#20
The English Way Of Death
By Gareth Roberts
Gareth Roberts returns, and he is
unlikely to leave until you agree that Season 17 was actually pretty good. And that you’re sorry for what you said
about The Creature From The Pit.
The English Way Of Death is his second Missing Adventure with the
Fourth Doctor and Romana, the era when Douglas Adams was on staff and a trip to
Paris scored the show’s highest ratings yet.
It was all good fun, apart from some unfortunate production values and maybe
a little too much Adamsian snark – not to mention not getting the finale they wanted,
and having to make The Horns Of Nimon instead. As with his last MA, The English Way Of Death
reminds you how indomitable this Doctor / companion combo was, as well as highlighting
Roberts’ knack for the era and comic writing in general. No wonder Big Finish adapted these books.
I heard both plays before reading
the books, and I thought this was the lesser of the two. It had a less action-packed plot and a
general Wodehousian sameness in its characters.
There is also a little too much crossover between the stories, as both feature
a disembodied villain-of-the-week with a silly sci-fi name. (This time it’s Zodaal-the-zombie-creating-gas-of-doom,
rather than Xais-the-super-power-granting-death-mask.) But perhaps I’d look down on The Romance Of
Crime for that if I’d heard them the other way around.
Anyway, whereas The Romance Of
Crime begs to be performed, The English
Way Of Death is maybe better off in print.
It’s absolutely entrenched in P.G. Wodehouse (and so, by proxy, Douglas
Adams), being set in 1930s England and featuring a host of high society
caricatures. They seem to benefit from
having their pompous and silly opinions wittering on in prose, as opposed to
just being a bunch of pompous and silly (and so pretty two dimensional) characters
in a play.
The prose is an absolute shindig
from start to finish. Roberts lives for
characters that find each other irritating, which can simply make you hate them
all; Tragedy Day and Zamper could have detonated their casts for all I cared, and The Romance
Of Crime forgot to include anybody sympathetic.
But the irritation in English Way
Of Death is primarily… well, English. And it’s delightful. We open on a misanthropic biscuit magnate (!)
being forced to share a train journey with an eccentric buffoon, and this is full
of witty snipes about the buffoon resembling a squirrel, and how the self-important
Stackhouse wishes he’d taken the car to Nutchurch only it had “chosen the same moment as him to break down”. Buckets of personality are poured into the
(obviously doomed) Stackhouse, who can’t help following the bizarre Percival
Closed across a beach, leading him to a spooky beach-hut. The TARDIS-ey incongruity of said hut is left
snazzily unsaid, and it leads to an arresting shock, as a weird green haze
takes over Stackhouse’s body. Closed,
for reasons of plot, puts a lot of effort into seeming like a quaint Englishman, allowing Roberts to go nuts. (We can obviously thank Ford Prefect for the
name.)
Later we have a socially inept novelist/widow
trying to ensnare a tedious Colonel – both of whom want to win the other over while neither is remotely impressed by the match.
Felicia Chater is a wonderfully pathetic creature, certain she can steer
the conversation back to herself by leaving open her Tibetan exercise book, and
wearily observing that “it was … so much
more convenient to be married. It means
there is always somebody in the house for one to complain to.” (I also loved the line “After a year spent in mourning – an unutterable bore but form was form…”) The Colonel’s character pivots on his being
an old bore, but a moment where he falls instantly for Romana made me hoot: “The Colonel knew he could never forget
her. His heart had melted into a sticky,
pumping ball of goo. As he watched her
slender, boyish, betrousered figure heading off along the pavement the
securities of his character, 58 years in the making, crumbled.”
Up against all the whimsical
flippancy is the now possessed Stackhouse, who along with his zombified
underlings shows a crassly hilarious disregard for passing as human. I mean he is not trying at all. They shamble, they
rot, they clamour for brains; when a dangerous new contact asks if he’d like a
drink, he says “I have no need of liquid
sustenance.” The contrast between
high society and B-movie is amusing – getting in there well before Pride & Prejudice & Zombies,
which I can’t countenance touching with a bargepole until I’ve actually read
Austen – but it wears thin before very long.
(As does, I presume, Pride &
Prejudice & Zombies.)
Neatly joining the two very
different worlds we have the Season 17 crew, whom we know Gareth Roberts can
write with aplomb. Their easy, sniping
relationship is there in spades. Romana
on the Doctor’s overdue library books: “Oh
yes, I’m sure there’ll be a great clamour for Febrile Diseases and Swine
Judging For Beginners.” And on their
length of stay in the one place the Black Guardian is most likely to look for
them: “‘After all, we’re only going to be
staying a few hours, aren’t we, Doctor?’ The Doctor waved his hand effusively. ‘Oh, minutes.’” When looking for one another, both assume the
other might have fallen down a hole, and after Romana makes a fatal error of
judgement regarding Zodaal’s trustworthiness, the Doctor makes frequent light
of her momentary uselessness. There’s
probably an argument to be made that theycre too combative here, but this might depend on which exact bit of the
era you want captured: Tom and Lalla in love or Tom and Lalla wanting to push
each other off a cliff.
Both are written sublimely by
themselves. The Doctor has that
inimitable Tom Baker ability to make zero concessions for mere mortals, casually
namedropping famous historical chums and scientific jargon and suddenly asking
random strangers questions of deadly importance. (Also spouting delightful rubbish: “‘Mrs Felicia Chater. Widowed, in brackets.’ The Doctor sprang from his chair. ‘How interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone in
brackets.’”) Romana strides around
having virtually no need of the Doctor – except for those moments where a vital
judgement call is needed and, I suppose, the Doctor just has more experience. She rebuffs any romantic
interest from the Colonel and has a low tolerance for just the
sort of people she’s likely to meet in this book: “Deciding that anybody that couldn’t manage to open their front door was
unlikely to pose an intergalactic threat, Romana shrugged and advanced.” But even K9 seems to have his sass on this
week, for instance throwing back the Doctor’s embarrassed accusation of going
for unauthorised walkies with “Charge of
wandering refuted.” (Asking quite a
lot of unnecessary questions later, he gets a deserved “Oh, shut up, K9” from the Doctor.)
There’s a lot of comedic
potential and Roberts gets the most out of it, but you still need a plot to go
with it. He provides one, arguable
similarity to The Romance Of Crime notwithstanding, but there isn’t much to
it. Stackhouse/Zodaal wants to destroy
the world and thus enable his escape. The
Doctor and Romana, whilst investigating some time-travel malfeasance
surrounding Percival Closed, need to put a stop to that. Zodaal murders people and works on his
doom-bringing machines in the meantime, while a wild card associate, Julia Orlostro,
weighs up her own schemes. There are
some excellent dramatic highs (neatly fashioned in the old end-of-episode style),
but there comes a point where Closed observes that he is facing “Another address, another frantic race
through the streets with the Doctor at the wheel, another confrontation with
the forces of evil.” And, yeah; as is
often the case with fourth wall pokery, just shrugging and saying “Hey, what can ya
do?” doesn’t fix any of the problems. Plot-wise
The English Way Of Death runs in
place from around the halfway point, and when you spend enough time with him,
it’s apparent that Stackhouse/Zodaal isn’t going to win any Mr Interesting
competitions. (Also his Blow Up The
World Machine takes its damn time.) The
kneejerk amusement of a bunch of ravenous zombies groaning through Jeeves & Wooster does eventually
give way to wondering why a bunch of husks sharing the same mind are arguing with each other, and
why brains are of any particular use to them. In the end, it’s all a bit candyfloss.
It’s even more of a pastiche than The
Romance Of Crime, going hell for leather with one particular setting and
style. The result is an often divine
read, which at times made me think – yes!
This is how you do a Missing
Adventure! It’s just right for the era, and
it’s a story well suited to a book! But The English Way Of Death isn’t exactly shy
about its lack of depth, and while depth isn’t a huge prerequisite for a comedy,
it helps to sustain a novel. Provided
you like Wodehouse riffs, Roberts should just about keep the comedic bubble
from bursting. It’s just less of a fun
rush by the time you’re finished.
7/10
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