#20
Deep Blue
By Mark Morris
Here’s another one I read earlier! And for once I have quite a clear memory of it. One day my family went out in the car to a pub dinner, barely-teenaged me reading all the while. Some time after we arrived I realised I’d been so engrossed in Deep Blue that I’d travelled there in slippers.
Unlike Demontage, which to be fair I still like a bunch, I think Deep Blue has retained most of its appeal after all these years. It is, to be clear, an extremely trad book. We’re talking UNIT soldiers vs marauding aliens here; Sgt Benton at one point says “Sorry, sir. It’s just that… well, there’s a monster on the beach, sir,” which is the sort of dialogue you can 100% imagine hearing in the Pertwee era. Push boundaries this book certainly does not, but there is a market for trad-as-all-heck Doctor Who and Deep Blue goes after it like a laser-guided missile.
Seeking a bit of rest and relaxation after the events of Warriors Of The Deep, the Fifth Doctor brings Tegan and Turlough to Tayborough Sands in the 1970s. The Doctor has barely stepped out of the TARDIS when he gets a telepathic sense that something is amiss. He doesn’t let on to his companions right away, genuinely hoping that they’ll have a nice time while he sneaks off to investigate. Unfortunately this secrecy is enough to rile Tegan — it rarely takes much, let’s face it — who nonetheless manages to have a fairly nice time with a local policeman. Unbeknownst to any of them, Mike Yates is already on the scene investigating on behalf of UNIT.
And there is plenty to investigate. Something recently arrived from another world, and not coincidentally there have been strange mutant fish sighted, as well as an unexplained clear jelly all over the beaches. More importantly there have been savage attacks by seemingly unconnected people. Something is affecting the local populace and it is escalating fast.
If you’ve read The Bodysnatchers then the level of violence in this will not be a surprise. I already had done by the time Deep Blue came out and to me it was practically a selling point. (I guess young fans like the idea of Doctor Who minus the watershed.) Within a few pages of Deep Blue a man has had his fingers bitten off; within 30 pages he and his entire crew are dead. Later we meet a man nursing seriously disturbed serial killer fantasies (with disturbing crimes already part of his repertoire) and the body count begins to rise.
It’s Mark Morris rubbing his hands with glee again, no question, but there are examples of restraint. The monstrous rampage alluded to by Benton happens off-screen, as does the slaughter of the boat crew. The violence tends to be nasty but not protracted. Various mutant hybrids are offed with clinical headshots like we’re watching a zombie movie. I doubt any of this will transform Deep Blue into a great read if you strongly dislike this kind of violence, but I like to think it shows growth.
At the root of the violence are the Xaranti: apparently the nemeses of the Zygons, they are a parasitic species who steal technology and transform other species to swell their ranks. Morris is well aware of existing copyrights in this area, having the Doctor note that “it’s what the Cybermen do, and the Wirrrn.” In defence of the inevitable Here We Go Again accusations, then: the Xaranti have a fairly novel way of going about this, and Morris is able to tap into a much more direct vein of body horror than the Wirrrn were afforded in Placebo Effect. The whole process is so specifically tied to senseless violence that the Xaranti inevitably take on a life of their own — albeit not a terribly interesting one, because there really isn’t much to them beyond their mission statement. There’s no singular being behind all of this, or not for almost the entire novel, and there’s no complicated plan to unpick besides the previously stated mission of the Xaranti. It’s just a case of stopping it. Still, that invasion method really is quite clever, and it makes for a satisfying penny drop moment in the last act.
There’s not a lot of character work here, which perhaps ought not to be a surprise — you know right away that you’re in for a monster mash, and those rarely afforded any acting challenges on screen. Nevertheless Morris builds in a few little nuggets.
Mike Yates is between Pertwee stories here, recovering from The Green Death but not yet an ideological traitor in Invasion Of The Dinosaurs. There are quiet hints that the Doctor wants to make him feel better about all that, though of course he can’t say anything about it. There’s a moment where Mike reconsiders the path of UNIT and whether it’s the right thing to do, which seems like foreshadowing.
The Brigadier is here (I’d entirely forgotten this), allowing Turlough a few whiffs of awkwardness at meeting his future teacher. The Brig, along with most of UNIT, suffers a malevolent possession in Deep Blue which really ought to cause as much of a problem for them as Yates had in The Green Death, but mercifully they all forget about it in the end. While it’s happening, anyway, the Brigadier’s turn against humanity is an interesting one, which speaks to his general stubbornness — something the Doctor has occasional cause to lament. (NB: it’s adorable that Benton is the last Xaranti hold-out. What a good boy he is.)
When it comes to the regulars, Turlough gets the least to do. He’s accused of cowardice by Tegan, and pretty much leans into that as the crisis deepens; at one point the Doctor endangers him and fails to apologise sufficiently so that Turlough starts to see Tegan’s problem, which is quite a fun, if nasty way to do that. The Fifth Doctor puts in a good showing, very much in his less forgiving Season 21 mode: he retains his whimsy but isn’t one to be bossed about, at one point negotiating his release into danger by putting a gun to his own head. (It makes sense in context.) He has a pretty solid stand-off against the Xaranti, delivering this natty ultimatum: “I’m here to offer you the chance to withdraw the infection you’ve set in motion on this planet and leave before I get cross. Rather sporting of me, I think you’ll agree.” I’m often unimpressed by this incarnation of the Doctor, but I find he strikes a proactive balance in this one between his usual fallibility and his characteristic, almost human impatience.
Tegan has the most to do, so in other words she suffers the most. After meeting some abnormally violent youths she is rescued by a young police officer and they take a liking to each other. Before long they’ve been on a date and she flirts with the idea of staying with him — a very quick turnaround, I know, but as with other Who flash-in-the-pan romances like Ace and Robin in Nightshade, I think this kind of lifestyle encourages it. You can already guess what sort of obstacles might prevent this in Deep Blue (though to be fair, Tegan had already decided not to stay), and as well as losing him in a traumatic fashion she must also face a possible transformation into a Xaranti herself. Morris is no continuity slouch, so he draws a parallel here with the Mara; Tegan is specifically afraid of being turned into something against her will again, which is a good use of such a plot device. It’s arguably a cop-out that she (along with the other converts) loses her memory of these events, and therefore of her holiday romance and ensuing trauma, but PDAs and Missing Adventures will inevitably be stuck in this cul de sac if they want anything significant to happen to anybody between serials. Maybe there’s a better solution out there. For now it’s perhaps better that we have it and forget about it than that we don’t bother at all.
There’s a reasonably stacked guest cast, most of whom go through something at least memorably unpleasant here, but they do tend to fade into the background. I think there’s an argument to be made that there are too many names floating about in Deep Blue, probably in aid of killing them off. (Which isn’t much of an endorsement, I know.) Charlotte, a young holidaymaker with problems of her own even before the Xaranti turn up, fares the best.
The seaside setting doesn’t afford Morris as many prose opportunities as Victorian London in The Bodysnatchers, but he heightens the body horror and violence wherever possible with visceral little observations, like a ship full of fish being a “slimy carpet.” (The image of little black quills spouting on people’s skin has also stuck with me over the years.) The prose is good enough that I wish we’d got a few more Who novels out of Mark Morris, but I would understand a resistance to that if they were all going to follow such a traditional path. Granted, his books are far bloodier than anything you’d get on television, so in a sense they’re hardly trad — but they are nevertheless an obvious extrapolation of “Doctor Who in print”, viz “all the scary nastiness on screen but in more lurid detail.” In truth books like Deep Blue don’t aim much higher than Target novelisations for slightly older readers, but is that automatically a bad thing when (as in this case) there’s absolutely no fat on it, and it is absolutely clear about the kind of story it’s telling? (For better or worse, depending on the reader.) Deep Blue does This Sort Of Thing well, in other words, and while I wouldn’t want This Sort Of Thing to come along every week, that’s the bar I’d want authors to clear when we do get it.
7/10
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