cyberman, and sometimes they just go on and on.  Conversely, thanks to the pacing problem, the ending is a rushed, explosion-themed anti-climax.  The writing includes the occasional drab cliché like "and not a moment too soon", and a smattering of quite annoying typos.  (I think we're past jotting them down.)  It's not a predominantly clumsy or amateur book – these are nitpicks, it's reasonably well-written overall – but combined with the utterly slack pace, I'm left feeling that Iceberg needed at least another draft or two, and a more critical editor's eye.

To my knowledge, this is the only New Adventures novel to feature Cybermen.  (Come to that, there aren't many featuring TV monsters.)  David Banks gets a lot out of them, which is a relief: all too often they've seemed like drab, bipedal Daleks, lacking the uniqueness of their pepperpot betters and easily supplanted by the Borg.  As Spare Parts showed a decade later, they are more compelling when their roots are showing.  But there is more to a story than scary monsters.  Well, look at Spare Parts.  Iceberg lacks the momentum, progressive plot and character development needed for a really good book.  While never exactly tedious, I still needed weeks to pick away at it, as if it were an especially large and unappetising dinner.  It was a relief to finish, and then not especially filling

5/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #17 – Birthright by Nigel Robinson

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#17
Birthright
By Nigel Robinson

Hmm.

Nigel Robinson's second New Adventure is marginally longer than his first, but Birthright still feels like a small story.  I mean, it shouldn't.  It concerns an exodus of carnivorous aliens from a barren world to a vulnerable old Earth; a band of humans fighting against them in the future; a spate of murders in the past; a centuries-old villain hell-bent on acquiring the TARDIS; the craft itself torn into a couple of dead police boxes millennia apart; and two companions out of time, without a Doctor to protect them or offer advice.  It should be epic, and I don't know if it's the conspicuous Doctor-shaped hole or the way he casually and unaffectedly shows up at the end or just the sheer lack of pages, but it's somehow bizarrely... slight, in spite of everything.

At least there's an abundance of neat ideas.  The TARDIS is dead.  Dead!  Bernice and Ace find themselves each waking up worlds apart in a husk of a police box, light falling in through the rotting windows, nothing to signify anything other than wood, and possibly a telephone.  That's a mind-bogglingly evocative image, mana to a crusty old Doctor Who fan, and it's equally thrilling to leave the Doctor's companions so suddenly and inexplicably adrift.  What a hook.  There is nonetheless a degree of just-don't-worry-about-it on reading, in an editor’s note, that this novel is contemporaneous with David Banks's Iceberg.  What, so it'll all sort itself out and some of the answers will show up in the next book, so we might as well just enjoy the atmosphere?  Feh.  Still, there's plenty of that in London circa 1909, especially with a series of Jack-The-Ripper-esque murders tearing through the city.

Of course the shadow of the Ripper – and the recurring voices of Cockney urchins and ladies-of-the-night – makes this virtually indistinguishable from pop Victoriana.  Victoria had only been gone eight years, sure, but there must have been some differences in 1909 besides the odd motorcar?  As it is, this 1909 could effortlessly feature Jago and Litefoot.  Starring Bernice "Lisa Bowerman" Summerfield as prominently as it does, it was all I could do not to imagine their sudden arrival by hansom cab...

Ah, Bernice.  Adrift from the Doctor but not forgotten, she soon comes across one of his homes-from-home, a veritable 221B Baker Street kept by the remaining Waterfield relative.  (It's a bit like his House On Allen Road.)  Benny's soon investigating the murders with the help of a Russian, Popov, and an urchin named Charlie.  She shortly encounters nemeses in the slithery young aristocrat, Bellingham, and the mysterious Khan.  (Unrelated to the Khan in the previous book!)  There's plenty of rushing about, an exciting bit where she's framed for murder and locked up in prison, and numerous encounters with assailants and what appear to be alien insects.  After 100 nearly breathless pages, the book seems just about wrapped up.  And then we skip over to Ace's narrative.

So far, it's plenty exciting and evocative, especially the TARDIS and the murders.  Bernice is written well.  Independent and quirky, attempting a Cockney accent with varying success and using her otherwise vaguely militaristic skills to bluster through her investigation, she's a totally compelling lead character.  She strikes up a fun rapport with Popov and Charlie, although neither of them is exactly a rounded character – especially Charlie, who would blend effortlessly with any Victorian cast ever.  There's not a great deal of character-building here, or rather there isn't much time for it.  Bernice is understandably upset by her situation, and has moments of reflection and even outrage at the Doctor's apparent abandonment.  She begins to ponder how well she knows him, recalling once again the loss of the Seven Planets (and his part in it), contemplating his callous attitude to death (and his lack of attendance at funerals), and briefly suspecting him of a murder as it seemingly kept her from danger.  ("Oh no, he wouldn't have, would he?  Not even him.  Not Margaret...  But... but I don't know him like Ace does: he's an alien, after all...  What would Ace believe?")  This novel is a precursor to the new series Doctor-lite episodes; the Doctor’s influence is felt as he manipulates events from wherever he’s got to.  All of which no doubt says something about him, but again, there’s not a lot of time to say exactly what.

Nigel Robinson captures Benny’s voice, and of course that acidic sarcasm of hers well.  For the most part though, her tale is one of hurried, murder-investigating incident.  That whole winding-up-in-prison fiasco comes and goes maddeningly quick, and all the while we're side-stepping into Interludes that progress something else (shh) while Ace's section looms.  Have I mentioned the book is really short?  While there is introspection, and plenty of colour, it all feels secondary to the watch-tapping frog-march of the plot.  Said plot later collides with characterisation within the TARDIS's telepathic circuits, and the resulting mix of psycho-analytical imagery and climactic Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! is like an ice cream headache.

But that's for later.  On to Ace. The Charrl are dying; they regret trying to colonise the grim dustball that is Antýkhon.  The indigenous humans feel the same since they are the Charrl's only source of food, and Ace becomes their leader by default – have gun, will lead.  She organises an attack on the creatures' hive, but eventually agrees to help the Charrl evacuate to/get help from Earth, even when it transpires that Antýkhon is – spoiler! – Earth of the distant future.  I kind of guessed that.  I also guessed just how well the Charrl would stick to their side of the bargain, which is to say they rhapsodise about the value of all life, and still eat people.  Do Not Trust.  Duh!

There's less plot in this (shorter) section, and Ace is less well-written than Benny.  "Toe-rag" and "bog-breath" are here again; there's even a "Wicked!", and a moment where she thinks "there's nothing more satisfying than a bloody good bang!"  (Ahem.)  All that feels just a little regressive.  Robinson examines the tension between Ace and Bernice, which is fair game in a situation where all the main characters are apart, only I think it's a bit redundant right after their improving relationship in Shadowmind.  You might say Ace's regard for Benny will naturally ebb and flow, especially when they're torn apart like this, or when it looks like the Doctor is giving her preferential treatment (e.g. a TARDIS key), and you might be right.  But it felt like awkward timing to me.  Meanwhile, Ace is also mad at the Doctor – a degree of jealousy re Doctor/Benny, but also just plain mistrust.  Again, this feels like old ground to me, though I can just about understand the argument for going over it again here.

Before long it's back to 1909 for the grand villain unmasking.  An ancient man who wants the TARDIS in order to prolong his life, he makes an interesting foe, his journey spanning all those interludes (which made more sense when I went back and re-read them afterwards).  I wondered if he could have been dropped into an earlier novel or two, to really build up his importance.  Oh well; as it is, you guessed it, it’s a teensy bit rushed.

The climax arrives and he triggers a telepathy-themed finale that didn't really do it for me.  I like TARDIS-centric stories, or the idea of them.  Whereas rummaging through the Doctor's psyche, with literal representations of guilt swimming through oceans of blood (on-his-hands), is not my kind of characterisation.  Bit on the nose, innit?  I don't have much truck with abstract imagery; see Transit, Time's Crucible, even some parts of Timewyrm: Revelation.  The latter book is particularly applicable here, as Birthright is full of intriguing ideas but is in some bizarre hurry to get through them.

I've not even touched on the mystery of Muldwych, a probable Time Lord stranded on Antýkhon who knows the Doctor somehow.  Is he a Doctor from the future, or someone else entirely?  Why is he exiled?  Is he living those years on a loop?  (It's implied he'll start the whole sequence over again at the end.)  Is it just a coincidence that his story seems to echo the villain's – Me Really Old, Me Want TARDIS?  No time, the book's over.  And it doesn't look as if Nigel Robinson wrote another New Adventure after this, so... never mind?

I've seemingly done nothing but complain about this one, so I'd better redress the balance.  I enjoyed Birthright.  It's astutely and creatively written, with ideas that reward the long-time Who fan as well as any frequent New Adventures reader.  I just rarely had the opportunity to savour them.  Robinson's plot is sufficiently interesting and in certain TARDIS-y places, downright cool.  The characterisation is hit and only ever-so-slightly miss; the Charrl would be a lot more interesting if they didn't keep killing people, and few of the people Benny and (especially) Ace meet have more than a couple of notes.  The book ties its settings and interludes together with some finesse, but much of it is undermined by the constant cloister bell of The Book's Nearly Over.  Now that it is, a worrying amount of it seems to have dropped away, and there wasn’t a lot to begin with.  It's one I'll surely read again, chewing its chapters one at a time, though not all of them call for it.

7/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #16 – Shadowmind by Christopher Bulis

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#16
Shadowmind
By Christopher Bulis

What's that ominous note of thunder?  Ah yes, Shadowmind: presenting yet another New Adventure that fans generally do not like.  Consensus is never going to account for everybody, of course, but we're basically talking Time-Flight or The Invisible Enemy here – in Doctor Who terms, it might as well give off stink-lines.

As it happens, I've read one of Christopher Bulis's later books, or should I say tried to read as I literally couldn't finish The Sorcerer's Apprentice.  A mixture of sci-fi and fantasy every bit as bog-standard as Witch Mark, studded with flat characters boasting godawful names like Nyborg, it did not make a good first impression.  And he wrote Shadowmind years earlier.  I read this one peeking through my fingers.

About a third of the way through, I wondered if I was reading the same book I'd been hearing about.  Over halfway, I was in a near-constant state of alarm that any minute now it would all turn to mush.  By the end, I assumed I'd gone completely mad and dreamt the whole thing.  This is Shadowmind, right?  Godawful, out-of-character, stab-it-stab-it-make-it-die Shadowmind?  Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle: it's actually pretty good.

The first thing to strike me in a positive way was the pace.  It's Ace's birthday, and along with the Doctor and Bernice, she wants a holiday.  A proper one this time.  They settle on the bright, clement world of Tairngaire, and to my surprise as well as theirs, Ace and co. holiday their brains out for an entire day before trouble (inevitably) starts.  Tairngaire, or more specifically the city of New Byzantium, is nicely realised.  It calms Ace in particular, who now seems well adjusted to life with the Doctor and Bernice.  Her rapport with the latter is coming along quite organically; at one point, they both agree that the TARDIS is their home.  Quite right.  After the tumult of Lucifer Rising and the violence of White Darkness, it's good to see Ace mesh with friends.  And it's nice to have characters exit the TARDIS without stumbling immediately on a pile of corpses.  (Like in the previous novel, for example.)  The first 40-page chunk is fun.  The characters breathe.

But this is not What The TARDIS Team Did On Their Holidays, nor should it be, and trouble shows up in the form of a man being chased.  Ace intervenes too late to save him, but discovers he is not a person at all: there's something smaller living inside him.  Something that made a duplicate of the man she's seeing.  There are more duplicates on Tairngaire, and that's putting it mildly.  A full-scale coup is staged, as duplicates in key positions sabotage and steal technology, and even a few spaceships.  Suddenly there's a tremendous feeling of oh-my-god-what-just-happened?!, and the pace roars up a gear.  Moments before it all goes nuclear, there's a splendid scene where the Doctor deduces which of his colleagues are duplicates – it's like Agatha Christie with a stun gun.  Then, when the fun starts, Ace is ambushed by duplicates and ends up fleeing naked except for a Dalek-style helmet.  (Hmm.  There's your mental image for the day.)

There are quite a few exciting and very visual scenes in this.  Bulis is a designer and illustrator, which no doubt helps.  He's also a massive Doctor Who fan, evidenced by the brilliant bit where the Doctor is cleared of all the usual (tedious) suspicion heaped on him when he's only trying to help by, er, getting them to look him up.  And hence find loads of records on how helpful and face-change-y he is.  Brilliant!  Good lord, why doesn't he do that every week?

After the duplicates make their move, there's another change of pace – a calm between storms, as the Doctor and the Tairngaire survivors figure out their next move.  I enjoyed the ebb and flow of the book.  I was aware, just from glancing at the cover, that it would take on a fully militaristic bent at some point, but there is plenty of lead-up to that, and the enormous-yet-intangible threat of the duplicates totally earns it.  And it's here I want to address one of the criticisms I've come across for Shadowmind: that the book, in particular the Doctor, takes on a pro-military slant.  Ahem: no.  The Doctor goes to considerable lengths to clarify his position on that.  Here he is on war:

“'I hate war.  I will do everything I can to avoid it.  But sometimes there is a dreadful inevitability about it.  And then you know that good people are going to die for the lives of others.  And all one can do is try to build something worthwhile from their sacrifice.'”

And on weapons:

“'I understand your unwillingness to use weapons, but–'
'Oh no, Lieutenant,' the Doctor interrupted bitterly.  'You do not understand at all.'  He sighed.  'I wish I was as pure as that.  My problem is that I have used entirely too many weapons ... I once triggered a weapon that destroyed an entire world.  And knowing it "had to be done" does not make the memory any easier to bear.'”

I mean, yes, the Doctor adopts military gear in Shadowmind, even carrying a gun – the local military rather insist that he and his friends can defend themselves, and in any case, it's under protest.  But he's quite clear that this is not something he's keen to do.  He makes numerous attempts to contact the intelligence behind the duplicates.  He even stops short of destroying Umbra, the force behind it all, and not before it kills a load more people for fun.  People die in Shadowmind, and it matters.  It is felt.  In an almost unbearable climactic scene, Ace must gun down new friends to buy time.  At no point is death celebrated.  Admittedly, duplication is painted as a boon to rival regeneration, but even that has its limits, since if you're not duplicated before you die, you're toast.

In a nutshell, Shadowmind is a violent story and its heroes must be violent in it, but it's about people struggling against a sudden, horribly expanding force that absolutely does not want to co-exist.  To borrow a line from Aliens, what were they supposed to use?  Harsh language?

As for the people themselves, there are a lot of characters – and to get the critic ball rolling, characterisation is a bit thin on the ground.  But the action spans several planets and spaceships, so it makes sense to cast a wide net.  That's not to excuse spotty characters like Santony, a man Ace connects with whose sad past comes via info-dump, or the rather odd Robson, one of the "main" duplicates who spends most of his time hanging around with a marsupial.  But I get why there are a lot of people here, and I didn't have as much trouble remembering who they all were as in White Darkness.  Everyone has some element of interest to them.  You feel for the Marshal and his bright starship-captain granddaughter, you can't help sympathising with duplicates like Gerry who are more or less innocent in all this, and of course there's Sorren.  A colonist unwittingly trapped within the duplicates' plans, she doesn't really connect with many other characters, but she reflects poignantly on what this all means for her, and to the fallen pastoral world of Arden:

“Lyn knew she should have cared more for this senseless destruction of the ancient woodland, exactly the thing the controlled colonization of Arden was intended to avoid.  But every so often she caught sight of Holly Freyman, working like a zombie, dead-eyed, uncomprehending.  And then she would see Liam Freyman, almost eagerly wielding a cutter ... to trim the branches of another tree, and then see his face go blank when Holly looked at him.  In the midst of such madness, she could find precious little within her to pity the trees.”

I think it's only fair to back-track here, because the duplicates are worth discussing.  These are not your average possessed-people or robots, spouting "I must obey", not remembering their childhoods and generally doing a good impression of wood.  The duplicates in Shadowmind don't know they're not real, and are generally in control apart from short, disorienting lapses.  There's a memorable (and tragic) sense of befuddlement to them, and inevitably some guilt for those who survive.  It's a very memorable and eerie take on a familiar trope.

“‘Everything seemed so bloody reasonable ... I think you can get people to do anything to anybody, as long as they think it's the right thing to do.  Not having any doubt and uncertainty, just knowing.  Believe me, it's easy to go along with.’”

And controlling them, the Shenn.  A hive of rodent-ish creatures that don't particularly rate individual life (calling Ace a "hive-of-one"), they're utterly memorable – and cute!  And... with the usual SPOILER ALERT to anyone who hasn't read Shadowmind and is considering it, that's a SPOILER incoming... even the Shenn aren't fully responsible for what's going on here.  Umbra, an emergent intelligence on a nearby asteroid, wishes to grow at all costs.  The Doctor can, and does understand that impulse, but unfortunately Umbra is petulant and irresponsible; it revels in revenge when it does not get what it wants.  "Emergent life = childish" is, perhaps, a simplistic view, but it was a lot easier to follow its goals than the similar malevolence in Transit.

And anyway, there is some moral greyness here.  An irresponsible creature wants to expand, so it convinces a lot of harmless creatures with no individual values to steal and murder to achieve that.  The whole thing comes off with a disquieting lack of understanding, particularly as the duplicates blank whenever they try to understand why they're killing (or worse, why they shouldn't kill), and that makes the violent reaction from Tairngaire all the more understandable.  You cannot reason with shadows.

I'm probably making it sound like a heavy and miserable book.  It isn't, although there are moments like that and swathes of action once we reach Arden.  More importantly the Doctor, Ace and Bernice are well captured.  Bulis has a knack for the companions in particular; I’ve no qualms with the Doctor's morals, but he does spend a lot of time helpfully spouting exposition.  Meanwhile Ace and Benny have fun, funny moments.  Benny's astute and learned wit is just right.  Ace's sense of responsibility, re violence, is well-earned and judged; she feels just as dangerous as Ace 1.0 (is that a thing?), but lacks the sheer recklessness.  I loved her self-reproachful running commentary on armament:

"The Doctor disapproved of her fascination with ordnance in general and explosives in particular, but even he (she was sure) would agree that this time there had been no choice.  The opposition had been packing some pretty severe hardware of their own (she would point this out) and didn't mind using it.  And she had resisted the quite reasonable impulse to fragment the murdering pair of... somehow, she knew the Doctor would still not approve.”

Look, I'm not barking mad.  Shadowmind has flaws.  As above, some of the characters don't make a big impression.  Bulis doesn't have a great ear for names.  Some of the description is rather leaden, especially in an early scene where Ace and Bernice stare at each other and make note of their appearances for no particular reason.  Shadowmind is an Ace-heavy story, and it works well in that regard, but right now I'm struggling to recall much input from the Doctor (besides fact-gathering) and especially Bernice, who seemed mostly to be cracking wise in the corners of rooms.  There is an unfortunately large supply of typos and layout snafus which, okay, are a general problem with the New Adventures, but they really seem to pile up in this one.  (One character is alternately spelled "Khan" and "Kahn" every time they appear.  FFS!)  It clearly wasn't ready for the copiers, which is a pity; it reflects badly on Bulis and Virgin.

Honestly though, I'm drawing a blank.  I flat-out liked it.  This is neatly paced, and its so-called villains had enough layers to keep me curious and entertained.  The prose bobbed along, alternately reflective and exciting, and at least one of its main characters had what you'd call a life-altering experience.  That goes a long way to making Shadowmind, for my money, a substantial and exciting read.

7/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #15 – White Darkness by David A. McIntee

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#15
White Darkness
By David A. McIntee

A somewhat prolific name in Doctor Who fiction, David A. McIntee makes his first impression with White Darkness.  I've read one of his later books, The Shadow Of Weng-Chiang, and they have some things in common.  Not all of it beneficial.

McIntee is a big fan of historical research, even including an Author's Note to underline it.  In both novels there's a trade-off between narrative flow and period detail; it's well integrated, such as an aside that two cars stopped is the Haitian equivalent of a traffic jam, but you're still aware he's taking time out to do it.  While there is an alien threat in both, the focus is on the people and how it affects them.  That's laudable – it reminds me of Malcolm Hulke and his interest in moral shades of grey.  But White Darkness is severely overpopulated, and between getting the historical period right and juggling the motivations of all the players, it is difficult to tell a single coherent story, or get engrossed in it.

It's Haiti, 1915, and a revolution is erupting between the ruling President Sam and the anarchic General Bobo.  Like a lot of historical Doctor Who, there is an inevitable feeling that these events will trundle on as scheduled, with or without the plot.  Despite all the evocative horror that ensues – especially a massacre of the island's prisoners, a key turning point – there is also a feeling that revolution is the norm for Haiti, and its seedy underbelly of voudoun practitioners [sic – see Author's Note!] will cheerily play the sides off one another and continue to exist afterwards.  There's a certain oddly dull inevitability to it.

Meanwhile, a team of Germans including an evil general, an evil number one and a couple of slightly opposed mad scientists are working on a formula for zombis – not exactly the brains-obsessed George Romero things, but servile and unkillable soldiers.  Such a discovery could win the war for Germany.  Meanwhile (again), the island's big cheese of the dark arts, Mait, together with servants Henri and Carrefour, secretly manipulates them in the hopes of resurrecting The Old Ones (or The Great Ones, or The Great Old Ones, delete where appropriate), ancient enemies of the Time Lords.  Meanwhile (Volume: III), a team of Americans are due to invade the island.  Meanwhile (keep up!), the Doctor, Ace and Bernice arrive seeking, however improbably, a holiday.  Meanwhile (why not?), various other folks flit between all of the above, including a disillusioned Haitian soldier and an American professor.

There is a great deal going on in White Darkness, and obviously a great many people are affected.  Unfortunately the end result is sprawling.  McIntee has a very evocative style, best evidenced during a terrifying shipwreck and the aforementioned massacre, but many of the characters and events still feel like bullet points.  I routinely confused the individual Germans, Haitians and Americans, some of whom (e.g. Henri) seemed to die before they really accomplishing anything.  There is a tendency to describe folks by what they are wearing – a device Terrance Dicks often employs, and one I can't stand as it not only reduces people to tedious constituent details, but means I have a bunch of stuff to recall the next time they show up.  Despite a presumable interest in historical fairness, the bad characters are 100% bad here – in the cases of Etienne and Richmann especially, there is nothing else underneath.

In the end, after a number of escapes and recaptures help to pad out the pages, historical flavour and horror collapse in a helter skelter of action.  It should be exciting – indeed, Dicks mixed a similar cocktail of Evil Military and Occult to great effect in Exodus – but instead it's wearying.  Things go bang and boom, people die and good lord, is it over yet?

I felt disconnected and a bit bored reading much of this.  Another reason, besides the large and thinly-written cast and the too-numerous themes, is the lack of an overall threat.  I'm dimly aware that The (Great? Old?) Ones are something to do with H.P. Lovecraft.  Some of us haven't the foggiest about Lovecraft, so we'll just have to make do with what the book gives us.  And right from the overly ethereal prologue that introduces them, I never got a sense of what they are or what they can do.  They're never "in" the story, as the Doctor prevents their coming altogether; it is suggested a few times that if one acts under their perceived influence, even if it isn't there, the result will be the same.  Sort of undermines them, doesn't it?  And with so much going on in the here-and-now, there didn't seem to be time to establish a coherent threat beneath it all.  I certainly won't lose sleep worrying about Old Ones: Round Two.

White Darkness spreads itself too thin, but hey, at least the main characters are well-written.  The Doctor is full of foreboding, whimsy and otherworldly disconnect from his surroundings, particularly when the prison massacre looms, and when he explains just why you shouldn't kill people, especially in your own past.  There's also a lovely moment where he picks up Cameca's brooch (see: The Aztecs), which doesn't really go anywhere, but I liked it anyway.

Bernice is on fabulous form: one of the novel's highlights is a scene where she is tied to a laboratory stretcher (with a side order of impending doom) only to escape entirely thanks to her own skills.  It sort of undermines the capture, and we march right back to that locale a.s.a.p., but it's still way cool that she can take care of herself.  And Ace slips into her role as the Doctor and Bernice's protector (whether or not Benny needs one), her discomfort around the latter finally beginning to subside.  She's moving more towards Leela at this point, as the apparently fearless and reliable fighter of the group, but there are still glimmers of further dimensions.  There's a moment where she contemplates a different life (“'I sometimes wonder what it would be like,' Ace said softly.  'Get married, have kids, stay in one place and one time...'  Be a mother, she thought, but what kind?”), slyly and simultaneously underscoring the open wound that is her mother.  Less sly, there's a theme in the last dozen or so pages of Ace becoming addicted to violence, which is a valid concern, but the tool used – a parallel, the brutal Richmann – is too bluntly and all too briefly explored.  There just isn't time to get into it.

But that's White Darkness for you.  Historical record, zombie horror, wartime adventure, Doctor Who novel – there’s too much to choose from.  McIntee is a good writer with a keen interest in people, but focus is a vital, missing ingredient.  I slogged through the result dutifully enough, but for the most part merely keen to finish.

5/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #14 – Lucifer Rising by Andy Lane and Jim Mortimore

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#14
Lucifer Rising
By Andy Lane and Jim Mortimore

A popular defence of New Adventures, or at least some of the ones I haven't enjoyed much, is that they're really good at world-building.  The play might not be the thing, but hey, check out the ideas!  And I respect that, sorta.  It's just that for me, unless it's got a coherent plot, or puts its characters on a coherent journey, or ideally both, then all the ideas in the cosmos are still for nought.  That stuff is great, but it's scenery to me.  Like the Doctor once said, angrily to a pirate, what's it for?

Reading Lucifer Rising, I begin to see why people get so excited about world-building.  Here is a world you could almost walk around in, steeped in technical detail and flavour.  Project Eden concerns a number of celestial bodies: Moloch and Belial are linked by a mysterious Bridge, while Lucifer, vast and unknown, blots out everything else.  There are Angels on it, or so they say.  There are only people on Moloch and Belial – they are (at least neurotically) rich, strange, frequently hurt.  Further afield, planets are falling to a mysterious enemy.  There is an atmosphere of growing, but still uncertain fear for the future. (If they only knew.)  It might be scenery, but it's the bloody engrossing kind.

In the course of the novel, I got to know Belial Base very well.  Also the Bridge: host to the book's most visceral and terrifying sequence, when the strand between two worlds up and snaps.  Lucifer remains elusive, to say nothing of the Angels; unless I missed something (and it does sadly happen!), I counted no descriptions of them.  The tumultuous Lucifer, on which we never exactly set foot, undergoes a transformation akin to Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey Two.  Doesn't "a warning to all not to disturb the Angels at their worship" sound a little like "ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS—EXCEPT EUROPA. ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE"?  But I don't mean to point out a borrowed idea or trope.  Lucifer Rising is, at times, obscure in its meaning and imagery – those darn Angels! – but there's a sense of mystery there, of space being a great unknown, and it shares that with Clarke.  Not everything is described, explained or within reach, but it is human to look for it.  That's the way of all good science fiction.

And I think I could begrudgingly appreciate all of that even if the story was just as odd and ethereal.  However – drumroll – it isn't!  There is murder afoot, and perhaps a plot to overthrow Project Eden.  There's a box marked "coherent plot" here: tick!  And we've got Ace back, but we haven't really had time to examine that – we do, or at least we resoundingly begin the process. Oh hey, box marked "coherent journey": that’s tick number two!  Isn't it great to have a book actually get more than one core thing right?

And it's nowhere near as straightforward as I'm making it sound.  Lucifer Rising attacks its goals from some odd, rewarding angles.  We witness the TARDIS's arrival through the neat literary trick of security camera footage (tweaked and occasionally rewound!), but we skip the bit where the Doctor and co. ingratiate themselves.  This might seem an odd omission, but it has the effect of putting us in the crew's shoes, leaving the Doctor's involvement as tenuous and yet strangely convincing to us as it is to them:

"With dawning amazement, she realized that he wasn't part of the Belial Base complement, and even as she did so she knew that it wasn't the first time she had remembered that.  She tried to recall how he came to be there, but the memories were soft and fuzzy, and her mind didn't want to focus upon them.  She couldn't seem to look away from his eyes.  It was as if he and his friends had always been there.  Had always been there."

The Doctor's influence is a sore point for Ace, and for Bernice by proxy.  It's only natural for Lucifer Rising to be a novel where that comes out.

"'It's you, isn't it?' [Bernice] said with a sudden realisation.  'Wherever we land, people accept us. I've always wondered why ... And now you're out of the way, whatever spell you've put on them is fading.'

He just smiled sadly.
'And do you do the same to Ace and me?  Do you blind us to your faults?'"

Almost needless to say, the Doctor is blamed for the murders and his mysterious arrival is seen as evidence.  You’ve heard that one a hundred times.  But this time, it's really under the microscope.  And it's not your run of the mill murder plot, with the Doctor and the investigator eventually conspiring to flush out the real criminal.  It's an all the more satisfying hunt.

But, with all due respect, the novel's real strength isn't the plot.  It's character.  There is an enormous cast here and considerable effort is expended to make them real.  The first death, Paula, isn't just the (hugely evocative) opening scene – its effects are felt throughout, as grief rebounds off the various other crewmen for various reasons.  Everyone loses or has lost someone: Miles his daughter, Cheryl her lover, Piper her husband, Alex his whole family... the symbolism of Angels, and what they represent to the troubled individuals on Belial, often resounds.  These are not all nice or even good people, and they can do questionable things, but you're in there with them, as wrapped up as you are in the world.  One of my favourite bits is a montage of insomnia and dreams that covers seemingly everyone.  There are many insights including flashbacks, and all of them add organically to the story.

Okay, before I get carried away, it needs saying: there's isn't enough character development for everybody.  There are loads of people on Belial, which can necessitate sheer lists of names, jobs and nationalities.  We're still meeting people in the closing chapters, and some cannot hope to make an impression.  It can be, if not jumbled, at least a bit crowded at times.

And then there's IMC.  The book's antagonists are an unscrupulous group who'll stop at nothing to strip-mine Lucifer (which is sort of like what Project Eden is already doing, actually, except much more aggressive), and yeah, there's absolutely no question of who's doing the antagonising here.  One of the first IMC characters we meets counts their prior engagements in severed ears; later on, goons sit belligerently about watching porn (!), and one of them comes within a hair's breadth of sexual assault, because... evil, presumably.  It's easily the most disappointing thing about the novel, though to be fair, there is very little competition.  (And neither of the authors came up with IMC anyway.)

Still, IMC have an unfortunate knock-on effect.  Ace's loyalties are tested here – and if you've not read Lucifer Rising, you can go ahead and skip this paragraph.  Ace (all gone? We good?) is really working for (last chance...) IMC from the future, who are more morally ambiguous.  She has used the Doctor to manipulate Project Eden for later tactical advantage, which is a morally grey and, well, pretty bloody interesting modus operandi.

(Quick tangent: the blurb says it was Bernice's idea to investigate the suddenly-abandoned work on Lucifer.  I never picked up on that, and indeed the plot seems to pinpoint Ace as the catalyst.  Also, apropos of nothing, that's also the plot of The Pit.)

She's still angry at the Doctor for the events on Heaven (oh hey, running theme, Heaven, Hell... yeah I just noticed it, I'll get me coat), and it's an incredible twist to put her in the opposite position, manipulating him for a change.  She feels justified, not just because she's mad as hell but because IMC aren't cut-and-dried evil.  Well, in theory: the ones we meet in Lucifer Rising unequivocally, disappointingly are.  Even Legion, the unearthly captain of the IMC's flagship, cannot morally grey things up for long, as a bald, obese lady Adjudicator who is specifically more evil than the other Adjudicator turns up to steal its thunder.  Ace's story still works, but this particular aspect aims for grey and comes off oddly black and white.  But hey, I guess something had to tip her off that she'd bet on the wrong horse.

I don't want to undersell Ace's journey, so a few words on the rest of it: it ain't over.  And a few more: her discomfort and rivalry with Bernice, which seemed such an odd note in Deceit, becomes central here.  It pushes her away from the Doctor, then becomes a point of pride. ("Ace gazed levelly at the woman, savouring the taste of jealousy that Bernice had left behind her: a dark and bitter envy of the depth of the relationship that still existed between Ace and the Doctor.")  The Doctor gets a taste of his own meddling, and ultimately takes a life, unambiguously, gun in hand; in that moment, he sees little difference between manipulation and the real thing.  Which is refreshingly honest, and bloody dark, is it not?  Ace can trust him a little more in the wake of that, which helps explain why she's back with him.  Another reason is that she's calling the shots, or at least more so now.  And oh, all right, she begins to see the Doctor's point of view, and a few scales fall from her eyes over the Jan affair.  Which feels rather earned, because that relationship made sense contextually, but yeah, a lot of it was a reaction to the Doctor.  Jan was sort of a dick.

Bernice is less involved, or at least has less of a hook in the story (despite that blurb), but that's not to say she's poorly written.  File Lucifer Rising under "Good Benny writing", with the requisite confidence, modesty, sarcasm and booze.  There's not a lot to her yet, but it's good when all the ingredients show up.  She has that certain ease with the Doctor, the sense of two smart and witty people just getting on, which was such a gem in The Highest Science.  (There's too much to quote, but there's some zingy banter on pages 101-102.)  There's some decent character development for her, including a delightfully frank complaint about how time travel robs archaeology of its meaning, and of course there's a climactic glut of the stuff for all three regulars at the end.  I'm still not convinced it's a great idea to drive a wedge between Ace and Bernice, but I'll be keeping an eye on it.  I'll probably always wonder how she'd be progressing if Ace had planted roots by now, but at present, both hold my interest.

And the Doctor? Trickster and manipulator as per usual, he's nonetheless surprised and a little shaken by Ace, among other things.  And yet after all that, he still finds time to work a little influential magic on Earth's future, and his own past.  We get under his skin with all that hypnotic effect stuff, but there's plenty of whimsy too, including his extensive pin collection.  There's some downright lovely writing for the Doctor, among others. Here's an easy highlight:

"Perhaps it was the white Panama hat perched upon his head like a nesting bird; perhaps the fact that beneath its brim, like two large, round eggs, his eyes were bright and full of joyful intelligence.  Whatever it was, the sum of all the individual details added up to a personality shining with the conviction that, whatever the situation, whatever the galaxy, it could be grasped as firmly and immediately as the crooked handle of his umbrella."

Lucifer Rising was co-written, and due credit to its co-conspirators: it's seamless.  The only hint of a gestalt is the occasional leaning towards the evocatively visceral, and then to the wistful and beautiful, or the scientific and clever, or the ethereal and intangible... and actually, sod it, I can't tell who's who.  But it works, and a rich tapestry is the result.  It's a world-builder that leaves some things to the imagination, then describes others in bone-shattering detail.  Its people are driven and unhappy and real, apart from the few that aren't.  (D'oh.)  The Doctor, Ace and Bernice have all grown at the end of it, which is the mark of something substantial.  And as it happens, bloody good.

8/10

Doctor Who: The Virgin Novels #13 – Deceit by Peter Darvill-Evans

Doctor Who: The New Adventures
#13
Deceit
By Peter Darvill-Evans

Surprise!  Ace is back!  Phew?

I'm biased because I really like Bernice, and these books came out too long ago for me to say I didn't see it coming, but... really?  After three books that shoehorned Benny into the plot with varying degrees of awkwardness, it's rather sad to throw away the possibility that the writers will get better at it, not to mention the chance of developing an organic friendship between Bernice and the Doctor.  However these books shuffle it, what you're going to get from now on is one too many people in the TARDIS.

Okay, dismount soapbox, now for the actual book.  I might as well address an elephant in the room, as I did for The Pit: Deceit is another infamously unpopular New Adventures novel.  (Two in a row.  Huzzah.)  Knowing this and reading it anyway carries an obvious risk: you've only yourself to blame.  But I think it's important not to take received wisdom for granted, to make up your own mind and in any case, the rough will help you appreciate the smooth.  I want to follow the whole New Adventures story, warts and all.

Here be warts.  Deceit isn't as terrible as I was expecting, but it still makes complete sense that people tend not to recommend it.  This is a book many feel they have to read because it reintroduces a long-running character; it's as important to the world of the New Adventures as Love And War, but only in the strictest technical sense.  Given its significance I couldn't help wondering how this is the best they could come up with.

Deceit begins, as so many New Adventures do, by spinning a bunch of plates.  Over here you've got a sinister relationship between man and computer (and soon, woman and computer); over here, a woman tries to contact her husband in deep space, but he'll never get her messages; over here, a military operation sets its sights on the mysterious world of Arcadia and gathers soldiers for the cause, including a familiar citizen of Perivale; and over here, Arcadia itself, a medieval world descended from Earth colonists, where people die at a young age and strange Counsellors rule by suggestion.  The Doctor and Bernice are off doing nothing much in the vortex.

The book gives an impression of a lot going on, but it's false.  Instead of chapters we have parts of roughly fifty pages, and Peter Darvill-Evans saves much of the book's action for those intervals.  At 50-odd pages we finally hear from the Doctor and Bernice.  At 100-odd pages the TARDIS lands on Arcadia.  At 150-odd pages so do Ace and the remains of the military.  At 200-odd pages the Doctor and Bernice arrive on a creepy space-station.  At 250-odd pages, so does Ace.  Darvill-Evans is impressively strict about this, but in the interim, not a lot actually goes on.  Ace investigates her ship, her crewmates and her mission – really though, she just travels to Arcadia.  The Doctor and Bernice separate on Arcadia, they walk lots, meet people, meet up, get locked in rooms.  It kills time. Once the action shifts to the space-station it becomes Journey To The Centre Of The Corridor, while Ace and co. make shooty-peeow-noises on Arcadia for, as we later discover, no reason at all.  The 300-page mark looms, we learn what it's all about and the Doctor sets one of his traps to make it stop.  Then, congratulations: it's over!

There is no reason for it to take as long as it does.  Deceit is noticeably the longest New Adventure yet, a generous 325 pages including an Epilogue, Appendix and rambling Afterword.  As editor of the range, Peter Darvill-Evans didn't have to submit his book for editing, and it shows.  In the Afterword he admits: "I'm aware that I've tried to cram a lot into it.  Perhaps too much."  Ya think?

And yet, that's kind of the opposite of the book's problem.  He crams too many pages into it, certainly, but story, and even that frequent New Adventures fall-back, ideas are in short supply.  Action scenes trundle and explode, corridors are walked and answers take the scenic route.  In truth, it's long because it's long.

Fortunately there are some ideas to be getting on with, most having to do with continuity.  Deceit marks the return of Ace, three years older and even more skilled at demolition, so obviously there's some emotional content to do with Love And War.  Darvill-Evans does quite a bit of narrative housekeeping, and it's here you feel his hand as editor of the range.  The concurrent, similar endings of Nightshade and Love And War are folded into the same Doctorly narrative.  Events from Warhead inform Deceit's villains.  Something unseen occurred at the end of Witch Mark which is only now resolved – the tail-end of a sort of Cat's Cradle 2.0: Now Even More Off-Screen, as Darvill-Evans explains the Doctor and the TARDIS's so-called erratic behaviour since then.  (A way to write off the clumsy handling of the-Doctor-and-Bernice, perhaps?  Say he had other things on his mind?)  He even takes the ending of The Pit, when the Doctor had to let seven planets die to appease history, resound in a way that Neil Penswick had neither the time nor the ability to manage.  It's arguably a continuity-fest, which can be the worst kind of fan writing, but it's trying to inform the characters rather than simply stack up Do You Remember This points.  It felt more rewarding than intrusive, so he must be doing something right.

And as for those characters, while it is undeniably a mistake to maroon them amid great oceans of nothingy non-plot, they are at least likeable and recognisably written.  The Doctor is, let's face it, hard to get wrong: he plots and schemes, he has eccentric moments, emotions bubble beneath his eyes.  Darvill-Evans's Bernice is more of a boon.  She's in tune with Love And War, still possessing that nervous sarcasm and modest intelligence: "'Read all about it,' Bernice shouted, lifting her hands in what she hoped was a universally recognized gesture of peaceful intent.  'Town terrorized by unarmed archaeologist in scruffy jeans and old jacket.'"  But there's also a vulnerability that comes with half a dozen not-altogether-fun rides in the TARDIS.  When she meets Elaine, a troubled and grief-stricken girl locked in an attic, her distress and anger are palpable. And when Ace signs up at the end, her world is shaken. "The Professor and the Doctor.  They made a good team, didn't they?  They understood each other. ... The Doctor didn't need Ace any more.  Did he?"  I'm still – and I can't believe I'm writing this – surprised that the Doctor and Bernice spend much of Deceit apart, and that he sort of forgets about her again.  Just pair them up already, for god's sake.  But she acquits herself well.

And there's Ace 2.0.  Older and wiser, doesn't seem to say "toe-rag" or "bilge-breath" as much (never again, pretty please?), but still maintains a cheery and rebellious attitude.  And phew for that: I thought she'd be a humourless space marine.  She's recognisably Ace, only a bit more balanced.  It's just a pity she spends so long marching through endless action scenes.  Now, I've more than once heard that Deceit devolves into little more than an action sequence as it goes on, and that's not entirely true; there is, believe me, plenty of tedious walking down corridors and sitting in rooms as well.  But the action is there, and it's simply monotonous.  Lines like this only serve to suggest even Darvill-Evans knows it's filler: "'You could let them land here.'  'Don't worry, Doctor.  We intend to. Although I think I'll play a few games with them.  I don't want them to have an uneventful journey.'"  Jeez.  Are "uneventful" and "tediously repetitive" our only choices?  What’s to stop the baddies simply beaming them up if they're so keen to have them?  Is it intrinsically more interesting to zap a bunch of androids first?  (Going back to that quote, there are other moments of possible self-reflection dotted about.  Take "'Do you know,' the Doctor said, 'I rather think we're getting somewhere at last'", or "It seemed like hours since she had slipped away to find Ace, but nothing had changed much. "  It's like the book knows it's swaddled in padding, which – surprise! – only makes it worse that it is.)

Unfortunately, while Darvill-Evans demonstrates a good ear for the regulars, his supporting cast are dead weight.  Arcadia is medieval-yet-alien, so a bog-standard Tara, then.  You've seen and heard it before, and the whole "You die when you reach 30" dilemma reeks of Logan's Run – not to mention Timewyrm: Apocalypse, plus the countless things that inspired Nigel Robinson in that.  We scarcely meet any Arcadians apart from Francis (cowardly and sleazy) and Elaine (small and vulnerable), so when their fate hangs in the balance, it is necessary to restrain a shrug.

And what of the military?  About 95% of Ace's compatriots die before they reach Arcadia, leaving Defries, a woman single-mindedly obsessed with bringing down those responsible, and Abslom Daak, a Doctor Who Magazine creation who's pretty much just single-minded.  "Daak was always the same: without reference to the creed, colour, gender or opinions of whoever happened to be around, he was rude, randy, rebellious and always ready for a fight. "  When even the narrative agrees that a character is "always the same", there can be little hope for them.  He amounts to nothing more than a watered-down Gilgamesh, including a lascivious intent towards Ace.  He's hardly even irritating, he's so bloody boring.

Perhaps the most interesting characters are Lacuna, the Sinister (with a capital s) interpreter for Pool, a group of minds responsible for the Arcadian dilemma.  And Britta: a wife stuck light years away from her husband, drawn into an abusive and servile relationship with Lacuna, whose monstrous feelings are Pool's only outlet.  I say "interesting" here – perhaps that's the wrong word.  Lacuna and Britta fall into a bizarre and troubling Stockholm Syndrome, and it is damn uncomfortable to read.  By the book's end, they are in each other's arms, presumably forever.  It's, uh... yeah.  I'm not sure what to make of that.  I'd say it was the weirdest bit by miles, if not for the scene where Daak makes his umpteenth rapey advance on Ace and she comes within a hair's breadth of actually going for it.  You, uh, only live once I guess?

The prose is solid and readable, and so an obvious improvement on The Pit, but it's not something that brims with personality.  I probably couldn't pick one of Peter Darvill-Evans's sentences out of a line-up.  But given a more layered and interesting story and, ironically, an editor, I'd probably read another of his books.  I can't recommend this one.

Deceit needs to exist only inasmuch as Ace (apparently) needed to return in one of the books.  If you're desperate to know what happens to her, as I was, here's the edited version: she joins the army, meets the Doctor and Bernice again and sticks with them.  If you're still bloody-mindedly determined to read it, and to hell with the negative reviews, it's best to think of it like lancing a boil: a necessary but unenjoyable task to be got out of the way.  There is absolutely no point in taking your time over it.

4/10