#11
Dreamstone Moon
By Paul Leonard
Hey everyone, Sam’s back! I hope she’s refreshed from her *checks notes* one book away.
Not that the timing matters, as her absence wasn’t the point of the exercise.* (Anyway, it’s all relative. If like me you’ve also clocked up two Past Doctor Adventures and a book of short stories in that time, then she’s been gone a little while.) Steve Cole was unhappy with the writing for Sam and he wanted a clearing of the decks. So, no pressure, let’s get it right this time.
Paul Leonard is a good choice for her first book back. Genocide already did a good job of putting Sam and her views into context, and it gave her a not insignificant amount of trauma to deal with at the end, causing the death of a Tractite. Leonard and Sam are on similar wavelengths in Dreamstone Moon, questioning her values and putting her through the wringer throughout.
We pick up immediately after Longest Day, as she requires rescuing from the Kusk ship she had been “helpfully” bundled onto. (I hope we see Anstaar again just so Sam, or the Doctor, or both can go “what the HELL, Anstaar?”) She meets some people on their way to a Dreamstone mine: Daniel, a career miner, and Aloisse, an alien very much against the mining.
Right away we can see another thing Paul Leonard is very good (possibly the best?) at: writing aliens. All the non-humans in this are memorable and have ways of communicating that are unique and often subtle. Aloisse is a Krakenite (a human bastardisation of their name), a sort of large tentacled tube with one big eye and a beak. Despite her left-field appearance she is a thoughtful presence, and as a character she is far more defined by her choices and her views than her lack of digits. You don’t need to look far to see other examples of this. Anton, a central human character, has a girlfriend who’s a Besiddian/large anthropomorphic cat, but her emotions and bankroll are more important than her tail. Anton, seeking answers in a very lowdown part of the city, encounters a dubious fellow who is a Zmm-Zmm/bipedal form of fly. They fight and the Zmm-Zmm is killed, a fact that haunts Anton because well, it’s murder, and when later on he briefly contemplates that the victim “was only a Zmm-Zmm … Not a real person,” he is rightly horrified because “He hadn’t thought he was like that.” Consideration for the rights of the unlike runs throughout Dreamstone Moon, and is easily one of its strongest ideas. (Although it has some pitfalls which we’ll come back to.)
Sam is not immune from this. Based on her appearance, she initially assumes that Aloisse means her harm, when in fact she’s saving Sam’s life. Later, having apologised for this, when she sees dangerous creatures underground she thinks they might be related to Aloisse because they look similar. It’s significant that the initial correction doesn’t stop Sam getting it wrong again — and she makes other mistakes, such as dropping a pretty serious cultural faux pas against a couple of Arachnons/very large spiders, then frantically rushing back to apologise when she realises her mistake. People ain’t perfect.
This is very much Sam’s ethos in Dreamstone Moon. She doesn’t know what to do next — she can’t go home, her best friend is (as far she knows) dead, so what else is there? These are canny questions if you want to redefine the character. Immediately presented with two sides of a situation, she tries to make the right call. Does she support the miners, who are just doing their jobs and are clearly in danger? Or does she go with Aloisse to protest against the Dreamstone company? The latter seems like the obvious choice, but she interrogates it anyway: do the protesters know what they’re doing? Could they be exacerbating things, or even fabricating them? Even if it’s for a good cause, that’s not a positive. At a funeral for some dead protesters she has already come to know as friends, Sam is appalled when the eulogies take the form of ecological grandstanding. But then again, maybe that is genuinely what they would have wanted? (Forgive the drive-by, but all of this is so much more thoughtful than the approach to eco-activism we saw in Kursaal. They need to be better at this sort of thing, since it is obviously critical to Sam as a character.)
Whilst trying to make sense of things, she naturally falls into a Doctor/companion rhythm with those around her. Aloisse, for all Sam’s misunderstandings, is worldly and charming, and even behaves “like the Doctor … She doesn’t know that’s true — she just thinks it might be. And all of us will panic less if we don’t think we’re being bombed, so she presents it as the truth.” Sam seems a little in awe of her. (And perhaps there’s some guilt in there because she left the Doctor.) Later, separated from Aloisse, she finds herself with a journalist (Madge) under her wing, and promptly takes on a heroic role. This has dreadful consequences, but before long she’s in the same role with a clearly out-of-it Anton, and is much more careful this time. It might be tempting to view these dynamics as an obvious go-to in the Doctor’s absence, but I think they make sense for a suddenly isolated companion, especially such a young one. She gets to look at both sides of a lot of things here, and apply a learning curve as she goes.
Sam’s arc is perhaps the strongest thing in Dreamstone Moon, which is good since I think that’s what most readers are here for. (Certainly it’s what Steve Cole had his money on.) Hot on the heels of this is the reunion with the Doctor, but circumstance (aka the plan for the next book) means that it’s not going to happen here. Dreamstone Moon gets tantalisingly close, no doubt because, as per the Pieces Of Eighth pod, that was originally the plan: the Doctor, following Sam, ends up investigating the same thing; they see each other, a dangerous attack separates them again, and then despite heading for the same location at the end Sam is hauled away from him sight unseen. I didn’t know this going in (although as the page count rose it did seem less and less likely that they were going to sail off together this week), and it’s a bit disappointing to tantalise only to then drag it out like that. Especially when the previous EDA, by complete coincidence, also teased and then welshed on a significant reunion. (The Doctor and Susan.) It can’t be helped, but it does leave Dreamstone Moon feeling a bit surplus to requirements.
Still, none of this is what a casual reader is here for. What about the plot, and what are those dreamstones I mentioned? Well, Anton is a professional dreamer. He records and sells his dreams. Much to his chagrin, the Dreamstone company offers alien rocks that will supply endless dreams without all the work. The good news (that’s debatable) is that some are faulty and provide bad, even dangerous dreams. Anton finds himself on a mission to buy up dreamstones, then trace their origin, in the hopes of exposing the company.
This is all quite intriguing but, sadly, the execution is lacking. You would think for all this fuss about dreams we’d see a bunch of them, wouldn’t you? But no, despite a few abstract sit-bolt-upright-screaming reactions from people the actual dreams are treated as a transaction; society at large might as well be addicted to Pogs. I’ve no idea what’s so incredible about Anton’s dreams that’s so popular — it’s not like he meets any satisfied customers armed with feedback. The only people we encounter who even use dreamstones are the ones using a shady drug-den analog to have deliberately bad dreams, screaming all the while, so they’re not representative. The whole plot is predicated on dreams and these ubiquitous bloody dreamstones, but the world-building — very unusually for Leonard — doesn’t strengthen the point, so I was never heavily invested in it.
The nuts-and-bolts action of the story isn’t very interesting either. The moon of the title is having mysterious earthquakes, so the intergalactic Earth military are on site to help. (Or so they say.) Sam is off investigating/pitching in with the protesters, until she falls into danger alongside them. (She falls into danger pretty constantly, which you would think would be exciting, but honestly “Sam is running out of air!” loses some of its shine the third or fourth time around.) The Doctor, hot on her trail and finally getting a search result, assumes she’s safe enough where she is (?!?) and focuses on investigating too. Only he’s totally unable to convince the local figurehead because she, and the entire military, is massively speciesist.
This is another, critical aspect that isn’t underpinned enough by world-building. Yes, I can believe that a traumatised Earth would respond to Dalek invasion with a mistrust of the unlike. And it certainly feeds Leonard’s theme of the importance of respecting other cultures. But the sheer vehemence of, say, Captain Cleomides is necessary to drive the plot, so it ought to be fleshed out and supported. She outright refuses to believe the Doctor when he tries to help, and is even willing to execute him no questions asked just for trying, all because he is non-human. This is a barrier he doesn’t normally face, so it is worth examining to some degree. But there’s seemingly no time for him to reflect on the unusual reception or even offer much of a counter-argument. (Although I’m sure it would do no good.)
Later, possibly as a last minute tweak from Leonard to hold off that reunion, Cleomides – having softened to him a little – suddenly abandons the Doctor to a likely death in order to force an escape with Daniel and Sam. The Doctor makes repeated reference to his belief that she is not an evil person, but as to what she is, there isn’t enough material to get into it. Her actions speak to someone who is broadly terrible but might be reachable... but isn’t when it counts here, so never mind then? (Unless we’re going to see her again and develop this further, but that seems unlikely.) Certainly the rest of her lot, her maniacal boss and her psychotic underlings, come across as simple rotten eggs whom we can dismiss. The whole thing feels a bit left-field and surface level, despite fitting the theme, or perhaps even because of it, since the rest of society that we see in Dreamstone Moon seems pretty damn enlightened about all this. Are the military the only people traumatised by Daleks?
At the centre of all this are the dreamstones, and Leonard’s conclusion here is not one of his best. The Doctor, at least, enjoys some of that Sam-esque pondering about what to do next (which puts them marvellously on the same wavelength): he assumes the dreamstones are alive and lashing out at the miners and dreamstone users deliberately. He is wrong. (The use of illusions to trick soldiers and spaceships into friendly fire is a really neat idea by the way that, once again, doesn’t quite do the homework. It’s something we’re aware of and briefly see happen but it never feels like a primary concern.) What’s actually happening is more instinctual: the planet/moon are “alive” but as to the actual images, those are being generated by a single dreamstone user with, unwittingly, too much influence. This concept is articulated a bit too late for me to really get hold of it, and the preceding lack of definition with dreams and dreamstones makes it difficult to care about what this all means beyond a surface level “killing a living thing is wrong”. I think perhaps the concept of a living planet/living rocks is an alien too far even for Paul Leonard. Certainly the whole thing is packed away too quickly at the end — it’s hard to imagine that being due to the last minute reunion-nixing, and harder still to believe that these somewhat two-dimensional space racists will let it lie.
Dreamstone Moon has a lot on its mind. (And let’s be fair, a lot in the brief.) I think some of it really works. Leonard’s consistent strength is his view on unusual forms of life, and this is (mostly) another strong example of that. Sam is in an interesting place, questioning her role in her travels. Her feelings for the Doctor are unresolved — and definitely still there, by the way — and by the end she’s even uncertain about whether she can travel with him again. Exciting times, despite the enforced annoyance of the To Be Continued.
On the flip-side, the Doctor is not as well served, being mainly on the receiving end of some slightly hysterical prejudice throughout, but also quite frankly not trying that hard to see Sam again, even (in the end) toying with the idea that maybe she doesn’t want him back. All of which I am hoping Blum and Orman put to good use in the next book (I’m sure they will), but it highlights that The Sam Problem was never all about Sam. What’s the Doctor’s investment, beyond what he has with every companion? I don’t think that’s ever been clear, to the books’ detriment — there are times when he might as well be looking after a favourite ornament — and Dreamstone Moon doesn’t move the needle much. I hope subsequent authors give it some thought.
There are great ideas but, as so often happens, they’re not quite in focus. I can imagine a version of this that went off a bit more around dreams, illusions and the conflict of a day to day world filled with life vs a military that doesn’t recognise aliens. But that’s not Dreamstone Moon, which just sort of tells us that stuff instead as it plods through various tunnel collapses. Some of the problem is the lack of catharsis, which isn’t on Paul Leonard, but then some of the author’s strengths are absolutely on display, so it’s not a total loss.
6/10
*All the same, I did imagine the arc that could have been, with a few more Sam-less or even Doctor-less novels gradually drawing them together again. Hey ho.
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