#39
Bunker Soldiers
By Martin Day
Following The King Of Terror we’re now seeing the other side of the Topping/Day solo divide. That’s not entirely fair of course, since Day’s first novel (The Menagerie) was all his own work, but he’s co-written a few things since then and has presumably learned a lot.
It’s a funny old bibliography. I wasn’t very impressed by The Menagerie, an imaginative but rough-around-the-edges first novel, and his co-written Bernice Summerfield book (Another Girl, Another Planet) was some of that range’s least distinct work. But his two PDAs with Topping bear thinking about: The Devil Goblins Of Neptune and The Hollow Men are both violent yet interesting exercises, each with its own voice. All of this brings us to Bunker Soldiers, a book that I wasn’t excited about due to that previous uneven track record but which I can now say is the best thing Day has written.
It’s a pseudo-historical about the Mongol invasion of Kiev [sic] in 1240, adding an alien menace into the mix — but keeping the emphasis on the historical elements. Pseudo-historicals became the default way for Doctor Who to visit the past not long after Hartnell exited the series; I’ve always found them slightly disappointing, as they feel like a concession to impatient viewers that won’t recognise it as Doctor Who unless there’s a bug-eyed monster somewhere. Bunker Soldiers does indeed have an extra-terrestrial lurking about, but it’s there to reflect the nightmares going on in real life. In all honesty the book could probably still work as a pure historical, but I’m not unhappy with what we got instead.
You’ll notice there are no continuity links on the back cover. (This appears to be a change to the PDAs as a whole, no doubt to tone down the fanwank. I’ll bear it in mind the next time we get a Quantum Archangel.) Day is nevertheless specific about what period of the show he’s using: this isn’t set long after The Massacre Of St. Bartholomew’s Eve, what with Steven “remembering our earlier argument after our escape from Paris … the debate had never really ended, and I didn’t want the Doctor to think that the passing of time meant I now agreed with him.” That specific argument has cropped up in the PDAs before, with Salvation set directly in its aftermath, but Bunker Soldiers finds more to say on the subject.
At first things are very clear cut. You know how the Doctor feels about changing history from watching The Aztecs, or more nuanced explorations such as The Witch Hunters. He boils it down succinctly here: “‘We must do something.’ ‘We must do absolutely nothing!’” Awful as it is, the Mongols are going to invade and the Russians [sic] are going to be massacred. Typically, the Doctor and co are separated from the TARDIS, barred from re-entry by a desperate governor who knows a miracle when he sees one and won’t pass up another. The Doctor digs his heels in and refuses to share his secrets, which right away gives the novel a doomy atmosphere: the only alternative to helping is simply waiting to die together.
But there’s another problem. One of Kiev’s advisers, Yehven, has unleashed a secret weapon in the city’s catacombs, a “dark angel” that can assume different guises and kills with ease. He hopes to turn it on the Mongols. (He is apparently blithe about its initial target practice in Kiev.) The Doctor cannot let an already dangerous army get their hands on an alien weapon.
Suddenly the “not one line” guard rails aren’t good enough: to do nothing might be what changes history. The urge to keep time on track is still the important thing, but the addition of a sci-fi problem changes the Doctor’s entire approach. All of a sudden the Doctor has some justification for trying to reason with the Mongols and avert the invasion altogether — after all, what’s the greater crisis? Kiev getting an easier ride or the Mongols getting a super weapon? The Doctor’s usual certainties erode even further as the novel progresses and things get nastier, giving him a more casual attitude towards sharing future information. Why worry about it when most of these people aren’t going to make it?
The story often challenges preconceived notions. Perhaps the biggest one is the Mongol threat. They are perceived as demons and monsters by the Russians. Day doesn’t suggest that this is outright wrong, indeed he frequently demonstrates their scant regard for human life. They execute all but two of the Doctor’s negotiating party, and the last we see of Mykola — a previously treacherous man whom the Doctor has come to respect, so another example of preconceptions challenged — is the sound of Batu Khan having him tortured, presumably to death.
We are given a florid account of what Mongol invasion means to the conquered people, which includes the drastic reduction of their numbers — but then, only if they don’t surrender, and what happens to them after invasion is more or less normal society, perhaps it’s even improved. They have culture and they prize comforts. Their envoys are often captured men, and likeable ones at that; when two of them are rashly executed by the governor of Kiev there’s no doubt in the reader’s mind that this is a gross tragedy. When the Doctor (spoiler?) stands with the reigning warlords overlooking a mostly dead Kiev, he notes that “the wind tugged at the Mongols’ beards and hair and, perhaps, irritated their eyes. Only that could explain their tearful gaze as they, too, looked over the city.” They believe in what they’re doing, up to and including atrocities, but they can also be more than that.
The same is true of the conquered. Yehven is a slippery vizier in the grand tradition of Tlotoxl in The Aztecs: he is generally disliked and has designs of power, and of course he makes enemies of the TARDIS crew. He’s also busy trying to get rid of Isaac, an impassioned Jew looking to translate ancient texts. Yehven eventually finds himself in power, but only at a point when everything’s gone horribly wrong; he opines that “whatever I have done in the past, the pain I have caused — it has been with a greater purpose in mind,” and then in a less genial moment, “what do I govern? A terrified city, riddled with pestilence and soon to be attacked by a great army. This is not what I had in mind!” There’s a fantastic motif around doors, first having him lock Steven in a room with the alien to die, then later locking a number of people out so that he can face danger instead. Sadly, Yehven isn’t quite done twisting and turning at this point, as he was actually attempting to use these people as bait for a Mongol trap. Somewhere underneath all that, however, is a broken family man who means well for his people and his faith.
The rest of them are mostly virtuous, some committing terrible actions for what they thought were the right reasons. Mykola frames Steven for murder to throw suspicion away from the alien; Yehven orders a guard to kill Isaac and destroy his work; Steven meets Olexander, an old man as instantly loveable as Binro the Heretic, but he’s revealed to have been lead astray, much good it does him. Then we have the governor, Dmitri: a good man who seems uncommonly able (for a character of this archetype) to believe the time travellers and support their suggestions — that is, until he loses his mind and instigates a strategy that will doom Kiev. We leave the door open for possible alien influence on Dmitri, plus there’s a cholera outbreak that might be affecting his wits. Nonetheless the possibility remains that a good man under impossible pressure can do monstrous things. In the end he is pitied, but we can’t truly understand his actions. Perhaps he can’t either.
It’s debatable whether you needed an alien threat in amongst all that, but Day makes a good selection all the same. The nameless creature/soldier/machine is a shape changer with a few hallmarks of vampirism, plus the habits of a succubus and/or incubus. It feels suitably superstitious that it could take part in these events without anyone needing to guess what planet it came from, which helps bolster the “historical” part of pseudo-historical. Day’s descriptions are often murky, but that feels deliberate: when it hasn’t settled on a shape people simply don’t know what the hell they’re looking at. The creature’s lack of personality could have made it boring, but Day manages to land on unfathomable and creepy instead, particularly when it plies its trade and the prose gets to work: “As her husband brought his head downwards, his mouth was full of needles.” Ultimately the whole concept of a creature that could be anyone is an inspired one for a story about people that contain dark, unpleasant multitudes.
You would hope that the recurring characters bear examination too, and happily that’s the case. We’ve already gone over the Doctor’s thought processes, and how they challenge his normal attitudes, but Day makes a point of letting the characters sit with what’s happened at the end: despite everything the Doctor feels more resolute about history’s certain course, he’s just had to accept that his involvement might be necessary sometimes. The Doctor is a fierce presence in Bunker Soldiers, quietly pruned of any funny Billy fluffs; he relies on his past experience with Kublai Khan to talk to his ancestor and he does so fearlessly. When the time comes to be with the doomed people of Kiev, any airs and graces have gone and he can be frank with them. When the Mongols try to stop him working against the alien he finds a way to outfox them, and when it’s all over he can somewhat see eye to eye with them. It’s a great reading of the character.
It is though, to a significant event, Steven’s book; he is afforded chapters in first person, and it’s Steven who has to shoulder much of the story. It’s the force of Steven’s personality, not just the Doctor’s, that wins Dmitri around. (Although we must also credit Day for simply not being so dull as to do the usual “imperious type locks up the time travellers so we can squeeze out another episode” structure — well, not beyond a certain point anyway.) Steven has to do most of the legwork when it comes to the alien and his bond with Isaac is a large part of why the travellers are (relatively) so well thought of here. He still never dials down that incredulity that makes the character so dynamic, not shying away from telling Yehven what he thinks of him (and, well, to just get out) despite him trying to offer reassurance in return. Steven, like us, cannot truly see the Doctor’s point of view of history being inevitable and many of its people being uniquely “intimate with death”; if he’s not at last in agreement with the Doctor’s rebuke at the end of Massacre, though, he’s at least accepting of it.
If Bunker Soldiers has a bum note it’s probably Dodo, but not because she’s poorly written. Day lets her off the leash when we see her, she is fiercely and almost ferally Dodo in this. She refuses to “posh up” in a historical setting and says things like this to a love-struck girl: “It all makes sense now. I noticed you staring at him the other day. I thought he had his flies undone or something.” She also joins Steven in tearing strips off Yehven, utterly undaunted in supporting his long-suffering daughter Lesia. The issue is that there isn’t much for her to do — I suspect because Day wanted to write about this Doctor and Steven, specifically after the Massacre, and Dodo comes with that package deal. At least we can count this as a novel in which something personally horrible doesn’t happen to Dodo (murder, STD and sexual assault so far), but then again Day does make it so that maybe she was indirectly responsible for the Black Death? So um, yeah, that is going on the list actually.
It’s worth acknowledging the depth of history here, which is rich enough to involve you even if you didn’t know anything about it. Some of it is both creditably real and genuinely shocking, particularly the bit about the church roof. I think I’m right in saying though that Dmitri’s plan, which Dodo thinks she may have inspired, did not really happen? Which seems at least a little bit tasteless as real people are involved. (On the plus side, if that is the case then that rather argues that Dodo didn’t affect the plague. Every cloud!)
There are other things to like. Bunker Soldiers is at the stronger end of prose for a Doctor Who book, Day perhaps being spurred on by the historical setting and some of those acclaimed Hartnell stories. It starts in media res, which often makes things more exciting. The format is interesting too, juggling Steven’s first person narrative, the rest of it in third and interludes from the alien’s point of view that don’t make sense until you’re near the end. (Potentially irritating, but this had the effect of keeping me intrigued.) Ultimately it just felt like a strong argument for going back to the (mostly) historical well: the past is full of stories and also attitudes, including ones from established characters, which still have room to move. It’s all worth exploring.
8/10
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