#44
Vanishing Point
By Stephen Cole
Now that we’ve all settled into the new normal for the EDAs we can finally get down to some good old fashioned Doctor Who stories. So naturally ex-range editor Stephen Cole rocks up with: what if God was real and he lives over there?
There are lots of big questions in Vanishing Point which we’ll get to, but first and foremost it seems to be a meat and potatoes (not meant as derogatory) challenge for the new regulars, something to test their mettle. They arrive on an unnamed planet where the people are putting up with, in no particular order: random terror attacks, random kidnappings and killings, a eugenics-based society that won’t allow genetic deviation, an office-based clergy who have all the answers but are frustratingly selective about their caseloads, a shadowy extra level to the clergy and a benevolent god that will vaporise you regardless if you approach his house. On top of all that our heroes must reunite with Fitz after he falls off a cliff, while also protecting Etty, a woman they met during one of those attempted kidnappings, plus her barn full of genetically imperfect kids. Lots to do then; action and incident galore.
There’s a breathlessness to Vanishing Point that keeps up the pace, assisted by Cole’s usual short chapters and a clear grasp of how it all looks. The ever-present jeopardy also helps reinforce the tenets of the characters. The Doctor for example is full of his usual fun and ebullience. (On arriving he notices that everyone looks human, which nicely underscores how long he’s been on Earth: “How dull. I’ve seen so many people lately. You don’t have any really good monsters around here, I suppose, do you?”) But he’s also forced to deal with violence, as the people he’s up against really aren’t open to anything else.
During the initial scrap over Etty he doesn’t hesitate to put a hand to someone’s throat and say “Go back to wherever you came from. You understand? Whatever you were meant to do here, you’ve failed.” Later, seeking information from a henchman, he says “Tell you what, if you do tell me I shan’t break your arms and legs. How does that sound?”, before banging his head against a door. He still shies away from guns, at one point trying to talk Anji out of using one, at another considering it for a second and then just throwing the thing like a rock, but he has no qualms about using force if needed. Violence has always been a messy point of contention for the Doctor, but Vanishing Point seems to find the right balance for an Eighth Doctor a) without all his memories, perhaps also without his usual checks and balances, b) with experiences such as Father Time behind him and c) still fundamentally the Doctor.
It’s also a strong outing for Anji, highlighting and challenging some of her personality traits. A world with an apparently resident god is automatically going to challenge her worldview, and this leads to some spirited debates with the Doctor, who takes the view that god in this instance is really just another word for what these people are experiencing — and this might be a shared experience with humanity while we’re at it. Anji’s knee-jerk atheism is perhaps something for her to work on, the better to understand cultures other than her own, and her own as well. The local obsession with death also leads her to remember Dave; she had been “taking it for granted they’d be growing old together.” It feels organic enough to bring him up in this way, without also betraying the sense of closure she got in EarthWorld. As in that book, we’ll see where they go with it.
There’s also lots of reinforcement of Anji as a TARDIS crew member, so she gets assigned tasks like looking after Etty, which quickly highlights the personality gap between her and the Doctor. (He wins people over better. “The Doctor could refresh certain parts other aliens couldn’t reach.”) Those spiritual debates also help cement the dynamic between Anji and the Doctor — the sceptic and the open-minded believer. She’s properly invested in Fitz’s safety, and (often for that reason) she mucks in when it comes to fighting off villainous forces. There are callbacks to her self-defence classes; it’s just a shame that these seem to amount to “kick him in the nards,” although this is admittedly effective. (Who taught the class, Bobby Hill?)
Fitz is the runner up for character development. It’s still a pretty good story for him, throwing him into his usual mildly farcical chaos as he is recruited by a strangely anonymous brute squad, then brainwashed, only it doesn’t take (presumably) because of his Swiss cheese brain. He gets thoroughly wounded, breaking his ankle and getting shot in the (presumably same?) leg, but as he’s a long-suffering comic relief guy he still has to put in a load of work afterwards. And, Fitz being Fitz, he manages to contrive a love interest, at least as far as sleeping with someone. I’m never sure if this sort of thing is an essential part of the character or if it’s just smirking writers playing “tick the box,” and it sits at a bit of a funny angle in Vanishing Point where his amour is a very sheltered young woman with physical abnormalities who just wants to grow up a bit. It’s… yeah. Good for her I guess, but I kind of want to back away from that bit regardless.
The supporting characters are a mixed bag, mostly because of the plot and how it’s executed. Etty is a surprisingly combative character for how central she is to the story, and for all that her (I don’t want to say “disabled” but that’s clearly what they’re going for) “mooncalves” love her, there’s not a lot of obvious affection going in the other direction. Vettul, the differently-limbed eldest daughter who pairs up with Fitz, is a bit easier to get your head around, yearning to see the world but also feeling overwhelmed by it. The whole mooncalf thing is a bit cartoonish and perhaps hasn’t aged well, but it serves the wider point of this planet’s cruel view of those who don’t conform.
Nathaniel Dark (the names aren’t very consistent) is a Diviner, aka a priest who helps track the progress of people’s lives and puts their affairs in order at the end. He’s having a crisis of conscience about how his world is run. He’s probably the most rounded secondary figure here, but Cole still can’t quite fit him into the book’s second half, by which time things are getting a bit frantic and overpopulated. (Dark, like Vettul and Fitz, also significantly gets his end away here. I guess it passes the time.) We seem to spend more time with the villain, Cauchemar, whose limited dimensions are entirely dictated by how much plot he’s telling us about in each scene. His subordinates are mostly brainwashed units, so there’s not much to be had in the way of sparkling conversation there.
All of these characters, including the brainwashed guys, have a germ of something interesting, but it’s a struggle to get that out there. More broadly, Vanishing Point has ideas — perhaps even in abundance — but it fumbles their execution. Take the god stuff. The “Creator” is a physical force in this world. That’s very interesting, and a hugely significant thing for anyone to hear. We not only leave out the scene where Etty spells out how this actually works, skipping straight to Anji’s reaction — we then go the entire rest of the book without the Doctor, Anji or Fitz actively wanting to go and have a look. There’s a god here, a legit force that is a part of all life on the planet, and they’re not going to see if he’s home?! Yes, Cole establishes the weirdly deadly perimeter of his kingdom, but to not even bring it up as a possibility is massively strange.
The way the Creator filters through to these people takes a lot of explaining, and it’s a broadly interesting idea akin to reincarnation… but even after the required pages and pages of explanation, it’s tricky to get your head around and trickier still to care about. Wouldn’t it have been a good idea just to show the whole “godswitch”, end of life thing in action? Sort of, give us an example so we can relate to it emotionally later on? Sadly, that isn’t how the book works; it’s one of many BBC Books that’s more comfortable telling than showing.
See also, the brainwashing. It’s amusingly absurd that Fitz is mistaken for one of their number just because he’s wearing the guy’s coat; the idea that the same “person” is being downloaded into one unfortunate host after another is intriguing, as well as providing a counterpoint to how the whole Creator process works. But I don’t care because I don’t know any of them, before or after; there’s no sense of “real” people being snuffed out or “fake” people being somehow consistent in body after body. There aren’t any visible “people” in the whole equation. It’s just a thing of exposition, rather than an idea to explore. Feels like a waste.
That also goes for Dark’s profession. There isn’t much call to see it in action, and there are hardly any people for him to administer it to. Even the nitty-gritty stuff of how this all works is like an afterthought: the Diviners work for the Holiest, a more sinister ruling class who we find out in a stray line of dialogue are made up of dead tissue (?!), who then barely impact the story at all. So why include them?
Even the big, important eugenics bit doesn’t leave much impact. Yes, it’s horrible that Etty’s “mooncalves” are shunned by society, and would be killed if caught, but that’s a bit of an extreme example. Can’t we see what it means it be “normal” in this context? Where’s the cut-off point, exactly? Do a lot of people worry about not conforming? And really, once we’ve dispensed with the baddie and his campaign of terror, won’t it take a lot of work to unpick this clearly prejudiced society? How much of that is the Creator’s fault?
Vanishing Point has the makings of a challenging, emotional story about intolerance, but it seems much more interested in wittering on about genetic engineering. (I’m not even going there — trust me.) Similarly it could have been a refreshing examination of how atheism holds up against an infinite universe (really put Anji’s disbelief to the test, like) only whoops, we’re not going there at all outside of a few quick chats. It’s far better, apparently, to put all our stock in escapes, recaptures, bombings, car chases and hostage situations — the latter of which gets dragged out to extremes in the finale, which is one of those “He’s down! Oh wait he’s got a gun! Okay he’s down again! Oh no, a knife!” gauntlets. Action is by definition exciting, but doing it on a loop and without enough underlying meaning can turn it into monotony.
There’s enough action here that it’s very readable regardless, and that action forces (some) characters to behave in interesting and true ways, but I ended up bored with Vanishing Point anyway. There are big ideas, but too many of them, and there’s no space to meaningfully explore them. It’s like a philosophical discussion that barely asks, let alone answers the big questions. But with car chases.
6/10
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