#14
Dreams Of Empire
By Justin Richards
Justin Richards finished up a very busy 1998 with Dreams Of Empire, his third published novel of that year. It is, impressively, not much like Option Lock (his Eighth Doctor Adventure about secret societies and nuclear war) or The Medusa Effect (Bernice Summerfield visits a haunted spaceship), although coincidentally each of these, like Dreams Of Empire, is a story fixated on its own past. (Armchair psychiatrists, start your engines.) Managing a breadth of tones as he does across these unrelated books, you can really see why BBC Books were keen to keep him around.
Dreams Of Empire is one of his more compelling efforts, although at first glance it doesn’t look all that interesting. Set almost entirely within a medieval-ish prison on an asteroid (well, I did say medieval-ish), it’s effectively a base under siege story — bread and butter to the Troughton era. And if you liked that, wait until the TARDIS arrives very near the site of a recent murder: would you believe the Doctor and co get into some hot water over that?
Fortunately Richards knows this stuff just as well as his target audience, so although he touches on the trope, he doesn’t wallow in it. We don’t spend a lot of time and effort trying to prove the Doctor’s innocence — there’s no reason to bother when the situation with the guards and inmates of Santespri (a name so jaunty I was sure I’d heard it before) makes for a better whodunit.
Some time ago, the Haddron Republic very nearly became an Empire. A civil war erupted between three highly placed friends, and the aggressor — Kesar — became a figurehead. He was eventually defeated and sentenced to exile, but was attacked and badly hurt on his way to prison. He now resides on Santespri in an iron mask with a voice synthesiser to cover for his wrecked vocal chords. More interestingly, his remaining loyalists are there with him, some of them working alongside Republic soldiers as guards. (Sort of like Police Officers and PCSOs.) Attacks on the prison and murder plots within its walls could equally be happening to free Kesar or kill him — Kesar, for his part, seems content to remain imprisoned. When bodies start dropping and an unknown space cruiser approaches, no one knows what to expect. Thrillingly, “the three weirdos next to the police box did it” is not a popular theory.
There’s an oddly genial atmosphere to this civil war and its after-effects, particularly after Richards grounds it in friendship in the first chapter. There’s less animosity than you might expect between the different sets of guards, which is surprising given some tragic shared histories. I wonder if Richards is playing on his proximity to The Enemy Of The World, another story about a world-famous rotter that is placed directly after this one, in encouraging us to expect a lot of back-stabbing in the guy’s orbit. (I’ve seen some reviews point out this arguable overlap and then criticise him for it.) Dreams Of Empire takes a somewhat more optimistic view: most people who are hurt by a few dangerous personalities at the top just want to get on with their lives. I was surprised how well the book kept to this thesis statement, even in the face of some outright villainy and a few tragic deaths before the end.
If you want an example of civilised opposition, it doesn’t get much better than chess, which features heavily in Dreams Of Empire. (And on the cover.) I’ve never learned the rules, so chess scenes in stories to me are like high pressure card games in movies — I can tell which general direction it’s going in but you could make up the words and I wouldn’t notice. Fortunately the chess scenes here have a very clear intent, coming in handy plot-wise in ways anybody could follow, and they help contextualise the tensions in the story. I can see why it seemed important to Richards in a story about taking sides without aggression. It’s also a fun backdrop specifically for Troughton’s Doctor, a character of mercurial intelligence who may or may not be a few moves ahead.
For what it’s worth, I think Richards is betting on “may not be”. That’s not to say the Second Doctor here is not brilliant, or not capable of outsmarting the villains — he’s believably able to win people’s trust, just as he can piece together the bad guys’ schemes and his own counter-schemes. However, Richards puts a lot of effort into keeping up the slapstick side of his portrayal, at one point mixing up a flight from suspicion of murder with a comedy bit about a sandwich stuck to his bottom. The Doctor’s scatterbrained silliness doesn’t feel like a put on, and it also doesn’t contradict his brilliance — it’s all just one big amorphous self. He’s able to ping-pong believably from a stray comment by Jamie to a solution for the whole crisis, and make it a joke. (“He grabbed Jamie’s hand in both his and shook it vigorously. ‘You’re a genius.’ ‘I am?’ ‘Oh yes. Well’ — the Doctor considered — ‘one of us is.’”) I think it’s a great read on the Second Doctor, believably impish and yet intelligent all at once.
Richards is similarly apt when it comes to defining Jamie and Victoria. The former is on high alert around a scene that was once a warzone and might become so again; the latter is affected by the ruined dignity of important figures and shares their sense of loss. There’s a bit of tension when Victoria seems attracted to someone and Jamie doesn’t like it — all-too-easy stuff there, but it still seems well enough established in the era they come from. As the book progresses there’s less and less for the companions to do, perhaps betraying a certain authorial preference for the characters made out of whole cloth here. (Probably the most notable interaction is the Doctor unveiling the sonic screwdriver a few stories early, but in a way where Jamie and Victoria don’t see it, leaving continuity in tact. Phew!) The writing is as considered for them as it is for everyone else, highlighting any quiet words or private little glances. The contained location perhaps focuses the characterisation; just as if it were made for TV: you’ll go stir crazy looking at the walls and invest in all the little stuff instead.
Dreams Of Empire doesn’t build a huge head of steam, or not for a while at least, which I think is a side effect of all that geniality. It makes for oddly pleasant company to read, rather than a furious page-turner. But Richards is an old enough hand at this to reveal a very smart plot as he goes along, some of it not until the very end, and although you’re sort of expecting that (come on, it’s chess) it’s still satisfying when he plays the final moves.
7/10
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