#4
Business Unusual
By Gary Russell
Well, I’ve got to do admire the title. Gary Russell promising Business Unusual is a bold claim, since he is definitely one of those writers who Knows What He Likes.
A fairly bold claim is also contained in the book’s introduction, where he announces a “desire to write a sixth Doctor story that I thought Colin Baker would have liked to be in.” Not knowing Gary or Colin personally I’ve no idea what this means — more dinosaurs? — but perhaps more telling is his apparent aim for “what might have been the Sixth Doctor, given time and a decent go at it.” Any Big Finish listener can point to the cuddlier, less explosive character played by Colin on audio as “the version he liked better”. (Gary would of course have had a hand in that.) You can also find an eerily close approximation of this in Millennial Rites. So, story and characterisation-wise, what does Business Unusual do for the guy in the aggressively colourful coat?
Oddly, he’s a lot like he was on screen, particularly in Season 22 when his demeanour hadn’t yet softened. He’s rude (clapping back at an American that his accent seems out of place because he made a similar comment about his coat), he’s loud (frequently doing that “say a word three times with increasing volume” thing to show up whoever said the word first) and he’s more incongruous than is usual even for the Doctor (there are plenty of references to his weight, an odd thing to highlight about a timeless alien but something that makes him stand out more physically). I don’t know what Colin thought of all that; it’s very recognisable, much as it was in The Eight Doctors, but it doesn’t move him on in the same way as, for instance, The Trial Of A Timelord, when he and Peri seemed able to enjoy each other’s company for once. (At least until he went mad and she got murdered.)
Some of this abrasiveness is deliberate, as the Doctor in this is attempting to avoid his own future. Business Unusual gives us, at long last, Mel’s introductory story, as the Doctor’s travels have brought him to Pease Pottage in 1989, where Mel is from. He reckons that if he doesn’t become friends with her then his path will change and he won’t eventually become the Valeyard. QED. We’ve had shades of this before in Time Of Your Life, when he lived off the grid on a distant world to eliminate any possibility of a red-haired fitness fanatic entering his life. This time it’s all a bit more pointed: the Doctor tries to avoid meeting her, then pours cold water on the wonders of space and time travel, being fairly rude to her in general just to split the difference.
This idea ought to be valid, what with there being a prior attempt, but I just don’t like the way it’s done here. Living on a backwater planet is one thing, especially for only a brief portion of the narrative. Actively trying to put Mel off her established future (for most of the novel) is direct interference, and more overtly self-involved than I’m used to for the Doctor. (Perhaps, ironically, this talent for manipulation is a hint towards his future.) Who is he to say that Mel shouldn’t have those experiences? Why is his happiness worth more than hers? It’s also worth saying that the more direct his action to change his future, the more we’re putting it under a microscope and the less it actually makes sense for a Time Lord to think that this is even possible. He has met and interacted with a future, Doctor-adjacent Mel. He even used evidence of their adventures in his trial! Hell, the paradox of even trying this might end up creating the Valeyard. (You can argue that this is all a desperate Hail Mary and even he doesn’t think it will come to much, and fair enough, but there’s little suggestion of that in the text. Even showing us some genuine fear and concern about his future as the Valeyard would help justify it, but the whole thing is presented merely as continuity: he will become this thing so he needs to not do that thing. The Trial Of A Timelord is left to do all the heavy lifting.)
Long story short: “what might have been the Sixth Doctor, given time and a decent go at it” ends up being pretty much the same Sixth Doctor who stomped around shouting at Peri. The stuff I like about him in this is more incidental. We begin Business Unusual with the Doctor closing off a previous adventure (featuring the Master! No, he’s not in the book) which right away is a fun place to start, but in practical terms this means working with the police. By making this the end of an adventure we skip all that tedious “you have to believe me” stuff, and the Brighton constabulary instead have a wonderfully eye-rolling acceptance of the Doctor and his foibles. It’s refreshing to cut to the chase like that, much as it was for Hartnell when The War Machines suddenly repositioned him as a known quantity in the British scientific scene, and for Pertwee during pretty much his entire run. The Sixth Doctor in this also manages to be quite persuasive with new people he meets, such as Mel’s somewhat open minded father Alan and, oh yes, Mel herself, who despite the Doctor’s best efforts to the contrary accepts that he is an alien and quite fancies a trip in the TARDIS. (Perhaps dialling down the “I’ve got a spaceship” bit might have helped his plan along. Ah well.) The Doctor might be a certifiable pain but he brings other people along with him. Perhaps this is what Gary was going for viz “what might have been” etc.
But enough about Joseph and his very colourful whatsit: Mel is here! And Business Unusual does a good job of introducing her, meshing the character’s slightly disparate interests of fitness and computer programming in ways that a novel can do more comfortably than a few frenzied TV episodes. We learn that Mel took a gap year and went to university as a mature student, which right away makes her seem like someone apart from the world around them. The technology she’s working with feels beneath her, the job offers doubly so. It doesn’t take long to believe that this person would be doing a smart thing to get off this rock altogether and see the universe. Her refusal to be cowed by the Doctor (in full “don’t do it” mode) also bodes very well, suggesting a kind of authority that — for better or worse — she rarely had on screen. (See the moment where she screams at something awful, and we make a point of saying it’s the first time she’s ever done that.)
I would rather her first adventure had not been so interested in an abortive attempt to call the whole thing off, and had instead focussed on building their Doctor/companion rapport, but she nevertheless comes out of it well. Or at least she does until the final stretch, when she pleads and pleads with a still-implacable Doctor to let her aboard and he still says no. When she sneaks onboard anyway he gives way genially enough, but by this point she’s ceded some of that authority she’d built up, and the turnaround comes with no apparent resolution of his (highly questionable) future-avoidance plan and certainly no humility about trying to neg her out of her destiny. (Although maybe I’m onto a loser expecting that from the Sixth Doctor.) On balance then, as a companion intro, it’s hit and miss.
Of course there are other reasons to read Business Unusual besides the new companion schtick. What of the proverbial business? Sadly, to quote a Welsh philosopher, it’s not unusual. We’re picking up threads from The Scales Of Injustice (and further down the rabbit hole, Who Killed Kennedy) with the “pale young man,” a shifty inhuman presence with access to a lot of discarded alien tech once again making a nuisance of himself. (He has rebranded as “the managing director”, which makes for a less irritating repetition.) With him as before are the creepy Irish twins and a Stalker — a giant dog infused with Stahlman’s Gas which makes it even deadlier. This is not an inherently bad toy box, and it gives him a completely valid license to regurgitate old continuity. Certain other familiar elements creep their way into the plot, which generally concerns sinister video game consoles; the discerning Whovian will surely develop suspicions about the plastic figures and glassy-eyed duplicates that begin to show up, and let’s just say they’re onto something.
But after a while, when all the pennies have dropped and it turns out the guy who collects old alien stuff is going to (brace yourself) use the old alien stuff, it begins to feel like the writer forgot to actually bring his own idea to the table to make it any different. The villain’s collection ends up as a sort of accidental mirror of his own limited imagination. (Here’s his grand plan: “I want to take over the world simply to give myself something to do.” 200+ pages for that, honestly.) The creepy game consoles are a nice idea, but the “game” part never really manifests; they’re supposed to be a means of control, but the initial test just activates the free toys that come with each one and kills the nearest kid. Which is horrible, obviously, but also pointless. (Do you want to control them or kill them?) And hey, we already did a version of this in Terror Of The Autons, only that was just the toys and not the random game console as well. If you’re going to add elements but not explore them, what you end up with is the old ideas again, with bonus clutter.
The less than intricate plotting is supported by a Gary Russell staple: casual excessive violence. Heads and various other limbs are bitten off by the Stalker, horrific injuries are sustained generally, and we hear about similar awful things in flashbacks — sometimes wistful ones, recalled by psychotic characters. I got whiplash going from the horrible story of a woman taken to bed then (mid-intercourse) violently pulled apart and mind-wiped so she can be a cybernetic secretary on wheels (I don’t even) to the general Enid Blyton cheeriness of the prose in other scenes, but that’s how it goes. When characters die the length of time we’ve spent with them has no bearing on the quickness of their passing, like a man with a tragic UNIT backstory, forgotten by the Brigadier and corrupted by the managing director, only to finally turn and fight back and, oh right, now he’s dead, next. (The secretary doesn’t even get her memory back before being unapologetically bundled out of the book.) There’s a creepy indifference to this stuff that seems to happen in book after book. I wish he’d find a balance between blood and guts and the other stuff he writes, which tends to be blandly inoffensive if prone to a continuity reference.
Speaking of which, we’ve got one more box to tick besides plugging that gap in Mel’s timeline: the Brigadier is here, ready to meet the Sixth Doctor, because Dimensions In Time doesn’t count. (Gary’s own words via Terminus Reviews.) And look, fair enough: everyone likes the Brigadier, so why not. That said though, it’s a curious impulse when the other thing he wants to do is lock up the Brig for almost the entire book, and only have him meet the Doctor briefly at the end. The lone Brigadier stuff is at least worthwhile, having him reflect on the odd situation of living after UNIT (and teaching maths at an all boys school — his life story is in places as disparate as Mel’s), jumping at the chance to get back in action. It’s an excuse to reflect on the cost of what he used to do for a living, particularly when faced with a now corrupted ex-subordinate. This is good character fodder. (Which also ran satisfyingly rampant in The Devil Goblins From Neptune.) Later, when forced to confront Mel with the necessity of killing, he reflects eloquently that living with it means “never forgetting … not letting one face, one name, ever fade away.” I like that very much, although I wish the author would take it on board too.
There’s plenty of introspection elsewhere, but it’s generally just “halt, introspect, onto next bit”, like the sudden mucky remembrances of Mr Jones, or the record-scratchingly abrupt change of heart for the Irish Twins. The prose is as harmless-if-unpolished as ever — unpleasant asides aside — with some purple bits probably thrown in as tribute to Pip and Jane Baker, who get a favourable mention in the introduction. (They’d have loved “Do you possess even the most rudimentary auditory organs under those flowing locks of golden gossamer?” Although I can’t say that I do.) And it does at least try something different, which is to start each scene with its exact time and place. This is perhaps intended to give the story an urgent real time feel, but ultimately it’s stage directions we just don’t need — it’s a novel, there’s already enough context. I’m not likely to bother reading the likes of “Madeira Drive, Brighton, East Sussex, 24 July 1989, 12.36” more than once.
Clearly there’s a lot to say about Business Unusual, and yet there’s really not a lot going on here. Is this a more developed Sixth Doctor? Not that I noticed, and in some ways, he’s worse. Am I glad we finally “met” Mel? Sort of. It mostly works. Am I pleased that the Sixth Doctor met the Brigadier? Well he didn’t particularly, although it was nice to see the latter again. Is this a good finale for Gary Russell’s Scales Of Injustice toy box? Honestly, not really. Similar ideas would later be repurposed as Torchwood, and although I never cared much for that, clearly you can get more mileage out of this stuff than “gosh, this guy’s evil isn’t he? I wonder if the aliens from Terror Of The Autons that he’s manipulating will turn on him like they did in Terror Of The Autons oh.”
5/10
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