#49
Relative Dimensias
By Mark Michalowski
Bunting! Sparklers! Those unrolling party things that honk! BBC Books has a new author for us. And he’s good.
I know nothing about Mark Michalowski other than the fact that I can’t seem to retain his full name. (I keep having to check.) We can surmise that he likes Doctor Who since he, y’know, wrote one. Relative Dementias has enough flavour to tell us that he knows it rather well, too, or otherwise that he excels at doing his homework. This isn’t a mark of quality by itself of course — most of the people who’ve read this book ought to stand a good chance in a Doctor Who pub quiz. But writing something that feels of a piece with the TV show without feeling like you’re coasting is no mean feat.
It gets off to an exciting start with a very singular teaser, using second person dialogue to set up something iffy going on at Graystairs, a Scottish Alzheimer’s clinic. (It feels a bit too easy to say that a vaguely modern thing feels more like New Who than Classic, but damn it, this one does.) We then dive straight into a bit of world-building, which you don’t often see in Past Doctor books.
The Doctor is asked for help by an old friend from UNIT, Dr Joyce Brunner, whose mother is at Graystairs. She does this via a secret PO Box which is monitored by another old/new friend, Countess Gallowglass: a fabulous grand old lady who lives with her cat in a hidden building. (I could immediately see her being an asset to the series, but alas, this is probably a one-and-done.) What an unusual instinct, using the continuity of the Doctor’s UNIT days but not having it be about Liz Shaw, or Mike Yates. And then throwing in brand new lore to boot! It felt like a proper expansion of the series, all tucked away in the range most people consider a chocolate box. Lush.
The story is on potentially shaky ground with Alzheimer’s, a subject you can imagine being done badly — especially with the potential insensitivity of a sci-fi explanation. Michalowski handles it appropriately, give or take some evil aliens on the periphery. The book doesn’t dwell much on the disease itself or its effect on families, but there are thoughtful moments as the residents rely on each other, and some fearlessly dark ones, such as Joyce’s view of her mother following a heart attack: “A stranger that more and more frequently, had reminded Joyce of what she’d wished for that day.” There is a sci-fi plot of course, as doctors somehow reverse the symptoms of the disease — for a sinister purpose, no doubt — but the book still makes time for Joyce to come back and confront what her mother is going through, the bad and the good. I wish there had been room to explore this more from the residents’ or the families’ point of view — more of a Flowers For Algernon thing, or even a Thursday Murder Club (with spaceships). But what we get feels quite decent.
Also very solid: the regulars. The Seventh Doctor and Ace are among the most written-about TARDIS teams, largely thanks to Virgin, so it might be hard to get them wrong. Even with that in mind, Relative Dementias really sells the duo. Granted, it feels like an earlier time in their relationship than the New Adventures or even most of their BBC Books — despite the Doctor’s Season 26 jacket Ace is a little more gung-ho here than she was in Fenric or Ghost Light. She is given reasons to be mistrustful of him in the novel, rather than carrying them over from other media, but they never really threaten to break their relationship. (Especially since Michalowski also gives Ace reasons to sympathise with the Doctor’s machinations.) Ace’s Leela-esque protectiveness is on full display, as is (charmingly) her sense of fun. I loved the bit at Graystairs when she tries to ruin an unpleasant person’s day: “Ducking back to the lounge, [Ace] opened her mouth to call ‘bingo’ as loudly as she could — only to find it smothered by the Doctor’s hand as he dragged her away. ‘Spoilsport,’ she muttered.”
There’s a surprisingly level playing field in this one between the Doctor and Ace and the villains of the piece. The book takes a while to really get into the action, the Doctor spending about a quarter of it mostly just getting something to eat — it feels, implicitly, like An Easy One. When we finally identify the baddies they’re not exactly the galaxy’s most wanted, feeling more than usually like just some (alien) people caught on the back foot. To an extent the Doctor and Ace have earned this sort of indomitable feeling. Michalowski uses it to set them up for a fall, however, when the Doctor’s relative (ahem) overconfidence puts him in the crosshairs of a certain kind of degenerative mental illness. All of a sudden, the less than accomplished villains are looking rather more threatening. Nice work.
This perhaps ought to be the selling point of the novel, if that doesn’t sound too glib; the Doctor losing his mind. (The blurb seems to think so.) I think Relative Dementias largely sleeps on it, however, pushing the Doctor lower down in the mix for a bit but never quite leaving us in doubt that he’ll recover. (Yes, I know that’s always a given, but still: novels gotta suspend disbelief.) It’s a good excuse to give more action to Ace, and it seemingly sets up a mystery about his past, although I might have misread that bit. If I didn’t then it’s hard to believe that anyone else is going to pick it up.
I haven’t said much about the plot, perhaps because I’d end up spoiling it. Relative Dementias keeps a lot of plates spinning and at times requires a bit of thought to piece it all together. One of its mysteries is perhaps not as mysterious as Michalowski would like to think, but I still enjoyed finding out what was going on there and following it through. There’s a decent number of reveals to keep things going afterwards. There are times though when it threatens to get over-ambitious, particularly with (don’t panic) a writing style that favours short sections and scene changes. Combined with some unusually hot weather, this slowed down my reading somewhat, but I don’t think it’s really a massive hindrance. Michalowski keeps his focus on the same few scenes at a time.
There’s a mild feeling of over-ambition in the characters as well as the structure. There are perhaps too many of them to really give everyone their due, with a number of Graystairs residents threatening to blend into the furniture, a couple of young lads on a boat fighting for pages, and even Joyce ending up as second fiddle to her son — him being a walking example of lore-building, there to set up the interesting but perhaps extraneous idea that life in UNIT has more cons than pros. It’s all good stuff, honestly, and it’s grist to the mill once it’s time for Ace to feel less than terrific about the Doctor’s actions. But in amongst a complex plot it becomes noticeably just another ingredient.
“Slightly too ambitious” is a nice problem to have, ultimately. Relative Dementias is my sort of speed for Doctor Who. The plot isn’t a galaxy-botherer, but there’s enough of it to make it spicy. Granted, the characters are a little over-crowded, but everyone’s got something to them. It engages with the TV series, but more with a “Yes, and” than a “What’s your favourite episode,” which tends to be the way. It’s a good example of the Past Doctor Adventures being fine to pick up and read without any context, only to then go a bit further than your expectations.
7/10
