#19
The Wages Of Sin
David A. McIntee
David A. McIntee lands what is surely his favourite kind of assignment in The Wages Of Sin. It’s a pure historical, so he can play with all his customary research without then having to staple it to a spaceship. The sci-fi-est thing here* is local interest in possessing the TARDIS, which puts it on a similar footing to Marco Polo.
(*The Tunguska blast was due to part of the TARDIS crashing, at least according to Birthright. I think we can safely say that if McIntee is aware of that piece of Virgin continuity then he doesn’t think you need to be.)
This seems apt as, according to I, Who, The Wages Of Sin started life as a First Doctor story with Ian, Barbara and Vicki. Knowing that makes a bit more sense of some of its choices. For instance the addition of Liz Shaw, which otherwise looks like a trademark McIntee Really Cool Thing to get fans on board, but is arguably a bit flat in practice.
Bringing Liz back — giving her a trip in the TARDIS, no less — really ought to be a big deal, since going back to past companions has never been the norm, especially when the Doctor is quite happy with the current model. (Jo Grant.) Liz disappeared unceremoniously between TV serials, hardly to be mentioned again, making it doubly intriguing that he scoops her up again just as soon as he gets the TARDIS working. Was he just waiting for an excuse? Did he think about her often? It sure seems that way, but I dunno: we begin this adventure with the team already having landed, only displaying the reunion via a brief flashback, and there’s no definitive goodbye at the end. How the Doctor feels about getting the band back together never explicitly enters into the book; Liz has some interesting mediations on Jo as her replacement and time travel generally, but if she feels a particular way about seeing her friend and colleague again then scientific detachment has the final say about it; and Jo barely scrapes into the plot, let alone ponders the ramifications of the Doctor casually picking up where he once left off.
Obviously you wouldn’t need to think about any of that if she was just Barbara to your First Doctor, but since this is what we’re doing I wish there’d been an effort to make some lemonade with these rather promising lemons, especially with The Wages Of Sin coming in at 30 pages under the usual count. It’s a surprising lapse for an author well known for fan service, but I suppose the plot he’s chosen doesn’t leave a huge amount of time for ruminating on old friendships — or at least, not their own.
With Liz hoping to see the Tunguska event of 1908 but flying off course (well, it is a test flight) the TARDIS lands in 1916, not long before the death of Rasputin and the start of the Revolution. The Tunguska near-miss is a natty if roundabout way to get us there (because otherwise 1916 Russia would have been an odd pick), and it’s strengthened by adding Liz, a scientist specialising in meteorites who would plausibly want to see that. Pretty quickly the TARDIS goes AWOL and the trio are inveigled in aristocratic politics while they look for it, mixing with the likes of the Tsarina, future conspirator Felix Yusupov, British agent Kit Powell and various other shady types whose names challenged my not-Russian brain. The three travellers all know what’s coming and are keen not to contribute to it. They all end up doing so anyway.
Despite opening with an explosion and some spy shenanigans, it’s predominantly not a flashy book. McIntee is keen that we feel the awkwardness of these last days of the regime, where no one really comprehends the change that is coming and consequently (despite a few murder plots) everyone seems eerily calm, all things considered. The Doctor and co. have had many worse receptions than this.
Historically-minded as ever, McIntee does his best not to sensationalise real people or events, including several of the conspirators and the man himself. He surrounds the death of Rasputin with a few competing essay-friendly reasons, from genuine concern about his influence over Alexandra and the negative effect on the Russian war effort (not to mention the country at large) to more selfish concerns over the same things, to a deep-seated hatred of his infamous temperament and vices. (The latter perhaps hints at a deeper class warfare, his betters resenting a peasant who made good — “good” being, of course, extremely relative here — but at this point I’d better leave the actual essays to the professionals.) There are moments that emphasise the brutal conditions of Russian poverty, on which Liz reflects that times haven’t changed all that much; specifically, the inability of the Royals to do something about it just seems to push them further out from reality and any sense of consequence — much like Alexandra’s merry letter exchanges with siblings on both sides of a catastrophic war — which again heightens that odd, light-headed sense of a calm before the storm.
Rasputin himself is portrayed, if not exactly with sympathy, then at least as a real person who will be murdered. He can still be a quite revolting charlatan and not deserve to die in the moment, as suggested (however naively) by Jo at several points. She does eventually contribute to his survival by swapping out poisoned food and drink for the safe kind, but that’s only to save others including Liz from becoming collateral damage, and it still more or less tallies with real events. (Go check Wikipedia.) Liz must bait a trap and stand by while it all happens. The Doctor has an opportunity to rescue him at the last minute and, in probably the book’s most poignant moment, holds his ground.
Elsewhere, the text is always ready (perhaps too ready?) to underline its thesis statement on the mad monk, at one point comparing him favourably to a character we’re implicitly on board with: “[Rasputin’s] determination suddenly reminded Jo vaguely of the Doctor’s pugnacious stand for his beliefs.” / “Do you have proof or are you just believing too much of what you read in the papers?” / “[Rasputin] no longer was the bear-like figure that held Russia in a fearful grip, but a passionate man who strayed out of his depth.” / “Rasputin may be a rather unsavoury man, but that’s all he is.” / “[Rasputin] might be the very incarnation of crime and vice, but he was still a man. He was still a flesh and blood creation of God’s, with all the rights to life and privileges that Felix would consider for any man.” / “[Liz] wished she could hope for Rasputin to survive since, seen like this, he was no monstrous ogre. He was just an aging hellraiser with a big mouth, who had picked too many fights over the years.” / “He isn’t the monster everybody says he is…” And so on. In short, to quote Zaphod Beeblebrox’s therapist: well, he’s just zis guy, you know?
As for the death itself, there is an element of black comedy about it, but probably no more so than when the event itself itself is described. Perhaps this is the reason for that final sobering moment with the Doctor, when two men shed tears on either side of the ice.
It’s not all historical context and calms before storms, of course. The Doctor gets into several hair-raising scrapes, gifting us another McIntee staple, the intense action sequence, at least two of which take place on moving trains. Liz, for all my complaints over the lack of contextual character work, makes the most of what will probably be her only TARDIS outing: at turns she takes a maternal approach to Jo, easily refutes Rasputin’s advances and — in another hair-raising moment — violently interrogates a man to tell her where the TARDIS is, even taking Jo by surprise. I liked her in this. Jo, for my money, loses out. It makes sense that this is a Liz adventure (since we’re skipping Hartnell’s wacky TARDIS and coming to Russia on purpose), but there’s nowhere in the series for that to go, so you’re stuck with the chirpier companion as well. Her main purpose seems to be (also) fending off Rasputin. However she does give us another perspective on the affair, that being the bluntness of “can we save him actually.” (The Doctor and Liz are quite patient about this.) Honestly it would be weird to write a novel about an impending murder and not vocalise that.
This is the closest McIntee has come for a while to writing pure history — with, of course, Doctor Who squeezed into the gaps. (That’s how he himself puts it in his introduction.) While I do love a historical, at times this one feels a little too weighted in favour of events just happening while we look on, but it generally avoids the McIntee pitfall of feeling like a lot of research detail for its own sake. It’s all done in favour of trying to make sense of something dreadful.
Also, now that I’ve waffled on about it, and despite some awkward frayed edges I feel a bit more positive about Liz-and-the-Doctor here. (Sorry, Jo.) How much of this is head-canon I don’t know, probably all of it is, but the implication seems to be that however little he vocalises it, the Doctor had not forgotten his friend, he wanted to share a happy event with her and the last sentence confirms that he succeeded. In due course Liz experiences enough hardship for it to make sense that she didn’t rush to do it again, but it’s great for her — and for our lasting impression of The Wages Of Sin, a not exactly happy read — that she got something positive out of it as well.
7/10
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