#21
Revolution Man
By Paul Leonard
Hoo boy. This one is nuts.
There are things about Revolution Man that reminded me of the New Adventures. (Which perhaps contributes to its somewhat divisive reviews.) It has bonkers ideas. It’s primarily about drugs. There’s violence, some of it moving in unexpected directions. And main characters act, or are forced to act in ways outside their nature. I think, deep down, it’s just trying to make statements about the characters and what they are about, and it’s using very eye-catching — perhaps questionable — methods to do that. I really liked it for the most part.
We begin in media res (something I enjoy as it cuts out all the faff) with the Doctor noticing temporal anomalies on Earth. Someone is carving huge “R” symbols on landmarks in 1967. Mucking about with timelines is bad, to say nothing of the suggestive power of someone casually defacing ancient pyramids just for a bit of graffiti. The Doctor, Sam and Fitz go to London hoping to learn more about the supposed “Revolution Man” responsible. They plug into the burgeoning counter-culture scene, meeting the somewhat revolutionary Jean-Pierre Rex (an idol of Sam’s) and an attractive waitress who catches Fitz’s eye. Before long they discover that a drug, Om-Tsor, is responsible for these incidents. It grants the user incredible astral power and it has already claimed hundreds of lives in collateral damage. The Doctor is desperate to investigate and sort it all out. Fitz, finding himself suddenly in a position of care with waitress Maddie, decides he’ll stick around, possibly for good. But even without his TARDIS friends he finds himself investigating Om-Tsor with Maddie.
There’s already a lot here to raise eyebrows. The novel sets out its stall with the amazing, horrifying power of Om-Tsor. Maddie derails a train full of people simply because she doesn’t understand what’s happening to her, so what would a genuinely malevolent user look like? The imagery is immediately hard to forget: a pyramid with a logo on it, guns hovering around shooting people, enormous astral projections stomping around the Himalayas or grabbing helicopters. It’s one of the most sock-you-in-the-jaw concepts we’ve had in these books, plus it’s distinct from the kind of mental powers we’ve already seen in Virgin books. (For the avoidance of doubt, “psi powers” warrant a mention here. +1 geek points.) Paul Leonard is never short of imagination but Revolution Man is him in widescreen and technicolour.
Go back a bit, though — what’s this about Fitz leaving? Characters going on sabbatical is practically a tradition at this point, with Ace and Sam having done it and both come back changed, but Fitz only just got here! This is clearly a point of contention with readers, but I think there’s some mileage in it. Fitz is not your typical Doctor Who companion: unlike Sam, he’s not here because he has a burning desire to go out there and, uh, be a Doctor Who companion. He was in a traumatic situation where his only relative died and now he’s wanted by the law. TARDIS travel sounded preferable to that and in any case, probably quite fun too. Whoever said it was a lifetime commitment? Faced with 1960s England again, a few years on from where he left and perhaps any consequences of his departure, is it inconceivable that he’d politely part ways? It’s not as if he’s yet formed a major attachment to the Doctor or Sam; his only adventure that we’ve been privy to made the point that he felt out of his depth and out of his element. I think the promise of new love and some stability makes as much sense as anything else for this guy the Doctor and Sam — not to mention, the readers — barely know.
All that said… he’s back on the Om-Tsor trail pretty much the next time we see him, which he must know is eventually going to lead back to the TARDIS. He’s happy enough with Maddie, and even a little conflicted about the decision to keep investigating, but all the same I wish there had been time for “domestic bliss” Fitz, or whatever normal life looked like for him for that little while. I don’t think anybody reading Revolution Man seriously thought he’d be gone for good, especially a third of the way through. (Who is he, Dodo?) It’s more likely that the device serves to underscore his commitment to joining the TARDIS crew.
Or does it? Later on Fitz’s investigation grows enormously dangerous — just as, thanks to Om-Tsor, he grows about fifty feet taller (!) — and in the wake of it he is spirited away to the Chinese military, brainwashed using the same drug that’s causing all the problems. He’s actively an antagonist towards the end of the book, and although he fights against it and wins, there isn’t time to flesh out his side of the story, what it was like losing his identity, whether — since we’re asking — he does actively want to see the universe. The final lines of the book suggest that he does, but as so often happens with Sam, putting the character out of his head means he’s not having that conversation for a chunk of the book. Taking him away from the TARDIS sets up the opportunity to examine the idea of going back to it but we’re only doing half the job if he doesn’t, y’know, examine it. Instead he is bundled back into the TARDIS after — eek — another traumatic situation.
Fitz is at least well written, capturing his weirdly theatrical persona and his otherwise down to earth wants and needs. He doesn’t feel like a gimmick character, which must so often be a temptation with born-in-print regulars. Leonard is equally adept at writing Sam, though of course he’s had more practice there.
After Blum & Orman I think he’s the writer most interested in developing Sam. Genocide, Dreamstone Moon and Revolution Man all put her activism in context, allowing her to see how other people approach it, each time with a slightly different level of maturity. In the post-Seeing I world we have a Sam who is more weathered, able to work with the Doctor without awkwardness, confident about popping to Rome on reconnaissance. On her travels she observes a younger activist, thinking her “a young, ill-informed anarchist with an almost insane idealism, not much intelligence, and no clear mission.” She dresses down her own idol, Jean-Pierre Rex, disagreeing with his heavy-handed methods, based on her own hard-won experience. (And her own Fitz-style sabbatical.) The sixties is a keystone of revolutionary politics but she’s not that impressed with it, being aware of “just how far the flower children had to go before they reached maturity. Most of them — she recalled again her parents’ generation — would never make it. On the other hand, the steps they had taken would make it possible for future generations to be better than they had been.”
Leonard isn’t painting Sam as a perfect paragon here — she’s grown and she’s good at what she does, but there’s more than a whiff of protesting too much about the failings in others. When she comes to have it out with Fitz concerning the story’s climax, her defence of the Doctor — “‘He’s a hero!’ Sam was shouting too, now. ‘And he never never never does anything wrong — you don’t understand!’” — sounds every bit as far-gone evangelical as the Revolution Man cult, suggesting a pedestal that can only come down. On the whole Revolution Man is a good bit of exercise for who and what Sam is, without suggesting that she’s truly finished growing as a person.
The dynamic with Fitz is also nurtured in a way that hadn’t happened yet. This is a critical aspect of a new companion — how do they fit in? — and although Leonard essentially dodges it again by giving him an out, for a time it is under the microscope. Sam sees his potential departure even before he does, and she understands the rationale behind it. All the same she hopes he will change his mind. She knows what TARDIS travel has done for her and she hopes that will also happen for Fitz. When she realises he is no longer himself, she is desperately keen to get him back. This perhaps lends weight to Leonard offering us a “join the TARDIS properly” story by the back door — not making it Fitz’s choice, making Sam want it. She reflects on Fitz’s embarrassing attempts to flirt with her, almost regretful in case that has spoiled his future in the TARDIS. In short, there’s good stuff in here, even though I feel like no author has yet nailed the three companions setup, or even really tried. We’re getting there.
Darting between the two companions and between crises is the Doctor, and it’s fair to say there’s a lot to unpack here. Some of it literally isn’t unpacked. I try not to be a nitpick guy these days, but is there any explanation for how Om-Tsor wreaks havoc in 1967 when in the “normal” run of things, it didn’t? If it’s simply a thing that happened until the Doctor stopped it happening then that would be part of established events, but it’s presented as an anomaly to be resolved. We know that the pyramid stuff is new. Yet there is no time travelling malefactor in Revolution Man and there are no aliens, just an alien drug that is somehow on Earth and is now part of a timeline where a dangerous idiot stole some of it for his crazy plan. It’s a bit chaotic, not necessarily by design.
On top of that, these events create absolute havoc for two straight years, including unnaturally instigated natural disasters, a world just short of nuclear war and — less important but just as visible — bloody great big letters drawn on the pyramids. Doesn’t any of that have consequences? It won’t if it’s all “established events”, but again, we seem to be in “anomaly” territory to begin with, and the novel’s cumulative mess seems an absurd thing to let stand. I was half expecting a reset button by the end (and the Doctor does mention “purging the vortex”) but no, we just go nuts and get out of there. The pace towards the end is so relentlessly manic that to be fair, the only solution seems to be to just stop.
If you can tear yourself away from the plot (which works quite well generally, just not at a few important junctures) then the Doctor is having quite an interesting time here. He really is frantic about all this, getting awkward about moving the TARDIS and being unsure about telling Fitz what’s going on (this, too, feels like an under-clarified point), but he’s still buzzing with Doctorliness, particularly when he races after a woman pronounced dead and fixes her up not with magic, but simply better medicine than they had in 1967. He gives Fitz a police box calling card for emergencies (which is a great idea we’ll either see again or never mention again), perhaps suggesting he didn’t really think Fitz was gone for good. He and Sam are a well-oiled machine with their own shorthand and backup plans; he sends her on errands, not unlike his more manipulative predecessor. And in the end… well. A thing happens, which if you’ve read the book you’ll have been waiting for.
It’s probably the Revolution Man talking point if there is one, so here we go: the real Revolution Man has been hidden through most of the novel (the scene where an Om-Tsor user appears to kill him during a concert, who did that? Pass) and he has a grand, yet harebrained scheme to unite the world with the drug. Or destroy it. A concert is hastily arranged at Wembley stadium and this well-travelled Om-Tsor user goes for broke. He wants power. He wants the TARDIS, now that he has learned about it from Maddie. A still partially brainwashed Fitz panics and shoots him — only this doesn’t entirely work, and things are only getting worse, so the Doctor picks up the gun and shoots the man dead. It’s the The Doctor Shoots Someone Dead novel.
To be clear: I think the book puts him in an impossible situation. Fitz’s actions (themselves arguably not Fitz’s fault) have caused a dangerous Om-Tsor user to pretty well go nuclear, which is having an immediate effect on the TARDIS that might rip apart the world. The man is dying anyway but he will make everything worse before he goes. And look, it’s not as if the Doctor enjoys it, or jumps straight to that as a solution. It’s just an unusual response to an unusual situation. There is context for it.
That said, it bumps us up against a recurring problem with Revolution Man: it’s too short. Much like Beltempest, this is a novel containing enormous, almost cartoonish chaos that nonetheless comes in 30 pages below the average for BBC Books. Why? There isn’t time for the Doctor to reckon with what has happened, and also therefore — conveniently for the action itself — there isn’t time for him to think of anything else. I don’t have a problem with the Doctor doing this if it makes sense in context. Hell, Sam has killed people, and/or inadvertently caused their deaths, and she’s only learned from it. Characters should be allowed to be imperfect, Sam’s allowed, why not the Doctor. But… if you skimp on the meaning of a thing then it’s like writing a huge life change into a short story. What’s the point if we’re not sticking around to hear more about it? Sam was haunted by the death of a Tractite. Do we need to wait for other authors to do the same for the Doctor?
Revolution Man gives you plenty to think about — some of it in a head-scratchy, hang onnn sort of way. It pushes its characters to interesting extremes using huge, colourful, often beautifully written set-pieces — but it’s in such a hurry that it doesn’t put everything away afterwards. This has the knock-on effect however of making it a deliriously readable and exciting story. It’s weird. It’s a bit messy. But I like it.
7/10
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