#33
Coldheart
By Trevor Baxendale
The last time we saw Trevor Baxendale he was injecting some very trad (though still quite effective) elements into the EDAs. The series had, to be fair, settled into quite a trad pattern by then, all “the Doctor and Sam visit a colony world” this and “ancient doomsday device” that.
Now things have changed. Sam’s gone, the gang’s different, they’re on the run in a TARDIS that is also one of them, and in the previous adventure said TARDIS was so upset she killed a guy. What a strange new world Baxendale has stepped into! But for all the difference it makes we might as well still be in the Sam era, because with a few honourable exceptions Coldheart is just another EDA.
That’s not always a bad thing. Baxendale’s The Janus Conjunction didn’t reinvent the wheel, but it did its thing sufficiently well that several later books felt like they were treading on its toes. And Coldheart finds some of the same things interesting: once again we have a largely inhospitable planet that’s killing its people, there’s a schism between two groups which means one of them is visibly decaying to death, and the leader of the mutants wants wholesale destruction for everybody out of sheer spite. Missing this time is a sense of intergalactic doom, with only the people living on the desert planet Eskon in immediate danger. That’s no problem though, as long as they’re quite compelling and/or sympathetic.
So, yeah, about that.
What I will say is that Baxendale once again sells the physical details of his world very well. From the underground ice caves to the blistering heat on the surface (already a memorable juxtaposition there) we soon discover vast caterpillar-like “sand-cars” that work like wagon trains. Then there are the native Eskonians who look a bit like camels, and their city Baktan which is a giant hollowed-out rock. Water is at a premium on this world so it’s the basis of their economy, itself a free albeit rationed resource that you can sell on in other forms once you have it. Eskon and its society are very easy to picture. Mind you, I read most of this during a heatwave, which added a certain horrible verisimilitude. (Yuck. Eff off, heatwave.)
The Eskonians have a few problems besides the heat however, which recently has increased causing their previously not-that-bad climate to worsen. (Gee, what must that be like?) Their society looks down on women, frequently denying them identity or even speech. Then there are the “slimers,” a subset of society with an unexplained degenerative disease; they are literally losing their shape and when they die, an event somewhat unfortunately called “the Squirming,” they dissolve into a pool of slithering leeches. Needless to say, the slimers have been ostracised, but rather than politely go out into the desert and die they’ve blockaded Baktan, causing even more friction with the non-infected Eskonians who hate them as their presence has halted trade between Baktan and neighbouring cities. What few aliens come to their city tend to take advantage of their desperation.
It’s an interesting and heated dynamic. There’s an obvious question of who are the real monsters here, with the less unpleasant-looking Eskonians behaving inhumanely towards the more mutant-looking slimers who live in squalor. Baxendale complicates this however by making the slimers unlikeable as well: they’re justifiably angry about their situation, but their leader Revan is just another fanatical nutjob who delights in arranging murder and havoc. If any of his lieutenants feel differently, they’re awfully quiet about it.
The slimers even reject Ckeho (rhymes with “keyhole”, which we are told and then I thought of it every time I read his name) because he is the son of an Eskonian elder. That elder also rejected him, however, locking him in his bedroom because his position prevents him from having kids and a slimer in the family would bring great shame. When Fitz releases Ckeho his first impulse is to strangle his rescuer. In the end however, Ckeho is our token likeable slimer.
The non-slimer Eskonians don’t have such good representation. There’s Brevan, an ice-miner who meets the Doctor and co. early in the story and then lingers beigely in the background. Not memorable, but at least he isn’t outwardly horrible. Two of the ruling Forum members, Krumm and Anavolus, seem alternately harmless and perhaps even kind, but they’re still complicit in the living conditions of slimers and the mistreatment of women, as well as the political cover-up surrounding Tor Grymna. (Ckeho’s shamefaced father.) Grymna is a dubious and troubled figure, whom we’re obviously supposed to hate because of his treatment of Ckeho, but he wobbles back and forth in a way that suggests character growth. I say “suggests” because in his final scene he’s definitely a baddie again, even getting dispatched with a one-liner. Presumably we’re not meant to weep.
There’s nothing wrong with writing about a society with problems. It would be boring if they didn’t have any! But Coldheart isn’t here to fix anything. (A fact it’s well aware of, with Fitz noting “They’ve still got problems here, Doctor. Big problems” after it all wraps up.) The treatment of the slimers reverses, to the paltry extent of allowing Ckeho to represent them on the Forum, and only because the Doctor and co. find a scientific basis for what’s happened to them which proves that they are blameless. The Eskonians don’t use empathy to get there, they just get more information.
The subjugation of women is even worse. There’s only one woman in the story apart from Compassion; she only gets one line and her death isn’t used as a direct motivator for change. It’s still up to Fitz to make the case — off screen! — that maybe they ought to stop being so awful to women like her. This is also right at the end, and there’s no Ckeho-like rep in the Forum, so good luck with that, I guess.
If you cram all of your societal change into the epilogue then what is the rest of the story about, and who are we rooting for in the meantime? The Doctor is “not very impressed with a lot of things about these people” and Fitz more than once expresses the view that he could take or leave everyone here (“As far as I’m concerned, you can all bloody well starve to death, dry up and blow away or mutate into who cares what. To hell with the lot of you”) and it’s hard to disagree with either of them. All that’s left when you take out emotional progress is a load of plot and action, most of which we’ve either heard before or just plain isn’t going to set the world alight.
Coldheart does a pretty good job of upping the stakes at least, especially near the end with the delirious one-two punch of “your people are all going to turn into slimers and die out” BUT ALSO “the slimers exist because of a giant terrifying alien worm lurking underground” BUT ALSO “Revan’s actions will cause tectonic disasters that will destroy your city” BUT ALSO “the big worm had babies and they’re gonna eat everybody before any of that even happens.” I actually laughed (not entirely derisively) when Fitz, then the Doctor, then Compassion all walked into a dramatic summation to contribute one bombshell each, although obviously we are kind of playing silly buggers at this point. You reach a point when you genuinely think, wow, they’re screwed! Which at least adds a certain excitement to the final act.
That sense of peril is shared by the main trio, who are continuing their randomised flight from the Time Lords. I was cautiously optimistic about the randomiser (hold that thought) because although it takes away Compassion’s agency as a TARDIS it can still land them in interesting places. To the device’s credit, it means that they can’t rely on Compassion to spirit them away from danger, as she won’t be able to control her landing. Given that Compassion is otherwise invincible and could, in theory, shield the Doctor and Fitz from all harm, anything we can do to introduce an element of danger is a good thing.
It’s hard not to be a little sceptical about where this new TARDIS will take them, however, based on current evidence. They’re not really achieving anything with their random hops since “go somewhere the Time Lords aren’t” is the single stated goal at this point. What does progress even look like in this arc? Not a string of Coldhearts, surely. I hope some sort of progress is made soon. Even The Chase had the Doctor working on an anti-Dalek weapon between landings.
Coldheart is not, as you might have guessed, very big on the arc stuff. (Inasmuch as there can be arc stuff once you land and there are definitely no Time Lords about.) Some effort is made to ask questions about Compassion in a way that is in conversation with the previous book. There’s the curious development about the randomiser. (You can release that thought you were holding.) “She hadn’t liked the idea at first. It still rankled … But she had found that travelling through the vortex, feeling the passage of space-time around her and through her, was a glory in itself. She didn’t actually care much about destinations. It was the journeying she craved.”
I wouldn’t call this a complete back-pedal, she’s entitled to change her mind after all and the thrill of travel probably is a big factor… but it’s still rather abrupt after the previous novel had her, not to go on about it, killing or attempting to kill people over it. For good measure she considers abandoning her fellow travellers (“What was to stop her just leaving?”), something the Doctor appears to sense during the final crisis. This stuff is interesting, although to be honest if Compassion was still willing to stick with these guys after The Fall Of Yquatine then I don’t see why she’d wobble about it now.
There’s a bit more wobbling with Compassion apparently tuning into the Doctor’s telepathy and mourning her inability to save a man from a great fall, which of course she survives. (Not to get all “I hope someone was fired for that blunder” but could she not have popped him safely indoors before they hit the ground?) Both things suggest an increasing sense of empathy, which would be an ironic character shift after she became less and less personified before. This is somewhat at odds with the way Compassion is actually written, however, which is robotic at times. I know she’s a machine of great power now and she was specifically never personable, but having her rattle off lines like “I’m still not certain how my own position in the space-time continuum is defined. As a temporally annexed life-form I am irrevocably linked to the space-time vortex too” brings to mind a Star Trek science officer, not the surly cyborg from Yquatine. I guess ongoing characters + rotating writers is a lucky dip.
There’s some interesting stuff around the Doctor, although Baxendale doesn’t fully integrate it into the story. We have a moment where Fitz, for some reason, intuits that “the Doctor was [possibly] trying to distract himself … from the sudden loss of his TARDIS.” I would have no problem at all with that: if anything, we’ve been severely undersold the impact of that event since (and during) The Shadows Of Avalon. But there’s not much actual evidence of it here, and it doesn’t come up again. Then we have Compassion observing (so it’s external, again) that “there was something nagging at her subconscious. Something about the Doctor’s whole demeanour.”
Possibly this is the same “something” that allows the Doctor to cheerfully orchestrate Grymna’s death, in a way that will also resolve the planet’s giant worm problems. The Doctor is generally anti-killing, although it would be unhelpful to storytelling to never consider going there; this time, however, he seems a bit blasé about it. Is this what Compassion was talking about? Are we Doing A Thing? Could we be hinting at the Doctor’s still-percolating time bomb disease from Interference? No idea. But it’s among his more notable moments in an otherwise pretty standard performance, all “I like meeting new people!” and “Wow, things!”
Shockingly, Fitz is not left to fend for himself this week, or not to the extent where he has to consider a new lifestyle. He has a likeable enough dynamic with Ckeho (once they’re past the whole “sorry I strangled you” business) and he manages to find and get attached to the only woman in the book, because of course he does. I’m not sure if we’re meant to infer more than just companionship here — Compassion seems to raise an eyebrow when she interrupts them indoors — but I hope not, since her mute slave status would render a relationship with a passing white saviour a little on the iffy side. Fitz’s capacity for fancying is so far beyond parody at this point, but it does at least speak to empathy of a sort. The Doctor’s suggestion that Fitz stay behind and mediate is, however, laughable. (Anyway, isn’t he still planning to go and live with Filippa some day? Is he going on tour?)
Fitz is not especially well written when it comes to dialogue, steering clear of bad language in a way that recalls some of Ace’s less natural moments; see “I don’t give a cuss about him or anyone else here” and “What in the name of muck happened to you?” Dialogue isn’t really the book’s strong-point, however, often gravitating towards hoary SF/fantasy-speak like “‘Revan! Manag! Come quick! Ibres is ill!’ ‘Is it the Squirming, Hefeg?’” (There’s a lot of “good morrow, character A” followed by “indeed so, character B”, which is a pet hate of mine. People know who they’re speaking to! You can make this apparent to others by making them sound different!) There’s the odd good bit of prose, such as “Dawn struck like an ironmonger’s hammer,” but the book mostly just trundles along between shouty bits — to be fair, often at quite a lick.
Coldheart is meat and potatoes stuff. The characters arrive, there’s a problem to resolve, action, escalation, sigh of relief, wheezing groaning sound. Some of the visual ideas are well established — none of the nitty-gritty ones fare that well. There’s perhaps a subtext here about empathy (which snuck into my review more than I intended), with a generally unlikeable group challenging the notion of who you should care about, an idea that maybe includes Compassion as well? Your guess is as good as mine. Really though it’s a sharp reminder of how quickly an interesting arc can level out; like Compassion, you’ll wonder if there’s any compelling reason not to just leave.
5/10
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