#7
The Face Of The Enemy
By David A. McIntee
Well well, look who it is.
This one came out in January 1998: the early days of BBC Books, when they were still putting together what would become their regular stable of writers. It’s unsurprising, and actually quite practical that most of their picks were already regulars at Virgin Publishing.
David A. McIntee wrote six Who novels prior to this. As is perhaps inevitable after all of that, he is one of those writers with lots of easily identifiable habits. This makes reviewing his books a bit like a marking exercise. (Or perhaps, nerdy Bingo.) He likes to start with an introduction; he likes to incorporate historical research; he likes to make it abundantly clear that he has done said research, usually in the introduction (but also in general); he likes to use a lot of visual detail, ideally as much as he can get away with before needing to include diagrams; he likes infrequent but intense action sequences; he likes to cut frequently between scenes and characters to heighten the tension (but also as a general style choice); and lastly, more of a subtle one here, he has a consistently good eye for a fan-pleasing concept, often involving the Master.
Most of the usual McIntee stuff is present and correct in The Face Of The Enemy. (Well, it is his seventh rodeo.) This week’s concept, though, is a humdinger: we have the rare but not unheard of Doctor-lite story — but also, a Master story — but also, a Master story set during that brief bit of the Pertwee era when he was under lock and key, before he escaped in The Sea Devils! I’m honestly surprised no one else thought to show The Man In The Nehru Suit doing porridge, and not escaping before this.
And that’s just the fannish stuff you get in the blurb. The Face Of The Enemy also features — I don’t think you could call this a spoiler since they’re in most of the book — Ian and Barbara! Roped in to help investigate a downed plane and a mysterious duplicate, they’re soon in the thick of it with UNIT as some sort of invasion begins to take shape. We’re following on from a dollop of continuity in The Devil Goblins From Neptune, with the pair not only being married, but parents. (Slightly annoyingly, McIntee seems to contradict that same scene in Goblins which said that Ian and the Doctor had met up again. Oh well.)
Continuity is sprinkled quite liberally through this one, including: the introduction of a major telly character who never officially showed up for the first time on-screen; the explanation for why an impossibly minor character dropped off the radar after two stories; nods to stuff as disparate as Delta And The Bannermen and Gary Russell’s Virgin books; setup for the Master’s post-Sea Devils escape in The Eight Doctors; and a ref to an upcoming BBC Book. (Ian recalls The Witch Hunters.) But where Ian and Barbara are concerned, continuity tends to serve the character, which is a relief.
Ian’s scientific background leads him to suspect that an irradiated piece of airplane has been to another world; Barbara’s historical background leads her to think it has been far back in time. Until NASA filled her in, Barbara had no knowledge of other people possessing TARDISes (she left before they saw another one in The Time Meddler), but her experience jumping a time track in The Space Museum helps her to understand a bizarre journey here. This stuff is well-judged, and only wheeled out when it’s called for. McIntee seems broadly more interested in their importance to each other as people than as ex companions of the Doctor, with emotions running terrifyingly high on that later. It’s not a very nice time for them, all told, but for once I’d say it was worth bringing someone back. (I might have had a different opinion if the original aim of killing off Barbara, as stated via Terminus Reviews, had been realised. Honestly, sometimes it’s good that the BBC stick their oar in. It seems, to me anyway, a particularly cheap way to score drama points with a particular audience, just parachuting in a familiar face so you can blow it up.)
I’d hesitate to say either of them was the protagonist, and it’s perhaps to be expected that this question feels unresolved when the Doctor and his companion are both busy off-world. We spend a fair amount of time with different players instead, such as Grant (a mob lawyer who scrubs up good), Boucher (a cop broken early on by a death in the line of duty) and Kyle (one of the shady antagonists behind it all). McIntee succeeds in making them each a worthwhile investment, despite some fairly repetitive inner preoccupations — yes, we know Boucher is upset about his nephew and yes, we know Kyle has mixed feelings about her “lost” father and husband, but neither of these situations really grows in the telling. The survival (or otherwise) of some of these characters can make it feel like a bad investment at times, however, but maybe that’s just me being soft. Damn it, I thought that character worked! Why kill them off, you big git? (In one case, off-screen. Did McIntee really resist the urge to roll up his sleeves and show us that untimely end, or was there a bit of editing, I wonder?)
The bit we’re all waiting for, of course, is the Master. McIntee is several rodeos into this character now, and it shows: there is light and shade, but also an unwavering commitment to his goals at the expense of all else. The Master is cheerfully running a bank to finance his criminal enterprises, all from prison. When unknown assailants attack first his bank and then his prison, he escapes (which was already well rehearsed and could have happened whenever he felt like it) and decides that he needs the Brigadier’s help.
This is easily the book’s (groan) master-stroke. Pairing UNIT with its most regular nuisance provides a constant source of colour, especially when it comes to Ian, whom the Master at one point comforts and then manipulates to achieve his ends. I have inevitably mixed feelings about the scene where a distraught Ian seriously considers suicide, but the peculiarity of the Master sitting with him and encouraging him to keep it together has, just as inevitably, stuck with me. (There is of course a hint of disdain baked into it that Ian misses.) The Master really will help others if it is useful to his plan; his duplicity not running entirely amok is, for my money, a lot more interesting than the all-mad-all-the-time version of the character we so often see on television.
Like a few of McIntee’s books, there is a bit of a struggle between the stuff that is interesting and the stuff that is just stuff. There are plenty of opportunities to unleash a bit of action (more specifically, violence) with the bank job and later a Godfather III-esque helicopter strafe run leaving bodies all over the place. I had a growing awareness through these sorts of scenes that I was waiting to find out anything useful. The answers are genuinely interesting once they finally arrive, but — like the Master reaching out to UNIT to forge an awkward alliance — once you reach the good stuff, it becomes a bit difficult to remember what the rest of it was.
This isn’t helped by McIntee’s rapid-cutting style, with up to six scenes occurring across two pages, and not always because we’re nearing an action climax. I just don’t get it when authors do this — it’s a novel, not television. You have my attention. For me, being able to dig in and concentrate when you’re employing this kind of itchy-footed setup is as likely to succeed as getting to sleep after a stressful day. Accordingly it’s taken me about twice as long as usual to get through The Face Of The Enemy, despite the good bits.
Those answers, though. Much like the Master working with UNIT, I wish they had come along sooner. You know, just from the long wait, that there will be something big here, something that is consequential to fans, and there is. The forces seeking to invade Earth are following on from a previous story — and I’ll keep shtum on the details in case you want to go and read it*, but like the choice of time and place for the Master here, it’s a genuinely creative use of continuity and you could continue to work with it. (Indeed, this is not ruled out at the end.) The only downside is that by making it, effectively, a twist, there isn’t time to explore those motivations or the place that they come from. That stuff sounds more engaging than the authentically beige 70s cop show we’re largely here for.
The good stuff’s really good. And this one doesn’t even labour the historical detail very much, that usual McIntee bugbear. (He says in his intro that there would be little point what with UNIT dating, which probably explains it. There are even some deliberate anachronisms in the book, though I couldn’t say where.) You can tell the author delights in taking full advantage of the possibilities where the Master is concerned, such that I hope others get the opportunity to give him a run for his money. I’d say The Face Of The Enemy is one of his more measured efforts. I wish it had been reshuffled somewhat at the planning stage, but enough moments in it are striking for it to be worth investigating.
6/10
*Spoilers for this pretty old book. Okay? Don't want, not read...
SPOILERS...
...the villains are the survivors of the ruined world in Inferno. They’re not duplicating or copying people, they are people’s actual counterparts. For obvious reasons, they want to swap one world for another, and oh yes, they’re far right whack jobs. Great setup! Not, IMO, enough payoff. Will we hear more, I wonder.
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