#29
Cold Fusion
By Lance Parkin
NB: I’m breaking publication order for this one as the blurb puts it
squarely after Return Of The Living Dad.
I’m swapping out The Shadow Of Weng-Chiang which won’t cause any ripples
coming later in the run.
Talk about a hard sell. Virgin’s first bona fide multi-Doctor story,
directly crossing over the New and Missing Adventures, written by an
up-and-comer whose last novel everybody loved?
I mean, sure, if you happen to like that sort of thing.
Cold Fusion is an event book, so you’ll probably want to read it
whether or not you’ve read any reviews.
I really had no idea what it was about or what kind of story it was –
although it’s a fair bet this is a multi-Doctor story more in the vein of “they
both happen to be there” than “all of time and space is on the blink AND ONE
DOCTOR ISN’T ENOUGH”. That’s good, as
the latter is difficult to do well. I’m
only surprised it took them this long.
(There was apparently an imperative not
to write multi-Doc books, but then at the same time there were more Doctor
cameos in Virgin than you ever got on television.* Work that one out.)
Cold Fusion is primarily a Fifth Doctor book – it is a Missing
Adventure after all – with the Seventh Doctor sneaking around the
outskirts. That’s a neat way to approach
a multi-Doctor thing, and it suits McCoy who has doubled down on deviousness in
the New Adventures. But it does mean
you’re not getting much multi-Doctor bang for your buck. There’s something pointed and interesting
about using these Doctors – Davison
having just regenerated, young and idealistic, plus McCoy getting older, more
cynical and pragmatic. But Lance Parkin
has his work cut out just finding something for the Doctor, Tegan, Nyssa, Adric,
the Doctor, Chris and Roz to do. Making
sure two out of that lot spend time trading insults does not seem like a
priority, and a “Whose side is he on?” dichotomy perhaps needed somewhat equal
screen time devoted to each side. McCoy
sits most of the book out, so there isn’t much ideological sword-crossing.
After the TARDIS reacts to
something wrong in the vortex, the Doctor (Davison) and co. arrive on an ice
planet mostly known for scientific research.
It is ruled by the Scientifica, who are so goal-driven that they have
slaves and roll their eyes when people complain about it. One of them, Whitfield, is very interested in
a strange machine that seems to pre-date known human civilisation. Incidentally (or not), there have been
sightings of “ghosts” nearby.
A large number of Adjudicators
are on the planet, ostensibly to deal with a terrorist element attacking the
Scientifica, but this is clearly and suspiciously overkill. Nyssa meet a conspicuous and slightly randy
blond gentleman investigating all this (Chris, duh) and Adric ends up working
with a gruff ex-Adjudicator (Roz). Tegan
and the Doctor soon make the acquaintance of a distressed lady Time Lord,
Patience, and then make their way towards a shadowy figure who seems to be
pulling the strings. Probably with the
crook of his brolly.
This book has one of those plots
where a lot of individual things seem to be happening, yet somehow they don’t
knit together into a single, forward-moving plot. I never felt like the story properly
“started” – the characters just move around and meet up in various combinations
until it’s time for the denouement, which is surprisingly rushed at that. The nature of the “ghosts” is revealed too
near the end; an apocalyptic event is averted via the Doctors playing “contact”
and casually saying it’s been averted; a neat solution is manufactured
literally by magic; and then the remaining problem neatly blows itself up
quick-smart as well. By that time I’d
lost interest in what all the Adjudicators were up to or what was going on with
Adam, the planet’s resident terrorist-or-maybe-freedom-fighter. Questions such as the nature of Patience, who
exits the story rather shockingly but without dwelling on that for some reason,
are left for future books. I’d lost
track of where Nyssa, Tegan and Adric even were.
An obvious problem here is hype,
and it’s debatable whether that rests on Lance Parkin. A multi-Doctor story carries certain
expectations, and it’s no exaggeration to say the Doctors only share thirty-odd
pages near the end. Mixing the New and
Missing Adventures is an intriguing idea – although the waters are pretty muddy
with some MA writers playing up the blood and horror elements you didn’t get on
TV – and Cold Fusion does this quite
well in the last burst of pages. The two
Doctors have their own approaches to the problem, with McCoy wryly commenting
on his younger self’s fondness for suicidal selflessness, which contrasts
tragically against his own cold manipulations in the final chapter. But there isn’t enough time to really make
something of that, with Davison literally getting knocked unconscious before
they can have it out. (Admittedly it's very funny.) Other ideas,
like the true nature of the ghosts, are certainly interesting but not made
enough of. The running theme of robots
with unusual temperaments and jobs – such as an analytical Freudroid, and a
robot with a chipper northern accent – is very welcome, but feels a bit too
much like a random sprinkling of colour.
It’s a little schizophrenic to
compare this to Just War, as it’s not trying to be a remotely similar
book. However, we do know from Just War
that Parkin can be brilliant at character development – that was a seminal
story for Bernice, and there was some lovely Roz stuff too. The groaning cast list here precludes any
heavy-lifting character work, so we instead opt for random blobs of it. The text observes a few times that the Fifth
Doctor and his companions have been together less than a week, with Adric puzzlingly
believing he’s only known the Doctor at
all for “a couple of weeks”. There’s a funny bit where Davison ponders the
length of his hair, which fluctuated between his first and second stories due
to the shooting order. (Nerrrrrrd!) There’s a nice moment where Tegan
contemplates her past and what she hopes to do in her future. Nyssa discovers that a Traken colony has
survived, which cheers her up a bit – and is perhaps meant to explain what is,
when all’s said and done, a pretty placid Nyssa considering what happened to
her. On a darker note, Roz accidentally
kills a man and then convinces herself that it was necessary. And McCoy is unavoidably confronted with
Adric, and must not say anything about what will happen to him. At first this is shrugged off – par for the
course – but we do get this lovely sequence: “The Doctor was more relaxed around Adric than anyone else she’d ever
seen. He watched him, was interested in
what he was doing. Like a grandfather
playing with his grandson. The Doctor’s
eyes betrayed a sadness of some kind, some deep regret that he was leaving
unvoiced.”
It functions reasonably well as a
New Adventure, with Chris and Roz babysitting the Doctor’s earlier companions
(in Chris’s case, hilariously almost spoiling what happens to Adric – awkward),
although the Doctor’s ultimately callous attitude towards the villains is
thrown into maybe too light relief by Parkin playing up his whimsical
aspect. I guess this is to help mark him
out from the Fifth Doctor. (Incidentally, I couldn’t find anything to put
this right after Return Of The Living Dad.
The blooming romance between Chris and Roz is nowhere to be seen;
otherwise couldn’t this take place anywhere, sans Benny? EDIT: It’s actually more to do with The Death Of Art, up next, which uses these events to create a fun bit with Chris.) It’s an at times very thoughtful Missing
Adventure, occupying that space right after Castrovalva when all this is new to
his companions, and to the Doctor himself.
At the risk of becoming a broken record, however, we don’t really delve
into it. The Doctor could use Patience as a way to come down from his own experience,
but they don’t talk enough to make it happen.
The Big Finish audio Psychodrome does a rather natty job with the same
time-frame, opening the collective wound a bit more.
The guest cast have very little room
to distinguish themselves. Whitworth,
the scientist, espouses the values of the Scientifica and is dating one of the
Adjudicators, but beyond that I got nothin’.
She does make some pretty chilling observations about transmats, and how
they literally involve creating a whole new self every time you “arrive”. (A sequence later on describes what happens
when it goes wrong, in case you weren’t already creeped out.) Adam The Friendly Terrorist shows up for a
scene or two and then promptly buggers off again; the only thing I registered
was his friend, a shark-person named Quint, for obvious reasons. Patience ought to be the book’s biggest coup,
and there is something to be said for the Time Lord world-building that seems
to follow her around. We learn (although
it may not be 100% accurate) that the Doctor took Susan away from Gallifrey
because she was woman-born, and Time Lords don’t allow that (see Time’s Crucible); Patience suffered something similar, and may or may not be back
somehow later on. Interesting as this stuff
is – and there’s a casual-as-you-like reference to the House of Lungbarrow as
well – Patience literally doesn’t say anything for most of it, and is then very
abruptly taken out of the picture. So what
exactly was all that in aid of? She
could be a telepathic bag of flour.
Livening all this up – if, like
me, you find the gradual moving of chess pieces unexciting – are a number of
evocative action sequences, including a bloody robot attack at the start, an
unusually conscientious train robbery, an avalanche and best of all, a space
station hurtling towards a planet. The
writing of that last piece is spectacular, likening the approaching station to
a marble, a tennis ball, a melon and so on until it’s impossibly vast. There are also quite a few light-hearted
moments, particularly when Chris first makes himself known using the surname
Jovanka and an outrageous Aussie accent, outraging Tegan; there’s
some funny confusion over whether the Doctor has regenerated in the course of
the story, with McCoy asking if he has become “all frock-coat and youthful appeal?
Well, perhaps I did but I haven’t yet.” (Yes, it’s a Five Doctors gag. How apt!) And there’s a bit where the two Doctors both
reverse the polarity, nabbing Steven Moffat’s “confusing the polarity” joke 17
years early. Nicely done.
I wish I could think of more to
say about it. I wish I liked it more.
It’s not as if I hated Cold
Fusion, but it wasn’t the book I was hoping for – even though I couldn’t
specifically tell you what book that was.
There are many deftly-written moments here, like the action and the
occasional bit of comedy, and even scene transitions which you would ordinarily
take for granted but are given clever attention here. And there are many good ideas, like the
Scientifica and the ghosts and the whole concept of the Doctor at two points in
his life, dealing with the same crisis and reaching different conclusions. You could do so much with that. Cold
Fusion maybe tries to do too much, and ends up not doing much with any
of it.
6/10
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